Rat Storm

 The following is a memory of one particular " night bush" (ambush) while we were working on the west side of Saigon in the region south of the "Parrots Beak" known as the "Pineapples". I believe we were still working out of FSB Elvira.  It was probably late April. On the days that we were sent out by squad to do the night ambushes, we usually headed out in late afternoon and managed a good hike as the sun settled toward the horizon.  We usually had an area located within a kilometer or two of the ambush sight.  If we arrived early and darkness had not yet fallen, we would wait for the cover of darkness before moving on in to set up the ambush.  I can begin this account  as we move through the darkness , after the wait for darkness. On that particular overcast night we could hear thunder in the distant and we figured that there would probably be rain sometime in the night. That was nothing new and rain had little to do with whether we were assigned to do the ambushes or not. Anyway, I remember us moving through the night and into the bed of a small dry rice paddy. As usual, we distributed ourselves out around the inside of the thing, looking out in all four directions. Things were going as usual except there was a new man in the squad. I do not remember his name. I do remember asking him if he had any trouble getting his Claymore set up.

A Claymore mine is a wide, thin curved anti-personnel device which was perched on some thick wire pull-down legs. It had a layer of plastic explosive at the back and then over that layer was a layer of metal, like a waffle, which would blow apart and become a huge, shotgun like, blast toward the enemy if they came in at us. The thing was slightly rounded to distribute the blast out over a curve. It was always faced with its curve pushing out, away from the unit. Each man had to carry one and when the bush was set up, the area all around the position would have at least one layer, one wave of protection against the enemy. The device had a little hole on the top where a blasting cap was placed down into the layer of C4 and a thin double wire was rolled out along the ground. Then it was pulled up over the burn or rice paddy dike where it was then connected to a hand held switch where a squeeze would send a charge of electricity up to set of the blasting cap and the explosive.

Anyway, I had to watch the new guy that night. After he returned over the dyke I asked him if he got his claymore set up correctly.  His response to my question about the Claymore was "I think so." The answer that was required was a confident, "yes!" Well, this was the stuff he should have known from his basic training and A.I.T. (Advanced Infantry Training).  He must have been sleeping in that particular class. Anyway, like most of the "newbies"  on their first "bush", the poor fellow was already a nervous wreck.  I didn’t see any need to add to his fear.  I could not send him back out there to check his work and I knew that even if I did, I would not sleep well having some question in my mind as to whether he would get it right the second time even if he had goofed up on his first attempt. All of us were newbies at one time or another. I asked him to show me where he had the firing device and I disconnected it from his wire and put it in my leg side pocket. I let the fellows on both side of us know that I had to go back up over the embankment, crawl out and check the mine. I slid up over the mound and scrambled along side the wires in the dark. In the darkness above, clouds had been boiling and a few drops of rain were starting to fall. By the time I had done the belly slide out close to the mine at the end of the wire, and occasional flash of lightening would cover everything with a quivering blueness. I was quite conspicuous out there in the next paddy, our open field of fire,  with the mine out ahead of me and the momentary light catching everything. Then, all around, the world would go back to dark. I made my way on out toward the Claymore. Soon it was only inches in front of my nose, I struggled to see which way it was facing but it was too dark. I reached up to feel it. There was another flash of lightening followed by its crash of thunder. I could see very clearly in that instant and, yip, the F.N.G.  (F___ing New Guy) had the thing turned, facing us instead of the enemy. It could have wiped out a good portion of the squad if we had needed to use it that night.

The mine was repositioned, the blasting cap was checked, and I crawled back to the men as big raindrops were transforming our bed of dust to one of mud. At the dike, I quietly let them know that I had returned and would be coming up over the paddy burn which was our perimeter.

That night, I kept both firing devices in front of me. I remember thinking that if the clown didn’t know how to set the darned thing up, he surely would have trouble trying to figure out how to use it.

The rain continued.. From the distance, one could hear an occasional low bellowing guttural sound which one often heard near waterways or rivers. Later in the month, I heard the sound again and asked if anyone knew what kind of animal made it. One fellow said he thought it sounded like a crocodile or alligator. Surely he was pulling my leg. (Years later, in the lazy boy comfort of our family room, those same sounds gripped me. They were coming from the TV audio in a PBS special on the reptiles. The man had been correct. I think perhaps, long ago, that was one of those occasions where "ignorance was bliss.")  Had I known the true origin of the sounds, surely sleep would have never come that evening.  With another man on duty at the radio, it came for a while. It did not last.

The rain continued. Somewhere in the night we decided to unhook the firing devices from the mines because of the electricity all around us. The moon must have been out, somewhere up above the night haze. Its big yellow face was probably looking down into the storm clouds above us, down toward the little muddy, squashed "grand-daddy longlegs" position with the men in its belly and the wires strung out into the surrounding paddies forming its legs. Its feet were our Claymores. The tide came in, raising the level of the river and its lower delta tributaries. Up river, the rains also came. The season was in change and the yearly flooding had begun. Later in the night, in the rain, the huge expanse of land which stretched out around us gave in to the change, filling with water. The patchwork quilt of dry, then muddy, paddies.... even the place where we had claimed for our sleep, began to reflect the serpent tongues of blue night lightening lapping across the steamy spaces above us.

In the flood, in the dark, the river moved on in, sneaking like an enemy, over low places in the dike. As the water moved in on our boots and legs, we eased closer to the embankment. In slow evolution we moved again, closer up the walls. Then within another hour, the packs and weapons were moved up above us on the little causeway of our concealment. Eventually all of us were laying in the water perpendicular along the inside rectangle of high land with our heads out of the water resting on the burn.

By this time, we were shivering. Our body heat would not stay long in the usual tightly wrapped warmth of our poncho liners. If anyone found additional sleep, there in the water that night he would have found it out of pure frustration and exhaustion. Things were certainly not going well for our group. At first I thought I heard someone talking in their sleep. Then, in the night some of the men seemed to be swearing out loud, twitching and squirming and slapping at the the water. High pitches squawks and squeaks also filled the air. A man yelled out from across the geometry of our plight, "There Rats!"

I peeked out of the soaked poncho liner wrapping that was my bed . After some darkness, I saw in another flash of the storm what seemed like flat black shadows, hundreds of the dancing, wet, skinny critters, hopping in crazy rhythm above us on the paddy banks. Then thud, something the size of a small house cat was on me. Then it was off again and there was another thud and squeal. Another was on me. With the change of the season, the water of the flood had evicted a multitude of these stinking, vicious things and they couldn’t tell our recumbent bodies from the paddy dike. The rainy, rodent orgy seemed to go on for hours. We just had to lay in the water, prostrate behind the protection of the bank until we had a bit of morning light. Throughout the long night, the rats came and went with no warning.

The poor fellow who had been confused about the Claymore, that "newbie" who tried to sleep in the water near me, would assure you that it is an understatement to describe that night as "miserable".  Indeed,  it was something else. Certainly it was an substantial initiation for the new man.

When light finally came, the order to "move out"  was given.  Like corpses from a watery grave, we struggled to position our water shriveled bodies upright. The water made its way down our shirts and pants legs. It drained it’s way down our legs and then back up over the tops of our boots or out the vent holes on the sides. I remember the strange low fog which seemed to cover everything to our knees and the water in the rice paddies went on for miles around us. This was not the same land into which we had come. Some of the Claymores were nearly under water. Others seemed to pitch and bob as it they were trying to float. One of the fellows was on the bank reeling his in by its wire as if he were on a fishing trip with his buddies. He had the thing nearly in before the wires to the blasting cap came loose and he had to step down from his rise and wade in through the old rice straw and water buffalo dung which rose and fell with the gentle paddy waves. Soon we were "saddled up".

We began to move out. A man pointed to a serpent which was swimming along, staking his claim on our former position.

We had not been long into our diagonal path through the paddies, toward the higher trail when a man, his name was Carl  Belmont, held up and waited for the "newbie" ahead of me to move past him. I saw a twinkle in his eye and as he gave a quick snicker and then the words, "Welcome to Vietnam!"

We all cracked up.

Humor got us though a great deal over there.  At times a good laugh was critical.