Читать книгу An LA Cop - John Bowermaster - Страница 7
ОглавлениеVietnam, August 1968
August 2, 1968, Ed Bowes’s first day in the country. Delta Company assigned him to First Squad, First Platoon in the Twenty-Fifth Infantry’s Second Battalion, Twenty-Seventh Regiment, called the Wolfhounds. Based at Firebase Crockett, twenty miles west of Cu Chi, the home of the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division’s headquarters.
Ed didn’t know the history of his unit. They activated the Wolfhounds in 1901, during the Philippine-American War. Their insignia was a black pin with the head of a Russian Wolfhound dog on it, colored in gold. Below the dog were the Latin words, “Nec Aspera Terrent,” meaning “No Fear on Earth.”
The division fought in the Pacific theater during WWII, later in the Korean War. Now they were in Vietnam. Ed caught a chopper from Cu Chi to Firebase Crockett that morning. First Platoon was getting ready to go on patrol when his chopper landed at Crockett.
Delta’s area of operation was northwest of Cu Chi, along the Cambodian border, a place called the Angel’s Wing. Delta Company was engaged with the VC in Tay Ninh City. Ed and two men on the chopper were replacements for men killed during the fighting in Tay Ninh.
Ed stepped off the chopper at Crockett. Sergeant Johnson, the leader of first squad, was waiting for him at the chopper pad. “Bowes?”
“Yes.”
“Follow me.”
Sergeant Johnson instructed the other two men to report to Second Platoon. He pointed to a sergeant standing by another bunker. Sergeant Johnson said, “Follow me to the bunker line.”
Sergeant Johnson pointed at an M-60 machine gun leaning against a sandbag bunker. He told Ed, “Now you’re a machine gunner.”
Ed looked at the gun lying next to an ammo can and utility belt with a couple of canteens. There was a Colt .45-caliber semiautomatic hooked to the belt.
Sergeant Johnson told Ed, “Two men are your ammo bearers. They each carry four hundred rounds for your gun. They’ll be near you on patrol. They’re around here somewhere. You’ll meet them later. Get a couple belts of ammo for your gun from that ammo can on the bunker. Get saddled up. Fill your canteen. I see you only have one canteen on your utility belt. Take that .45 auto and its ammo and one of those canteens off Cliff’s equipment belt. Put them on your belt. They killed Cliff in Tay Ninh—he won’t need them anymore. I’ve checked the M-60, it’s in good working order. There’s an extra gun barrel lying with Cliff’s gear and canteens on the bunker. When we get back off patrol, grab it, keep it handy at your bunker. During a ground attack, the barrel on an M-60 gets red-hot. You’ll need the spare barrel to replace the hot one.”
Ed began to realized Vietnam wasn’t just a place on the news. This place was real, and people were dying.
Sergeant Johnson assigned the dead man’s M-60, his canteen, and equipment to Ed, giving no further thought or explanation other than Cliff wouldn’t need them anymore.
Ed wondered what kind of story Cliff’s equipment could tell. He noticed there was no emotion in Sergeant Johnson’s voice when he talked about Cliff or his equipment. Ed thought, People get killed here and everyone acts like it’s just another day.
Sergeant Johnson interrupted Ed’s thoughts. “Don’t forget that extra canteen. It gets hot out there, you’ll go through water fast. You’ll be glad you have it.”
The platoon trudged through rice paddies in knee-deep mud and water, it was early afternoon. Ed polished off his first canteen and was making a serious dent in the second one. He hoped Cliff’s other canteen was still lying on the bunker when and if he got back. If it was, he planned on making room for the third canteen on his utility belt. With the incredible heat and humidity, carrying that heavy machine gun, that was getting heavier with every passing step. He was afraid he was going die from heat exhaustion, his first day in the field.
He wondered what poor bastard would get stuck carrying his M-60 if he died. Was Cliff new in the field too? Did he die his first day in the field because he only carried two canteens? Ed concluded this was at least a three-canteen country!
Later that day, Ed changed his mind about dying. Now he was afraid he wouldn’t die from exhaustion and would have to endure the miserable heat and humidity. He thought if Vietnam wasn’t hell on earth, it was second, third, and fourth place!
The column stepped out of the rice paddy onto dry ground. He thought at last he could walk without fighting every step in the mud and water. A few minutes later, the column stopped. The man on point motioned the platoon lieutenant to his location.
Someone placed a claymore mine by a bush on the trail. The lieutenant knew there was a team of army rangers working the area the last few nights; he assumed it had been accidentally left behind.
The Claymore’s detonator cap was missing. Someone had stuck the claymore in the ground on its metal legs. The lieutenant sent word for the last man to grab the claymore and bring it with him to Crockett.
When Bill McDonald reached the claymore, he picked it up. The lieutenant didn’t check the claymore for booby traps. There was a trip wire attached to one leg buried in the dirt.
When Bill picked up the claymore, the booby trap exploded. The blast did not detonate the claymore. The explosion was strong enough to blow off Bill’s foot at his ankle. Bill fell to the ground. The lieutenant radioed for a chopper to transport Bill back to Cu Chi.
The medic put a tourniquet on Bill’s leg to stop the bleeding. He gave Bill something for pain.
When the chopper landed, several men carried Bill to the chopper. One guy grabbed his helmet.
The soldier laid the helmet on the floor of the chopper next to Bill. Ed noticed two names written on Bill’s helmet, Mary and Jennifer. The chopper lifted off heading Southeast toward Chu Chi. Another soldier picked up Bill’s gear and rifle.
The platoon continued back to Crockett. They learned that Bill went to Japan for medical treatment then returned home to Pennsylvania, to his wife, Mary, and daughter, Jennifer.
After Bill’s chopper lifted off, Ed heard men talking about the VC that set the explosive. Some called the VC Charlie, while others called them Charles. Ed asked Robert to explain the difference between Charlie and Charles.
“When VC attack, they act like they don’t care if they live or die. Some guys give them more respect by calling them Charles,” said Robert. “As far as I’m concerned, if they’re in that big a hurry to meet their maker, I’ll arrange the meeting!”
The platoon returned to Crockett. Ed planned on grabbing Cliff’s last canteen. Locate his bunker and learn how to live on a firebase. The first thing he’d do was take off his wet boots and socks and let his feet dry out.
The second item on his agenda was to find a cigarette to burn the leeches off his body. Robert told Ed during a break in the jungle don’t pull the leech off his body. Part of the head would remain buried in his skin, and the bite would get infected.
Everyone used cigarettes to burn the leeches off. They attached themselves to the men’s bodies when they walked in the swamp. If you didn’t check the first chance you got, you would notice them later.
After the leeches gorged themselves with blood, they let go. By then, the leeches were big as cigars. When they released themselves, blood would squirt out of them, causing a large bloodstain inside your fatigues. Ed knew he had hitchhikers inside his clothes because of the bloodstains on the legs of his fatigues.
Ed’s thoughts about relaxing changed when Sergeant Waters walked over to meet the platoon returning to the firebase through the concertina wire. Sergeant Waters hollered at First Squad, “Gather around me before you go to your bunkers.” A dozen men gathered around Sergeant Waters.
“You men get something to eat. Clean your weapons and get some rest. We’re leaving after dark to set an ambush for Charlie.”
One guy wanted to know, “How far out are we going, Sergeant?”
Sergeant Waters told the man, “About a click. So get some rest.”
Ed did the math in his head. A click is a thousand meters, a little over three feet to a meter. That’s over three thousand feet. If a mile is five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet, then Waters is talking over a half mile back into that mosquito-infested jungle at night. Great!
Earlier that day, the point man was using his machete to chop a path through the brush and trees for the platoon to follow. He killed a viper snake everyone called a two-step snake. He sent word back down the column where it was lying so everyone was aware as they walked past the snake.
Ed asked, “What’s a two-step snake?”
Robert looked back at Ed. “If it bites you, you’ll take two steps and die!”
Ed’s full attention was on Robert. He wanted to know if he was serious. “Are they that poisonous?”
“That’s what everyone says. I don’t plan on being the one that finds out!”
After dark, First Squad saddled up with their gear and left the firebase through the barbed wire, walking past the claymore mines placed in front of each bunker in case of a ground attack during the night.
Ed concluded that day in the jungle, Vietnam didn’t have ordinary mosquitoes like in the States. which you slap or flick off when you notice the pesky things bother you.
Not the Vietnam mosquitoes he encountered in the jungle that day. You could have put a saddle on those mosquitoes and rode them like a small horse! They convinced Ed to kill one, he’d need his .45 auto or maybe that heavy ass M-60.
Good old American mosquitoes just cause a little bump on your skin with some itching irritation. When Vietnam mosquitoes bite you on the face, the area swells to the size of a saucer. Your face goes numb, you lose all feeling and control of your facial muscles for hours afterward. You look like you’ve suffered a stroke, with your face drooping and your slurred speech.
During a break-in the jungle earlier that day, Ed wasn’t able to discuss his observation of the mosquitoes with Sergeant Johnson. He couldn’t see the Sergeant through all the cigarette smoke caused by the men burning leeches off their bodies!
In Ed’s mind he was certain he saw two mosquitoes standing on the stump of a fallen tree watching him in the jungle. It looked as though they were trying to decide which one of them would drag his ass off into the jungle to feast on later!
The sun was down; it was dark! Not like the city. No streetlights, no vehicle lights, or lights from buildings. Tonight, there was no moonlight. Ed couldn’t remember seeing so many stars in the night sky before.
Ed thought, How could anybody navigate through that jungle in this darkness? Jungle! His thoughts flashed back to that fallen tree where the two mosquitoes were standing! He wondered if they were still hungry. Maybe they found a water buffalo in a rice paddy, killed it, and were busy feasting on the carcass and wouldn’t notice him returning through the jungle.
As the platoon neared their planned ambush site, they walked out of the jungle into a foot-deep water-filled rice paddy. Charlie picked the same location for their ambush site. But they were there first. It was so dark when the first squad stepped into the rice paddy the VC couldn’t see the soldier’s silhouettes. They only heard the water being disturbed by men walking through it.
The squad was in a single-file column with the dog handler and K-9 in the lead. He could just see the person in front of him as he stepped out from the jungle into the water. Charlie opened fire with their automatic AK-47s on first squad.
The sounds of multiple crack-crack-crack came from the hedgerow seventy yards in front of them. Green tracers came streaming out of the trees toward First Squad. Men dived into the mud and water wherever they were standing, trying to avoid the incoming rounds. Men crawled through the muddy soup, searching for the nearest berm to shield them from the bullets striking the water around them.
This was Ed’s first experience in combat. People were trying to kill him. This wasn’t a game or a military training exercise in basic training; it was real. As Ed dived for cover, he glanced at the streams of tracers coming from the jungle in front of him. He remembered seeing the tracers in the reflection on the water.
He counted at least six places where the VC were firing from, submerged in the water, keeping his mouth above the waterline to breathe. He prayed he was out of reach of the incoming rounds striking the water around him as he crawled through the paddies to the first berm he could find.
Ed’s machine gun was up on his back. He held the gun by one of the gun’s bipod legs attached to the gun’s barrel as he crawled through the mud. It was a dangerous balance, keeping his head low enough in the water to avoid incoming rounds and high enough to breathe.
Rounds were striking the water everywhere. Ed reached a berm in front of him and shoved his M-60 up on top of the berm out of the muck so he could return fire. A hundred thoughts were racing through his mind while crawling in the muck under the incoming tracer rounds above him.
They trained him for this situation; only this time, instructors were not firing the weapons. These men were trying to kill him and everybody with him. He remembered the ambush seemed to occur in slow motion in his head.
His basic training at Fort Ord, California, kept running through his mind. They were doing a live fire exercise crawling under barbed wire on their backs. The instructors were firing live machine gun rounds over their bodies while popping smoke to add to the stress. They kept yelling.
“Don’t panic. Think about what you’re doing. Don’t panic!”
Ed wasn’t feeling panic; he was pissed off. He didn’t like being shot at and not able to return fire.
Ed turned his M-60 on the berm toward the incoming rounds. He placed a hundred-round belt in the gun, straightened the ammo belt out and closed the receiver’s lid on the gun. Looking at the green tracers coming from the hedgerow, Ed remembered thinking the scene looked like green laser beams of light coming from the trees toward them.
Forty-five seconds passed from the initial opening volley of automatic weapon fire toward first squad before they could return fire. The rice paddy became alive with automatic weapons returning fire into the hedgerow. Now there were hundreds of red tracers streaming back into the tree line toward the VC.
Everybody in the paddy returned fire. Robert crawled up to the berm on Ed’s right side, ten feet away. Ed was firing his M-60 at the beam of green light coming from the tree line when Corky, one of Ed’s ammo bearers crawled up next to him. Corky removed a belt of ammo off his shoulder preparing the new belt for Ed.
Robert was launching M-79 grenades into the hedge. His grenade launcher looked like a fat break action shotgun, functioning the same way, only with a much shorter barrel, delivering a larger 40 mm grenade that exploded on impact.
Robert was a good shot with his grenade launcher. Ed watched him fire two rounds earlier that day at a couple of palm trees across a clearing while they were taking a break. The trees were fifty yards from them. Both trees were hit midsection, blowing the trunks in half. He had no problem placing his rounds where he wanted them.
The squad continued firing into the hedgerow. Hundreds of rounds riddled the tree line. Robert sent a dozen grenades into the hedgerow, each explosion caused the tree line to light up giving the men a temporary live silhouette to shoot at.
Sergeant Waters yelled in the darkness for the men to cease fire. The squad’s gunfire died off.
It became silent for several minutes. There was no return fire coming from the hedgerow. Sergeant Waters ordered the squad to move forward to secure the tree line.
The squad’s dog handler and K-9 were both killed in the opening volley of fire in the ambush.
There were no sounds of movement coming from Charlie. Charlie was dead or gone.
After the ambush was over and the tree line was secured, Sergeant Waters radioed for a chopper to evacuate the soldier and his K-9.
You could hear the helicopters approaching. Sergeant Waters took off his helmet and turned it upside down. He activated his strobe light and placed it inside his helmet so the choppers could see their location without the strobe light illuminating the area for Charlie.
As the chopper approached the rice paddy, it hovered a few feet off the water, while four men carried the dog handler to the aircraft. Men grabbed the dog, carrying him to the chopper.
They laid the K-9 on the floor of the ship beside his handler while the chopper hovered, waiting to load. A cobra gunship circled above them, providing cover for the men and the chopper in the open rice paddy. The chopper lifted off, clearing the landing site. The cobra made a couple more orbits over the area. Sergeant Waters advised the gunship they were pulling out returning to Crockett.
The next morning, First Platoon returned to the ambush site checking the area for bodies. They found pieces of bloody clothing and two Chinese hand grenades left behind in the grass. Blood covered the grass and bushes. There were no bodies. Charlie had taken their dead or wounded with them.
Ed and several other men set up a perimeter along the tree line, while Sergeant Waters checked for hidden bunkers or anything left behind. Ed and Robert talked about the ambush. Ed asked Robert if last night’s ambush was routine or unusual.
“I’ve been here four months, last night was my third ambush. Two were at night. One was during the day. They don’t happen that often. But once is enough for me!”
Robert laughed telling Ed, after they got back to the firebase last night, he told Sergeant Waters, “He didn’t want to play anymore, and he was catching the next bus out of town!”
Sergeant Waters told Robert, “Save him a seat!”
Robert said, “One thing I know for sure. You don’t have to worry about the bullet that has your name on it. You never hear it coming. The ones marked ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ are the ones to worry about! They don’t care who they kill!”
During the next few days, Ed became acquainted with more men in his squad. Robert was six feet four inches, one hundred sixty-five pounds bean pole. He always smiled, bordering on laughter. His familiar Southern draw caught Ed’s attention when he first arrived at firebase Crockett.
Robert and Ed became instant friends. They were both assigned to first squad. Robert was born in a small town in Florida near Connersville. It was near another small town where Ed’s mother was born, called Plant City, Florida. Ed’s mother was one of sixteen brothers and sisters all raised on a farm in Plant City.
Ed’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all had the same recognizable Southern drawl. At the end of World War II Ed’s dad, raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, met his mother while working in the Plant City area. They married and moved to California and started a family.
Every year as far back as Ed could remember, his parents made their yearly trek to Plant City with him and his little sister in tow to spend a week celebrating his grandfather’s birthday. The commonality Ed and Robert had with families living in small towns in Florida. Both of them living on opposite ends of the country, meeting in a place like Vietnam was reason enough to form a bond. Robert was four years older than Ed and been in Vietnam four months longer than Ed.
Robert was an old-timer, by the new guys’ standards. Robert took Ed under his wing and taught him about the country. Things like snakes, Punji pits, hidden bunkers. Basics needed to survive in that hellhole.
Another country boy Ed meant in first platoon with Robert was Arlie. He was raised in Alabama. married to a country girl named Sheila. Arlie talked with the same thick southern drawl. His speech was slow and laid back, like Roberts. Sometimes he’d take the listener down a dirt road telling his story. But you would have enjoyed the trip.
November 1968, Ed had been in Vietnam four months. Robert and Arlie were in their eighth month in Vietnam, on the downhill slide of their one-year tour, getting closer to the day they would go home to the real world.
For two months, it was quiet. They conducted several night time ambush patrols. They patrolled daily, searching the villages for hidden or buried weapons and tunnels.
They found weapons and three VC hiding in an underground room dug in the floor of a hut. An occasional small cache of weapons or a hiding VC became routine.
November 30, the First Platoon left a small village after coming up empty during their search.
They headed to the next village to search. November was the dry season in South Vietnam. The rice paddies were drying up, making it much easier to walk patrol without fighting the mud and water.
The platoon received several replacements, for men injured by booby traps.
During the monsoon season, all the paddies are full on water, Charlie couldn’t dig a Punji pit in a water-filled rice paddy.
Charlie watched the US Military. He knew the soldiers tried to avoid walking through water-filled rice paddies by walking on top of the berms that separated the paddies. Charlie adapted; he dug Punji pits on top of the berms and camouflaged them. He knew the soldiers would walk the dry ground. Punji pits injured two men during the last month.
Today, Cecil was the point man for First Squad. For a couple hours, through several patches of jungle. It was common practice to relieve the point man with someone else, giving him a break from swinging his machete, chopping his way through the jungle.
The heat and humidity coupled with the stress of walking point watching for ambushes, snakes, and trip wires wears a man out. After stopping for a break, everybody saddled up to continue back into the jungle.
Before Sergeant Waters gave the order to move out, he sent word to the rear of the column for the new replacement to come forward and relieve Cecil on point. The new man arrived on the morning chopper like Ed did in time to join First Platoon on patrol. Cecil handed the man his machete, telling him, “Have fun!”
He walked twenty yards ahead of the platoon toward the jungle as he stepped out of the rice paddy into the jungle; there was a tremendous blast where the point man had been standing.
He stepped on the wire attached to a mortar round buried in the ground. The explosion blew his body into the triple canopy foliage above. The overhanging branches of the taller trees blocked his ascent further into the air. He fell back to the ground. Both his legs were missing up to his groin. The blast blew off part of his skull. He never knew what hit him!
Ed turned around looking at Cecil, his face was pale with no expression as he stood looking at the scene. The man’s first day in the country, he was dead. Ed learned in Vietnam life could change in a heartbeat. One minute, someone was there; the next minute, they were dead or wounded.
Ed understood why Sergeant Johnson was callous when he assigned him Cliff’s machine gun and equipment that first morning at Crockett. Incidents occurred, people died, and life continued. The platoon received a new radio telephone operator named Freddie. He replaced another operator that served his tour and returned to the States.
Sergeant Waters called the new RTO over to him. Freddie made his way over to the sergeant, carrying a radio that seemed half Freddie’s size. Sergeant Waters was standing by the man’s body. Sergeant Waters requested a chopper for the dead soldier. Freddie seemed a little high-strung.
Ed wasn’t sure if it was the situation with the dead soldier or just his nature. He seemed capable of handling the radio traffic as he communicated with the firebase and the inbound chopper with no confusion.
Ed figured Freddie would be fine, considering he was a new RTO handling the situation. A week earlier, First Squad had a day off from patrol. Relaxing in the firebase with a little free time to catch up on writing letters home.
The news traveled fast through Crockett that the Second Platoon was returning with a casualty. Bad news always came from the command bunker to the troops via the RTO. Freddie was new, but he kept up the tradition of keeping the men informed. When Freddie received news, he told the men somebody was killed.
Another platoon had been on a sweep, checking villages when their point man tripped an artillery shell booby-trap. Returning through the barbed wire, a man was carrying a soldier’s leg in a poncho liner, a lightweight green plastic raincoat everyone carried during rainy season.
They tied the liner like a sling, carrying the severed leg. One of the guys asked the man with the leg why they didn’t send it back in the chopper with the man’s body. The man carrying the leg answered, “This is all that’s left of him.” He continued walking, carrying the leg to the command bunker.
December 1968, Arlie had left Vietnam to go on R&R to be with his wife in Hawaii for a week. A chance to get out of that hell hole, relax, and forget about the war for a week.
At 1:00 p.m. on December 11, it was another endless day on patrol searching villages for VC.
First Platoon walked out of the jungle into an open clearing. The military had carpet bombed the area. Craters covered the entire area. The platoon finished taking a break for lunch in the jungle at the edge of the clearing.
Robert and Ed were laughing, talking about their relatives in Florida. Ed pulled a can of Vienna sausage from his pack and opened it. Robert’s eyes lit up, asking, “Where did you get those?”
Ed explained his parents sent them all the time. “They know I like them. You want some? Heck yeah! Hand some of them over here!” Ed emptied half of the sausages in his hand, handing the can over to Robert. They sat there in silence finishing their sausages.
Robert told Ed, “I guess by now, Arlie’s with his wife in Hawaii. I’ll bet he’s glad to be with her and out of this place for a while!” Sergeant Waters told the men to saddle up. Ten men including Ed, and Robert exited the jungle into the dry open rice paddy. The VC opened fire from their ambush position along the tree line on the far side of the rice paddy.
Everyone dived for cover. Ed was five feet from a bomb crater just ahead of him. He was getting ready to walk around it when the rapid cracking from AK-47s started. Robert was fifteen feet ahead of him.
Ed dived into the crater in front of him. Robert leaped to his left toward the nearest crater to him. It was too late, a VC hiding in a small camouflaged fox hole across the clearing in front of them fired at Robert as he was diving into the crater.
Rounds struck Robert. He was dead before his body landed in the crater. He fell facedown. His feet were sticking up motionless from the rim of the crater. Everyone started returning fire on the VC.
The commanding officer, Captain Sharp grabbed the hand set from Freddie’s radio while pulling his map out of the leg pocket of his fatigue’s. Everyone pulled back from the clearing into the jungle.
Captain Sharp gave their coordinates over the radio. He ordered gunships to respond to the location. Sergeant Waters and Everett, another friend of Robert, told Ed they were going back out to recover Robert’s body. Ed told Everett, “I’m going with you guys!”
Everett looked at him telling him, “You might not come back! You guys need cover fire, I’m going with you!” The three men crawled out into the open rice paddy to retrieve Robert’s body. Ed set the gun up on a dirt berm and started laying cover fire with his M-60 at the hedgerow across the clearing.
Sergeant Waters and Everett continued to crawl toward the bomb crater where Robert was lying.
Ed covered both men with machinegun fire, forcing the VC to keep their heads down, unable to return fire on the men. Ed heard a gunship approaching from behind him, firing his machine gun.
He rolled onto his side to look back at the chopper.
The gunship tore up the ground coming up behind Ed in the open rice paddy. He mistaken the soldier’s cover fire for an enemy soldier laying in the rice paddy, firing at the two US soldiers crawling toward Robert.
Ed rolled over on his back, facing the gunship, waving the ship off, letting the gunner know he was an American soldier, not VC. The gun ship shut his machine gun off seconds before reaching Ed.
Ed rolled back over and continued firing toward the VC’s foxhole and the hedgerow. Everett and Waters reached Robert. Tying a rope to Robert, they dragged him back to the edge of the jungle.
Cecil along with three other men came out of the jungle, grabbed Robert’s body, and carried him from the clearing into the jungle.
The four soldiers went back into the jungle. Ed followed them out of the clearing. He looked at Robert’s face as Cecil and the others carried him. His eyes were open. The expressionless stare of death had replaced his ever-present smile. Minutes had passed from sitting in the jungle laughing and sharing food with a friend, to recovering his body from a rice paddy.
A week passed, Arlie returned to Crockett, just before nightfall from his R&R leave with his wife in Hawaii. Arlie was in a good mood, happy he spent time with his wife. The men were sitting around the bunker. Arlie joined the conversation with Ed, Everett, and Sergeant Waters sitting around the bunker talking. He noticed Robert was missing. “Where is Robert?” Everett looked at Arlie. “He’s dead, Arlie, he was killed in an ambush.” The joy on Arlie’s face changed to grief. Arlie put his hand to his forehead. “Oh no.” Arlie turned and walked away to be alone.
By late January 1969, rocket and mortar attacks on the firebase were becoming routine at night.
It was common to sleep inside the bunkers for safety. The only options were inside or somewhere close outside the bunker.
After a firefight, Ed noticed several men searching the dead bodies. He asked Robert at the time if they were looking for souvenirs? Robert told Ed, “They’re searching because of the rats! The rats come in the bunkers at night looking for food. You haven’t seen them yet, have you? Those guys have! They’re looking for hammocks, so they can sleep up off the ground in their bunkers. To get away from the rats!”
A few nights after their conversation, Ed was asleep in his bunker. He was awakened when something heavy crawled over his leg. He grabbed his flashlight to search the bunker. A rat! Ed never saw a rat that big in his life! It was bigger than a domesticated house cat. Big enough to kill and eat a house cat.
Ed’s movement didn’t seem to bother the rodent; it continued searching the bunker for food. Ed gave the rat a healthy kick, slamming it against the sandbag wall. The rodent got the message. Scurrying out of the bunker. Ed spent the rest of the night sleeping outside on top of the bunker.
After the next firefight, Ed was out searching the bodies for hammocks. He found two and kept them both, one as a spare.
