Alpha 1/7 V.N. Stories and life experience since:
"What did I tell you? Didn't I tell you? I told you to use a probing rod, but you just wouldn't listen. I told you! So cried the corporal as I hung there between life and maybe death.
We had been sweeping the area for booby traps and punji pits and the viet cong, but unfortunately they had been there before we arrived. It seems I found one of their punji pits the hard way. I stepped forward onto what I thought was solid ground, but it gave way with my right foot and leg slipping down into the hole between the sharpened stakes. They were razor sharp and treated with dung on the tips to cause infection and a painful, long death to the poor soul falling in on top of them. Fortunately for me, somehow my rifle fell crosswise of the hole, and I hung there suspended over these razors. My right leg was completely extended into the pit between the sticks. Wow, what a blessing for me! I hung there in a state of shock and embarrassment as the corporal continued to chew on me and help me out of my predicament.
Once on the scene, like everybody else, I plunged into the routines of the day, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle, fighting the bugs and leeches while succumbing to the heavy air as it hung all around, and we were forced to breathe. Life was miserable (unhappy, sad, depressed, wretched, glum, dismal, and cheerless)!
The surroundings was a claustrophobic offensive jungle with elephant grass up to 20 feet high and a suffocating temperature of upwards of 120 degrees, or, being completely out in the open with no protection trudging through a wet rice field as a sitting duck.
Even back on the hill, things were crude, at best. Many nights we slept in our clothes, unable to take a proper bath or even to sleep. This kind of war was different than for which we had trained.
For days on end, we lived in the bush, ate C-Rations from the 1950's, took baths as we could, and slept in our armour. I used my webbing in my helmet for a pillow oftentimes, hoping for protection if we were hit as I slept.
I remember once I laid asleep in a gully when it began raining. I awoke as the water ran down my collar under my flak jacket down my back. My feet stayed wet all the time. The only thing you could do is change to dry socks for a short bit of comfort. Eventually, many of us developed jungle rot on our feet and had to be on a short medical relief from the field. Jungle rot is very much like athletes foot, only worse. I stayed out for three weeks while under doctor s care.
The monsoons began and I did not believe it would ever quit raining. It rained for more than three months solid. Our hill where we lodged was so wet, muddy, and mucky, we had to walk on planks just to keep from sinking in below our knees. We stayed muddy and wet. Mosquitoes and leeches were everywhere.
Booby Trap Alley
I first walked "point" in what we dubbed as "Booby Trap Alley". It was a place where, within three weeks, we lost more than thirty men from booby traps. Once I literally walked into one of our own mine fields without seeing the markings because I was so engrossed in watching the ground, of not falling into another pit, tripping a nearly invisible trip wire, or stepping on a land mine that can't be detected until you do. I failed to observe the bigger picture.
We were constantly seeing someone killed or maimed. So, I became very vigilant, always on guard. How could I not? Even today, after forty plus years, I find myself thinking and acting the same way.
