U.S. Army Soldier Describes Fighting During Tet Offensive (1982)

Interviewer: Okay. Sabatier: So, I'm laying there in this bomb crater with this other friend of my who's in my squad and ah I realize that ah we're going up against, you know, North Vietnamese regulars here. These are not VC. VC do not have .51 caliber machine guns and ah it seemed like every day approaching this day we've been getting – you know, for the last two weeks we'd been in a lot of firefights and they were really prepared for us here. I realized that it was going to be a long day – probably the worst firefight that I'd ever been in already. Sabatier: I haven't even engaged the enemy hardly. And ah, so I told this guy next to me, I said, don't stick your head up here. You know, if you want to fire just keep them off of us, stick your hands up over the edge and you know pull off two or three rounds. We've got to conserve our ammo here. And ah don't bar – you know, just keep shooting just to keep them off of us. So, luckily we had this case of grenades that have been drug over so every couple of minutes we'd throw one of these grenades. We we knew the trench lines were probably about twenty yards ahead of us and we were in this open area that had been bombed out and ah we're exposed. Sabatier: We're in a bad position. The only thing that we could hope for was that we still had communications and that they could call these air strikes back in here, give 'em their positions, get some gunships in here and shoot some rockets in here to give us some cover to get the hell out of here. Um, about that time um I hear this guy calling me and my nickname was Tex... everybody seemed to have a nickname and that was mine. I hear this guy outside...

Interviewer: Excuse me. I’m sorry… Interviewer: Sorry for the interruptions, go ahead. Sabatier: So about this time I hear somebody calling me. My nickname was Tex... Interviewer: Would you start again please? Sabatier: Yeah. About this time I hear somebody calling me, Tex, that was my nickname. Ah, I thought I was hearing things 'cause I could barely hear so I waited and I heard it again, Tex. So, you know, I wasn't going to stick my head up to see who the hell was calling Tex, and ah the third time I heard it somebody was saying, Tex, help me Tex. And so my friend says, don't be a fool, you know, don't go out there, you're gonna get killed and I probably think that he was more scared of me leaving him there alone than me getting hurt. Sabatier: But I didn't go out for like ten minutes and I kept hearing this friend of mine hollering Tex, help me, so finally I don't know what happened, I didn't really even think it over or anything I just instinctively jumped up out of this bomb crater and ran over to help this guy. Just as I got to him, I was putting one knee down on the ground and I was just reaching for him and I felt this thud in my back and I thought my other friend had run out too and had tripped or something when I stopped and had accidentally kneed me in the back, it was like, you know, somebody punched you right in the back as hard as they could.

Sabatier: Well, it knocked the breath out of me and I took this deep breath. When I took the breath this blood just came flying right out of my throat as if I had a faucet in my mouth and ah you know I ended up falling, you know, my chest hits the ground I'm laying on my M-16 and I realize that I've been shot, it's not him kneeing me in the back. And so I took another breath and ah the same thing happened, and I'm having a hard time breathing and I realize that a bullet had hit me and penetrated my lung and I tried to roll over and I couldn't roll over, I was paralyzed and I didn't that at the time 'cause the bullet severed my spinal cord, too, on its way to the lung, so, I was pretty scared and I learned that just within a few seconds if I just barely breathed that I could barely suck air I get a little blood but I could get enough air in order to stay alive. Sabatier: So my problem would be bleeding to death at least not choking to death so if I could like stay alive long enough maybe somebody would drag me out of there. Well, I took a look at my friend I was laying right there next to him and ah I I opened his fatigues where he'd been shot, he'd apparently go a full burst of a Russian AK-47 across the lower part of his stomach and his groin area and I opened it up and I saw ah just what looked like a bowl of blood to me. His genitals had been ah just shot right off, I guess. And ah, it looked just like a small potato salad bowl of blood sitting there, just sitting there.

Sabatier: And ah I looked at him and ah he said, “I'm gonna die aren't I?” and I said, “yeah, you're gonna die.” And uh he died like a minute later. And ah, so then I started worrying about myself. I knew that if I tried to move to get back to the bomb crater I'd just get shot again. Um, it was it was just unbelievable the firepower that was going on there. Um, when I say this it almost sounds like we were isolated and it was lonely or something but it was like a tremendous amount of noise and rockets and people screaming and hollering and a lot of... you know, just amazing, like the movies. Sabatier: So, I lay there and I figure, well, I'll just pull myself up to him so I can get right next to him as much as I can. My arms had been um paralyzed too but at least the feeling. I could move them but I couldn’t feel them they were numb like they were asleep and they were finally coming back so I could so I thought maybe my legs were numb too and they'd come around but they didn't. But just the sheer shock. When the bullet had hit me it felt like a great big spring inside of me had busted, you know, and ah as if somebody had but an electric wire to me and just shocked me and I had all this numbness throughout my whole body like I was asleep and I was just waking up again.