Monsoon. That's about it. If you've been through one, you know what I mean. If not, let's just say it rains a lot and then it rains a lot more.
From the air the Delta looked like a shallow sea with tree lines and the stripes of rice paddy dikes. Night positions became precarious. No place to dig in, no paddy floors to sleep on. Leeches everywhere except for the tide controlled rivers. Some mornings you'd wake up with a circular tell-tale leech sucking mark on your arm that said you'd been accosted in the night. No thank you note on your pillow, not a dime in payment. GIs left a lot of non-wound blood in Vietnam.
We'd set up on the raised mud platforms of farmyards. Never gave it any thought at the time but I guess we took those poor people hostage, as shields to protect us against mortars, rockets, and rifle fire. Not that we did them any harm. For all I know Bravo Six reimbursed them for their hospitality at regular Saigon hotel room rates.
Even sleeping above the water table did no good in keeping us dry 'cause it rained at night. Hard. Every night except odd numbered Thursdays. And it was cold. Not exactly Minnesota winter cold but when you're used to temperatures in the 90's, a wet 65 can feel like winter.
At night we'd roll up in our waterproof ponchos when not on watch and hope for motionless sleep to keep from bein' more in touch with the ooze. Didn't much matter. We were wet and mud covered when we rolled up and even more so when we awoke.
One night me and The Farmer decided to sleep dry. More or less did the Little Boy Blue thing, or the farmer thing if you want, and crawled under a hay stack for the night. No doubt about it, it was dry. And we weren't alone in our cleverness. Rats like to stay dry also. Screw them. We slept well.
Typical for the Army, or at least any company I was ever in, we were always short some items of equipment. For us it was ponchos. A big deal during the monsoon. Seemed like we were never short more than one, but we were always short. Come time to head to the field from Dong Tam or Moore there was a always a kind of musical chairs for ponchos goin' on. I'm missin' mine, I steal yours and so on down the line till the order comes to saddle up. On the first operation in question, turned out it was me who was in the stink hole.
Wasn't but an overnight out on the highway where my squad was to pull guard for a sniper. You see, we were in a free fire zone. That meant we could shoot to kill anyone who was moving away from us with the intention keepin' on in that direction. Or anyone out and about after dark. 'Specially if they were thinking of crossing a highway to maybe visit mom and borrow a cup of sugar.
On the upside, the highway was cozy warm on a chilly night. On the downside, it was raining buckets. The kind of rain that would drown a man if he slept on his back with his mouth open. Not a good night to sleep without a poncho.
But there was a Jeep, the sniper's Jeep. And it was kind of like a tent if you crawled under it. Probably would have been just as dry and a whole lot more comfortable to sleep in the Jeep. But, you see, it wasn't my Jeep and askin' to sleep in it would have been way too personal. Almost like asking for a date. So I scooched my ass underneath. Ahhh, dry.
I was blissfully happy. For about ten minutes. Don't know if you've ever noticed but asphalt doesn't really fluff up. Nope, nothing at all like a down pillow. And rolling over once I stiffened up wasn't an option seeing as how my nose was tight to the drive train. Couldn't even lay on my side. What was Jeep thinking when they designed the vehicle's ground clearance? Probably never gave a second's thought to anyone sleeping underneath. A simple case of selfish, short-sighted bastardism if I ever heard of one.
So I spent the night wet, sleeplessly leaning against the side of a Jeep's fender. Doubt anyone else got much sleep either. And no Vietnamese died on the highway that night. Not like I cared much one way or the other. My guess was a VC was smart enough to stay dry when the opportunity presented itself.
But that's not the gist of this entry. Not even close. But the story I'm working towards does involve water, as does most every combat story from the Delta.
I believe I once mentioned it was SOP in the Delta to get an infantry company out of the field after two days due to the conditions. The conditions being water and its effect on feet. Emersion foot, paddy foot, jungle rot, ring worm, and a variety of other kinds of weird shit that would sprout on a GI's body, live there for a while, then go away. Or maybe make itself at home deep in his body till the time came for it to reawaken on a warm summer's day in Minnesota. If you ever saw a Delta based grunt unit in the shower on a stand down it'd look sunburned faces, scorched hands, and a flower garden of lesions from the knees on down. Yeah baby, we itched a lot.
On this occasion, we'd been out in the field almost three monsoon drenched days. Spent the night in a farmyard and were now waiting for our chauffeurs in helicopters to come get us. We'd been waiting for a couple of hours when the word came down it was time to saddle up and hoof it into Moore. Seemed there was a bunch of fire fights going on elsewhere and they needed our choppers more than we did.
From our grumbling you'd have thought we were a bunch of spoiled brats. Just like Americans are supposed to be. One of our crazed killers was so upset he kicked a picket out of a fence. Then felt bad about it and put it back. Like I've said time and again, most of us didn't want to be there in the first place but weren't sharp enough to avoid it. So we pissed and moaned about a lot of stuff while we went about doing the stuff we didn't want to do. Like having to move ten clicks, that be a little over six miles, during the monsoon.
The land was flooded. Pure and simple. Any form of bridge was washed out. Every moat and river had to be forded. Slow slogging at its finest. And by slow that figured to about one mile an hour. Quarter mile along a dike, down into a stream, up out of the stream, then down to the next. Eighty men, for six hours. Actually no big deal. No one was shooting at us and, once we got going, no one bitched about it. We just did it, simple, mindless, grunt work. What the hell, we were grunts, what else would you expect of us?
Mid-afternoon we were back at Moore and peeling off our boots. Actually, I felt just fine. I figure most of us did. We were used to humping from one end of the day to the other with weight on our backs. Not a fat boy among us.
But when the boots came off, the show began. Underneath the leather was a layer of wool socks pressed tight to the flesh with a neat double row of boot eyelets squeezed onto them. Beneath the socks the same pattern was embossed on my feet and ankles. Once the socks came off the swelling began. The eyelet dents disappeared as both feet visibly puffed up. Fascinating. Next the ankles bulged. The process continued till my toes began to point skyward like sunflowers following the sun. En-masse a group of us hobbled to the aid station where we were all sprayed with disinfectant, given two aspirin, and put on twenty-four hour bed rest.
Life in a combat zone knows no bed rest. You'd think I'd have figured that out after a couple of months in country, but I hadn't. There were bunkers to man and each required three warm bodies regardless of feet. About an hour after us infirms were cozied indoors for a day of lounging, a sergeant walked in with a list with half of our names on it to head to the bunkers ASAP.
That's when I went into my barracks lawyer's routine about how we were all free from such nonsense 'cause we had doctor's orders which I, with all certainty, even though I had no clue as to what I was talking about, stated trumped a First Sergeant's orders. Ironically, I wasn't one of those on the list. Sometimes I don't know when to keep my mouth shut. Rather than listen to me blither on, the sergeant about-faced and disappeared.
No more than a minute later he returned with a request that I go visit First Sergeant Withers. The others immediately picked up their gear and headed to the bunkers. Guess they knew the score and whose shit was in the wind.
I'd like to say I was upbeat about being singled out by Top concerning my sense of right even when in a war zone but that wouldn't be exactly true. I'd also like to write that me and the First Sergeant were best of buddies from that moment on 'cause he found me to be a soul mate in the never ending war against injustice in the world but the tremors I felt on my way to the office would have said that also wasn't on the money. Mostly I hoped I wouldn't get reamed out too badly and was thinking furiously of my defense.
Right off Top explained why he'd made the list, then let me begin my defense. Nice of him to do so. I began with, "I thought..." That's as far as I got.
Top cut in with a booming, "We don't pay you to think!" Then continued on with a tirade backed by twenty-five years in the Army, that offered no room for rebuttal.
By the time he finished all I had left to say was a wizened, "Yes, First Sergeant."
Interestingly, I wasn't put on his list for bunker duty. But I did move a lot higher on his shit list.
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