Death in the Jungle Read online

  Two hours later, I felt something nibbling on my left wrist. I hastily brushed the creature away, but another swam through my arms. Then another. I was surrounded by several tiny fish. I chased them away with my hands, then they were back in a matter of seconds. I decided not to resist, and they continued to play and nibble.

  The fish stuck around for a long while, and suddenly they were gone. Maybe the smell of Bucklew down the line had done the trick. Or perhaps it was the fact that I had just urinated through my clothing. At any rate, my little friends departed. I was left to my mission, which was to ambush the enemy.

  Since I was on the right flank of our point ambush, my responsibility was to watch for any sampans approaching from the right, which in this case was south. In the event of a sighting, I was to tug three times on the parachute suspension line that I’d strung between me and Bucklew, who was several meters to my left with the line tied to his right wrist. Bucklew was to then pull on another line linking him to Lieutenant Meston, who would likewise pass the message. We were to hold our fire until the enemy skiff reached the middle of the kill zone, which was right in front of our middle man. Once the center of the kill zone was penetrated, the platoon commander would initiate the ambush. That was when all seven of us would open fire, and when some gooks would wish they were dreaming. It was my job to put them to sleep.

  More hours slid by and the sun went down. The fish hadn’t returned. Just a few mosquitos annoyed me. No VC had yet made an appearance, but we were not really expecting them until late in the night.

  I gazed at Bucklew one last time before it was too dark to see him.

  I tugged once on the suspension line, which asked, “Are you okay?” I thought he was looking at me, then he smiled, and I knew he was. I smiled back.

  Darkness settled on us shortly thereafter and Bucklew disappeared. I stared at the moonlit water in front of me and reflected a while about why I was there. I blamed it on Life magazine (or was it The Saturday Evening Post?), which had printed a cover picture of a soldier looking up to the heavens and a hand reaching down to him. I had been in grade school in Abilene, Texas, at the time, and I had tacked that picture up in my bedroom. It had made me think: Am I predestined to be a career military man? From that time forward, I had been obsessed with playing war.

  The man who had lived next door to my family had served in World War II, and he had fueled my obsession by giving me some German and Jap gear, including a gas mask, web gear, and dummy grenades. When I was fifteen, my family had moved to Wichita Falls, where I became a frequent visitor of a country club. I had dressed in military utility greens and boots, wielding my pellet rifle, and I had carried out secret operations all over the club’s golf course, which had been “enemy controlled territory.” Occasionally I had shot a grey squirrel for my taxidermy projects; however, the country club’s security personnel had thought dimly of my actions. Whenever they had spotted me with my rifle, they had assaulted my position in their golf carts.

  Escape had not always been easy, especially when I had had my goofy Brittany Spaniel with me. Sometimes I had done what Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans did—I had crawled (dragging my dog) to the creek, slid into its dirty water, and maintained a low profile in the weeds that grew in and around it. Never mind the water moccasins—the water had become my friend. Fortunately, I had never been caught. After three years of numerous close calls, I had retired to the campus of Midwestern University, where I had figured out ways of hiding from my professors without being missed.

  Now, here I was, twenty-five years old and still playing hide-and-seek. Up until that day, it always had been just a game; never again would it be just a game. Never again.

  It became difficult to see in the dark, especially when the moon vanished behind the clouds. I had to rely on my ears. I listened hard. To hear things at any distance, I had to block out the hum of mosquitos circling my head. It was their supper time, but my tenderloins and hindquarters were underwater.

  The buzzing became hypnotic when I allowed myself to relax too much. It reminded me of the purring of a rotating fan that I had liked to sleep to when I was a kid. I had to watch it to avoid dozing off. The mission had begun almost twenty hours before, and my head and eyes felt it.

  I decided to close my eyes and trust my ears. My hearing was acute, and besides, I was a light sleeper. I was sure I’d be alert with any unusual noise.

  Some time later, I woke up. At least I thought I had been asleep. Really, it was hard to say. I sensed that I had slipped over the edge between waking and sleeping, but I was not sure. Nothing seemed to have changed. It was still dark and the mosquitos were with me. I saw very little, and there were no distant sounds. The only difference I noted was the smell.

  I smelled the jungle then, really for the first time. It was the odor of decomposing nipa palm. The smell of wet and rot. An Oriental smell like I’d not smelled before. It had probably been there all along, but I’d missed it. I hadn’t concentrated on it. But then it filled my nostrils and registered in my brain. The smell of Vietnam.

  I looked in Bucklew’s direction, but I saw only black. Tugging once on the suspension line, I received no response. That meant he was asleep, or dead. I pulled again. The second time, he pulled back, once. I’m okay—you’re okay. Then we were alone with ourselves, again.

  The night passed. Nothing happened. No sampans, no VC. Not even a croc, thank God.

  The sun was sneaking up to peek at us, so we had to get on the move. Our extraction point was eight hundred meters and a couple hours south. At Lieutenant Meston’s signal, I climbed to my feet. Water rushed out of my clothing as I pulled Sweet Lips from the branches. She felt funny in my hands and I wasn’t sure why. Slipping her under my right arm, I rubbed my hands together. My skin felt like the exterior of a shriveled prune.

  Bucklew motioned for me to roll up the suspension line. I did and shoved it in a pants pocket. A minute later, the platoon was ready to go.

  Back on point, I was wet and cold in the cool morning air as I guided the platoon south toward the Quan Quang Xuyen. The sun was still struggling to climb over the horizon, but its quest had lit up the land. Ahead of me, some nipa palm trees looked black against the brightening sky.

  Looking back down, I watched the water and protruding brush before and to the sides of me. Many nasty things could await me—booby traps, crocs, and snakes to name three. And then there were the NVA, gooks.

  Fortunately, we made it all the way to the extraction point with nothing more to show than a souvenir skull and five million mosquito-inflicted puncture wounds for the seven of us. Four and a half million of them belonged to BT2 McCollum, our grenadier, who hadn’t worn his long johns. His facial expressions as we awaited the LCPL were a sight to behold, and his incessant scratching of his thighs told the whole story. He’d been had, royally.

  Twenty minutes later, though, we were all on board the Navy boat and were headed back to the barracks at Nha Be Naval Base. I glanced from one SEAL to another, all seated and chattering; strict noise discipline was off. Each guy was wet and dirty, caked with mud. Filthy as they were, they were downright ugly, but it was a good-looking ugly to me. They were the bravest and toughest men in the world. They were my teammates, my buddies, my brothers. I would fight to the death for any one of them.

  Personally, I was feeling really good, almost euphoric. I couldn’t wait to grab a shower, clean my gear, oil Sweet Lips, eat some vittles, and hit the rack. The thought of it all made me smile.

  Mission One was a complete success. Seven men out, seven came back, all alive and well. Only McCollum would argue the point. Scratch, scratch.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mission Five

  “That is at bottom the only courage demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.”

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  DATE: 3, 4 September 1967

  TIME: 030315H to 041030H
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br />   COORDINATES: YS143736

  UNITS INVOLVED: Foxtrot, 1st Squad, MST-3

  TASK: Line reconnaissance and river ambush

  METHOD OF INSERTION: LCM-6 (Mighty Moe)

  METHOD OF EXTRACTION: LCM-6

  TERRAIN: Mangrove swamp

  MOON: None

  WEATHER: Cloudy

  SEAL TEAM PERSONNEL:

  Lt. Meston, Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16

  RM2 Smith, Ass’t Patrol Leader/Point, shotgun

  MM2 Funkhouser, Automatic Weapons, M-60

  BT2 McCollum, Grenadier, M-79

  ADJ3 Bucklew, Radioman/Rifleman, CAR-15

  ENS Khan (LDNN SEAL), Rifleman, M-16

  AZIMUTHS: 000 degrees

  ESCAPE: 000 degrees CODE WORDS: Challenge and Reply—Two numbers total 10

  There I was, back on point with Sweet Lips. I was moving through the mud of a mangrove swamp on my fifth mission. In the previous two weeks I’d been point man on three other missions; all had been uneventful. I wasn’t complaining. I was glad we’d had the good fortune to get a few placid missions under our belts; we had needed to get our feet wet, which we’d done in every sense of the phrase.

  Mr. Meston liked me on point. He’d noticed my country-boy instincts and knew my Texas upbringing, so he’d put his faith in me. I’d reciprocated that trust. Since the first couple of missions, Mr. Meston had settled down and impressed me with his decision making. He was a well-balanced man, cautious yet creative, and not afraid to hear new ideas. My kind of leader.

  I glanced back at Meston. He was five meters behind me, just visible in the first light of day. Behind him, invisible to me, was Bucklew with the radio, then followed Funkhouser, Khan, who was a Vietnamese SEAL, and McCollum. All of them were likeable guys, especially McCollum.

  McCollum was a jovial fellow and had turned out to be the life of the party whenever there was a party, which was every available night. At Nha Be Naval Base, the Seabees had erected a prefabricated twenty-by-forty-foot shelter with a semicircular arching roof of corrugated metal. It was a Quonset hut over a concrete floor. Inside was a plywood bar, a large refrigerator for storing beer, a few tables with chairs, and a beat-up piano stolen from Saigon. It was there where many SEALs hung out, and where McCollum sat at the piano and sang endless off-color English and Australian ballads. Our platoon had nicknamed him “Muck,” which was simpler to say than McCollum, and is British for “engaging in aimless activity,” which was what hanging around the Quonset hut entailed.

  Also part of Muck’s repertoire were the love songs from the Navy Song Book, which he saved for the nights when he’d especially miss his wife back home in the States. His last song two nights earlier, sung with great feeling, had been “Sweethearts and Wives.” The words were well known to me:

  “Now comrades fill your glasses,

  And cease each merry jest;

  Let ev’ry one among you think of her whom he loves best.

  From Maine to California, in lands far off or near,

  God bless the girls who love us, the girls our hearts hold dear!

  Sweethearts and wives, wherever we may roam,

  Back fly our thoughts to you and home.

  Sweethearts and wives, fond hearts and true,

  With tear-dimmed eyes, we drink to you.

  Make it a bumper, comrades, and each one standing here

  Can whisper soft above his glass, the name he holds most dear.

  While as we drink in silence, across the ocean foam,

  Our loving greetings fly tonight, we drink to those at home!

  Sweethearts and wives, wherever we may roam,

  Back fly our thoughts to you and home.

  Sweethearts and wives, fond hearts and true,

  With tear-dimmed eyes, we drink to you.”

  Suddenly my brain screamed, “Stop!” and my right leg froze in midair. My heart slammed in my throat as I realized there was a trip wire across my shin. The next few seconds took forever; part of me wanted to draw back, the rest of me refused to move. I stayed put, and nothing happened. It became apparent that I’d stopped my forward momentum in the nick of time.

  As Mr. Meston approached, I waved at him to back off. He did, and I looked hard to see where the trip wire lead. I spotted a tin can, camouflaged and tied to the trunk of a small tree in front of me and to my left. The can was tied parallel to the ground with the open end facing me. Inside the can was an object which I couldn’t make out, but I knew what it was. It was a VC grenade. The trip wire was attached to the grenade, which had had the safety pin removed. Fortunately for me, the grenade was still inside the can where the spoon was held in place. Had I finished my step, the grenade would’ve been pulled out of the can, releasing the spoon and detonating the grenade. It’s fair to say I would’ve earned a Purple Heart, but I’d have been a bit too stiff to shake hands at the award ceremony.

  Sure of myself, I stepped back and allowed the trip wire to slacken. I got free of it, then took a few seconds to choke my heart back down my esophagus.

  I carefully approached the booby trap and took my K-bar knife and cut the monofilament trip wire. I didn’t slide out the grenade. I simply left the grenade in its nest and rejoined the platoon.

  Mr. Meston slapped me on the back, then motioned for me to take point and lead the way. Gee, thanks for the compassion, Lieutenant. Couldn’t I have had another five seconds, first, to recover from my nervous breakdown? Nevertheless, I guided the platoon eastward to the place where our intelligence indicated a VC hootch was located. Our job was to check the hootch, looking for enemy activity.

  We located the hootch two hours later. From our position, forty meters from the hootch, it looked vacant. Mr. Meston decided to play it by the book, spreading us out into a skirmish line facing the hootch. He then signaled me to skirt the area around the hootch, maintaining visual contact with the platoon.

  I carefully walked the minor trail leading to the hootch, looking for more booby traps. Staying close to the brush, I circled the hootch from west to east, finding only old human tracks in the mud. I signaled Mr. Meston, and he slowly advanced toward the front of the hootch.

  As Meston reached the open door, I joined him. He motioned for me to go inside. Sweet Lips was the first to stick her nose in, with me coaxing her from behind. I saw immediately that there was no one in the hootch, and in the few seconds it took for my vision to adjust, my eyes told my brain the place had been cleaned out. The only things left were a broken clay stove in one corner of the dirt floor and a makeshift bed constructed of lashed limbs in another.

  Meston entered the hootch and participated in the perusal, then we exited and rejoined the platoon.

  As we continued our reconnaissance, I couldn’t help but analyze each member of the platoon strung out behind me. Khan, the Vietnamese SEAL, was impressive. He was a short, slender man with penetrating, predator-type eyes. He was steady and exhibited no fear at all. He had a deep scar on his left cheek as a reminder of a knife fight with a gook, who had a deeper scar across his decaying chest.

  Funkhouser was just as impressive as Khan. He was a husky six-footer who was so familiar with the M-60 machine gun that I believed the barrel had been his pacifier in his cradle days. He was as cool as a cobra in the field, warming up only when we partied.

  Mr. Meston was a clean-cut man of medium build, standing five feet, ten inches tall. He had been making good decisions, including his choices of beautiful, exotic women.

  McCollum was better behind the piano than he was in the field; to tell the truth, we were all better at the bar than at recon. “Muck,” though, was a bit uncomfortable with his assignment to rear security. Bringing up the rear on a pitch-black night in an enemy-infested jungle was enough to make most men jittery. Still, I’d rather have “Muck” with his M-79 grenade launcher protecting our posteriors than most.

  Bucklew was the most handsome one of the platoon, with the possible exception of myself. He was a muscular, six-foot, hundred and eighty pounder.
He was a great runner and swimmer, but his athleticism wasn’t helping him in the swamplands. That was because his mind was giving him problems, negating his physical advantages. Mr. Meston had given him a try on point a couple missions back, but the stress had eaten him up. Bucklew by then seemed too nervous to me. I was hoping he would hold up when we engaged the enemy, which was an eventual surety.

  I pondered my analysis of my buddies for a minute. It seemed to me as though I’d been a little hard on some of them, until I remembered I was judging their performance under extremely dangerous conditions and not simply how they’d fare on a frog hunt back in Texas. In a jungle with gooks and snakes and crocs all around, nobody was perfect, believe me. But these imperfect SEALs, of which I was one, were not quitters. Regardless of their individual quirks and shortcomings, collectively they composed a group of fighting men that no sane enemy would want to face. Of that I was sure. I knew these men. They’d been trained to the max. Someone would have to pay for all that training, and his name would be gook.

  I continued on point, moving in ankle-deep mud, until 1200 hours when Mr. Meston decided to take a break. In fairly thick cover, the six of us set up a perimeter in a circle, with each man facing outboard. I sat down in the mud and leaned my head back against a nipa palm and closed my eyes for half a minute. It felt good to rest my eyes and daydream of the little house in the country I planned to buy near my parents’ home in Scotland, Texas. Right then I really wanted the house because it was built on a hill where I’d seldom ever have to walk in mud.

  Knowing I must stay alert, I opened my eyes and looked for trouble. He was only present in his mosquito disguise. Feeling safe, I stood Sweet Lips against the palm tree and took a can of C rations from my backpack, along with a P-38 can opener and a spoon. I opened the can of ham and lima beans and stared at the stuff, smothered in solifidied grease. I set the can down to my right in the mud, hoping the ninety-degree heat would liquefy the grease so I could pour some of it out.