Soldier's Ghost

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The question of our mortality is one we likely avoid dwelling on.

And for many of us, the thought of encountering a ghost would be a terrifying experience.

But there are those among the Vietnamese people who are so accustomed to the idea of ghosts, they refer to them simply as their invisible neighbors.

Their beliefs dictate that unless their bones are properly buried, their spirit may remain bound to the earth, tragically unable to pass on to the afterlife.

And in war, a proper burial is a luxury, unafforded to many soldiers and civilians, their bodies being completely obliterated by an artillery shell, or forgotten, and lost to both rot and animal predation in the jungle.

It would seem that becoming a ghost is evidently a far more terrifying prospect for people who are accustomed to seeing them walking among the living.

The American forces discovered this belief, what they considered a widespread superstition, and used it to formulate an effective psychological warfare campaign against the North Vietnamese, an operation known as Wandering Soul.

But are these just mere superstitions?

What would an American soldier think when he finds himself encountering something that he doesn't believe in?

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

This story belongs to a man we will call Thomas.

As noted by his friend Craig Jorgensen, a fellow war veteran and the author who interviewed him for this story, Thomas is described as being the quiet, deeply religious, dark-suited conservative type who just happens to be a Vietnam veteran.

This isn't your standard war story, Thomas told him.

I mean, it's not the typical there I was with the shoeshine kid who had a booby-trap grenade grenade kind of story.

Or say the kind of story where the Viet Cong attacks your camp, and then when you're looking over the dead enemy bodies in the wire, you see the body of your favorite barber from the base barber shop who always cut your hair.

And it turns out he was a Viet Cong colonel the whole time he was shaving your neck with a straight razor.

No,

this story is

different

In 1967, when Thomas was just a young man in college, living in the state of Washington, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do, so he dropped out of college to find himself.

His draft board found him first, however.

Soon afterward, his two-alpha student status was changed to that of one-alpha, draftable, which is exactly what happened less than a few months later when he got a telegram that began greetings from the President of the United States.

Along with thousands of other draftees, his induction in Seattle was quickly followed by a bus trip to Fort Lewis, where his basic and advanced infantry training took place.

In the cold rain and snow of Washington, he trained for 16 weeks on how to survive jungle combat.

Choosing not to take orders to airborne jump school or the 12-week NCO course, he was given 30 days of leave before being put on a plane with 100 other GIs flying out of McCord Air Force Base, a short flight to Alaska, a longer flight to Japan, and then another uncomfortable leg to their final destination, Vietnam.

Upon his arrival, he was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, the CAV, and spent the rest of his time in Vietnam as an infantryman, a grunt.

Having initially arrived to Vietnam in the fall of 1965, the CAVs' initial combat engagements were some of the first between major U.S.

forces and the North Vietnamese, beginning with the Battle of An Ninh, just south of the dividing border between North and South Vietnam.

During this first battle, they suffered 13 dead and 44 wounded, with an estimated 226 enemy soldiers killed.

These men's experiences with death and suffering would continue to mount, with the division suffering more than 5,000 total deaths and nearly 27,000 wounded by the time the U.S.

withdrew from the conflict.

By the spring of 1968, Thomas's infantry company was to be found patrolling the mountains and valleys just outside of Phantiet on the coast of the South China Sea.

With a large amount of Viet Cong activity being reported in the area, his company was tasked with locating and ambushing any enemy units that would be heading south on their way toward the capital city of Saigon, about 100 miles away.

Spring used to be so cool back home.

I am never gonna get over this heat.

Yeah,

ah, damn, bugs.

Oh,

does that look like a foot trail?

You?

Yep, sure does.

Hey, Sergeant.

Yeah, you might want to come over here.

Check this out.

I think we got something.

What is it?

Foot trail.

Charlie?

Yep.

About 10 days into the operation, while patrolling through a small valley, His platoon discovered a well-used foot trail following along a stream.

Reporting this find back to their command, they were then ordered to to remain on location and to monitor the trail for enemy movement.

With the rest of the company spreading themselves out along the mountain hillside, Thomas and his platoon moved up to an observation position, an OP, setting themselves up on top of a ridge that overlooked the foot trail below.

If any Viet Cong walked down that trail, their assignment was to conduct an ambush.

If any enemy soldiers survived the ambush, their attempts to escape or to flank Thomas' position would lead them right into the rest of his company, which was spread out along the hillside.

Night fell as they secured their OP, concealing themselves in the vegetation and setting out claymore mines, the hot, humid day turning quickly into a miserably cold, foggy, and wet night.

The men then did their best to get comfortable, settling down onto the cold, wet mud for what might amount to several days of jungle rot and continuous observation.

While some men rested, the others took it in rotating shifts to watch the radio, to hold security, and to keep watch on the trail.

Thomas was up before first light and took over a guard ship from 4 to 6 in the morning.

He conducted a comm check back to his command, checked that the Claymore clacker was close at hand, and set his rifle down on his lap, leaning back against his rucksack.

With the cold damp air from the South China Sea blowing inland, he kept his body tucked in, shivering as he tried to stay warm.

As he stared out over the valley, visible only by the light of a quarter moon, he thought that Vietnam might just have been a beautiful country if not for the war.

Some guys hated this early morning shift, but Thomas, he liked it.

Says it was usually a quiet and peaceful shift, and plus you got to watch the sun come up over the jungle or mountains.

The early hours weren't always quiet though, which is what usually kept his tired mind set on edge.

The Viet Cong were known to attack just before sunup, right when their enemy least expected it, often ruining everyone's first cup of coffee.

But here in this elevated position, Thomas and his platoon had the tactical advantage.

Any attacking enemy would have to climb up the steep hill to get to them, so he felt somewhat reassured that these next two hours would be an uneventful watch shift.

Or perhaps not.

Don't move!

Identify yourself!

Hey!

Who is that?

Identify yourself!

Miserably cold and tired, he says what happened next must have been a dream.

One minute, it's quiet, as he's staring out over the hillside just as the sun started to come up.

And then as his mind started to wander, a soldier suddenly appeared directly in front of him.

His first thought was that this was one of the other guys taking a piss or something, but it wasn't.

Startled, Thomas brought his rifle up, staring down the sights now leveled at the man's chest.

Then he realized something was wrong.

The soldier wasn't standing on solid ground down below him.

He was standing directly in front of him.

This man was floating in midair, off the edge of the ridge.

Wasn't real.

Couldn't be, he thought.

He tried blinking and shaking his head to ward off the grogginess, but the man was still there.

His mind now gathering in what he was seeing, he realized the man he was staring at wasn't a Viet Cong soldier, nor was he an American soldier.

He wasn't even close to being either.

No, this man looked like something out of a gladiator movie.

He was dressed in something like Long John's, only cut off at the elbows and knees, along with a cape and sandals on his feet.

His armor and weapons, nothing fancy, just a helmet made of leather, his right hand resting on a short sword in a metal and leather sheath, and his left hand holding a battered, oblong shield.

This was a man that, by all appearances, was a Roman soldier floating in mid-air.

Other men who fought in Vietnam reported seeing weird things, hallucinations, even ghosts, but rarely have they mentioned a ghost speaking to them.

This one did.

Hey!

Identify yourself.

What?

Whatever he said, Thomas didn't understand it.

Something like, meant to marry.

It was only years later he would find out the soldier was speaking in a different language, Latin.

And Thomas didn't know any Latin.

As he observed this strange soldier, he suspected this must be some kind of waking dream he had fallen into.

The soldier then nodded at him, as if to say that Thomas should understand what he meant.

Thomas nodded back, thinking he might be nodding off to sleep.

And just as the sunrise peaked over the valley, the soldier disappeared.

Was this the result of battle stress?

Thomas thought it might be.

He would later state that fear often had soldiers seeing things their eyes told them couldn't be true, only they were too gripped with fear not to believe what they were seeing.

He might have discounted what he saw as just that, an uncomfortably realistic and very vivid hallucination brought on by an overactive imagination, exhaustion, and combat stress.

But then again, the rest of the story, he says, is X-Files or Twilight Zone material.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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In his pizza shop interview with his friend Craig, Thomas went on to elaborate his own research, which was conducted when he'd returned from the war and was trying to make sense of what he saw, this strange vision of an ancient Roman soldier in Vietnam.

He certainly couldn't prove whether what he saw was a hallucination or not, but his leading question was whether any Roman soldier would have ever stepped foot into Vietnam.

He discovered that the Roman Empire once stretched from England to Iran, with its influence stretching a great deal further east into Asia.

After sharing the same strange story with a schoolteacher friend of his, she evidently said it was possible that the Romans might have conducted an expeditionary trip into Vietnam, although it was probably unlikely.

The Greeks apparently found a sea route to China in in the first century BC, and Thomas said there was even a professor at Oxford University who was convinced the Romans made it that far, possibly to Vietnam.

Evidently there are even Chinese legends that speak about a few Chinese cities being sacked by mercenary soldiers that were dressed and carried weapons uncannily similar to the Romans.

With no evidence to either confidently prove or disprove the idea of the Roman army exploring and possibly dying in Vietnam, his next thought was to approach the subject with a logical comparison to other historical disputes.

Thomas recounted the story of an American soldier, John Coulter, from the 1800s, a man who went out with the Lewis and Clark expedition, later returning to civilization completely stripped of his clothes, bringing back only a story of his adventure, a story that no one believed.

Sure, they believed the story about him being captured by the Blackfoot tribe, stripped naked, and then being given the opportunity to outrun them to save his life, which he barely managed.

But nobody believed his story about Yellowstone, that he had actually seen a place where the mud bubbled and where hot water shot up from the ground.

No, says Thomas, they laughed at him until a few other explorers managed to find Yellowstone themselves.

Thomas also points out that according to Old Welsh legend and books by E.O.

Gordon and Dunan Wilkins, London was originally named Kyertroia, New Troy, and that the city was founded by a man named Brutus.

Yet another controversial debate among historians.

His point being that, since time began, soldiers or armies seemed to reach just about every corner of the globe, and certainly not all of them made it back alive.

The men who went to Vietnam are no different, whether French, Japanese, American, Australian, or possibly even Roman.

As for this unanswered question about Romans ever being in Vietnam, more recent evidence may well prove this to be entirely true.

Thomas would not have known it at the time because his interview with Craig took place prior to 2001, the year his book was published.

But additional archaeological findings and documented evidence was published only recently, possibly as late as 2021.

These archaeological finds in ancient texts do offer compelling evidence that Thomas was right.

Romans may well have walked on Vietnamese soil and perhaps died there.

But the creepy part of the whole story, he says, is what he discovered about the phrase spoken by this Roman apparition, meant to marry.

His schoolteacher friend said he was probably mistaken.

It was more likely a Latin phrase, she told him:

memento mori.

The translation,

remember,

you must die.

A hallucination, perhaps.

A dream?

The phrase Mementumori is said to have its origins in ancient Rome, where it is believed that slaves accompanying military generals on their victory parades would whisper these same words into the commander's ear as he was applauded and cheered by tens of thousands of people.

The phrase was meant to remind a soldier of his mortality, to prevent him from being consumed by hubris or excessive pride and self-confidence.

So, we are left to ponder, what are the odds that an American soldier fighting in Vietnam, who spoke no amount of Latin, would hallucinate something like that?

As he reflected on his friend's strange story during the interview, Craig Jorgensen likewise recalled a similar moment from his own time in Vietnam.

He was likewise pulling a pre-dawn guard shift in the jungle, and like his friend, he was groggy, with his mind drifting off to settle on anything but the war around him.

Suddenly, his attention was yanked back into the present moment.

He had spotted an enemy soldier approaching his position, an NBA sapper, a special forces soldier with the North Vietnamese Army.

The man was crouching only a few yards away, having apparently snuck up on his position while he was dozing off, now remaining perfectly still, clearly hoping Craig wouldn't notice him.

He was all of 15 yards away, and Craig knew this man was on his way to kill him.

His heart now racing, not wanting to make any sudden moves, Craig slowly moved his hand to the grip of his weapon, leveling the rifle on his thighs, knowing he couldn't possibly miss him at such short range.

He held that position for some time, his body cold and trembling uncontrollably in the early dawn, waiting for the NBA soldier to make a move, to flinch, or anything so he could blow the guy away.

The sun was now rising over the horizon, the light filtering through the trees.

It would soon reveal the enemy soldier in his position, and he would be forced to move.

Craig steadied his rifle.

But when the sunlight hit the NBA sapper,

he vanished, a small tree taking his place.

Had he been a tree the entire time?

A hallucination?

Neither of these two men could ever be sure,

because what they saw certainly looked real to them.

In Craig's case, however, he might have only imagined seeing the ghost of his current enemy.

a Vietnamese man who could have died very recently.

And he didn't speak.

what Thomas saw

is something else entirely

wartime stories is created and hosted by me Luke Lamana Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin Nick Witters and Zach Levitt written by Jake Howard and myself audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acascio, and Witt Lacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddum.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooke Lynn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Clogson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.