Death in the Jungle by Gary Smith (most inspirational books .txt) 📕

the explosions and let go with about seventy rounds of 7.62mm bullets. I pulled the pin on my third frag grenade and tossed it into the river. It blew, then Mr. Meston shouted, “Cease fire!” At least that’s what I thought he shouted. My battle-blown eardrums were vibrating so violently with all the racket that a screaming jet engine at ten feet wouldn’t have done any more damage.

In a few seconds, I saw no more tracer rounds or explosions. The terrific firepower had stopped, but the roar continued to bang off the walls of my brain.

Mingled with the ringing in my ears was a cry of pain. Then another. The sounds were from downstream. I thought I heard a moaning, too.

As I listened harder, Mr. Meston sounded like a bomb going off when he called on the radio for the two LCPL boats to extract us. Using predesignated code words, he said, “Stingray Eleven, this is X-ray Two. Be advised, enemy contact. Request extraction as soon as possible. Over.” He next requested the Seawolves to fly in and strafe the opposite riverbank. Then he communicated with Caisson 69, which was the U.S. Army artillery battery on an island called “French Fort,” requesting an artillery H-and-I (Harassment and Interdiction) strike soon after our extraction.

Giving the radio handset back to Bucklew, Mr. Meston passed the word to mark our flanks with strobe lights, which McCollum and Funkhouser handled.

A couple minutes later, Mr. Meston told me to mark the Viet Cong’s position with a hand-held parachute flare. I took one off my web gear, aimed it skyward over the bullet-torn jungle and slammed the bottom against the palm of my left hand. The flare rocketed out of its case and soared into the sky over the VC’s position. Reaching its peak height, the parachute deployed and the illuminating charge ignited. The flare burned so brightly that it turned our dark little world into brilliant daylight. The light was mesmerizing as it hung a while, then gradually floated downward, reflecting off the water. It shone brightly for almost a minute, and, as it slowly died, I sent up another. McCollum waited forty-five seconds, then shot up a 40mm parachute flare.

Then I heard the helos. They flew single file over our heads and opened up, strafing the opposite shore with M-60 machine guns and 2.75-inch rockets. I watched as the rockets exploded and bullets sheared branches off trees.

The gunships circled in their usual racetrack pattern. As they swooped in for a second attack, I heard a partially-muted yelling across the river. I listened for more, but the Seawolves erupted in a wave of gun and rocket fire to drown out every other sound. More rockets blew the life out of the jungle; more trees and bushes were shredded.

As the helos flew away, I watched the flares peter out. Eerie shadows were cast on the water and jungle in the fading light. Seconds later, it was lights out.

While my eyes worked to adjust themselves to the sudden darkness, I couldn’t see a thing. My night vision was totally shot. I held my hand in front of my face. Where I should see my hand there were red, white, and blue spots. I smiled at the thought: I was patriotic even in my blindness.

I tuned my ears toward the opposite shore and listened intently for a few minutes, but I heard only a humming in my ears.

Minutes later, I heard the boats coming for us. Mr. Meston used the radio to guide them right to us.

First squad swiftly boarded one boat, Mr. DeFloria’s squad the other.

Moving upstream, the coxswain of our LCPL flashed a spotlight along the shoreline, looking for sampans hidden in the vegetation. He spotted pieces of a sampan floating on the water.

Filled with blood lust, the gunners on the boats began destroying the jungle with their .50-caliber machine guns. I saw branches and leaves dropping in the light of the spotlight. An entire tree was cut in half and fell into the stream.

I fired Sweet Lips twice at the shore. Funkhouser joined in with his M-60. McCollum sent two rounds of HE into the foray. Mr. Meston and Bucklew added semiautomatic rifle fire. My eardrums took another licking, but so did the VC.

As we stopped firing and the boats accelerated up the river, a great feeling of relief washed over me. We had survived the T-10 area, leaving a vivid reminder of our visit carved in tree trunks and, we hoped, human bodies.

We heard incoming artillery rounds as we disappeared into the night. The “men with green faces” had scored again.

CHAPTER FIVE

I awoke at 0630 hours on September 29, my birthday. Twenty-six years old, nine missions under my belt, and still in one piece. I did, however, have a couple long gashes on my legs, incurred while prowling through a nightmarish mangrove swamp.

Sitting up on my bed, I checked the cuts. One was four inches long, right of my left knee, just above the Wiley Coyote tattoo on my calf. Another two-inch incision sliced through the neck of the Road Runner tattoo on my right calf. Both tattoos had been artfully done by old Doc Webb in May of 1964, while I had enjoyed my first liberty in San Diego after boot camp. Doc, known all over the world, had had a parlor not far off Broadway. Right then, I was not too happy that the Road Runner had been decapitated. I’d always hated the thought that any part of me that has a head would someday lose it. Someday for the Road Runner had been three days earlier.

I slipped on my UDT swim trunks, then raised the mosquito netting, and stepped out of bed onto the concrete floor. Dropping the net, I slid into my coral booties.

Funkhouser was lying on his back on the other bed, snoring softly. I decided to take Bolivar, my twenty-inch boa constrictor, out of his cage and set him on the topside of Funky’s mosquito net, three