I was not born in the USA; instead, I was born in El Salvador, in October 1949, right as the world was still picking up the pieces from World War II. My mom headed north to California in ’59, chasing the same dream every immigrant has: a place where her kids wouldn’t go to bed hungry. In 1961, when I was eleven, she sent for me. I stepped off the plane at LAX with maybe twenty words of English and a whole lot of hunger—to eat, to learn, to become something.
English came the hard way: sneaking into double-features on Broadway, staring at Superman and Batman comics until the pictures taught me the words, and haunting the downtown Los Angeles public library until the librarians gave up asking questions. High-school history bored me to death—dead white guys and dates—so at sixteen I dropped out and kept living in that library instead. That’s where Louis L’Amour taught me what honor looks like when nobody’s watching.
Fast-forward to May 1970. I’m twenty, on my first trip back to El Salvador to see family. Mom sends a telegram: “Expect you here by Thursday.” I had no clue what she meant. Then the letter from Uncle Sam showed up. Greetings. By Friday, I was on a bus to Fort Ord for the fastest physical in history. Meningitis outbreak—everyone got scattered. I ended up at Fort Lewis, Washington, where the rain never stops, and the mud tries to eat your boots. Eight weeks basic, eight weeks AIT, same gray post. When it was over, they handed me an M16, a duffel bag, and a one-way ticket to the Republic of Vietnam.
Bien Hoa, September 1970. Still a PFC. By Christmas, I was a Spec 4 because the guy whose slot I filled stepped on a mine outside Firebase Jack. Just like that, I had a radio, a map, and eleven scared kids looking at a twenty-year-old who still dreamed in Spanish half the time. Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne—O-Deuce. My squad.
My twenty-first birthday was October 15, 1970. We were inserted by helicopter into a hot LZ west of the A Shau Valley. First firefight before lunch. Feliz cumpleaños, Carlos.
The next twelve months were pure Vietnam War recipe: mud, leeches, monsoon rain, and NVA mortars. We humped the mountains west of Huế, slept on nameless ridges, and tried to choke the Ho Chi Minh Trail with nothing but rifles and grit. I caught shrapnel in the thigh (ten days in the 95th EVAC, Da Nang) and a round that kissed my shoulder the week before I rotated home—still got the scars. They don’t fade.
The summer of ’71 brought the siege of Firebase Ripcord. My company rotated through Firebases O’Reilly and Kathryn, feeding artillery coordinates into that meat grinder while the North Vietnamese tried to erase Ripcord from the map. I watched the sky turn white when their ammo dump cooked off, watched burning Chinooks spin in, watched good men vanish into elephant grass on missions nobody upstairs really believed in. When the final order came to blow the base and evacuate, my squad was on one of the last birds out. Ten minutes later, the mountain disappeared in its own mushroom cloud. We didn’t cheer. We just stared at the smoke and added it to the tab.
DEROS: September 1972. Exactly one year after that birthday insertion. Landed at Sea-Tac in uniform. Some college kid spat on the ground and called me a baby-killer. I was too damn tired to swing. Just wanted a cheeseburger and a bed that didn’t smell like CLP and gunpowder. (The mess hall was closed when we got to Fort Lewis. I lost it on the mess sergeant—told him to get the cooks moving, or we’d trash the place. What were they gonna do, send us back?)
I took the GI Bill, got the GED I should’ve earned in high school, knocked out junior college, transferred to Cal State Los Angeles, and spent the next twenty-five years climbing the corporate ladder—Bachelor of Science in Business, eventually VP and Chief Information Officer—because a man’s got mouths to feed. Later, I earned a teaching credential and spent 13 years in elementary classrooms teaching third- and fifth-graders that history isn’t a list of dates; it’s stories about people who bled so the rest of us wouldn’t have to.
I retired sixteen years ago and walked straight back into the only job that ever really mattered: making kids—and adults who forgot how to listen—give a damn about the past. I push Maus, All the Light We Cannot See, war films that don’t lie, anything that makes history feel urgent instead of dead.
Because I’ve seen what happens when a nation forgets its stories.
I was a Salvadoran kid who learned English from comic books.
I was a twenty-one-year-old Spec 4 leading American boys through the A Shau Valley.
I still carry Vietnam in my body and Firebase Ripcord in my dreams.
And I’m still here—walking, talking, telling the story—because if we don’t remember the price, we’ll be dumb enough to pay it again.
That’s the whole damn story, brother.
From El Salvador to Ripcord and back again.
Carlos
Vietnam Veteran | 101st Airborne | Teacher | Storyteller
Still kicking in 2025.
