If you guessed “Vietnam” or “Second Indochina War”, you’re correct. The next several years of Malcolm’s life would be the most turbulent he had, and I’m going to tell you everything he told me about his life, again, these years probably need a novel of their own. No, that’s an understatement, they’d need a series of novels to even begin to scratch the surface of what happened to him in that time, but I’ll try to tell what I can.
First off: Why did Malcolm Anderson even need to fight in the war? What could a small Southeast Asian nation possibly be as a threat to America? Even better— in 1954, Vietnam was divided into two parts, a communist north and a capitalist south. Only half of Vietnam against all of America? Was this a fight they needed to spend their time on? Yes. First of all, North Vietnam was already getting supplies from its allies, China and the USSR who were actual threats. Second, there was the Domino Theory. If Vietnam became fully communist, there was a pretty good chance that the ideals of communism would spread and take hold in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. And if those two became communists… what if it happened again and spread to Thailand? If Thailand was communist… then would Burma and Malaysia become communist next? Then India? And then the cycle would repeat until the whole world fell to the communist side.
By 1965, America was fully in the war, and Malcolm Anderson was drafted into the army at the age of 25. Jack also was drafted into the war, but he was mostly seperate from Malcolm and they only saw each other a few times a year. He spent 8 weeks in a processing and training facility, where they started to get him ready for the tough times ahead. Malcolm said that they started the war with a physical transformation, where they shaved your head, and learned how to march and perform tasks while wearing the tough gear. Every day he had to wake up at 5 in the morning and set up his cabin before taking a shower. His commander didn’t take it easy on him— to train them mentally for the war, the commander supposedly harassed them and singled them out as much as he could, which Malcolm, being the ‘quiet kid’ ended up being one of the more harassed cadets. I have a lot of respect to Grandpa Malcolm for holding out through all of that because if it were me I’d have collapsed entirely.
The training was physically demanding as well. It was several miles of running every day— they needed to run before and after meals, for training, and just about every time they had time to run, they ran. They learned hand-to-hand fighting. They had tough obstacle courses and by the end of them you felt like the next breath was your last— even simple things like eating and sleeping were turned into difficult because you had a limited time to eat and you still had to do the dish cleaning and cooking on your own- all while your command was yelling at you that you needed to do things quicker. Sleeping wasn’t much better if better at all because you went to sleep knowing you’d have to do more tomorrow and the beds weren’t comfortable. Sometimes you wouldn’t even sleep on beds, sometimes you had to sleep on the hard floor outside in the cold night. Malcolm Anderson described it as a Hell that prepares you for Hell.
In late 1965, Malcolm graduated from the eight-week training program and began the journey to the frontlines in Vietnam. When he arrived in Vietnam, he was briefed a bit on the situation and learned minor amounts of Vietnamese. In time, he would be able to carry on most conversations. He would be spending nearly the next decade of his life in Vietnam, where everything would change.
Malcolm told me a lot about what it was like to be a soldier. I was quite shocked to hear about how difficult his life was. Any kid who lived in a generation like mine where they grew up spoiled with Roblox and Tik Tok would not last very long.
First off, the environment. Anyone who’s been to the tropical Southeast Asian region knows that it’s hot as hell. I was drowning in my sweat while I was there, and doing this in a wartime environment (and they didn’t even have much access to air conditioners!) would only amplify the pain. Malcolm told me that there were many days that he nearly collapsed from the heat.
And there wasn’t much that helped them throughout this time. There were many times during the war that American soldiers were stranded without any source of aid. They’d have to live off the land while stuck in enemy territory. Malcolm said that this happened to him once during his first year as a fighter in the war. Vietcong soldiers cornered them in the jungle, and they ran nearly dry of the limited food rations that they were provided before the mission. They ran out of critical water supplies and were soon forced to send small scouting parties around to steal water from whatever ponds or lakes were in the area.
Transcript from the Zoom Call with Malcolm
Me: So you were surrounded by the Vietcong with almost no food and no outside help?!
Malcolm: Correct. There were about 80 of us, somewhere in the deep jungle, traversing over the unknown mountains. Our communication devices could not get back to HQ. We ran out of water about 3 days into the isolation and sent out a few teams to scout the region for water and wild herbs as medicine. The Vietcong were lurking everywhere, and we were attacked nearly every day. Every time they attacked we were in no position to fight back. We escaped every time by sacrificing a team or two as a distraction for the enemy while we heaved the wounded out of the action. Then we’d quickly get ourselves out of there before anything happened. Out of the 80 of us who went on the mission, only 30 survived by the end of those nine days. The rest died.
And that was only one part of the troubles. Malcolm told me the food rations he was given in the mountains were horrible- on many days they had to eat something that tasted horrible or worse— when supplies were difficult— nothing at all. Even just marching through the countryside had its struggles, as he was forced to carry dozens of pounds of gear needed to survive the extremity of this place. He had a huge backpack (Unfortunately he couldn’t show me in person, only in photos) which could carry— honestly, it could probably carry me easily. Most of the time, it was filled with everything you need to fight in a war.
Malcolm: There was everything you would need to fight in a war. We had pounds and pounds of ammunition… and a huge compartment to access it in… the weight from that alone nearly killed me already. We had several pounds of clothing. Enough to keep changing for a week, at least. We also had weapons of every kind, rifles, pistols, and knives for close combat fighting. One of my friends also brought a handbook for close combat fighting which they gave to me when I celebrated my first birthday in Vietnam.
All of this text probably makes you think that his life was completely hell. Everything sucked, everything was dangerous, painful or both, things like that. You might be thinking that Malcolm had nowhere to go but up.
And it was about to go up.
Far up.
In 1967, after two years of fighting in the central part of Vietnam near Laos, Malcolm’s unit was transferred to a new city in Vietnam in which he would spend the next phase of his time in the Vietnam War. You might have heard of it.
That city was called Saigon.