“I have a funny story but it’s about premeditated murder.”

And this is how 26-year Army and Marine veteran Tony D’Acquisto began to reminisce about his six years in Vietnam. D’Acquisto, a translator and a group of Chinese mountain people and mercenaries, known as ‘Nungs’ received intel that the Viet Cong were coming down the Bong Son River.

“So I decided to set up an ambush. You know the Patton quote, ‘Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country – he won it by making the other guy die for his?’ Well, I was going to kill them. I would fire the first shot and the other guys were going to follow me. Mine was the only gun that worked. Lesson learned: Always check your equipment,” D’Acquisto said.

D’Acquisto, then 17, enlisted in the Marine Corps right after graduating from West Seattle High School. When he was 20 he qualified for the Army Special Forces.

“I was special,” he said with a laugh. “I was on the short bus.”

D’Acquisto wanted to go to Vietnam very badly. He felt that the purpose of the military was to protect our country and at the same time he felt that the United States was in danger.

“Due to the propaganda of the time, I felt like were were in jeopardy,” he said.

While in country, D’Acquisto made good use of his SP packs (Sundry Packs) by trading the contents of his SP pack with the Marines for cans of Vienna sausages. With chickens and eggs plentiful, he enjoyed cooking the eggs with the sausages for a satisfying meal. To trade his SP pack for the sausages, he would flag down the Marine trucks regularly to complete the transaction.

Months later, the Marines were quite accustomed to seeing D’Acquisto from previous trades and knew exactly what he wanted. Cans of sausages. So they acquiesced, lobbing can after can of sausages at D’Acquisto.

“I was just pummeled with cans,” he said. “I had to dodge ’em. I should have pulled my gun,” he said, with a laugh.

Another memory D’Acquisto recalled fondly is, as he described, “The premeditated stealing of the toilet seat from Phu Cat AFB in South Vietnam.”

Longing for just a few comforts of home, D’Acquisto took the toilet seat stashed it in his Jeep. When he returned to his camp he promptly installed it in his latrine. He was excited to use it for the first time when he noticed footprints on the coveted toilet seat.

“The Vietnamese, you see, don’t sit on the toilet; they squat,” he said.

From then on, D’Acquisto kept his latrine locked.

D’Acquisto served in Vietnam for six years. He decided to keep extending his tour because he saw friends who would do a tour for a year and then return to serve in a different capacity. D’Acquisto was comfortable doing the duties he was trained to do in the location he was assigned to. So he stayed, until he was finally sent home by Lieutenant Colonel Santana in 1969.

“He (my boss) figured I had been there long enough,” he said. “But you see, every time I extended, I got 30 days of leave. I went to Australia and Hong Kong. All I had to do was provide my propaganda paper (money).”

It is remarkable that in his six tours in Vietnam, D’Acquisto was relatively unscathed physically. He did experience the most common of the Viet Cong’s booby traps: the punji stick. These traps were made of sharpened bamboo that had been hardened by fire. The wounds inflicted by the punji stick traps were rarely fatal; however, they did work exceptionally well to remove soldiers from the fight and increase the battle fatigue of those left on the field. To increase the injury, the Viet Cong would coat the punji stick with poison or feces to cause infection.

D’Acquisto was injured by a punji stick and did not realize it until he stopped and realized there was blood on his pant leg. The swelling and infection resulted in a trip to the hospital. He was sent to Army Hospital Camp Zama in Japan to recuperate.

When D’Acquisto left Vietnam, he went into the MP (Military Police) Corps., and finished his degree in forensic chemistry. From Vietnam, D’Acquisto was stationed in the U.S., and then in Frankfurt, Germany, for ten years.

“My three kids went to two schools, which is unheard of in military families,” he said.

D’Acquisto returned to Western Washington in 2000 from Alabama. He spends his days with his dog, Bennett, riding Harleys and what he describes as, “Piddling – I’m actively engaged in absolutely nothing.”