I was just thinking

 

…about not getting killed in Viet Nam.  I got to come home alive.

 

I might have survived because I was so well trained; because I was always aware of my surroundings and never let my guard down.  Or maybe it’s not that I was especially good at not getting killed, it just kind of happened.  I’m thinking of a time in the Central Highlands; somewhere in the neighborhood of Kon Tum and Pleiku.  I looked the old neighborhood up on a map:

 

Viet Nam Map

 

Looking at Google Maps now, it seems like there are a lot of towns and roads there, but we weren’t visiting towns then.  We were in jungles and fields with a few villages.  It was like a campout; Boy Scouts, but for keeps.  The sergeant put us where we were supposed to be and told us to “dig in”.  That meant digging foxholes.  It was here I learned an important lesson about holes; one that would serve me well the rest of my tour.  “Never be the first one to dig your hole.”

 

The problem with being done first is that you’re rarely truly done.  The sergeant tells you where to put your hole, so you do it.  Well, pretty soon, the second lieutenant is going to come around and tell everyone that their holes are in the wrong places; they should be over here. Okay, that’s two holes to dig and you’re still tired from the first.  But it doesn’t end there.  The Captain hasn’t been by yet.  When you get the order to dig in, it’s time to take a break.  Smoke a cigarette.  Get a drink of water.  Watch everyone else dig and say you’re waiting for a shovel.  You want your hole done before dark, but you definitely don’t want to be done first.  Better to only have to dig your hole once.

 

So here we were, dug in for a long stay away from base camp, foxholes all around the perimeter.  Patrols going out and back every day, looking for firefights.  I was ammo resupply.  Every day fresh ammo came out on helicopters from base camp.  I helped unload it and get it to the line companies that were using it up.  At night we defended the perimeter in the dark, watching for movement, listening for sounds that didn’t belong.  We owned the days.  Viet Cong owned the nights.

 

Two people per foxhole.  One person awake at all times.  A sleeping person next to a chest deep hole; an awake person in the hole.  That’s a long slow torture, by the way, one person awake at all times.  On the surface it sounds okay, but really it’s not like you’ve got half of a 24 hour period to sleep.  During the day you’re both going to be awake, working.  Altogether you’re going to get 8 or 10 hours to sleep.  That means for each person, 4 or 5 hours of sleep, and it’s going to be broken up into two-hour rotations; except after you’ve done this for a few days you get so rummy you can’t stay awake for two hours at a time, so you start rotating on one hour shifts.  Nights get very long.  Days get very blurry.  Maybe decision-making gets compromised.  Maybe sometimes decisions don’t even get made.

 

Anyway, one day, nothing happening at the moment, mind wandering, surrounded by jungle, exploring the edges, I wandered off.  I was looking at all the plants.  Maybe I was watching for ripe bananas, maybe I was looking for carnivorous plants, I don’t remember.  I just wandered off.  I wasn’t thinking about where I was or why, I was just exploring.  I found a creek bed and followed it uphill.  I came to a ridgeline and followed it.  I sat on an overlook and admired the vista of uninhabited jungled hills.  It started getting dark.  I had an “oh shit” moment realizing I was away from camp, all by myself, no one knew where I was, and I didn’t even have my rifle.

 

I headed back.  I was quite a ways out.  There wasn’t an actual trail to follow, but I’ve always been fine with sense-of-direction, so that wasn’t a problem, I knew which way to go, but I didn’t end up back at camp at exactly the point I had left it.  I was walking quietly so I wouldn’t draw any attention, but now I found myself in the gathering dark on the wrong side of our perimeter.  All the rifles in foxholes were “our” rifles, but they were all pointed out where I was.  That seemed like a problem.  I knew I was in the right neighborhood, but I knew for sure I was all the way back when I set off a trip flare.  There is nothing lethal about a trip flare, it is just something to illuminate any intruder so you can kill it; oh, and it makes a very loud POP when it goes off, just to make sure no-one misses that blazing bright light.

 

“American!  It’s just me!  Don’t shoot!”   I shouted to avoid getting shot, standing as tall as I could, arms in the air.  It worked.  I got back through our lines to the side I belonged on.  I didn’t get killed, but I kind of had to surrender to survive.