In spite of what I had been told, I was as bored as I had
ever been in my life. The initial fear I
felt when I entered the world of the jungle was long gone and now things felt
as empty and as dark as the night under triple canopy jungle. I tried to focus on the face of my wife but
after only a few months felt that without the pictures inside my pack, I had a
tough time remembering her face. I had
a pretty good feeling for her touch but here in the dark it was hard to remember
her face. The dampness of the jungle at
night was like a sweat that never went away.
It accumulated not evaporated until everything but me smelled like a
moldy cellar. I smelled so bad that I think I finally stopped smelling
anything.
It had been only a few short days prior that we stopped by a
mountain stream and dug out the soap bars to bathe. At first the guys just got in with their
jungle fatigues on and did their best to get them clean, if you can remember
what that word meant. When they had
scrubbed off the surface mud and some of the smell, they threw their fatigues
over bushes to dry. I then scrubbed the layers of dead skin and
stink off. Almost everyone had some form
of fungus on them and in a kind of funny way the sting of the soap and water
felt kind of good. If you leave the
fungus alone it just spread and really didn't hurt. Do your best to clean it and it hurt like
hell. The medics has long ago ran out of
that smelly white grease that helped clear it up. When we were as clean as we
could get, the next batch of guys were waiting for their turn. It was strange that putting on those warm
jungle fatigues felt like a million dollars.
Now if I had anything to eat but those damned C Rations. Seems
like I had eaten a million cans of Beefsteak and potatoes. If you put enough hot sauce on it was
filling. Tabasco was sent to GI's by the
case load from home. I wonder what Avery
Island there in Louisiana was like.
Probably hot as hell and a lot like Vietnam.
Night time in the jungle was so dark that you had to touch
your nose now and then to help keep yourself together. There was the constant buzz of mosquitoes and
we all hoped that Malaria didn't hurt too much.
We did take those damned little white pills daily and that big orange
sucker on Mondays but we were all afraid all they did was keep us healthy until
we got home. A bead of sweat ran down my
back and I almost laughed as it tickled my butt crack. Then I had that fleeting thought that I sure hoped it was sweat and not one of those
thousand of insects that crawled around on the jungle floor on their nocturnal
feeding hunts.
As a member of the Headquarters team and the assigned
Forward Observer, I, Lt MUD was pulling a radio watch. Once a night for an hour I sat neat the
command fox hole and listened to the radio.
Once every 15 minutes I would do a radio check with each position. I would say "OP 1, radio check." The OP would press the button on his mike and
it would make a hissing sound over the radio.
They called it breaking squelch and it was confirmation that someone was
awake there. I would check each OP and
listen for the acknowledgement. There
had been some banter back in the Headquarters but out in the jungle it was all
business and no bull shit.
Just as the last radio check finished, I realized that in
about 15 minutes I could go back to my little area and try to get some
sleep. Boom!, M-16's firing and then a pop flare went off
on the perimeter. Everyone was awake and
we locked and loaded our M-16's ready to fire at anything. I contacted the firing battery and had a 105 howitzer round on the way in about
15 seconds. The Company Commander slid
into the command fox hole and grabbed the radio. He was checking with the OP's to see what
the hell was going on. The Command net
was filled by the Platoons checking in and just then on the perimeter there was
a shout of don't shoot, patrol coming in.
The OP that the fire started from came into the area still lit up by the
flare.
OK GI what the hell
happened? The three guys were almost too
frightened to talk. One of the three woke
the other two up and said they heard noise in the brush coming their way. They got ready to shoot whomever it was one
of them threw a hand grenade without
telling the others. When the grenade
went off, one of the guys got hit in the hand by shrapnel and that's about the
time they beat feet it back to our perimeter.
Where's the machine gun?
The radio? your stuff? They had
just left everything and came into the safety of our perimeter. By that time, I had the artillery firing out
in the vicinity of the noise and pretty soon everyone wanted into the action. I think I had two full batteries of 105
howitzers and one battery of 155mm howitzers firing all around us. It was pretty damned evident that we had superior
firepower and whatever it was had just left the area. If you think you have ever seen a white man
mad, you should have been there to witness the wrath of that Captain at the
Platoon leader and his three idiots who had been out on the perimeter. They were ordered to immediately go out there
and get the radio and machine gun in their possession and stay the hell out
there the rest of the night. Even the Platoon
leader stayed with them to avoid the Captain.
The next morning, the Company at first light moved in that
direction. The carnage was
terrible. Blood, guts and body parts
were everywhere. It seemed that a troop
of monkeys had been spooked into moving at night and that started the whole
mess. My body count was high but for
some reason out Field Artillery Liaison Officer didn't think that he wanted to
pass on monkey dead in his report. I'll
bet that one incident cost many thousands of dollars and it was only reported
here. DANG, I HATE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS.
MUD
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