Southlands Snuffys Quotes

“Within a week of trudging around searching for Charlie, everyone looked the same. Drab, nervously depressed, even ill, and bent to near double under overloaded rucks, those dusty bundles held everything in life for them. It seemed incredible that such a set of tired exhausted men could within seconds become alert to do at times brave or at other times truly dreadful things.

The author to French journalist, Saigon, in the summer of 67.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“During the South Vietnam war, grunts when out in the boonie lived closer to the enemy than anyone else in an area of operations, and being in almost continuous fighting a grunt could only cling to his buddies and they to him for psychological comfort. Arising from that reliance was a very special comradeship termed “the brotherhood”. In essence, “the brotherhood” served as a vital coping mechanism for the fighting grunt.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“Combat stress, PTSD, is debilitating and can lie dormant, and then erupt again at the most unfavorable of moments for the sufferer.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“The Ho Chi Minh Trail was not as most folk imagined it to be for the use of the term “trail” conjures in the mind a winding at times narrow path something like the Appaloosa Trail, whereas the “Ho Trail “covered 10,000 miles and was in fact a network made up of roads, paths, and at times rivers. Thousands of “pioneers” that made up the North’s Group 559 maintained it. To us it was the “Ho trail”; but to the VC and the North’s Communists it was “Hanoi’s Road to Victory”.
Sergeant Walker, author of Southlands Snuffys.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“Black guys and white guys who had lived and clung to each other like twin brothers out of the same womb when in combat and the air was thick with flying metallic crap didn’t cease being so when off the gun line, for everyone knew they were there to kill or be killed. However, blacks and whites when on liberty in Saigon did not tend to hang out together, a part of it being a taste in music, and as the black guys said, “ole whitey don’t wanna hear no soul, whitey only digs that bronco redneck hillbilly crap”. So, the black dudes headed for Khanh Hoi, their soulville of the southland and free of “Sylvesters” white dudes, and the white dudes headed for Tu Do on the hunt for booze and “flatbackers”, prostitutes. Therefore, in Saigon there was an unofficial and mutually respected “Mason Line”, a demarcation line between a Black area and a White area. Fact was, when on or off the gun line folk’s personal survival rested on a state of mind and not a skin color.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“Regardless of all its faults, failings, or anything else, the United States of America is not a nation an enemy should ever underestimate, for it will destroy anything that comes at it.”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys

“The best plan in the world will fail if you cannot communicate it. Similarly, a
poor plan can be saved by good confident orders. Only competent orders will
leave a Marine in no doubt as to what is expected of him”
― Sergeant Walker, Southlands Snuffys