Gung Ho

A lot of new soldiers in Vietnam went on their first patrol dressed like John Wayne in one of the old movies, and I was no exception. For my first patrol into the jungle, (the boonies) I put on a full Army belt, with grenades, canteen, and medical pack. I wore my steel pot, (helmet), two bandoliers of sixty-caliber ammo, and flak vest. I didn’t get very far in the 110-degree heat. Going through the boonies was a fight under the best conditions. It was almost impossible the way I was dressed.

Let me try to describe the boonies. There was bamboo growing everywhere. The bamboo would reach out and grab you at every step. It got caught on my steel pot and ripped it off my head. We were trying to be as quite as we could, and when the steel pot hit the jungle floor, each of us held his breath. Lucky for us there wasn’t any Viet Cong out there that day. After a couple of hours of trekking through the boonies, we took a break. I started to sit down and the guy next to me said, “Wait, don’t set down rookie.” He then took the grenade off my belt very carefully. I looked at it and saw that the bamboo had ripped off the handle of the grenade. The top was still on it and the pin was still there. I was lucky, and would remain so throughout my tour of duty. Sergeant Cody (just a 20 year old kid, but oh the age in those eyes.) came and took the grenade and threw it into a hole in the jungle floor. Which was another give-away of our position to the enemy.

If the bamboo was bad, the ants were worse. Ever so often, someone would get into a nest of fire ants. Okay, truth is it happened to me that same day. The ants would get all over a person in a couple of seconds and start biting (stinging) and it hurt like hell. Several of the other guys would have to help kill them or, one would never get them off by oneself.

Then there were the wait-a-minute bushes, so named because if you got into one the thorns would make you stop in your tracks and yell, “WAIT A MINUTE”. Somehow, we made it back to our base camp without much more excitement just the same old fight against the jungle. This young boy learned many lessons that day.

The next time I went on patrol I wore my jungle fatigues. The jungle fatigues were made with many pockets on them. Pockets where one could put extra ammo clips, a canteen and a medical pouch. The shirt would hang lose over the pants, which was cooler. I never wore an Army belt or carried a grenade again. I wore a soft camouflaged beret instead of a steel pot, and no flak jacket. I never again carried bandoliers of bullets over my body. One stray bullet could hit them and they might all explode. There were so many ways to be killed.

Live and learn; learn and live.