The Tragedy of Friendship in the Vietnam War

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Head to Walmart.com today and score the 4K TV you've been waiting for. For over-throwing the old order, and that included Catholics, like Camilo's father Manuel. Camilo and his brother spent summers picking produce to raise money for Catholic school tuition and uniforms. Shortly after he graduated high school, Camilo was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army in 1966, and was stationed in Vietnam for one tour. Here is Camilo Venegas with his recollections of Vietnam. In 1966, I got drafted. I was sent first to El Paso, Fort Bliss. And then three days later, they took us up north to Kansas, and I was in Fort Riley, Kansas. When we arrived at Fort Riley, Kansas, we were all told, you're going to Vietnam. You will hear rumors, but don't believe, you're going to Vietnam. We need men in Vietnam, and you're going. Nine months later, I was in Vietnam. I left California on New Year's Day of 1966 on a troop carrier.

We arrived by ship in Vietnam in 1967. We were taken to a place called Bearcat. There was nothing there. It was in the middle of the jungle.

They did have a few bunkers, and the older guys that had been to Vietnam, maybe a month or two prior to us, they were guarding us the first night. We all slipped on the ground. I remember that when everything finally settled down, it was probably about 12 o'clock at night, and it was quiet. And in the distance, you could hear battles going on. And then it hit us. We were in a war.

This is it. And you could hear guys crying. It was just what was going to happen. I was 19 years old. It was scary.

No one in my whole company had ever seen any action at all. They were as green as we were. Eventually, we started going out into the jungle. The first time we went out in the jungle, we were so green that we ran out of water. While we were so lost, they couldn't find us. We went a day with no water in the jungle.

The second day, they finally found us, and they gave us water. That's how green we were. Also being that green, in the first few months of Vietnam, the Viet Cong took heavy toll on us. We lost a lot of guns because we didn't know what we were doing. They had been fighting the French before us. They had been fighting for 100 years, so they knew everything. And it was their backyard. We took heavy casualties. Everybody had guard duty at night, and the problem was a lot of guys would fall asleep.

There was a claymore mines. They have little legs on them and a cord runs from them. And you have a squeeze. You squeeze it twice.

On the third one, it'll blow up. Well, when we first got there, we were so green that the VC in the middle of the night would sneak up and turn them around to face us. And we didn't know it until a couple of guys got killed.

So in the middle of the night, you'd have to sneak out there and make sure they weren't turned around. After about four months, then we were good. We were good to go. The war was really difficult because, like I said, we had nobody who had any experience. In fact, some of us, after six months, had more experience than sergeants and lieutenants. I remember a few times we went out to go set up ambushes, and we had to teach them how to do it because they didn't know how to do it.

That's why we took such a beating. I was in C Company, 2nd in the 47th Infantry. I was a team leader for the weapons squad. My job was to lead my team on ambushes at night. We would go and set up in the middle of the night. We'd leave 10 o'clock at night and walk in the jungle. The Viet Cong, they also had ambushes set up. We were upset because they were having us go to this village because there was supposed to be heavy VC there and observe it. But we would leave at the same time every day. We kept telling the sergeants stuff, that ain't right.

They're going to time us. And unfortunately, when I had just gotten back from my patrol and we were cleaning our weapons stuff out in the jungle, an A squad got hit, and it was 11 guys. We went out to get them. When we got there, they were really tore up.

I'd never seen human bodies like that. It stunned me. I just couldn't believe that these guys, we crossed paths. We were coming in, they were going out. And now they're dead. And it was shocking. And that's when it really hit me that, man, I'm in a war.

And there's no rules. Being a squad leader, they asked me if I wanted to be a point man. And I said, sure, because one of my best friends who was from Florida was a point man. His dad, for a living, tracked animals. He was a guide for hunters. So the kid knew everything about tracking and stuff like that.

Me and him being best friends, he taught me how to track. He was in the center, I was off to the right, and another guy was off to the left, and we were the three point men leading people into the jungle. But the problem was the maps they gave us. By the time we got the map, the trail that they had was covered by jungle.

So now the trail would end right in the middle of a jungle. We couldn't get through it. From then on, it was no more. I saw a lot of combat.

I think too much. I saw a lot of my friends die. I had friends die in my arms. I think because I had so many brothers that I knew how to be around males.

A lot of my friends and other guys that I didn't consider, they were friends but not close friends. I always was able to talk to them, and I think that kind of backfired on me. When they would get hit, they would call for me, and I would try to get there. And sometimes when I got there, they were dying, and they were not happy about dying.

When you're a kid, you see war, and someone dies, and you have some great line at the end of his life. Well, it was nothing like that. It was bitterness. It was guys cussing the filthiest words you could think of. They didn't want to die.

I'm only 19, and now I'm dying in this pit. It's a nasty, dirty jungle, and I'm dying here, and they were very bitter. Some guys couldn't talk.

They just wanted me to hold onto them, and then when they passed on, then I had to crawl back to wherever I was at. And you're listening to Camilo Venegas tell the real-life story of war, and we do this often here on the show. It's one thing to watch it in a movie. It's another thing to hear it from a person who was there.

When we come back, more of Camilo Venegas' story, and he's telling it for so many tens of thousands of families. When we come back, automatic updates with the latest features, and much more. Roku TV is more than a smart TV.

It's a better TV. Learn more today at roku.com. Happy streaming. Welcome to 500 Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stone's hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. I'm Brittany Spanos. And I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. From classics like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams to the Ronettes' Be My Baby, and modern-day classics like The Killer's Mr. Brightside, listen to Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs starting on March 13th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For the 4K TV you've been waiting for. And we continue with our American stories and Camilo Venegas' memories of the Vietnam War.

Here to continue his story is Camilo Venegas. They offered me a sergeant spot, and I turned it down. The reason being is if you're a sergeant, you have to pick the guys that go out into the jungle on night patrols and day patrols.

And when you pick them, sometimes they're not coming back, and that sits on you because you're the one who sent them. We would see in the Stars and Stripes newspaper that the country was against the war. So we didn't see what was there worth fighting for. And then, more than a few times, the Vietnamese army would go in, and they'd get shellacked. So they would send us, and we would be going into the battle, and they'd be running out of it. And we'd go, well, what's this?

It's their country, and they're running, and we have to go into it? But that was part of the game, and we did it. We did it.

That was it. Everybody just had to go for a year. If you, like me, I had 90 days left when I got out of Vietnam, still in the army. If you would re-up for 30 days more, then they would let you come get out of the army two months early. But I told them no. No. Too many people had died around me, and I didn't think that 30 days more fighting in the jungle was worth it.

I'd rather come back to the States and be able to sleep with both eyes closed instead of one. So I took them and told them no. Most of my friends that went to Vietnam went on chartered regular airplanes. Coming back, a lot of the guys, same thing. They flew Delta, American, or whatever, was flying out of there. With me and the group that I went with, they just put us in a military plane.

I was still dressed in my jungle fatigues, everything. They brought me right out of the field, mud, everything, dirty, all nine yards, turn in your weapon, get on the plane, and take off. All the guys in there weren't. They weren't right.

And they weren't right so bad that we didn't even have stewardess. It was like they put all the, let's say, PTSD guys together in one, and they had MPs instead of them taking care of us. Once you did all your paperwork and changed clothes, showers, and all that kind of stuff, they give you money, and they tell you, okay, you got a month before you got to come back, and they give you your papers where you get to go. For me, I was sent to Fort Carson, Colorado, for my last 90 days.

When you get to San Francisco, guys are going wherever they're going, but you still see military guys all over the airport. Well, I'm walking, and two girls walk up to me and ask me, were you in Vietnam? I said, yeah.

I didn't think anything of it. A girl starts to get spit in her mouth. I see her go, and I looked at her, and she goes, I'm going to spit on you. You're a baby killer. And I said, where I just come from, you spit on me, I'm going to knock you out.

I don't hit women, but if you spit on me, I will punch you. So they left me alone. I went to go get on the airplane. The plane was full.

I got lucky. One of the stewardess' brother was in Vietnam, so she allowed me to sit in the back with all the stewardess and fly home, and all the girls were very sympathetic towards me. So finally, I got to LAX.

We always had a thing when we flew. We would never call somebody to come and pick us up until we had landed and got our baggage and all that, so they wouldn't have to wait. You could just stand at the curb, and they'd come by, pick you up, and you'd take off. So I call home and say, okay, I'm home.

Come get me. Well, my brother, Manuel, my brother, Bob, and my brother, Ronnie, went in one car. My mother, my father, and my brother, Joe, went in another car. I'm sitting outside in the airport on a bench, and everybody comes looking for me. And I'm sitting on the bench, and I see them get out of the cars. And I thought, I'm not going to say nothing to them.

I don't know why. I just thought, I'm not going to say nothing to them. So I sat on the bench, and they walked by me, went inside the airport, came back and forth. They must have walked by me about five times.

My brother, Bob, goes, where is that sucker? And I told them, I'm right here. And he turned around and looked at me, and it was emotional. My mother was in shock, what I looked like. They told me in the car they were sorry that I went. And I told her, it's not your fault.

I was not used to lights anymore, because I lived in the dark, on the freeway coming home, cars coming opposite of me, remind me of tracer rounds coming at me. Well, I got on the floor of the car, and my mother turned around to talk to me, and I wasn't there in the chair. And she asked Joe, where's he at?

He says, he's on the floor. I couldn't take the lights. I got home. All my aunts and uncles were there. They had thrown a party, a welcoming home party for me. I was home maybe about ten minutes. My dad gave me one of the proudest things I'll ever remember. He allowed me to drink in his house, and they all saluted me.

We all had a shot at tequila. I went back outside, and they were all inside. And my father came out and asked me, why aren't you inside with the family? And I told them, I'm scared to be around that many people. I said, after a year, you learn never to be around a lot of people, because if you're around a lot of people, that's who they want to kill, because you could kill a group of people instead of one or two.

I said, and I'm scared to be in there. So my father went in. My uncle Tony lived one street behind us, and he had everybody go to their house. And I stood outside.

Bob and Ronnie went to the liquor store and came back with a case of beer, and we sat outside in the backyard. And the first three nights I think I was home, I slept outside. I couldn't sleep with the ceiling. I went and laid in bed, and I felt like I was claustrophobic, because I was used to sleeping outside.

So I slept the first three days outside next to the chicken coop. And then after that, eventually, I started getting better. And like I say, I looked so bad that my father decided to take me to what was called Alvarado's Hot Springs, and it was in Walnut, California. And he took me there and had them give me showers and baths and massages and all that kind of stuff to clean my body. We came back home, and everything was all right. I couldn't hang around people and stuff.

I was nervous to be around people, and my dad noticed it. He asked me to go to the VA hospital and tell them that I needed help. Well, the VA was a circus. I had never seen anything like what the VA was then like, because the government had told the doctors to deny anything that we were saying was going on. They wouldn't give us medication. They would give you a 9 o'clock appointment.

You would sit all day, and then at 5 o'clock, they'd come out and say, doctor went home, come back tomorrow. And this went on and on and on. For years, they treated us like that. Eventually, one of the doctors told me, the reason being was the highest group was World War IIs. Next was Koreans. And we were the bottom of the pole, Vietnam. And a lot of people were bitter because we didn't win the war. So they took it out on us.

I could tell you a million stories. It was just unbelievable, the treatment we got. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own John Elfner. And a special thanks to Camilo Venegas for sharing his Vietnam story and his return with us.

And also a special thanks to Luke, his nephew, for recording the interview we just listened to and what a story he told. Coming back home, he said his mother was shocked at what he looked like. The lights on the freeway, as he described it, reminded him of tracers and tracer lights in Vietnam. And he would just hit the floor in the car. Where is he?

His parents wonder. And that's where he was. He couldn't sleep inside. He had to sleep outside because he'd slept so long without a roof. And then how he got treated by his own citizens, it was tragic. It was just disgraceful, how the Vietnam, veterans got treated.

The story of Camilo Venegas, the story of so many of our men and women who served in Vietnam, here on Our American Stories. With so many streaming devices out there today, what sets Roku apart? Roku players are made for one thing, to get you the entertainment you want quick and easy. That means a simple home screen with your favorites front and center, channels like iHeartRadio that launch in a snap, and curated selections of TV for when you only sorta know what to watch. Not to mention all the free TV you can stream, including over 300 free live channels on the Roku channel. Find the perfect Roku player for you today at roku.com.

Happy streaming. Welcome to 500 Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stone's hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. I'm Brittany Spanos.

And I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. From classics like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams to the Ronettes' Be My Baby, and modern day classics like The Killer's Mr. Brightside. Listen to Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs starting on March 13th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.