[gentle music] - Owen Mike: As a Ho-Chunk, from the day I was born, my destiny was to go to war.

I showed no fear, 'cause going to war is a blessing.

And being a warrior is a blessing.

But the most sacred is to die on a battleground.

Their nationality didn't make no difference.

We were like a team.

We worked together.

When they found out I was gonna be good, they accepted me.

This is the most important part of my life, 'cause that's the first time in my lifetime that people respected me.

- Cletus Ninham: Being Indian, they said, "Well, we're gonna make this guy a point man and a flanker."

That's the guy that goes out 25 yards of the company, and a flanker's the one that goes on the left or right side of the company.

And that's what I did, mainly.

I don't know why they'd pick on Indians.

Your nerves better hold up 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen, and you live one day at a time.

They only knew me by "Chief;" they didn't know my first name.

It didn't bother me at all 'cause like I told one guy, I said, "It's okay to call me Chief.

But on a reservation, I'm just a brave."

- Mick Lyons: So I got to the 2nd battalion, 7th Marines.

And instantly, I was made point man.

There was only one problem with that.

I was a better point man than most of the guys they had before because I could see the mushrooms.

We would go out in the spring and find morel mushroom.

My stepdaddy taught me how to do that.

Taught me how to see through the shrubbery and the growth and be able to discern what I was looking at.

And I could see the booby traps and I could see the trip lines, and I could see the stuff that might be in front of us, the NVA bunkers or whatever.

And I'm very proud of the fact that nobody ever died when I was on point.

- Walking point, it ain't the easiest job.

A lot of 'em don't want it 'cause the life expectancy is very short.

And my CO asked me if I wanted the job, and I said, "Yes, sir."

For the rest of my tour, I was a point man.

And I know I have saved many Marines' life 'cause I knew what I was doing.

I'm like a cat, a tiger in the mountain.

I was cunning, I was deadly.

I became a killer.

- You look for booby traps, anything that looks out of place.

I learnt that from hunting.

You know, you look around your environment and you see what's out of place.

Any movement and you know something's wrong.

You see the birds take off, you know something's there.

We never got hit while I was on point or flank.

But as soon as I got off, we got hit.

We'd get hit.

Our sniper shot, small fire come up on us.

- When you're in a situation where you can die within the next three seconds at any given time.

Your ears, [sniffs] your sense of smell, your sense of touch, your eyesight, everything just explodes.

- When I was walking point, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose.

All kinds of noise.

I hit the ground, but my hair stood up.

[chuckles] I hit a family of pigs.

Running here and there.

[laughs] We were all laughing, you know?

Someone wanted to shoot.

I said, "No, no no.

Leave 'em alone," I said.

"They're not part of the war."

[laughs] - I enjoyed the night because they couldn't see me any better than I could see them.

The smell is what gave each other away.

We could literally smell each other in the jungle at night.

The jungle came alive at night.

I used to like night patrols, and my buddies didn't.

Most of them were city kids, poor city kids.

- All of a sudden, I just heard a big explosion.

It was like I was falling down in slow motion, and it was burning like somebody just put hot fire in my body.

I looked down and I seen the holes in me, you know?

I could stick my fist through 'em.

They were trying to get us out; they couldn't.

The wind was too strong and they were pulling me up in a hoist.

They couldn't get me up 'cause I was going like Tarzan through the bamboo and I was gonna get crushed to death.

And so they had to drop me from treetop high.

They pushed the button and dropped me.

And they run out of morphine.

And they couldn't understand, with that many holes in me, why I wasn't screaming, you know?

And the medic all night is slapping me, thinking that I was dying, and said, "You gotta stay awake."

And so I told him, I said, "You hit me one more time, I'm gonna hit you back."

[laughs] - You're doing everything you can to keep your buddies alive and yourself alive.

The gooks were surrounding us, and I'm sorry for using that word.

It's a dehumanization.

These were people that we respected.

They were full-blown North Vietnamese army regulars in uniform.

And they were fighting for their country, and we thought we were fighting for ours.

And it's taken 40 years for me to finally understand that.

- We show our utmost respect to the enemy.

'Cause we look at 'em as a waak wasose, means "a brave soldier."

And I'm a waak wasose.

We are equal terms.

He respects me, and I respect his.

- I came back from Vietnam; I was a mess.

People just seen the medals on me.

You can't look inside of a person and see what's going on.

But that person is hurting bad.

A young guy seeing that many people die, you know, that's not natural.

Just put me back the way I was before I went over there.

- We call it a playground.

Not a battlefield; it's a playground.

'Cause my spirit was playing with the enemies' spirits like childrens in the spirit world.