Mai Ling
She was a beautiful black-haired little girl with eyes so dark they looked black. She looked like she was about ten. I was only nine years older. She was dead. I never knew her name. I will call her Mai Ling.* “They” said a fifty-caliber machine gun (‘50’) bullet had killed her. Let me start at the beginning.
We were in a firefight in Vietnam. The bullets were flying all around us. We were the 47th. Mechanized Infantry. It was 1967, just north of Saigon. Anyway, the bullets were flying. I had only been in country a little while. McArthur (we called each other by our last names, we didn’t want to get to close to someone who might be killed at any time) was on the ‘50’ and I (My name is Binion) was feeding him ammo. We shot the ‘50’ until the barrel turned red. I told McArthur, “Hey man, we better change the barrel.” McArthur said, Let’s do one more.” I handed him one more belt.
When he open the chamber on the top of the ‘50’, and put the bandolier in the chamber, it exploded. McArthur got a face full of shrapnel and I got a scratch on my knee. McArthur only had a couple of weeks left in country before his tour of duty was up, so he was airlifted out and went home.
After the battle, we received word from a local village leader that a young girl had been killed by one of our bullets. When we got to the village, which was about a mile and a half away from the site of the battle, we found the girl in a hutch lying on a homemade bed. The bullet was just barely in her neck, just hanging there, as if it had been pressed into her neck by someone’s thumb. On closer inspection by our medic, it was determined that the girl died of heart failure. The bullet was not even flattened or scratched, supposedly after going through a metal sign and into the girl’s neck. There was no way that bullet was fired from a gun. The locals had tried to set us up. The whole village could have been Viet Cong; there was no way of knowing. I hate war.
We stayed long enough to build a fence around the village,(To keep the Viet Cong out, ha) disarm an unexploded howitzer shell, and give medical aid to all of those who wanted it. However, we couldn’t bring back Mai Ling.
*In another life, I would buy my little girl, Morgan, an Asian doll and she named it Mai Ling.
We were in a firefight in Vietnam. The bullets were flying all around us. We were the 47th. Mechanized Infantry. It was 1967, just north of Saigon. Anyway, the bullets were flying. I had only been in country a little while. McArthur (we called each other by our last names, we didn’t want to get to close to someone who might be killed at any time) was on the ‘50’ and I (My name is Binion) was feeding him ammo. We shot the ‘50’ until the barrel turned red. I told McArthur, “Hey man, we better change the barrel.” McArthur said, Let’s do one more.” I handed him one more belt.
When he open the chamber on the top of the ‘50’, and put the bandolier in the chamber, it exploded. McArthur got a face full of shrapnel and I got a scratch on my knee. McArthur only had a couple of weeks left in country before his tour of duty was up, so he was airlifted out and went home.
After the battle, we received word from a local village leader that a young girl had been killed by one of our bullets. When we got to the village, which was about a mile and a half away from the site of the battle, we found the girl in a hutch lying on a homemade bed. The bullet was just barely in her neck, just hanging there, as if it had been pressed into her neck by someone’s thumb. On closer inspection by our medic, it was determined that the girl died of heart failure. The bullet was not even flattened or scratched, supposedly after going through a metal sign and into the girl’s neck. There was no way that bullet was fired from a gun. The locals had tried to set us up. The whole village could have been Viet Cong; there was no way of knowing. I hate war.
We stayed long enough to build a fence around the village,(To keep the Viet Cong out, ha) disarm an unexploded howitzer shell, and give medical aid to all of those who wanted it. However, we couldn’t bring back Mai Ling.
*In another life, I would buy my little girl, Morgan, an Asian doll and she named it Mai Ling.
posted by 7horses | Tuesday, June 21, 2005
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