Article Category: Humor
Added on: 07/10/07 04:34
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This story is about a lot of the crazy things that go on in war that are just plain weird. You might not think it's funny but every vet can tell stories like this, we laugh our asses off.
The fist time I went to Vietnam, March 3, 1968. I flew on a private air line and when we were seated I asked to have the window seat. No one cared, it was mine.
We stopped in Hawaii and the bar was closed, same at the next island we stop at. We're flying into Bhin Hoa air base and the pilot comes on the inter come and says he has bad news and worse news.
The bad news is: "There's a fire fight going on at the end of the run way".
The worse news is: " We don't have enough fuel to circle or divert so we're going in".
I'm looking out the window of the air plane and I can see red and green tracers flying back and forth at the end of the run way then, I see the out line of a Cobra Gunship and the line of tracers from the mini-gun. Then I see green tracers arcing up at the air line. They're shooting at us and I had to request a window seat. Shit, I'm not even on the ground and I'm getting shot at.
The plane lands under motar fire and when we stop all the doors are thrown open and we exit that plane. I'm looking at the door to the bunker and that's all I really see.
Later I had a guy ask me if I saw the tracers and I told him, "All I saw was the door".
Now, after all that they process us in, real quickly, and then load us on buses, unarmed. that have metal mesh over the windows to keep things from being thrown in. We've just been shot at, been through a mortar attack and now they want us to get on buses in the middle of the night unarmed? Hell, The Tet Offensive is still going on, in places.
Two days later I'm sun burned, my hands and cut and bleeding from making sand bags and we're all miserable and I don't know one SOB there. Neither does anyone else, for the most part. I'm walking down the road and this sergeant comes up to me and asks what I'm doing and I tell him. He asks if I have a ration card, I do. He asks if I want to make some money, I do. He goes over to some other sergeant and asks to borrow me for a while and I go with him.
On my 3d day in Vietnam I'm learning and making money in the Black Market. Hell, I'll never use a refrigerator or a lot of other stuff they allow you to buy. He taught me all about buying OP's, that's what a joint was called when they were regular cigaretts, stuffed with weed. 3d day in Nam and I've learned more than people who were in the service 10 years. I think I'm set. Yeah, right. I end up with the 1st Air Cav up by the A Shau Valley and the DMZ. Khe Shan is not far away. I never even saw a city or store.
I'm assigned to my unit and it HQ Battery Div Artillery. I"m a radio operator in the place that gets all the calls for fire support. Working in an under guround bunker. Every one has a weapon and thermite gernades are every where, in order to burn through any thing should be be over run. I did that until I voluentered it be an RTO on the FO team. On my 2nd tour I was a platoon leader with the Big Red 1, the 1st Infantry Division dating back to WWI.
One night, in the rear, while we're somking some weed I decied to take a picture of these guys. I guess they didn't realize what I was doing and when I took the picture they all thought they were dead. They thought the flash was a rocket exploding. I laughed my ass off. I said, "If it's incoming you'll hear it".
That's one of the funny things you learn. The 1st couple of weeks in Nam every time I heard artillery fire I was jumping or waking up. After a while you learn to tell the difference. Out going goes boom, incoming screams. It got to the point where I could sleep in a bunker next to an 8 in howitizer and never hear it fire while I was sleeping. But, step on a twig and I was alert and ready. Your mind learns what's "normal" and what's not.
We were on patrol on the Cambodian Border and we were getting hit all the time. North Vietnamese Army. Back and forth all the time. We had 6 enemy soilders in our sight and couldn't fire on them because they were using another platoon as cover, on the other side of them. If we shot the NVA we would be shooting into our own men. I'm nearly screaming loud enough for the world to hear me but the CO of the other platoon couldn't see the NVA or us. So, I'm waving my arms and jumping trying to be seen. The NVA walk on like it happens every day. Our CO comes on the radio and orders me to open fire. I tell him "Fuck you. We've been through this shit before and I'm not about to kill our own men a second time". He shuts up. The other platoon leader, a West Point graduate, came up and thanked me later.
Things liked this happened. The enemy wasn't stupid or lucky they knew exactly what they were doing and did it almost daily, to some one.
While working in this area we were being stalked by a tiger. A Fucking real live tiger. You could only catch glimpses of it but you could hear it snuffling and snorting and at night it would growl. After the 3rd night I'm going crazy. Fighting the enemy is one thing, that's man on man. But this tiger made you feel like you were next on the menu. My men even felt it and I told them, "Fuck the NVA, KILL THE TIGER"!
It would stay just out of sight, you could see it move from bush to bush but you could not get a shot. Shit, I was the best shot and I couldn't keep it in my sights long enough to fire a round off. This was a new level and type of fear. To hell with dying. I don't wat to get eaten alive! Even if you weren't on guard duty you couldn't sleep.
Finally, we get into a fire fight and that night the tiger is gone. Word goes out, Where's the tiger? No one knows, no one remembers seeing it or shooting it, what happened? That night and the next day, still no tiger. I figure out that we must have hit some one during the fire fight, blood would be the only thing that would attrack the tiger more than us, right? So, maybe we hit some one and the NVA rarely left dead or wounded behind. Maybe the tiger found some one else to eat. Hell one guy actually had the triger grab him by his boot heel during a fire fight.
Doesn't much matter what you have when it comes to nature. You learn quickly you are not at the top of the food chain any more.
One day my platoon was picked to go out and assault a unit of VC that had been spotted near us. Helicopters flew in to pick us up and we boarded them. This was a straight up fight not expected to last more than an hour so if we needed help they would send in more men.
We get on the slicks (Hueys) and take off. We are 200 feet in the air and the engine stops. It just stops. I'm sitting on the deck in front of the crew chief and behind the co-pilot and the crew chief yells, "Hold on." I'm thinking, "What did he say?" But I knew.
I grabbed a cargo tie down out of it recessed hole in the deck and brace my back against the co-pilot's seat and the next ting I know is, we crash.
If you ever hear a story where some one says, "My life flashed before my eyes." I say Bull Shit. It happend so fast that there isn't time to think.
Down 200 ft into a muddy rice patty we fall. BOOM, we hit. It took a second to realize that we weren't dead, we weren't on fire, every one was alright. The crew chief raised his hand and I raised mine, everyone raised their hand. "I'm O.K." Then I ask, "What the fuck do we do?"
The chopper hit the mud patty so hard that it sunk. We had to step up out of the chopper to walk in the mud. I'm the last to exit the chopper and the pilot calls out to me to open his door. I asked him why he didn't open it himself. He says, "They take off the handles, so if we get hit we don't bounce against the door and fall out".
I'm thinking to myself, "Fuck these guys, they're crazy." Now, I know the infantry that's where I feel safe, on the ground I can run, I can hide and I can dig a hole. Every one thought some one else had a rougher job than they did.
The air intake had sucked in a piece of plastic and shut down the engine, they had to bring in a bigger helicopter to lift out our's. Needles to say, that was one firefight I missed.
I have a picture, some where, of a guy taking a dump in the jungle only 3 ft from me. The vegitation is so thick I can't find him. It took 10 hrs to move 100 meters. That night we set up a position for a defensive perimeter the jungle is so thick you can't move without making noise and at night you can't see your hand in front of your face. We were sleeping head to foot so we wouldn't get lost. It comes to my turn for guard duty and upon being awakened I take a step or 2 away from where I'm sleeping to take a leak.
Well, out there in the black night I trip and fall. No flash light, sure as hell not going to light a match and can't call out for help. Don't want to give our position away. And I am terrified. It is so black you can't see a thing. I crawl one dircetion, a few feet then I back up and crawl another direction. I do this 4 times before I find my position.
I tell this to a friend the next morning and a few minuets later every one is laughing about me tripping over my own dick in the middle of the night.
There was a time when we actually got to use our ponchos to make a covered fighting position. The NVA knew where we were and so the noise made by the rain falling on the ponchos didn't matter. We dug positions about 2 ft deep, 6x6 piled the dirt around the sides and snapped 2 ponchos together and cover our hole. 4 men and their gear fit into this hole.
Sully is in the hole doing some thing and I take out a piece of rope and I tell my guys to: "Watch this." Sully is terrified of snakes, they are his one true fear. The guys are saying, "You don't want to do this."
So, I take this piece of rope and start moving it around and throw it into to Sully yelling, "Catch this."
His head shoots up through the 2 ponchos and he takes of running down the hill. The 2 ponchos are hanging around his neck and shoulders flapping in the wind as he is running looking like a banshee, screaming. We all start laughing. I'm laughing so hard I can't breath or stand up. I'm on my hands and knees and I'm still laughing. Sully comes back cussing and mad as hell at me.
Then he sees how much we are all laughing and he starts to laugh and finally helps me up and says, "That was pretty funny, wasn't it"?
I will never forget that sight.
That's all for now but I'll continue to add stuf as I remember it. Hope you enjoy, cause I laugh my ass off every time I add something. I hope you can see the humor.
About the author:
This is part of my life. I've experienced and lived through every thing you have just read. I'm college educated and have degrees but they don't mean much to me. This is stuff I laugh about, today.
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