8 Things Vietnam Point Men Never Told the Men Behind Them

Eight things the man at the front of the column kept from the men who followed him, read from what point men told oral historians decades later, from the memoirs of the men who led rifle platoons, and from what veterans have written under the videos on this network, without names: why he asked to keep the point when the rotation would have taken him off it, and why the reason was not courage; how he walked by smell and by sound and never explained it because it sounded like superstition; why he never stepped where the trail wanted him to step; the slack man he trusted more than any officer and never told; the halts he called on a feeling, the times he was mocked for it, and the one time he was right; the day they took him off point; what he did and did not tell the man who took the point after him; and the one thing he walked past that the man behind him did not. Human confession only: fear, guilt, and what a man did to survive. This is a narrated archive, not a veteran's voice; every account is attributed, the opening and closing trail scene is a composite declared as such, and no witness is invented. Sources: Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (oral histories of Vietnam infantry veterans) Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University, Oral History Project Robin Bartlett, Vietnam Combat: Firefights and Writing History (Casemate, 2023), 1st Cavalry Division platoon leader; chapter and web essay on the point man Mark Baker, Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There (William Morrow, 1981) Al Santoli, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It (Random House, 1981) Wallace Terry, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (Random House, 1984) Jim Wilson (B Company, 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, 1966-67), "Point Man," poem published on the 327th Infantry veterans' site Veterans' written accounts of walking point published on the Cherries Writer Vietnam War site (a point man breaking in his replacement; a 199th Light Infantry Brigade rifleman assigned to point) Accounts written by Vietnam veterans and their families in the public comments of videos on this network (used without names)