Grunts

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GRUNTS

Soldiers have always had to endure a variety of nicknames. During World War I, they were called doughboys because crawling through the European mud gave their uniforms a dough-like color. During World War II, they were called G.I.s, short for government issue, classifying the soldier as yet one more commodity in an endless line of government products created to win the war. They were also called sad sacks, after a cartoon character who epitomized their status as victims of the bureaucracy of war.

For the soldiers who served in the Vietnam War, the word grunt was not just a nickname but also a commentary on their status in the hierarchy of war. To be a grunt was to be in the infantry. It meant leaping out of helicopters into landing zones that were sometimes under enemy fire. It meant marching through elephant grass taller than a man and as sharp as a knife, or slogging across streams and rivers so deep and muddy that men sometimes disappeared beneath the surface or found themselves mired in mud so thick it sucked the boots off their feet. It meant suffering from heat, humidity, rain, and insects while straining under the burden of equipment, which could weigh as much as eighty pounds. It meant enduring endless marches up and down mountains, through jungles, and into villages, looking for an enemy who was hard to find and sometimes even harder to fight, all the while being on the lookout for booby traps and ambushes. Finally, it meant tolerating hours—and sometimes days—of boredom and frustration, punctuated by moments of terror when contact was made with the enemy. Being a grunt may have been the least enviable and most underrated task of the Vietnam War.

Grunts usually served a twelve-month tour in Vietnam. When they were in the field, they carried everything they needed on their backs: their weapons,

ammunition, food, water, and medicine. They could be on patrol for extended periods and were occasionally resupplied by helicopters as they searched for the enemy—either the Vietcong or units of the North Vietnamese Army. When their tours in Vietnam were over, many grunts were rotated back to the United States to either complete their service obligation or be discharged and become civilians again.

The status implied by the word grunt was that soldiers in the infantry were either not lucky enough or not smart enough to avoid the worst kind of duty. It could also be interpreted as a commentary on class inequality, implying that because a soldier was from a lower social or economic class he was doomed to be a grunt. Both perceptions were generally faulty. Not all grunts were draftees. Some volunteered, eager for either adventure or to serve their country. Grunts were a cross-section of U.S. society, including the best and the worst the country had to offer, and they left behind some of the war's most enduring images. Those images have changed in recent years as a result of books and movies that have re-cast U.S. views of the Vietnam War by distinguishing between the making of war and the warriors themselves. Grunt has now become a term of affection and respect for the hardships suffered by soldiers who performed their duty under difficult circumstances.