Death in the Jungle (28 page)

As I approached the entrance to the big French building, my teammates were filing out. Their hands were full of booze and gifts.

“Where you been, Smitty?” asked Flynn, sounding as if he had a right to know. His question irritated me since he was the one I had told I was going for a walk. It was obvious to me he was setting me up for some teasing from the others. Sure enough, they let me have it.

“He’s prob’ly been with some red-hot, sexy lady,” piped up McCollum. The others chuckled and murmured their approval.

“That’s right,” I spouted without hesitation, “your wife was good.” The chuckles became cackles as we walked to our pickup truck.

“Actually,” chimed in Funkhouser, “I think the Hawk set up a rendezvous with Nga. She’s let it be known that she’s interested in more of Smitty than just his laundry.”

Above the howls and catcalls, I shouted playfully at Funkhouser, “You traitor!” Then I laughed with the others.

We climbed into our truck and Pearson drove through Saigon until he found a bar advertising strip shows. He parked close, then bailed out of the cab with a grin on his face. Flynn and Brown crawled out the passenger-side door.

“Flynn asked me to stop!” Pearson announced to the rest of us. “He needs a pick-me-up before we go back to the base.”

The five of us in the box jumped out and joined our teammates on the sidewalk.

“We need one of us to stand watch over our booze and other items,” Pearson reminded us. “Do we have a volunteer?”

“I’ll stay with the truck if someone will bring me a beer,” I answered.

“All right, Smitty,” replied Pearson as he turned to go into the bar. He saw several Vietnamese children running along the sidewalk toward our group. Knowing what a nuisance the street urchins could be, Pearson and the others hurried inside the bar, leaving me to deal with the mischievous kids.

“Shoe shine, GI, shoe shine?” barked the first little boy to reach me. His almond-shaped brown eyes glowed with expectancy.

I looked down at my gray coral shoes, which were made of canvas. Pointing at them, I replied, “Da, go ahead.” The boy stared at my coral shoes for a moment, then looked up at me with a sudden grin. He shook his head.

“Funny, GI,” he said as four more boys brought their running to a halt right next to me. They were a ragtag bunch.

“Give me American cigarette,” said the tiniest one, holding out a hand. This was a common request of Vietnamese city children, as they sold all they could get on the black market.

“No cigarettes today,” I stated.

The little hand remained outstretched. “Buy me gum,” the boy persisted.

I noticed two of the older boys slipping behind me. Wise to their pickpocketing abilities, I moved a couple of steps closer to the pickup truck. When I turned to face the boys again, my backside was flush against the truck door, thereby protecting my wallet.

“Buy me gum,” repeated the small boy with his hand still out. I dug into a pants pocket and found a fresh pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint. I tore open the pack and distributed one piece of gum to each of the five boys. While the other boys wasted no time in getting the gum
into their mouths, the oldest-looking boy held his piece in his hand and stepped right in front of me.

“American cigarette?” he asked curtly. I stared into his eyes, looking for a sign of hostility. There was none to see; rather, I sensed sportiveness.

“American cigarette bad for lungs,” I stated, then I coughed twice in the boy’s face. He stepped back from me, then opened his gum wrapper and popped the gum into his mouth.

As the boy began chewing, he looked at me and said, “American gum bad for teeth.” He smiled big, showing me his crooked and decayed set. Then he spun around and ran away, with the other boys in hot pursuit of him.

Five minutes later, as I waited in the oppressive heat and wondered which of my teammates was going to bring me a beer from the bar, all seven of them approached me.

Funkhouser handed me a bottle of beer and said, “We’re gettin’ outta here.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking the beer. Everyone began piling into the truck.

“We don’t like the atmosphere,” McCollum told me. “There’s some questionable characters in that bar, and we don’t feel secure.”

As I jumped into the box, Moses continued, “We’ve only got three weapons, just pistols. I got a feeling that in another twenty minutes we’ll need a lot more firepower than that!”

“Besides,” added Funkhouser, “there’s no striptease show until tonight.” He grinned at me as Pearson cranked up the engine.

We arrived back at the base at 1515 hours. Funkhouser and I walked together to the barracks and found a Vietnamese woman sweeping up the dried mud in front of our cubicle. Her presence was not a surprise, as she cleaned for us almost every day. We addressed her as mamma-san, and each man who resided in our barracks chipped in and we paid her four hundred piaster per day.

As Funky and I tarried for a few moments short of our cubicle entrance, allowing mamma-san time to finish sweeping the area, I noticed her little boy and girl staring at me from the other side of the aisle, just ten feet away. They were but four and five years old and were always very clean. I smiled and winked at them. The girl smiled back, but the boy lowered his eyes and turned away in an obvious display of shyness.

I felt around inside my pants pockets, looking for gum, but I’d already given my pack away. When mamma-san’s cleaning removed her from our doorway, I stepped inside our living quarters and grabbed two sticks of gum from my footlocker.

“Gum,” I announced as I walked back into the aisle. The girl saw the sticks in my hand and stepped forward with her hand outstretched. The boy hesitated, but when he watched his sister take a piece, he raced to me and grabbed his own. Then both ran away to the other end of the barracks.

“Follow me, Smitty!” said Dicey with some urgency as he headed for the barracks door.

“What’s up?” I asked, not willing to move until I knew. I’d watched too many of my gullible teammates walk into traps, ending up the butt of a prank, for me to blindly follow Dicey.

“One of the support personnel guys has a nine-foot python outside,” Dicey told me over his shoulder, then he stepped through the open door and was gone.

I called my roommate. Funkhouser stepped out of our cubicle and gave me a look.

“Let’s go see a nine-foot python,” I suggested, pointing to the door. I allowed Funky to walk outside first, just in case there was a setup, then I followed. Lucky for Funkhouser, no one was waiting with a bucket of water or anything like that; instead, around the corner of the barracks, we found a group of men surrounding a sailor who was holding a large snake. Funkhouser and I joined the swelling crowd of gawkers, some of whom had cameras and were taking photographs.

“He’s as docile as can be,” stated the owner as he cradled the middle of the reticulated python’s body in his arms. “Somebody grab the two ends.” There was a moment of hesitation among the onlookers, so I took advantage and hoisted the tail off the ground. Someone else could fool with the head, I thought, and someone soon did.

As I held the thick, ropelike body of the snake, Funkhouser jogged back to our cubicle to get his camera. He returned a minute later and snapped a couple pictures of his roomie and the python. Then we traded places and I took two of him.

When Moses assumed Funkhouser’s position with the snake, Funky and I thanked the owner for the chance to take some pictures, then we walked back to our cubicle.

“It’s a good thing Bolivar isn’t that big,” Funkhouser told me in the privacy of our abode. “I’d quit being your roommate in an instant.”

I laughed. “Didn’t you like holding that python?”

“Not a bit.”

“But,” I reminded him, “you sure were grinning for the camera!”

Funkhouser grinned again. “Gotta keep up my image for the ladies back home in the States!”

Pearson stuck his head inside our cubicle and reminded us we were to be in the briefing room at 1630 hours. We were going on a forty-eight-hour mission early in the morning deep in the T-10 area of the Rung Sat Special Zone. The specific op area contained two large enemy base camps, a hospital, and from two to six hundred VC.

For the next forty minutes, Funkhouser and I prepared some of our gear for the next day’s operation while listening to my radio. Then we reported to the upstairs briefing room where Lieutenant Meston awaited us. When all nine SEALs from Foxtrot Platoon and eight members of the LCPL and Boston Whaler crews were assembled, the room was sealed off.

Mr. Meston began the briefing, explaining the mission step by step. Insertion off the Dong Tranh River would be at 0615 hours, followed by a 750-meter patrol through thick nipa palm and brush. The patrol would take most of the morning, as we would have to move very quietly. Pearson and I would alternate as point men until we reached the ambush site on a small stream just five hundred meters from two enemy camps. The hospital complex was but 150 meters farther. Our job was to intercept any boat traffic moving to or from the camps, capturing or killing the enemy occupants. I was the designated swimmer who would bring in any wounded VC and floating gear. Following SOP, we would attempt to preserve all intelligence data that was gathered.

We examined air recon photographs and pictomaps of the area of operation. The latest weather report indicated
cloud cover with a chance of rain, then a gradual clearing. There would be plenty of moonlight both nights after the clouds dispersed.

The point men were cautioned to beware of booby traps.

Finally, we were given the mission’s call signs and code words, then we sterilized the briefing room. All photographs, maps, charts, and notes were removed, and not a trace of the forthcoming op was left behind.

Since the base CO had ordered the Seabees to work half of the day, even though it was a holiday, the cooks had scheduled the Thanksgiving meal for 1800 hours. I decided to retrieve my laundry from Nga’s before I went to the chow hall, and while I was in the village I bought three brass vases to send home.

At 1740 hours, I dropped my clothes off at my cubicle, then, desirous of a holiday trim, walked to the base’s new barber shop, where haircuts were free. Knowing that Thanksgiving was Thanksgiving only to Americans, I hoped the Vietnamese barber, whose name was Nguyen, was still at the shop so late in the afternoon. A minute later, I found that he was.

“Moi ong vao ngoi choi,”
he welcomed me, asking me to sit down in his chair. I sat. He immediately started in on my head with his electric clippers. After a few minutes on top, he spent a couple of minutes spreading shaving cream on my ears, nose, and cheeks and shaving these parts with a razor. Next, he had me remove my T-shirt and lie back in the chair. He had me close my eyes while he shaved my neck and shoulders, handling the razor so deftly and gently it was as if he’d been born with it in his hand. I relaxed almost to the point of falling asleep.

When Nugyen was finished, he tapped my shoulder with a finger. I opened my eyes and focused on his smiling face.

“Het roi,”
he said, telling me he was done. I slid out of the chair and pulled on my T-shirt.

“Cam on ong,”
I thanked him. I took a twenty piaster coin from my pocket and gave it to the barber as a tip. He bowed and thanked me. I returned the bow, then left for the chow hall.

The cooks had pulled out all the stops on the Thanksgiving dinner, preparing hot turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, salad, and pumpkin pie. I stuffed myself until I felt like I couldn’t eat another bite, then I gobbled up some more. The food was so good that, if I’d have closed my eyes, I’d have thought I was sitting at my mother’s table back home. Of course, I’d have had to have closed my ears, too, because people didn’t talk at Momma’s table the way they did in a Navy mess hall.

After dinner, I finished preparing my gear for the forty-eight-hour mission. Since I was the designated swimmer, I gathered my duck fins and coral booties. Of course, with my shotgun having been replaced by the M-16/XM-148 combo, which I’d dubbed Bad Girl, I was toting different ammunition. I’d taped three 30-round magazines together for the M-16, and I’d carried four magazine pouches: two were each filled with three 20-round magazines for the M-16, and two contained six 40mm HE rounds apiece for the XM-148 grenade launcher. I’d also stuffed two of my quart canteen pouches with eight rounds each of 40mm HE. A claymore mine and two fragmentation grenades were attached to my web belt. My drinking water was stored in two collapsible canteens that were packed with a first aid kit in a rucksack, which I’d carried at the top center of my H-harness. With my C rations stowed to sustain me, I was ready for the op.