"I was very pleased to be there. It was like the ultimate video game . . . . only it’s for real."

After living on his own for a couple of years, at age sixteen Bane Ashley decided to join the Special Forces. Altering his birth certificate, Bane enlisted in the Army. At that point, he did not know that he would be sent to war because, "in 1962 the public was just becoming aware of the word ‘Vietnam’." Then he tested into paratrooper school, "which is not that easy." After more testing, Bane was received into the sixty-week Green Beret training and ultimately received his Green Beret. He was then placed on an A-team, which consists of ten sergeants and two officers where, "you live together, sleep together, and very often die together."

His A-team, like all Green Berets, was assigned to a certain country. "These are hotspots, ugly little places," he explained. They learned the language, customs, and the village chiefs. The Green Berets led the indigenous soldiers of South Vietnam against the communist government. He commented, "It’s a lifestyle; it’s what you do with your life."

While patrolling the jungle, a man stands out in front of the patrol, the point man, scanning the trees and ground for traps or mines. Usually a point man could stay out on point for only fifteen minutes because of the high stress level of the job. Bane is mostly color blind (he is able to see only yellow), but he can see camouflage. Also, he has many more rod cells in his eyes because they are lacking in the cone cells that allow us to see colors, so he can see very well in the dark. Because of his added ability to see soldiers and traps in the dark, he said that he felt obligated to walk point all the time. He felt more nervous when someone else was walking point than when he was because he could see better in the dark than others could. Sometimes they would move only a hundred feet in an hour because they always had to be alert and watchful.

During night ambushes it was so quiet that he could hear the blood rushing in his ears, and all the soldiers would instinctually put their hands over their chests because their heartbeats sounded so loud to them.

Responding to a call on the radio, Bane and some other soldiers were driving to a helicopter to pick up another soldier. On the way they encountered an ambush from North Vietnamese soldiers. While fighting, Bane’s skull was fractured by a bullet above his left eye and another bullet passed all the way through one of his legs. The North Vietnamese threw a hand grenade into the jeep, and he threw it back out. It detonated on the ground, but he received shrapnel wounds.

After passing out and regaining consciousness, Bane found himself a prisoner of war. For around the next ninety days he put up with many beatings and interrogations:

One night the Americans bombed the North Vietnamese camp in which he was held captive, and Bane was able to escape. To this day he still remembers the faces of all twenty-eight soldiers in the unit that captured him. "I hope they all fell into a giant pool full of maggots and were consumed. Other than that I have no grudges," he commented.

Though many of Bane’s memories of the war are unpleasant, he remembers some positive things about the war. He met some very friendly indigenous villagers and Vietnamese soldiers with whom he fought. He also met interesting village elders. Some of his closest friends today are Green Berets he met during his twenty years of service. He also is glad that he had the opportunity to learn and use Vietnamese. He still uses his knowledge of Vietnamese as a translator in courtrooms, even though he estimates he has lost eighty percent of the language he once knew.

When Bane came back to the United States, he was always on a military base until he retired from the military. He never had any negative reactions from other people when they found out he went into the war. He stated, "It is my opinion that a great deal of that is really, really blown out of proportion." He never had any flashbacks or nightmares. None of the other Green Berets and Special Forces he knows have had a bad dream or a flashback either. He believes that none of them did because they wanted to be there and they were professionals. Also, he was in support of the Vietnam War. He felt that the United States, along with six other nations, was just following a pact that it agreed to. They were trying to institute democracy and help defend the South Vietnamese from the communist North Vietnamese soldiers. His feelings about the war have not changed from when he first came back to now. He explained, "Thought we should have been there then. Think we should have been there now." Even though we could not institute democracy and capitalism then, Vietnam is capitalistic now, and he believes that it is because of our intervention. He elaborated, "So many Vietnamese came to the United States and went back during that fourteen year period, so the seeds of it were there."

However, to this day he has never watched a war movie. After actually being in a war he has no desire to watch a movie depicting war. One memory that still affects him is the memory of the sound of a bullet passing close to his head. Since the bullet traveled faster than the speed of sound, it made a crack sound as it passed his head. He described, "You can hear it like a click, snap going by." Even now when he hears a similar sound, it still scares him even though he knows he is not in danger.

He married his wife three years before he retired from the army after twenty years of service. He explained, "I just got out and started another life." She was also in the army; she had ten years of service and was a major, so "She knew all my idiot Green Beret friends." They retired because they wanted to have children who would not have to grow up moving all over the country.

Bane’s life is different now because of the time he spent in the war and the perspective it gave him. He doesn’t worry about some things that lots of people worry about. "For me, I just know what is and isn’t important." He really enjoyed being there because he wanted to serve his nation: