RivRon 13
By
Larry J. Kennedy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 1
A Lesson In Physics
For the most part, my life in the third dimension is pretty
normal but occasionally, when properly stimulated, I find myself roaring
through the universe trapped in an inescapable time warp. I am eventually
deposited in an entirely different millennium for a short, intense period of
time. Some folks would call this a flashback. I call it a ride on the Wayback machine.
I
never know when one of these crazy episodes is going to take place and if it
had not happened to me personally, I would not have believed that it was even
possible. Time traveling I mean, which only works for me in one direction, back
into the past.
My last trip backwards happened a few years
ago and it was a really good one. It was memorable because everything about
that trip seemed absolutely real and not a figment of an over active
imagination.
It
all started one spring morning when I stepped outside the
The smell of cow manure and wet earth
filled the warm atmosphere around the Post Office. The airborne perfume drifted
in from across the road where agricultural students working in a
The
crystal clear sky produced extra potent sunrays. They beat down on my face and
made me do an unusual thing. I removed my shirt then lowered the front of my
bib overalls to let the hot light shine on my pale winter chest.
“Ah
yes, that does feel good,” I thought, and fished out a cigarette to enhance
my sunbathing pleasure. As I bowed to light the smoke, sweat ran off my
forehead and dripped onto my glasses. It burned into my eyes causing me to
inhale sharply. The smell of tobacco, mixed with the odor of poop and fresh
mud, sped into my lungs just a little faster than I expected, which made my
eyes water even more. I was now fully strapped into the "Way back"
unit and ready for warp speed.
At
that exact instant, the trucks on either side of me simultaneously fired up
their engines with a huge roar that scared the ever-living snot out of
me. My face was blasted with powerful dense clouds of black diesel exhaust. I
closed my eyes against the onslaught as the big vans slammed into gear and
raced off on a twisting route towards the exit. The time machine, with me on
board, instantly achieved full backward escape velocity.
After a few year-seconds I opened my sooty
eyelids and blearily made out that today's date had changed drastically. As my
vision slowly cleared, I saw chocolate colored water flowing right there in
front of me. I knew immediately that I was back in
A
dirty, green, blunt nosed boat, bristling with machine guns, motored along in
the current ahead. The watercraft was a
Out
beyond the Tango's foaming wake, I caught sight of a threatening movement in
the tangled tree line behind her. No one aboard the stubby boat seemed to be
aware of any danger and fear grabbed at my throat as I waited for the opening
salvo of the Viet Cong ambush that I saw materializing.
Suddenly,
a mighty electric current surged through my body. I was instantly on my feet,
stretching imaginary hands out to grasp the handles of a loaded Colt 50 caliber
machine gun that magically appeared. If it moved I felt a desperate need to
shoot it, like Now!
Yeah, right, just my rotten luck. The weapon was
jammed or something because I could not get it to fire and I thought I heard
AK-47's rattling somewhere, increasing my alarm. I violently mashed the 50's
thumb trigger while repeatedly pulling back on the operating handle.
I saw crimson fire streak from the
opposite river bank and swing in my direction. Bullets would be here soon. I
could feel their relentless search for my tender flesh. “Man, oh man, this is really
going to hurt,” I
thought, as I braced myself for the impending impact and pain.
Suddenly,
everything dissolved into tiny bright sparkles out in front of me and my cosmic
journey ended as quickly as it had begun. The muddy
I
stood, blinked and noticed that if my stupid machine gun had worked properly I
would have killed a Chevy Suburban, a John Deere loader and an empty semi
trailer parked out in the truck lot. If I had wasted those poor innocent
vehicles, the term "Going Postal" would have taken on a new meaning,
especially given my current condition. Those "
Oh, well—some things just never seem to change
for me. Whether I am surfing in the space-time-continuum, or struggling along
in the real world, at any crucial moment I might be caught with my britches
down. As I hurriedly buckled my pants back up I felt very lucky that were not
entirely missing, as they were a couple of times back when I sailed on Tango
boats along the mighty Mekong, with River Assault Squadron 13.
Oh yeah, and where is that misbegotten squid that
had set up my weapon anyway? I had an extra large bone to pick with that
sailor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
The
My very first thought, as I stood on the
tarmac next to my inbound
It was about
A few days after my arrival I flew south,
on a C-7 Caribou, to a dusty Army-Navy base along the
After arriving at RivRon
13, I was assigned to an attrition division rather than with a crew on a
particular boat. If an engine man or gunner became missing for any reason, (R
& R, WIA, Clap etc.), I, as a member of the attrition division, would be
sent to fill in until they returned or until a permanent replacement could be
assigned. This insured that I would also be highly forgettable. Here today,
gone tomorrow. Who was that greasy sailor anyway?
I was kind of hurt
that I did not have a boat to really call home like most of the men in the
squadron and wondered why I was selected for this wandering duty. In the
intervening years since December 1968 I think I may have figured that
particular mystery out.
While being
evaluated with a barrage of Navy tests, before receiving final orders to the
fleet, a strange thing happened. I was required to take a standard Navy
mechanical aptitude test one day and went to a classroom on
The next day I was
sent back to the same room and told that I had to repeat the exam. No
explanations were offered so I did as instructed, answered one hundred
different questions of the same type and carried on with my duties.
I was really
confused when the following day I was sent to the same classroom to take the
same test over yet again. I wondered if they had lost my previous results or if
I had screwed up so royally that they could make neither heads nor tails of my
answers. Oh well, mine was not to reason why, so I completed another set of one
hundred questions. When I passed the finished paper to the instructor I was
told to sit down and wait.
My test was scored
and I was waved by the instructor, a Chief Petty Officer, to the front of the
room. There were two other flag officer types standing behind him looking at me
thoughtfully as I approached his desk.
When I once again
stood in front of him the Chief informed me that, “The Navy does not accept a
score of one hundred percent on ANY aptitude test.”
I did not
understand how this could affect me and I shook my head quizzically as I tried
to make sense of the whole situation. The instructor, seeing that I was very
confused, lowered his voice a notch and said, “Look asshole, just miss one will
you?” The other officer types nodded in agreement so I erased one of my
multiple choice answers then picked another at random.
They all smiled
like I had just given them a new puppy and that is how I received a score of ninety
nine percent on the Navy standard mechanical aptitude test.
All this proved to me that the Navy
actually was stranger than science fiction. I see now that they thought I was
somehow cheating on the exam and were watching me like hawks to determine if
this was true. After the third test they must have been convinced of my
innocence so offered the only solution at hand for them. Cheat and deliberately
miss a question. Heck, I had been working on cars since I was a kid. This stuff
was easy compared to fixing an automatic transmission. I found out right then
that the old three way thing concerning anything remotely naval was true. There
was the right way. There was the wrong way. Then there was the Navy way.
The next occurrence of note took place
during river boat training at a heavy weapons range where all future river rats
were evaluated for machine gun proficiency.
We were trucked to a shooting range on a
hillside overlooking a valley that was about a quarter mile across. On the far
side of the rift stood a dilapidated Army tank, several household appliances,
and an old car which turned out to be our targets.
I
stood in a line of men with a link belt of 50 caliber ammo draped over my
shoulder, waiting my turn to test fire. I watched the sailors ahead of me run
out their ammo and noticed that the 50’s created a tremendous amount of barrel
jump when fired. Hardly anybody was hitting anything as most rounds sailed way
over the intended targets. I recalled an instructor relating that you had to
start a four or five shot burst well under, say, a refrigerator then depend on
muzzle rise to bring the slugs to bear.
The smell of burned gunpowder intoxicated
me and I was excited when the time arrived for me to shoot. Adrenalin buzzed in
my veins as I stood behind the weapon, flipped up the loading door, hooked up
my rounds, snapped the cover shut, pulled the operating handle to chamber the
first round then set my sights well below an old
I was elated to see several white flash
hits on the old armored wreck. YES! Straight out of the box, I was right on.
This was easy and Great fun. I scored hits on a car next, then a refrigerator,
then the tank again and felt a sense of disappointment, after about thirty
seconds, as my ammo ran out.
Unbelievably I had lit up everything I shot
at. The other swabs awaiting their turn congratulated me as well as the
instructor who gave me a verbal, “Outstanding sailor.” Wow, I had no idea that
I could do a thing like that. I wanted to pay somebody for more ammo and get
back in line again. What a thrill. Yeah, well the color would fade from that
bloom a little farther on down the line.
For my next powder smoke experience I lined
up with a twenty five round belt of ammo behind a 20 millimeter cannon. This
weapon was much larger than a 50 caliber. The 20 mm shells were about twice the
50’s size and each projectile was filled with explosives so that when they
struck an object they would detonate into a deadly cloud of fast moving hot
metal fragments. 20 mm rounds had drawbacks though. They were not bore safe,
were always armed and could explode anytime the tips were hit hard enough. We
were told that if a 20 mm round was dropped on its projectile point from waist
high to the ground, the clumsy sailor who did so would be an immediate
candidate for a new prosthetic leg or two. Most explosive projectiles would not
detonate until after exiting a gun barrel where they would then be armed by
ballistic spin.
A twenty five round belt of ammo shot from
a gun that fires around seven hundred rounds per minute makes for about two,
one second bursts. I still made the best of the brief practice blasts by
getting several hits each time on the tank. I felt exhilarated. Shooting belted
ammo will do that to you.
I also test fired a 30 caliber machine gun,
a Mark-19 40 mm grenade launcher and handed clipped together shells up to a
crew served 40 mm cannon.
I think the Navy, therefore, set me up to
replace engine men or gunners in the squadron because I could do well in either
role depending on where I was needed. I did not see this as a plus until well
after I rotated home and was out of the Navy altogether. I was able to ride on
a lot of different boats and had many unusual experiences. Ok, I don’t feel so
bad about having been the odd man out anymore.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 3
Baby
Snake My Ass !!
Home base for the RivRon
13 attrition division was a berthing compartment aboard one of the converted
LST barracks ships that were anchored in the miles wide
From Naval records: "Rach Gia: On the
Here is what happened on that very first
open sea transit.
A few weeks after I checked in, the mother
ship, along with most RivRon 13 boats, weighed anchor
and set off down river towards the mouth of the Mekong then out into the South
China Sea.
When our convoy reached the open ocean we
were met with Very rough water. Fifteen foot waves, minimum, battered us. The
huge slabs of ocean rolled the larger vessels right, left, up, down, or a
sickening combination of those directions.
Inside the attrition division berthing
compartment, with forty other sailors, life became worse than miserable, it
became downright intolerable.
The weird motions of pitch and roll had all
of us new arrivals standing at the outskirts of "
When you are thinking about doing it, hear
it being done, then catch the unmistakable odor of it, you soon realize that
your own sympathy puke is close at hand and the next heavy roll could be the
start of something big.
I quickly headed topside, out on deck, for
some fresh air. Once there I beheld a world of torn up monstrous brown waves
crashing and smashing everything. Still, I immediately felt a little better
because even though the whole world was in motion the horizon was kind of
steady. I focused on it for a short time then made my way to the leeward side
of the ship bearing in mind sailor rule number one concerning the wind. Never
spit, urinate or vomit into the wind. You will not like the messy results.
I could see that the riverboats were not doing well at
all. They ran up and were lifted by swells of steeply
inclined water. When they crested the huge rollers their propellers came free
briefly then dug back into the froth which accelerated them downhill to SMASH
into the bottom of the next wave. This heaved great fountains of ocean spray
twenty five feet or more above their top decks. Audible ‘Booms’ traveled across
the intervening water each time a blunt ended Tango boat met an incoming solid
wall. I had no complaints about the coaster ride I was experiencing after
seeing the conditions that those smaller vessels had to endure. The crews were
filled with lots of new sailors that I had traveled to
We were out of the sight of land so we must
have been about fifteen miles east of the coast of
I stayed out on deck for a while as the sea
gradually calmed to around six foot waves. This gave the boats a much needed
respite from the terrible bashing and allowed their bilge pumps to lighten the
badly wallowing small craft. Time also to swab a few puke covered decks, no
doubt, because the troop carrying Tango boats were transporting a contingent of
Vietnamese Marines who were well into the dry heaves by then, I was fairly
sure. I also figured that a lot of those Marines thought, at first, that they
might die in the crashing waves. Then after a few hours of riding tall, water
filled "Whoop-De-Do's" wished that somebody would shoot them and put
them out of their misery. I felt sorry for them.
At some point we all turned in a southerly
direction, down the coast of
Some time later, near dusk, the ship slowed
then stopped to drop anchor for the night. I went to the port bow to watch as
the big hook splashed into the sea. The huge chain links rattled out, chasing
the anchor, for a very long time. The deafening racket this created was terrible.
I thought it would never end. It must have been a very long way to the ocean
floor.
Eventually the noise stopped and the world
slowly spun as the ship gracefully swung its bow into the wind. The sea, by
then, had calmed to a mild chop, the warm air smelled freshly salted. What a
difference. Like finding yourself on the other side of the planet compared to
the savage intensity of the crazy ocean world we had just passed through.
I heard the roar of diesel engines off the
starboard side. I crossed the forward deck to watch the boats motor in and tie
up to a long pontoon dock that had miraculously stayed attached to the side of
the ship despite the raging storm. I had gained a new respect for the old World
War II landing craft that our boats were created from, especially after seeing
them survive the pounding that an angry ocean threw at them. The waves had
cleaned them nicely though, and they glistened with reddish orange reflections
from beautifully colored light thrown off as the hot tropical sun dipped into
the sea. All were safely home alongside the mother ship, tucked in for the
night. All was finally well. What a ride.
As the sound of the last engine faded so
did I. I was still a little green around the gills, not ready for food quite
yet, so I headed off to my bunk hoping that the smell of barf had cleared out
of my bedroom.
I woke up before dawn the next day, well
before the rest of the men in my compartment, dressed, then went to the mess
decks for a cup of coffee. I smelled toast and finally my tender tummy said,
“Feed Me!”, so I gobbled a few of the half burnt slices.
At the coffee urn, cup in hand, I awaited
my turn at the tap behind another early riser named Claudie
T. Gaskins. He was from
As he drew his Java I recalled the last
time that I had hung out with him. A few days before our trip out the mouth of
the
Claude and I were occupied passing each
other loads of manure about life in general when he stopped mid sentence to
proclaim, “I can’t take this anymore Lare! I can’t
stand it!”
I looked at him
anticipating a forthcoming reason concerning his sudden distress. Without
another word he spread his feet a little and slid an enormous Bowie Knife from
its scabbard on his belt. Claude paused a second then bared his teeth and
stabbed the big blade down the front of his pants.
I was shocked. What in blazes was this man
trying to do, turn himself into a soprano? Then strangely, even though the
knife was in his drawers, everything in mine ran and hid.
Claude worked the monster blade from one
side to the other sawing away madly, a look of absolute concentration on his
face. After withdrawing the ‘Bowie’ he reached down the front of his trousers,
grabbed a handful of cloth, then with a lot of bouncing and hopping pulled his
now severed at the hip jockey shorts up out of his pants. The object of his
misery and discontent was now in hand with no hash marks or blood to speak of
either. Amazing!
Warning:
Do not attempt this foolhardy act unsupervised at home kiddies. Severe loss of
bowel control or accidental dismemberment may result. Oh yeah, and one other thing, my best advise
would be to not ever get in a knife fight with Gaskins. The man definitely
knows how to handle a blade.
With a look of disgust that you might give
a used condom, Claude flung the offending white underwear into the river where
they slowly sank from sight as they twisted away in the current.
Then he went into, "Claudie's Version", of the standard male adjustment
process by wagging one leg or the other while jumping, hip shaking, and tugging
at his crotch. The man made some very nice moves and managed to narrowly
prevent a few head, deck collisions. Females can imitate the Gaskins Dance by
putting on pantyhose while bouncing one legged on a beach ball.
After things became aligned and positioned
properly a satisfied grin came over Claude's features. He closed his eyes,
smiled in obvious ecstasy and said, “My Gawd Lare, that shore feels a Hell'va
lot better!”
I could not have agreed more. Haven’t you
heard Mr. G? Freedom IS the word. I was already sans skivvies having given them
up days before. It sure did feel better. It was too flaming hot to wear them
anyway.
In a nutshell, that was my man Gaskins. He
was a great sailor.
Back at the coffee spigot, Claude and I
decided to take our cups of stiff Navy brew out to the bow where we planned to
watch the sun arise from the ocean. This was an event I had never witnessed but
much anticipated.
Rosy dawn greeted us above, over smooth,
mirror calm seas below as we wandered forward, over to the port side, next to
the giant links of the anchor chain.
Once there Claude inserted, what had to be,
a heaping tablespoon of
I lit a Marlboro. I had tried a teeny tiny
pinch from his evil little tin one time and wound up with the worst case of
"I-Wanna-Die" hiccups ever recorded. I
could only imagine what a quarter of a can would do.
With everything now properly adjusted we
looked off the port side and were able to see down along the length of the
chain to where the murky depths finally hid the rest. It was serenely gorgeous
with the sky getting pinker, brighter on one side, the anchor chain gently
curving way down into the emerald green water on the other. We passed some
quiet moments lost in our own thoughts, not needing to speak. Peace and beauty
will hush a person right up.
I was dividing my time between the sun-up
show and tracing the length of the majestic, disappearing links when something
caught my eye way on down the chain.
At the very end of the iron tether,
hundreds of feet under water, I detected movement, a very strange, peculiar
movement. There it was again. Something was definitely moving down there at the
edge of my vision.
"What
in the world could this be?” I thought to myself.
I brought the curiosity to Gaskins’
attention by pointing and murmuring, “What in heck is that Claude?”
We both leaned out over the rail, intently
looked down the scope of the chain, then he
We were fascinated at this point, unable to
take our gaze from the object. It appeared to be rising and was wound round and
round the massive chain. Slowly, very slowly it cork screwed up from the
depths.
For the life of me I could not figure out
what I was seeing, but as it came closer I did make out that it was wrapped
around the chain about six or seven times. It kind of looked like a thin worm
or a baby snake maybe.
Gradually, as the creature dizzily rose, I
could see that it did appear to be a baby snake. I could not really be certain
though, because it was still way below the bottom of the ship.
Soon, Claude and I were both riveted to
this revolving wonder of the deep. The closer it came to us the farther our
eyes widened and the lower our jaws dropped. Up it swam, getting larger, ever
larger, while it did relentless rising laps around the chain.
As it neared the surface, a few yards
below, my heart froze and my already shallow breathing stopped entirely. I
tried to swallow but could not because of my open gaping mouth. Hot coffee
poured down my arm, ran off my elbow onto my pants and shoes from the forgotten
askew cup in my hand. I never felt a thing.
The beast finally screwed its way to the
surface where it arose, bathed in brilliant cascades of sunrise colored ocean
spray, into the air above.
BABY SNAKE MY ASS!
This thing was HUGE! Its massive head was
bigger than the side of a small bungalow and I don't think it would have fit
into the bed of a Ford pickup truck. I wondered if the ship's anchor had
somehow upset the monster and my blood ran ice cold. I wondered if the monster
would slither up the chain onto the ship and my blood turned ice colder. "Oh Man!" I thought, "What if it's pissed off or hungry...
or pissed off AND hungry?"
I nearly added to my coffee stain with
giddy relief when it swam towards the stern, uncoiling from the chain as it
went, until between thirty or forty feet of its glistening, greenish bronze
body stretched out in the water, undulating like some Loch Ness monster. It was
actually hard to tell exactly how long it really was because some of it dipped
into the water while some of it rose out. If straightened completely the
enormous serpent could have been even longer, probably was. At its widest the
body section appeared to be between three and four feet across, much wider than
a fifty five gallon drum and I am not completely certain, due to my visual
overload at the time, but I thought the colossal snake had a faint pattern on
its skin.
‘Nessie’s head
dove under, with a splash, just beyond the stern of the ship, came up swimming
back towards us and passed its own tail which was still going the other way.
Its tongue shot out like a forked red
carpet runner.
Holy Shish-Kabob! The thing could taste us
in the air. When the massive ocean asp did its tongue thing again "Creepy
Crawlies" shivered up and down my spine.
Then I noticed the eyes. They looked like
two of those large, shiny, colored globes, on pedestals that people put in
their yards, only darker and bigger.
My mind flashed, "If we can see IT - Then IT can see us", and . . . ."
Man Oh man! … The thing was coming and
looking straight back at us!
It did not matter. I could not have moved a
muscle anyway. I was part of the deck. Mesmerized, transfixed, enthralled, you
name it. The oversized snake could have eaten me for breakfast. Its head was
even bigger when viewed from this oncoming angle. The mouth looked like it
could easily swallow a Shetland pony, saddle, rider, and all.
Gaskins did not even bother pulling out his
scrawny little Bowie knife. I was relieved that he didn't as matter of fact.
The best he could have possibly done was to stab 'Nessie'
in the throat and madden it even more as he passed down its massive gullet on
his way for a dip in reptile gastric juice. Of course I would have been gullet
sliding and acid swimming right along with Claude because I do not think the
snake would have had any problem swallowing two grown human beings at once. My
secret abiding all time biggest fear of being eaten by a shark, made a super
smooth transition into being swallowed by a pissed off snake.
When ‘Nessie’
reached the anchor chain again, directly below us, it dove UNDER, Thank you,
Thank you, wrapped its huge body around the chain links and cork screw swam its
way back down into the ocean depths from whence it came. Claude and I watched
quietly, reverently even, as the giant sea serpent turned back into a baby
snake, then into a tiny worm, then into nothing.
The world was deathly silent as Claude and
I slowly swiveled our own puny little human heads until our eyes absolutely
LOCKED. We just stood there, looked at each other, and blinked. I don’t know
for how long. We just blinked.
Gaskins came to his senses first and
without looking away he said in a slow, low, odd voice, “You know Lare... they will Never.. (Ever).. Believe us.”
Texas talk, straight to the heart of a
matter. He was absolutely right of course. Not any sailor on ALL the oceans,
that had not been there, would EVER believe a story like this. Not in a million
years. We had obviously stumbled into a Japanese, Godzilla type flick or Alan Funt would soon pop out doing his Candid Camera bit, then
everybody would have a big laugh and a hearty round of applause for the stupid,
gullible, sailor with the large, brown, coffee stain down the leg of his
dungarees.
"This
is not for real," I
thought to myself, "This entire
ridiculous sea serpent rising out of the ocean thing could NOT have
happened."
But I'll be dipped in baby snake sauce, it
really did.
There were three questions that Gaskins and
I discussed as we left the bow of the ship.
First: What kind of a weird ass place was
this anyway?
Second: Did we have to fight snakes like
THAT as well as the Viet Cong? If so, Claude would have to buy an even bigger
knife.
And finally: What in hell did the Navy put
in their coffee anyway... L.S.D?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 4
Rach Gia
Shortly after my episode with the big snake
I was assigned a boat, Tango-131-13, to replace an engine man who had went on
R&R. It was a newer type boat with an upper helicopter landing pad just
barely big enough for a single Huey chopper to land on.
I packed a ditty
bag with some essentials, Marlboros, ‘church key’, P-38 can opener, toilet
paper, olive drab boxer shorts, and split the attrition division compartment in
a hurry. Finally there was something for me to do besides stand around with a
digit up my bum.
I double timed over
to Tango 13 and got an adrenalin zing when I caught sight of her dingy green
hull. This was it. I could feel my head sliding into the tiger's mouth and I
looked forward to it. That was totally backwards thinking, I know, but I could
not help it. The fear of death had already been compressed into a tiny little
ball in the back of my mind which I thereafter ignored. My newly acquired
machine guns would help me tame any stray fears that fell short of that.
When I reported
aboard T-13 the crew did not take much notice of me. I was just another warm
body to fill out the number needed before a mission. I was promptly ignored.
They probably thought I knew what I was doing. Yeah, right, this was all new to
me so I decided to start by firing up the diesels, as they were my highest
concern.
The engines checked out good after a test
warm up. The crankcase oil looked clean and the level was fine in both power
plants. The noisy beasts maintained a decent temperature while in operation.
The shaft packing glands were not leaking. The fuel tanks had no water in them.
The level of the bilges was kind of high however, which meant that the boat was
slightly down at the stern. There was nothing I could do about that right then
because we were moving out immediately.
We cast off our
lines from the mother ship then motored toward a village, on the southern coast
of
This was my first
encounter, close up, with the jungle. I was like a sponge absorbing everything,
soaking it all up. I was finally seeing what the ‘
I decided to go
topside, to the helicopter landing pad, so that I could absorb even better. I
soon stood on the tiny flight deck gazing out over the lush exotic landscape.
My hunter-gather
gene kicked in and I thought, "Well,
well, will wonders never cease. Here are hundreds of bananas and coconuts
actually growing outside, free for the picking." The only things that
were growing outside in my
With that cool
happy thought in mind I settled atop the coxswain’s flat with a Coca Cola and a
can of fruit cocktail in order to create a sugar buzz that might enhance all
the absorbing that I was about to do.
Groups of barefoot children gathered and
lined the earthen mound fifteen yards off our bow calling, “You Numba One G.I., You Numba One.”
In Pidgin English, taught by soldiers, this meant you were the best, top notch.
However, if a native sneered and said, “You Numba
Ten.”, this meant that you were lower than pimples on a snake's belly, spawned
from Hell. There was no middle ground there at all.
A sailor on one of
the boats carried a case of C-Rations to his landing pad and started throwing
the meals one can at a time to the kids. This excited them greatly and the
raucous group fought over each lofted donation. A youngster would catch a food
container, midair, then immediately take flight chased by a knot of other
little vandals trying to rob him. It was kind of like the way a flock of
seagulls act when fed saltines. No mercy.
In no time there
were quite a few men on different boats tossing food to now more than thirty or
so kids. Flights of outgoing cans sailed toward the beach in a near continuous
barrage. The native youngsters went bonkers. Dinner was being air dropped by
the Navy. I saw one swab try to arc in an entire meal set. The thin cardboard
box blew apart in mid air and sprayed its contents over the children shotgun
style. The food frenzy heightened when this happened.
One cute little guy
I noticed, was never in the right place at the right time. He ran back and
forth along the dike just missing nearly every opportunity to claim a prize.
When he managed to get his hands on a can he was always stripped of his booty
by the larger kids.
Sailors will always
root for the underdog. As the men became aware of Little
Guy’s situation they tried, specifically, to toss him a goodie but survival of
the fittest doomed their every effort. Little Guy was robbed of them all.
The men, frustrated, stopped throwing and
put their heads together. They came up with a plan. Here’s how it went.
One sailor made eye contact and kept
pointing from a can of Ham and Lima Beans in his hand to our Little Guy.
Three or four other swabs filled their
hands with cans then started firing them way to the left of the crowd.
The 'Ham and
Little Guy stood like an outfielder, hands
outstretched, fingers splayed, intent on the incoming chow. Open mouthed, wide
eyed concentration etched his small round face.
Every single man watching that day,
cringed, winced, and knew Exactly how Little Guy felt
when he lost the C-rats missile in the sun then took the revolving bean can,
right, smack, in the forehead, directly between the eyes. Little Guy went down
like he had been shot. Ouch! We had all been popped like that with a baseball
when we were his age. We remembered. I wish the 'Ham and
We all started to rush to Little Guy’s aid
but before we could do so a couple of kids ran over to him, stole his beans,
stood him up and wobbled him off into the jungle with them. Man, I hoped he was
ok.
The boat crews continued to toss treats but
now they sent them in low so the kids would have to chase them as they rolled
down the side of the dike. This gave the children more of a work out and
avoided another head-bean mishap.
Later on some teenaged kids showed up
carrying loaves of freshly baked French bread. Though the smell was absolutely
delicious, I cannot say why I did not buy a loaf like some sailors did. I guess
that I recalled an instructor back in training telling us not to eat anything
the natives offered. He'd said something about microbes that our systems were
not used to. Maybe that held me back. The bread sure smelled good however and I
was seriously tempted.
I sat there absorbing stuff until the setting
sun went nuts. It silhouetted the coconut palms and banana trees with sharp
yellow rays shot from a ruby red disk. My Dad was right when he had advised me
to take note of the beautiful things in life where ever I found them. A wise
man my father. I missed him.
The next morning we were greeted with an in
coming flight of Med Evac choppers. The Hueys landed on various Tango flight decks and lifted off
with very sick sailors. It was the lousy French bread that had been probably
made with dung infested
Thereafter I ate a total of, *One*, non
military provided meal in my entire tour of duty. I consumed that at the
airport restaurant the day before I left
Christmas 1968 arrived while we marked time
outside of Rach Gia along
the dike. For Christmas dinner I had C-Rations and a Coke while I listened to
Bob Hope and Ann Margaret on the Armed Forces radio station entertaining troops
back at Dong Tam. What a Bummer! To my everlasting regret I had missed Ann
Margaret. Not to mention Bob Hope who had entertained
My Christmas C-Rat’s sucked too. They
reminded me of glorified dog food, except for the canned peaches and pound cake
that I ate for desert. They were a delightful taste bud oasis in a desert of
really bad chow.
Other than that not much worth describing
happened during the next hot week as we awaited our time to do something,
anything.
On News Years Eve, at the far edge of dusk,
all the boats started their engines, formed up in a long column then headed
into the dark mouth of a one hundred foot wide canal that flowed from an even
darker jungle. The waterway appeared pitch black, totally without light.
I shuddered. I got the same feeling from
the dark entrance that had come over me as a child while lying bug eyed atop
the monster ridden area under my bed. “Something
evil lives in there.” I thought, as we approached the spooky canal mouth.
The order came from our boat captain to
"Lock and Load." With pleasure I strapped on a helmet then quickly
obeyed, loading all six machine guns in just a few minutes. Then I slid on a
flak jacket for good measure.
I smelled wood smoke mixed with something
sweet, like flowers, as we entered, engines roaring, into the dark canal.
Diesel exhaust soon drove that pleasant scent away when the boats bunched up,
as they were supposed to, for safety and for a more concentrated field of fire.
There was a very dim red light coming from
inside one of the rear compartments behind me that provided just enough
illumination to safely move about our well deck.
I stood back in the shadows scanning side
to side out past the machine guns trying to find any visual input. I saw only
velvety, dense, blackness as Tango 13 plowed along into the night.
Every once in a while during the next hour
the radioman, Homer, stuck his head out into the weak red glow, looked around,
then disappeared to monitor his softly chattering radio again. Other than that
I was wide eyed and alone.
All of a sudden there was an intense flash
of light from astern that starkly lit the tree line fifty feet away on the port
side. A booming explosion immediately followed.
In the next instant, amid more bright
lights and teeth rattling booms, twinkling flashes sent occasional green or red
tracers toward us. Those were AK-47’s I found out later.
Within seconds the riverboats opened up
with all weapons, which included 105 mm howitzers, 40 mm grenade launching
machine guns, 20 mm aircraft cannons, 50 caliber machine guns and 30 caliber
machine guns. All together dozens of jungle shredding guns, firing an ungodly
number of rounds per minute, began to pulverize the beach along a one hundred
yard swath that moved forward at about five miles per hour.
Wow! A dizzying combination of strobe like
muzzle flashes, tracers and deafening noises predominated my senses. I stood
there dumbstruck, in awe, lost in the powerful show.
Homer stuck his head out and hollered,
“Shoot, man shoot!”
Before he finished the sentence I jumped up
to the port 50, flicked the safety off, and started chewing up the tree line
through the thickening smoke from all the weapons.
You were supposed to fire short bursts in order
to keep the gun barrel from burning up. I held the thumb trigger down causing
the 50 to roar nonstop through a one hundred round belt.
I couldn’t see if I was hitting anything or
not so it became my immediate obsession to put a bullet next to every air
molecule along the beach. I didn’t want a human being to be able to raise a
finger without having it blown off. That was also the Last time that anyone Ever had to Tell me to start shooting. I regret that I even
had to be told once. I was a cherry sailor once but not any more. My life had
changed.
When the 50 ran dry I moved to the right a
few feet and got busy sending a two hundred fifty round belt from the middle
port 30 into the jungle, then I heard Homer hollering, “Cease Fire!”, somewhere
behind me. I was barely conscious of him because I was totally absorbed,
focused you might say, on improving my bullet to molecule ratio. My 30 fell
silent while a few guns along the column continued firing, baking off their
remaining ammo most likely. A very hot machine gun will do that.
Breathing erratically I hastily reloaded my
weapons. I recharged the port 50 last with two, one hundred round cans of ammo
linked together. I had exhausted my 50 ammo Way too soon. I didn’t care for
that. I also stood directly behind the weapon. I wanted it to be close at hand
from now on. No more wasted seconds. A wasted second is plenty of time to kill
you dead.
We motored onward like this for about forty
five minutes when the port side again erupted in gunfire. I rapped out two
hundred rounds almost nonstop with the 50 after the first enemy muzzle flash.
The barrel on the weapon began smoking and glowed dull cherry red. I had five
spare 50 barrels and could care less whether I burned this one up or not. If
the slugs started to tumble after they left the shot out rifling, so much the
better, I thought. The only thing that mattered was the bullet to molecule
count as I hastily switched again to the middle 30 caliber.
I was once more working tracers into the
tree line when I felt the boat thump hard on something then hesitate. Our
forward momentum dwindled and the diesels started to scream as Tango 13, with
all hands, coasted into "
I ran to the engine room, stuck my head in
the hatch and listened while the motors wailed at top rpm’s producing an
incredible noise. The transmissions slammed from forward to reverse a couple of
times then the engines shut down completely. The room went silent. I ran
forward back into the gunfire.
Once there I saw that we were drifting
sideways across the canal, blocking it, halting the column. Our boat, along
with all the boats behind, became sitting ducks, just like the little ducks in
a carnival shooting gallery, only we were not moving.
Incoming, portside fire intensified
dramatically. I heard the "Fwhooosh" of
several enemy B-40 rocket propelled grenades. I felt the ‘Boom’ that followed
as they blew up against some unlucky boat and I knew that it was only a matter
of time until the enemy put something explosive into Tango 13.
Things were getting just a little too hairy
for me right now. I was at a total loss for a solution to our nightmare. What
is a Tango engine man supposed to do when his engines are useless? Paddle the
76 ton, iron, slug of a boat?
Homer appeared at my side hollering
something about our propellers being gone. "Well, No (kidding)
Sherlock!!" I hollered back. Like he was telling me something I didn't
already know. Homer then said that the boat behind us would come along our starboard
side, tie up length wise and tow us out of there, which sounded like a
fantastic idea to me. We had all practiced this life saving maneuver during our
boat training.
Just as he finished his shouted information we were rammed heavily on the starboard bow by the boat behind and