I lived part of one of the biggest lies that Washington has ever pulled off, almost. I served the biggest part of my short but deadly military career in Cambodia. My military records say that I've never been out of the United States. But this is just one small lie in the lie of lies.

I reported to Ft. Bragg, NC for basic training. During the in-processing I was ask if I knew how to shoot. At that time, with a 22 rifle I could light a match stuck in the top of a fence post at about 40 ft. When I told the processing personnel about that I was told to go over to another station and he then told me to go out and get into a van and wait. When 2 vans were filled a driver came out and and took us through several secure checkpoints that at that time I believe to have been in the Special Forces Group area. Today this area is the home of a group of soldiers called Delta Force. It has been only recently that Washington has admitted that there was a Delta Force.

For the next few weeks we lived day and night on the rifle range. Being green and naive I didn't know what I was being trained for. I had hardly heard the word "sniper". We were trained to use something I'd never heard about, night vision. With the rifles with silencers and the night vision equipment we could work day and night. The people we would be targeting wouldn't know which direction the fire was coming from. We spent a lot of time working on rifle ranges firing at targets at more than a thousand meters.

Our trainers didn't wear military uniforms and no insignia of rank. We were to address these people as "Mr. Jones", "Mr. Smith". They were all common names and I don't believe that they were using their real names. We ask about what we were training for, who these guys were and we were told that we would be told as we had a need to know. We were not to ask for or give eachother any information other than your first name. All mail was read and approved before we could mail it. When we called home our conversations were being monitored to be sure we didn't let it slip as to our where abouts and what we were doing. Some weeks later I told my parents and girlfriend that I was being transferred to Ft. Lee, Va.

The one night Mr. Jones came in and woke the whole unit up and told us to put on our civilian clothes, pack just our civilian gear and leave everything else. When everyone was ready we were loaded on to vans and we took a short ride to Pope Air Force Base. There we were loaded on to a jet. We took off into the night. Sometime after a mid-air refueling Mr. Jones gave us paperwork to sign. Now we had a "need to know". We were no longer members of the US Army! Some hours later we landed in Sigon and were quickly loaded on to a DC-3 and immediately took off and flew again for sometime and finally landed in a hole in the jungle. Now we were employees of a company by the name of 'Mac Air'. There was a lot activity at this small remote airstrip. Mac Air was a company that would fly anything for anyone if the price was right.

The small group of us that were snipers stayed away from the air operations. The next night we went out with our rifles and were stationed along mountain ridges. Our mission was to watch the valley on both sides of us and to take out any officers that came through with their troops. These troops were Chinese.

It wasn't but a couple of hours before we could see men and equipment moving down the valley trails. The officers were easy to pick out, they weren't carrying large packs or AKs. My trainer for the night took out one target. Then it was my turn... So I picked a target and put the cross hairs where I would be assured of a kill. I squeezed off the round and to my amazement my target fell. Then it hit me.... I had taken another human life. I was sick, the sickest I've ever been. It was very difficult to have the 'dry heaves' quietly. My trainer got two more kills that night. But I couldn't bring myself to fire again. This wasn't like being in a fire fight, where it was kill or be killed. It took me a day or two to get up the courage to fire again. This time it wasn't so bad. In a few days I had shut what I was doing out of my conscious mind. This was the first time in my life that I had been praised for doing a good job. I'd finally found something that I could do and Mr Smith and Mr. Jones really heaped on the praise. It wasn't long before I wanted to 'stay out' all the time.

One night while at our watching post, the valley below seemed to be alive with soldiers coming through. There must have been 1500-2000 troops. This was something that we couldn't let happen. But there were only about 15 of us. Mr. Jones for the first time I'd ever seen him use a radio called in the big boys. It so happened that there was "Puff" in the area. Puff was a C-130 with mini guns mounted in it's sides. Puff made several passes over the area to make everyone keep their heads down. Then on the radio.... "we're coming in hot". Puff left the area quickly and Mr. Jones suggested that we get the hell out of there. By this time we could hear the roar of jets coming in our direction. We barely made it over the ridge before the jets dropped their napalm bombs and set the whole valley on fire. There we were at a safe distance away watching the 'krispy kritters' running around. They estimated that we had stopped three to four thousand Chinese troops from getting to Nam. Today the only way I can reconcile this horror is with the hope that we saved a few American lives that night.