Mundane Crap II - Tracers

     The man who replaced Lt. Olson was a hoss.  A big man.  And a heckuva nice guy.  Easy to get along with and, even though he was the Platoon Leader, he was also a rookie and knew it.  Not that he let on but he paid attention to us almost like we knew what we were doin', had been around the block a couple of times and had something he could learn from.  For some odd reason I ended up as his RTO and remained so until the rain barrel fiasco when I had to be replaced.  Nothing is permanent, 'specially in war.
     Memory gets garbled over time and the truth of a matter may never have been truth in the first place.  Keep those things in mind.  Us grunts humped the boonies under the idea that the Commies were smarter than us.  I doubt that was true but that's what we believed.  We felt their rifles were better than ours and never jammed.  They designed the diameter of their mortars a millimeter larger than ours so they could fire our rounds, no doubt acquired on the black market, but we couldn't fire theirs.  And maybe, just maybe, the AK47 could fire M-16 rounds, but not vice versa.  That may or may not have been true but like I said, that's what we believed.
     What I did know for sure was the tracers buzzing by our ears when we stumbled into an ambush were a mix of red and green.  Just like Christmas.  The reds were ours and the green ones were the Reds (that's a pun in case you missed it).  I assumed both colors were coming out of the same rifle or rifles.
     The ambushes we walked into were usually brief affairs.  Lasted about as long as it took two or three VC to empty a magazine each while on full automatic.  Half the time nobody was hit.  I figure the reason for our luck had to do with the VCs not wantin' to get themselves into a fire fight where the odds were stacked in our favor.  Squeeze 'em off and di di mau was the plan for them.
     On the operation in question, one of the first our new Platoon Leader was on, that's what happened. We were doin' something stupid.  Fancy that.  Walkin' down the center of a main dike so as to keep our feet dry at the end of the day.
     The walkin' ended in shower of bullets and tracers.  By then I'd been in country long enough to react instinctively.  And those instincts launched me headfirst over the side of the dike opposite the rifle fire.  Through the brush, over the lip, seventy pounds on my body be damned.  Gone so fast the bullets seemed to be floatin' through the air as I passed them by.
     Up atop the dike lay our new Lieutenant.  Later he told me that he was feelin' damn proud he'd hit the ground so fast.  Just like he'd been in combat all his life.  Then looked around and found himself alone.  Guess his instinct for survival needed a little honin'.  But in his favor, the Lieutenant was set to return fire toward the men who were long gone.  Such was life in the Delta.