Death in the Jungle Page 5

  I was keyed up and excited. If I was scared, I didn’t notice it. My excitement overwhelmed all other emotions. As I glanced around at the others, none of them looked scared either. Of course, their faces were covered with green-and-black camouflage paint, but even that couldn’t hide their eyes. And their eyes looked clear and confident.

  Personally, the fact that a SEAL had never been captured made everything black-and-white for me. No SEAL had ever been captured, and I wouldn’t be the first. I would never surrender. I would fight to the last breath. I would never leave my platoon; rather, I’d stay, and if death came, it would come to us all or to all who attempted to kill us. Do or die: That gave me courage. Knowing I wouldn’t allow capture, and consequent torture, took away my fear of the unknown. I’d make it back alive from this mission, or I’d flat-out die trying.

  Since this was our first time out, Lieutenant Gill had agreed to come along to make sure we didn’t do anything stupid, like getting killed. He was experienced and was finishing up his tour of duty. He’d advise our OIC (officer in charge), Lieutenant Meston. Mr. Meston looked a bit like he needed some help. He wasn’t scared, but seemed unsettled. I’ll keep an eye on him, I thought; the jury’s still out on what kind of platoon leader he’ll turn out to be.

  Seven of us went out in the dark. That seemed like a lucky number to me. Seven. Maybe that was a sign this tour would go well, or at least this first mission. I hoped so. But where we were going wasn’t a place swarming with luck. It was the Rung Sat Special Zone, swarming with Communist forces. The Rung Sat was a thirty-by-thirty-five kilometer area of mangrove swamp located on the northeastern edge of the Mekong Delta and contained some of the most toilsome terrain in Vietnam. It was a haven for the VC and NVA, who used the area as a resting place after operations. The Vietnamese called the area “The Forest of Assassins,” due to its history as a hideout for pirates, outlaws, and contrabandists. And now we SEALs were invading the territory, ambushing the enemy in his own backyard.

  It was just past 0200 hours when we boarded the LCPL MK-4 that would take us to our insertion point off the Quan Quang Xuyen, which was a tributary of the Soirap River. The LCPL was a thirty-six-foot-long, V-bottom, steel-hull landing craft, which sat low in the water because of the armor plating on the outboard sides, therefore affording us protection and a low silhouette. The boat was powered by a 300-horsepower turbine exhaust diesel engine. There was a four-man crew, including two gunners, whose job was to drop us at the correct insertion point, and not two miles off course. Once we jumped off the boat and into the jungle, we’d march to our own drummer.

  As we sped along down the middle of the river, the early morning air was cool and invigorating. An occasional spit of rain slapped me in the face. Once, I spit back. Eat it, Vietnam.

  I stood behind the coxswain and the two lieutenants, who were using radar to pick up any enemy boat traffic and to monitor terrain features. All the others were seated aft on the steel deck with their weapons pointed toward the black jungle. I held Sweet Lips, my Ithaca model 37 pump shotgun. The point man generally got his weapon of choice; on this mission, I was point, and Sweet Lips was my choice. I’d sawed off the last few inches of her barrel, making her one evil little lady. I’d loaded her with six rounds of 00 buckshot. No one had looked down her hole, yet, with his last gasp and his heart throbbing in his mouth, but, I thought, today might be the day.

  The moon was full and I saw its smiling face every few minutes when it promenaded from behind the dark clouds. I didn’t like its big face, though, right at that moment. It was not my friend when it lighted up my platoon for enemy eyes to see. I pointed Sweet Lips in the air as a silent warning for Mister Moon to disappear. Funny, but in a few moments, he did.

  One of the men took advantage of the blackness and got up and urinated over the side into the river. He must really have to go, I thought. Sure enough, he was at it a long, long time, which told me he was excited. Either that, or he hadn’t relieved himself since the eighth grade.

  Lieutenant Meston told me to pass the word that insertion would be in fifteen minutes. That meant it was time to get mentally prepared and to run one last check on equipment. I wore an H-harness and web belt with two ammunition pouches attached on my left side and two more on my right. Each pouch contained fifteen rounds of 00 buck, giving me sixty-six rounds including the half dozen already loaded. A K-bar knife was taped, handle down, on the left shoulder strap of my H-harness. Taped on the knife sheath was an MK-13 day/night flare. Two M-26 fragmentation grenades hung from my web belt. A full two-quart collapsible canteen was attached to the H-harness high on my back. A quart canteen was hooked on the web belt over my right buttock, and another over my left. In the center of my back, a small, nylon backpack containing C rations and a first aid kit was attached.

  Finding everything in order, I looked through the dark at the men behind me. Funkhouser patted the belted ammo for his M-60 machine gun. He looked at me and grinned, indicating that he, too, was ready.

  Finally, the coxswain cut back on the throttles and Lieutenant Meston signaled for us to lock and load. The LCPL, with its engine now just above idle, glided closer to the ominous shoreline. I climbed onto the bow and crouched down at the starboard side of the boat. Lieutenants Meston and Gill and Doc Brown gathered behind me. Funkhouser, Bucklew, and McCollum assembled on the port side of the bow.

  I looked down at the reflection of the moon in the water. Small waves rippled as the bow sliced through. Just ahead, the water lapped at the beach. A peacefulness hung in the air. I was mesmerized by the beauty of the moment. This can’t be war, I thought. My thoughts drifted with the current.

  A second later, I snapped back to reality. This is war, dummy, I censured myself. Life and death. I had to get my head on straight and do my job. These guys were depending on me. Wake up. The enemy had the element of surprise during insertion, and here I was, daydreaming.

  I watched the bank as the bow nudged into some ghostly black snags. I jumped onto the muddy shore. As the others followed, I heard a splash. Someone had jumped short of the bank, but I didn’t look back. My eyes and concentration had to focus on the ground ahead. Still, I wanted to snicker at the mental picture of a comrade falling in. Of course, I couldn’t snicker; strict noise discipline had to be maintained. Sounds, especially talk, carried incredibly far in the jungle, as I had learned in Panama only a few weeks earlier. I wondered now about the sound of the boat motor: Had it been heard by any bad boys? I squeezed my bad girl a little tighter.

  I dropped to one knee in the mud, my gun at the ready. My ears strained for sounds of enemy movement. Lieutenants Meston and Gill were a few feet behind me. At first, the only thing I detected was the drifting away of our support boat. A couple minutes later, there was silence. I only heard the ringing in my ears. Then I heard someone speak, which startled me until I realized the voice was only in my mind. It said, “Be careful, Smitty.”

  Another ten minutes passed. I saw and heard nothing. Lieutenant Meston signaled me to lead on. I moved slowly and painstakingly, which was the only possible way to walk in muck and mud. With each step, I felt like some little dirt devil was trying to suck my hundred-and-seventy-five-pound frame down into his private pit.

  I knew from Meston’s PLO (patrol leader’s order) that the first three hundred meters was defoliated swampland, which, translated, meant “our butts are exposed.” We wanted to get to cover as quickly as possible, but we’d been trained too well to screw up by senseless haste, so I proceeded cautiously on point. The lieutenants were right behind me, with the radioman, Brown, behind them. The others followed single file, but I couldn’t see them in the dark.

  After almost an hour, the open ground was behind us. We entered a mangrove swamp, which consisted of nipa palm and other tropical maritime trees and shrubs in dense masses. One hundred meters into the bush, I found a creek flowing into the Rach Long Vuong, which was the minor tributary we were to follow in a big U-shape back to the Quan Quang Xuyen and the
extraction point the next morning. It was at this finger of water that Meston wanted to hide out for a couple hours, looking and listening for enemy activity. He signaled me to scout the creek, both north and south of the platoon, while the rest waited.

  The sky was lightening as I patrolled, and the bushes gradually changed color from night-black to green. I patrolled the bank up and down the creek, looking for human tracks in the mud. My eyes scanned the foliage across the water. There were no signs of life, except for the mosquitos.

  Working my way back to the platoon, I gave Meston the “all clear.” He motioned me to crawl into some brush along the creek, assuming the right flank. I picked my way through the bushes and Vines and found the driest spot I could, where my rump would sink in the mud only a couple inches. Each man in the platoon followed suit, finding a hiding place off to my left, ending up spread out in a perimeter overlooking the creek.

  I’d been warned that armor-piercing mosquitos loved the dawn, and they loved SEALs. Sure enough, hundreds of the nasty things lost little time in locating my position. But I’d worked hard at covering every square inch of meat from my neck down with military-issue camouflage greens and cotton long johns. And my head held a thick layer of mosquito repellent, courtesy of the United States Navy.

  On my legs, dozens of the hairy-legged gooks tried to penetrate my clothing. I didn’t feel anything, so I guessed my protection was adequate. Another whole division buzzed my head. I watched them for several seconds, wishing I could identify the big shot of the bunch. I’d have liked to put him out of commission, but I couldn’t pick him out. All of them were huge.

  Just before the sun glinted over the horizon, the mosquitos mounted a final offensive, attacking me from all quarters. There was no way to swat a thousand ace flyers, so I didn’t swat any. I just allowed the repellent and clothing to do the job.

  After a while, I looked through the hordes of mosquitos at the foliage around me, and I discovered the red ants. They, too, appeared to have heard the dinner bell. It amazed me that such little creatures showed no fear of such a large beast as myself. I looked forward to killing some of them.

  A couple hours went by, and things had changed. The mosquitos had retired to who-knows-where, somewhere to escape the heat of the day. Eleven enemy dead—red ants—lay at my feet. Eight had died without warning; the other three, well, suffice it to say that their deaths had been drawn out and painful because each one had put a round of teeth in me before his capture. I went down in their books as a WIA; they went down dead.

  I looked over at ADJ3 Bucklew, who was visible to my left about ten meters away. He was hard to see through all the vegetation and cammo paint, but I knew exactly where to look. Besides that, I could smell him. I stared at him for a full minute, fully aware that I was gazing at the nephew of the famous Captain Bucklew of World War II.

  Eventually, Bucklew’s head slowly turned toward me. He looked for a few seconds, then his white teeth flashed behind a big, silly grin. I smiled back, then stuck out my tongue at him.

  The temperature rose toward a hundred degrees. Inside my long johns, I felt like a baked potato wrapped in tinfoil. Still, I was grateful, for without the long johns, the mosquitos would’ve drained me dry. As it stood, I believed I’d lost only a pint of high octane.

  Bucklew abruptly waved at me and signaled that it was time to move. I crawled out of the mud and waited for the lieutenant. Two minutes later, I was back on point and guiding the platoon north. Our planned mission was to follow the creek to the Rach Long Vuong and a checkpoint we’d designated Tijuana, then circle east with the river to checkpoint San Diego. From there, we were to recon six hundred meters southeast before setting up an all-night ambush site on the riverbank at Los Angeles.

  Suddenly the rains came. Hard. I didn’t mind, though, because the mosquitos were awash. My body and my clothing needed a good rinse, anyway. I couldn’t stand myself an hour earlier, but I had put it out of my mind then. I wished I had some shampoo and soap.

  In the downpour, my vision was limited. I glanced behind me at Meston, who was right on my tail. I turned away and continued guiding the procession.

  As point, I was supposed to look for the enemy himself, his footprints, and the little gifts he leaves for nice guys like me, namely, booby traps—all shapes and sizes.

  One of the friendliest booby traps was the “toe-popper,” a small pressure-activated mine that usually only blew off the foot of the unfortunate who stepped on it. Punji stakes, barbed sticks planted in a camouflaged hole, also were partial to American feet. The ones with a nastier streak were those dipped in dung, designed to infect through intimate contact.

  The booby traps that were totally antagonistic and anti-American were those made to destroy whole bodies: antipersonnel mines similar to our M18A1 claymore mine, specially adapted grenades, and many other types of mechanically and electrically initiated booby traps. These were set off by stepping on them or just barely moving one of them, tripping a wire, or by the concealed enemy himself. Oh, the joys of the point man.

  Upon reaching Tijuana, Mr. Meston motioned for me to leave the water’s edge and to take a shortcut over some higher ground toward San Diego. I checked the compass on my watchband, took a reading, then steered the platoon due east through the jungle. There was less muck throughout the shortcut, but I knew the vacation would be brief. High tide was coming soon.

  Before reaching San Diego, we stopped to eat our C rats and drink water from our canteens. The two lieutenants and I set up a security watch while the others ate, then we got our turn at some nourishment. The C rats tasted pretty good to me after all the hours of reconnaissance, and the water tasted like life itself, even though it was tepid.

  After a half-hour rest, I guided the platoon down to the Rach Long Vuong. At San Diego the mud was soft and we were in water that was knee-deep. The time was 1300 hours and high tide was in. That meant conditions wouldn’t get any worse, unless a crocodile erupted out of the mire. If so, strict noise discipline was off. Sweet Lips would see to that.

  I turned with the river toward the southeast, heading toward Los Angeles, our ambush site. We were only six hundred meters away, which was not very far unless one was walking in mud, water, rain, and a “free-fire” zone where people shot everything they have at anything that moved. Not that I was complaining. It beat being on the fiftieth floor of a skyscraper in an earthquake registering nine on the Richter scale.

  I wondered about Los Angeles, the primary ambush site of this mission. I wondered whether we’d cause the earth to shake there with all of the firepower we were lugging, our platoon of angels. Not that any of us were very angelic, though right then I wished I had wings. Come to think of it, I did. I’d already earned my Navy/Marine Corps parachute wings. Maybe there was some angel in me, after all.

  Just then, I stumbled over something and halfway fell into the water. Quickly regaining my balance, I felt with my feet for the submerged object. I touched something solid, and, holding Sweet Lips in my right hand, I reached carefully underwater with my left. My fingers found a hold on the thing, and I slowly raised it out of the mud and water. As water rushed out of the nose and eye sockets, I saw I was holding a human skull.

  Lieutenants Meston and Gill joined me for a few seconds in admiring the prize. They offered thirty more seconds of patience while I ran a short line through the eye sockets and fastened the souvenir to my web belt. Then I was back in the saddle.

  After another thirty minutes, the rain lightened up, and an hour later it stopped. Lieutenant Meston pointed a finger down the river and then held up one finger at me, indicating we were inside the city limits of L.A., and downtown was just a hundred meters away.

  The water I was walking in became a couple inches lower. I wished it were suitable for drinking, as I was thirsty again. It was brackish, however, so I’d drink from my canteen after I pulled up a chair in the ambush site, that is, if I wanted to hang Sweet Lips in a bush and sit in water up to my armpits. Twenty minutes
later, I thought I’d found the living room.

  Soon Lieutenants Meston and Gill confirmed that it was time to set up our ambush. First, I had to scout up and down through the bush growing along the channel. As I did so, the remainder of the platoon waited back in the brush.

  After a thorough check of the area, I rejoined the others. Meston signaled me to select a spot for the right flank. I slipped in between two bushes.

  Within a few minutes, our perimeter was set up along the flooded bank of the Rach Long Vuong. I carefully rested Sweet Lips in a small tree just above the water, which was almost two feet deep, then I sat down in the warm stuff. My buttocks sank a few inches in the mud, which put the water just beneath my chin. No problem. I’d endured much worse in UDT training at the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California. There I had been introduced to Hell Week and the infamous mud flats in the Silver Strand. The mud flats was an old sewage area, where the watery muck was two to four feet deep. On two consecutive days, my instructors had harassed Class 36 at the flats while timing boat crew competitions in the mud. For the better part of each day, I had stood in mud, swum in mud, crawled in mud, got stuck in mud, and almost had become mud. In fact, the instructors had tossed my paper-bagged lunch out to me when I had stood in mud at chest level; hence, half of what I had eaten had been mud.

  Then there was the time at Stead Air Force Base Survival School when I had spent forty-eight hours in a simulated POW camp. After many hours of mental torture, I literally had been pushed, squeezed, and compacted into a wooden box barely big enough for a rabbit. So tight was the fit that it had taken two men to pressure the door of the box shut. When I had heard the click of the lock, I had almost lost it. There I was, in a compressed fetal position, so crushed that my lungs couldn’t expand—I couldn’t breathe. I had mentally scolded and ordered myself to calm down, then started inhaling and exhaling tiny, rapid breaths of air. This had kept me alive until four hours later when the door was opened and I was pried back into civilization. With incidents like these in my past, sitting in two feet of water for a few hours was as easy as ogling the curves of Raquel Welch.