Combat and Campus: Writing Through War

Elm Grove Press, Old Mystic, Connecticut, 2021

An infantryman's riveting letters from Vietnam, preserved for fifty years by his family, share experiences of living the war that are honest, raw, and graphic. As a journalist and soldier with the 25th Infantry Division, riding armored personnel carriers into rice paddies, engaging in night time sweeps of the jungle, Sgt. Peter Langlois chronicles the smells, sights, and sounds during some of the darkest days of the war from 1968 - '69. He would return home to a nation still protesting the war in which his younger sister, Annette, had walked to class behind National Guardsmen marching across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Their correspondence and her poetry offer a unique perspective of the war in Vietnam and social change happening at home. Together, they share what was learned and what was lost.

 Letter Excerpt from Sgt. Peter Langlois:

1 October 1968

…As we moved down a narrow road leading into dense foliage, the whole world suddenly seemed to open fire on the tracks. To be exact, the tracks were caught in an ambush. The enemy had our position on the road zeroed in for mortars. The ambush was sprung by simultaneously firing mortars, RPG’s (rifle propelled grenades), and heavy small arm and machine gun fire. One mortar landed in front of our track and another behind it. Bullets were ricocheting off the armor and cracking over our heads. Within seconds, our radio was crackling with screams of “medic, medic – I need a medic fast. Then,

“Hold your fire – don’t shoot the fifties – you’ll hit our own troops.” 

“For Christ sake get a medic, we’ve got a man bleeding to death.”

“The sergeant is hit – his face is covered with blood. God, someone get the medic.”

“We’re receiving heavy fire – we need the fifties.”  “Hold your fire, pull back.”

As we pulled back from the ambush kill zone, we opened fire with everything we had.  The track ahead of us had taken a direct mortar hit on the fifty-spraying the gunner and driver with shrapnel. Back at the edge of the rubber, we formed a small tight perimeter.  Everyone was still firing full volume as the bedlam continued.

The driver of my track jumped out of the driver’s hatch and climbed on to the track that had been hit with the mortar. The fifty gunner was slouched over the remains of his gun.  Our driver lifted him off the track and managed to get the wounded man behind the vehicle for cover.  The gallantry was futile. The mortar had blown away a bicep, part of his head, and had made his chest crimson mush. As our driver laid the wounded gunner on the ground, his eyes rolled back and cast an icy white stare. He was dead.

The wounded driver managed to get off the track but he had to be lead to cover because blood was running over his eyes. At this point, our element had 1 KIA and 3 WIA’s.

One of the wounded was a sergeant who was shot through the side of his face.  His eyes were bleeding and swollen shut.  One cheek was a gapping red hole.

Our platoon sergeant started calling for a “dust off” but when the medevac chopper started to approach about 30 minutes later, it suddenly dropped out of the air from enemy fire. Another “dust off” made it in 40 minutes later.

It seemed like an eternity waiting for air support. Finally gunships and several new Huey “Cobras” slammed machine gun and rocket fire into the enemy positions.

The dismounted troops were pinned down. While we waited for the dust-off, our platoon leader kept calling us on the radio, fearful he would get over run.  But we couldn’t move until the wounded were taken care of.

Just before dark, the tracks circled back through the rubber; crunched through several hedgerows and approached the pinned down troops in a wood line across a clearing.

Once in the open, we opened fire, and roared into the edge of the woods.  The whole area was a maze of red flashes in the dim light. Our superior fire power overwhelmed the enemy about an hour later. By now it was dark and we had to keep firing aerial flares so that everyone could find his way back to the tracks.  Sniper fire continued and several enemy caught crawling in the light of the flares were quickly disposed. 

At 8:30 p.m. we started driving back through the rubber.  Choppers dropped flares for illumination. Back on the main road, casualties were totaled – 5 KIA and 15 wounded. 

We finally got back to our battalion logger at 1:30 a.m. One track was left behind – blown apart in the ambush site.

 Poetry Excerpts By Annette Langlois Grunseth:

Ongoing War, published Portage Magazine April 2019

Pears, published Bramble Lit Mag 2017

Invisible Wounds, published Portage Magazine April 2020

Chopsticks, published 2017 Summer issue, Bramble Lit Mag and in Dispatches

“On Behalf of a Grateful Nation,” Dispatches Magazine, Military Writers Society of America

Primary source Letters/Autobiographical Experiences of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia and at home combined with poetry in response to the war and campus protests at University of Wisconsin -Madison during the same time period and post-war.