“We left Vietnam, but Vietnam never left us,” proclaimed Bill Pyffer.
Like many Vietnam veterans, Bill Pyffer clearly remembers the events that transpired during the war.
He fought on a team that had a specific purpose.
“I was in the Army from 1966 to 1969. I was with the 101st Airborne Division paratroopers. I went to Vietnam in 1967 and 1968,” remembered Bill. “I was part of the LRRP Team, Long Range Recon Patrol. We would go out and look for activity. Sometimes there were four, five or six guys on a team. If it was a heavy team, there could be 10 or 12. Our job was to observe people moving. In our case, a lot of times we would cause a lot of trouble and then run. We never really knew what we did, but we knew we pissed them off.”
Their missions could last for days at a time, and he can easily remember the details of how they packed and what they would have to eat each time they went out.
“Depending on the mission, we could be out for four or five days. We always carried rations for longer,” continued Bill. “We didn’t have C-rations in the can; we had LRRP rations, which were freeze dried food. If you got a pack of spaghetti, you would put some water in there, mix it up, eat what you want, roll it back up, and stick it back in your backpack. At lunchtime, you’d take it out and add a little more water. They weighed nothing compared to C-rations.”
While in the midst of fighting, some of the most discouraging things he can recall were the reports from home discussing all the protests that were taking place.
“It was tough over there sometimes, especially if we got news from the States about all the riots and protests. That was when they all started—back in the mid-60s. That was kind of tough,” recalled Bill. “Of course, we have our girl, Jane Fonda, who went to Hanoi. They got her pictures out there straddling a big 105 gun telling us that we need to come home. That’s tough when you’re over there and have people in the States that are protesting that you’re there.”
Seeing everything that was happening over there, he could clearly see where the war was primarily a political move where they were only carrying out the orders of the government.
“We could have won that war in six to eight months if we wanted to, but it wasn’t the guys in Vietnam that would call the shots. It was the guys in Washington calling the shots,” proclaimed Bill. “We could go into a village and know the enemy was there. We could go in early morning and were going to do what we do as LRRPs. We’d get a directive telling us no because the map shows that it’s a friendly village. They would base it off a map that was done by some little Lieutenant back in the rear. It seemed like nothing was ever done until it went to Washington and came back.”
With all the political involvement, a mural he saw at one of the locations he stayed had an even larger impact on him. That one mural will forever be engraved in his memory because of the true message it conveyed.
“I saw a mural over there. I believe it was in a mess hall, but I can’t tell you where,” recalled Bill. “They had painted on the wall a rice paddy. In the middle of the rice paddy, there was a dike, or wooden structure they would walk on. On one side was LBJ holding an M-16. On the other side of the dike was Ho Chi Minh holding an AK-47, and they were shaking hands. The caption was ‘If the people that made the war had to fight the war, there’d be no war.’”
In his time over there, one of the things he had to deal with and still faces side effects from was Agent Orange.
“There was also Agent Orange while we were there. It took years for the government to admit that Agent Orange is what’s wrong with a lot of us now,” explained Bill. “Agent Orange was a killer of vegetation. They would fly over and just dump that repellant. A few days later, the jungle would be gone; it was burned up. It would kill everything. When you would get out of a helicopter on a mission, you knew that the area was sprayed with Agent Orange. You could just tell. It’s like when you go inside one night leaving a nice big beautiful lawn outside and come out the next day to find your yard is just dirt. They’ve finally come out now and admitted that Agent Orange does cause high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol problems, and other things. They’ve even gone as far as to admit it affected the sailors who were never even on the ground in Vietnam but off the coast because they would have inhaled it and picked it up from the wind blowing it onto them. It gives pretty much everything that is wrong with me now. My family has no history of diabetes, but I’ve got it now.”
Transitioning back after coming home wasn’t the easiest. He didn’t go straight into civilian life, but even life in the Army posed a slight challenge. He could see where the training the new soldiers were receiving didn’t match the conditions he knew they would be facing if they were sent over to Vietnam.
“The hardest thing for me was that you spend your time in Vietnam, which is nothing but a dust bowl and in some places mud if it rains during the monsoon season. You get out and put your boots on and put your pants on, your fatigues. Maybe you’ve worn them for two or three days and just put them back on,” informed Bill. “Then, I come back to the States and they talk about how your boots aren’t shined enough and how your fatigues aren’t starched. In training, they have these machines that they call troop carriers. The guys get in the back, you go up to the line, the back door falls down, and all the guys go out in a straight line forward. They don’t do that in Vietnam, and that’s what they were teaching these young kids. I told them I didn’t want any part of that because they weren’t teaching those kids reality. Everything you do in Vietnam is only like 10 or 15 feet distance and you don’t know what you’re shooting at half the time. You just see a muzzle flash go off or someone has a machine gun going, but most of the time it’s all 10 or 15 feet away.”
While he originally wasn’t stationed where he had intended, he ended up liking the area just because of some friendly interaction that wasn’t present in other parts of the United States towards the military.
“The Army is structured, and I wanted to stay in, but I told the company commander that wanted me to reenlist that I would stay in if everybody else in that Army went to Vietnam before I had to go back again. At the time, if your daddy was a Kennedy or a banker or whatever, you didn’t go to Vietnam. You may have to go in the Army, but you weren’t going to Vietnam. The company commander told me no and that the only thing he could promise me with my training and experience is that he could send me home for 30 days and probably get me back in my old outfit if I wanted to go back to that. You can only roll the dice so many times, and we lost a little over 58,000 people over there. After my three years was up, I got out,” declared Bill. “When I first came back, over here, they said I had nine months left to go. I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I put in to go to Fort Dix. I was a paratrooper, and the only way you lose that status is if you voluntarily quit. I did that thinking I was going to go to Fort Dix right outside of Philly, but I wound up in Colorado. It turned out to be great because I had never been to Colorado and will probably never go again. I called my dad and told him I wasn’t coming back. I told him I was walking down the street that day and someone said hi to me and I didn’t even know who they were. That wasn’t happening back in Philly. I stayed there and got married and spent 31 years in Colorado.”
Coping with the stress and trauma that was developed in Vietnam has been difficult over the years. Although he was able to break the drinking and other addictions he developed as part of his coping when he first returned, there are still things that he deals with constantly that will never dissipate.
“Terina, my wife, knows that if I’m having a nightmare or anything not to shake me. She knows to just ask if I’m okay or to get out of the bed depending on how I wake up,” expressed Bill. “It’s just a day to day thing. If I hear a loud bang, I jump. Where I live, I have eleven acres in front of the house that’s a hayfield and is surrounded by trees, and behind me I have 30 acres that’s all trees. I am constantly looking at the tree line and will zone in. When I drive to Meridian, I’m always looking at the tree line. I’m so guarded, even when going to restaurants. At Chefski’s I have a table over by the telephone booth in the corner. I can see who comes and who goes and know which way to get out if I have to get out.”
Life is better for him now, but he will always remember all of the experiences he had while fighting in Vietnam.
