Death in the Jungle (10 page)

We reestablished noise discipline for the next ten minutes. During that time, I didn’t hear us, and I didn’t hear the VC. It was dead still. Then I heard the Seawolves coming.

Knowing what was about to happen, I didn’t lose a second in prostrating myself in the watery mud of the riverbank. From there I flashed my blue strobe light at the black sky.

I heard Mr. Meston say, “You identify. Over.”

The reply via the radio was, “Blue light. Over.”

Mr. Meston said, “Roger that.” Five seconds later, silence got blown apart. A Seawolf swooped in on our location from downstream and opened up. M-60 machine guns strafed the opposite bank, just forty meters from my nose. I saw the tracer bullets streaking through the dark.

As the Seawolf flew away, a second helo came in, firing 2.75-inch rockets at the shore. The rockets exploded along the bank as another M-60 barked dozens of bullets. At that point I was sure that whoever was speaking Vietnamese over there earlier was speaking expletives now.

No sooner was the Seawolf gone than the first gunship, following a racetrack pattern, circled and started its second pass down the river. Again, the machine guns wreaked havoc. More rockets demolished the jungle. The second helo dove in for more, then the first, circling and hitting again and again, like two sharks in a feeding frenzy.

Finally satiated, and after communicating with Mr. Meston, they flew away. I sat up and listened as they faded into the night, spellbound by the precision of their attack.

Seconds later, my ears reverberated in the quiet. There was a pressure against my eardrums that I not only felt, but I could also hear. The sound of rushing blood. The thud of my heartbeat. The thunder of existence in a sphere where others no longer existed. I was alive. I could hear it.

I also heard Mr. Meston using the radio to call our extraction team with the Boston Whaler. The Whaler was an eighteen-foot, W-bottom, fiberglass boat that had a nine-man capacity, including a crew of two. I expected she would be zipping in with her
105-horsepower Chrysler outboard engine and power prop humming.

While waiting for the boat, I readied myself for another assault. Sweet Lips was fully loaded and pointed at the dark river. After all of the earlier firepower, I doubted I’d be looking eyeball to eyeball with a gook in the next twenty minutes, but I wouldn’t be caught making mud castles, just in case.

I noticed my hands were no longer shaking, and I wondered when they had stopped. I thought they had only shaken for a few minutes after our attack. Just a normal reaction to sudden excitement. I remember them having shaken after I killed a big whitetail buck a few years earlier. I had spent a whole day hunting for him, and in an unexpected moment, there he was. I had quickly raised my rifle and fired once, and as I had looked on the ground for signs of blood, my hands had shaken. Same as that night.

My ears quit ringing in a little while, and minutes later I heard a boat coming fast downstream. Using prearranged long and short radio clicks, Mr. Meston directed the coxswain toward our location.

As the boat drew closer, Mr. Meston signaled with his red-lens flashlight. The coxswain cut way back on the throttle and softly nudged the bow of the boat into the vegetation on the riverbank. I could see the silhouette of the coxswain and the gunner, who were the only crew aboard.

Mr. Khan and Funkhouser climbed over the bow and into the boat, followed by myself and McCollum. Mr. Meston and Bucklew, with the radio, came last. Usually, the patrol leader and the radioman were the last to extract simply because they had the radio for communications, and the patrol leader had to set the example. The boat then backed away from the foliage while all of us trained our weapons on both banks of the river.

Once we turned upstream, the coxswain poured it on and we sped the two hundred and fifty meters to the Song Ba Gioi. There we swung westward and went full throttle, which was thirty-five knots with a full load. I was wet all over, and the wind seemed colder on the big river. But it was no biggie. In ten minutes we’d climb aboard
Mighty Moe
, the big LCM-6 which would escort us back to Nha Be and a beer party I was still alive to enjoy.

I raised Sweet Lips defiantly toward the night sky and, with all eyes on me, whispered “Hoo-yah!” which was the cry of UDT/SEALs. The others responded with quiet
hoo-yahs
, maintaining a semblance of noise discipline. Still, the release felt good. Our morale was high. Another mission was over, this time with two estimated KIAs. Thank God, I wasn’t one of them. It was not my epitaph being inscribed that day.

It was a long boat ride back to Nha Be on
Mighty Moe
, and as we reached the naval base, the sun was already lifting over the horizon. I’d been awake for thirty hours but couldn’t sleep had I wanted to, and I wanted to. But the whole squad was flying high. We’d had our first action of the tour, and it was time to let everyone on the base know it.

As we disembarked, there were many howls and
hoo-yahs
. One of the Seawolf pilots stood near his gunship on the helo pad and gave us a quick wave. I raised Sweet Lips high over my head in salute to that courageous man. Funkhouser sauntered beside me and wrapped an arm around my neck for a friendly squeeze. I looked right into his face and yelled, “Hoo-yah!”

Funky slid away, saying, “Smitty, your breath smells like a three-day-old dead dink!” I puckered my lips and sent my buddy a kiss. He just grinned.

We entered the barracks and headed immediately upstairs to the twenty-by-twenty-foot briefing/intelligence room for debriefing. Our squad entered the room with the mobile support team right behind us, followed by the Seawolf crews and Lieutenant Salisbury. Altogether there were twenty men in the room, all of whom had had a part in the mission, with the exception of Mr. Salisbury, the detachment OIC.

The door to the room closed and Mr. Meston began
the debriefing. He spent several minutes reviewing the mission, then specially thanked the mobile support and Seawolf crews for their assistance.

Finally, Mr. Meston asked for suggestions. After a few statements of lessons learned and recommendations, I had one: “Next time out, McCollum needs to avoid beans.” With that comment, Mr. Salisbury congratulated us, then excused us to clean up.

Cleanup started with the basics. Everything was muddy, and the mud had to go. Wearing my muddy cammies and all my gear, holding Sweet Lips in my hands, I stepped into the rough shower the Seabees had made for us. I turned on the overhead spray and salty water, pumped from the Long Tau River, washed over me. The water was unheated, but it was not very cold.

After rinsing Sweet Lips, I set her outside the shower room. I began stripping off my gear and clothes while standing beneath the running water, cleaning things as I went. The water at my feet was brown as it swirled around the extra-large drain. Several minutes later, though, my clothes and gear were thoroughly flushed, and I was as clean and shiny as a real seal.

Once out of the shower, I slipped into my blue-and-gold T-shirt, UDT swim trunks, and coral booties. The wet clothes and gear I hung on pegs in a dressing room adjacent to the showers, intending to take the clothes to Nga’s, a laundry in Nha Be, the next day. The cleaning of Sweet Lips, however, had barely started.

I took the shotgun to a small wooden table with a jerry-built tin roof over it, located next to our barracks. A big metal tub filled with diesel fuel sat on the ground beside the table. There I disassembled the weapon and washed it in the diesel, using several sizes of firm-bristle brushes to scrub each part. A meticulous cleansing got off all of the salt and carbon residue.

After the diesel bath, I wiped the parts dry with a
towel, then used special lubricants on every inch of the weapon before putting it back together. When I was done, Sweet Lips looked and smelled like a new girl.

I returned Sweet Lips to the armory, where she would be stored until I needed her again. Then I entered the ground floor of our twenty-two-by-seventy-five-foot barracks, which housed three SEAL platoons, minus the officers, totaling thirty-six men. Eighteen cots were lined up, three feet apart, on each side of the center aisle running from one end of the building to the other. My platoon had done some trading with the Seabees for several four-by-eight-foot plywood sheets and some two-by-fours with which to build partition walls between every second and third cot. This gave us some semblance of privacy with two-man cubicles to share. My cubicle was eight by eight feet, and my mate was Funkhouser. Each cot had a mosquito net draped over its four tall corner posts, the ends of which could be tucked under the cot’s mattress to keep out mosquitos. At the foot of each cot was an individual locker for storing personal items.

I went to my cubicle, where I put on a fresh pair of camouflage pants, a cammo shirt, and dry pairs of socks and boots. I reached underneath my cot and pulled out a two-by-two-foot wooden cage that held Bolivar, my twenty-inch pet boa constrictor.

I opened the mesh wire top of the cage and took Bolivar in my hands for a minute of petting. The snake seemed appreciative of the show of affection, after which I put him back and slid the cage under the bed. Then I went to the chow hall to eat.

There were no C rats in the mess hall; instead, it was time for some real food, or at least as real as the cooks could get it in an out-of-the-way place like Nha Be.

Bucklew and Khan were seated at a table and were digging into ham and eggs, toast, and coffee. I grabbed
a tray at the serving counter and filled a plate with the same menu, opting also for some Tabasco sauce.

“Mr. Meston and McCollum took a chopper to go look for the sampan we shot up,” Bucklew informed me as I sat down at his table. “It’s low tide, so they may find something in the mud.”

“Prob’ly two dead VC,” snarled Khan, staring right through me with those penetrating eyes of his. He looked mean. I was glad he was my friend and not my enemy.

Bucklew swallowed a bite of food and said, “Hawkeye, you sure were lucky yesterday.”

I grinned. “You mean with that booby trap?”

“Yeah,” replied Bucklew, nodding his head, “not to mention that croc. Volunteering for point must involve some kinda death wish.”

I gazed hard at Bucklew. “I don’t wanna die. That’s why I’m on point. I trust myself more than anybody else.” I looked at Khan, who was looking at me. “If I ever get shot up, Khan, make sure the Communist pig who shoots me gets paid back in full.”

Khan slowly nodded once, then went back to eating. I poured some Tabasco sauce on my eggs as Funkhouser approached with Mojica, a Mexican-American member of the Boat Support Unit.

“That’s the way to smother those eggs!” agreed Mojica, pulling a chair away from the table and sitting down.

“There’s plenty more where this came from,” I informed him.

“Don’t stuff yourself,” said Funkhouser as he, too, sat down. “Save room for the beer. The party starts at 1200 hours, and we’re buyin’ for everybody on base in honor of our first successful mission.”

It was the custom, after every successful encounter with the enemy, for the returning platoon to invite everyone
to the Quonset hut for free beer. At 1200 hours, I tossed a five-dollar bill on the bar counter, which paid for fifty beers at ten cents apiece. Funkhouser, Bucklew, and Khan did likewise. Within minutes, there were forty guys in the building, including SEALs, boat support people, and helo crews. They were all in a festive mood.

Hoo-yah!
was the cry of the afternoon. Backslapping and neck-hugging were a frequent exercise, which accelerated when Meston and McCollum entered with two recovered Communist weapons in their hands.

“Look what we got!” boasted Mr. Meston as he held up an AK-47 and McCollum showed off an Enfield rifle. “We found the sampan, full of holes, along with these rifles, three rifle grenades, a paddle, and a cooking pan.”

“What about the dinks?” Funkhouser shouted.

“Probably washed downstream,” answered Lieutenant Meston, setting the AK-47 on a table.

“Shark meat!” someone yelled, and all of us shouted
hoo-yah!
and raised our glasses high.

McCollum wasted no time dropping a five-spot on the counter and grabbing a beer before heading for the piano. He drank half the beer in one swig, set it on top of the piano, then sat down on the piano bench. After playing a short introduction, he began to sing:

As he went through the words again, everyone joined in. Bucklew hoisted his glass over his head, splashing beer on himself and on my back, as I happened to be the fortunate one standing in front of him. But I was
only momentarily irritated. Five beers and a dozen songs later, I was not worried much about anything. And five beers after that, I was the one doing the splashing.

One of the SEALs from Echo Platoon made a big show out of downing two beers in ten seconds, then challenged Foxtrot Platoon to beat his feat.

“No problem,” I retorted. “Just give me a minute.” I spent the next few minutes searching the dark and dusty places of the building until I found what I needed to win the bet: a cockroach.

With all eyes upon me, I pinched the cockroach between the thumb and index finger of my right hand, while with my left I lined up two beers on the bar counter in front of me. After a final look into the fuzzy, bug-eyed face of the two-inch insect, I tossed it into my mouth and chewed it in half. Then I swallowed the two beers as fast as I could.

“Nineteen seconds!” someone from Echo Platoon bellowed. “You lose, Smitty!”

I coughed and said, “The cockroach is crawlin’ back up my throat.”

One SEAL from Echo Platoon ran out of the Quonset hut, hands cupped over his mouth.

McCollum watched the man go, then hollered, “It looks to me like Smitty won!” My platoon buddies shouted several
hoo-yahs
in agreement.

The party continued nonstop for nine hours, with many of the 230 men on base making an appearance. The Seabees who worked the day shift were the last to show, but by the time they did, I was too inebriated to care.