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

RM2 Smith, Point/Rifleman, Shotgun

BT2 McCollum, Grenadier, M-79

BT2 Moses, Grenadier, M-79

ADJ2 Markel, Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

HM2 Brown, Corpsman/Radioman/Rifleman, M-16

SM3 Katsma, Automatic Weapon, M-60

ADJ3 Flynn, Automatic Weapon, M-60

LDNN Ty, Rifleman, M-2 carbine

AZIMUTHS: 160 degrees-550m, 230 degrees-100m

ESCAPE: 090 degrees

CODE WORDS: Challenge and Reply-Two numbers total 10

The juice of a partially visible sun spilled over me as I climbed out of the mud after jumping out of a Huey slick. Nine other men had landed besides me, deep in the dangerous T-10 area of the Rung Sat Special Zone.

I quickly adjusted my web gear and the four claymore mines I was loaded down with, which had shifted after the plunge, and I assumed the point position. Mr. Meston moved in behind me and motioned for me to start for the ambush site.

The ambush site was six hundred meters southeast, where we’d set up on the Rach Bau Bong at a point where another smaller tributary joined it, creating a Y of waterways. But to get there, a jungle of nipa palm and nearly impenetrable mangrove had to be conquered.

As usual, the going was extremely difficult. Twisted roots and tightly growing clusters of vegetation impeded my progress. Every step was deep into soggy, sucking mud. Hundreds of mosquitos congregated before my eyes in the early morning daylight. A spider the size of a hardball hung on a web to my right. Biting ants crawled all over a bush to my left. In a word, the place was oppressive, but I’d been trained to handle it.

I slowly snaked my way through the brush and mud, and the nine men behind me followed my path in single file. I looked back once at the green-painted faces of Mr. Meston and Brown. Looking forward again, I remembered the day during Hell Week in the mud flats south of Coronado, when Teddy Roosevelt IV, John Odusch, Bud Burgess, Muck McCollum, some others, and I had sat in a line on each other’s laps with interlocked legs and arms, moving as one force in a backward motion through the mud. That had been the caterpillar race in which we either worked together as a team or we did not budge. This morning, I felt like a part of that caterpillar again.

During the next two hours, the temperature seemed to creep upward with every ten steps that I crept forward. The long johns I was wearing did a good job of decreasing mosquito bites, but they also did a good job of burning me up. By the time I found a small tributary we were to cross, I was wetter than it.

It being low tide, the stream bed was almost dry, but stodgy with black mud. I held up at the edge, where human tracks were abundant. I gave Mr. Meston the hand signal for “danger point.” Mr. Meston directed Moses and Flynn to move forward to the creek bank. Moses set up on the left flank with his M-79 40mm grenade launcher while Flynn set up on right flank with his M-60 7.62mm machine gun. The rest of the men formed a skirmish line behind me in the brush.

When Mr. Meston signaled that my teammates were ready, I sat down on the edge of the steep, slick bank and slid on my fanny into the muddy creek bottom. My feet buried themselves in the muck. Without hesitation, I pulled my right foot out along with a shoebox-size hunk of clinging mud, and I stepped ahead and back into the morass. Then I lifted my trailing left foot, again dragging a clump of gunk.

After nine or ten difficult steps, I made it to the opposite bank. The bank was five feet high, almost straight up, and slicker than grease on linoleum. I reached up as far as I could and shoved the barrel of Sweet Lips into the lower branches of a bush. Then I grasped a branch in both hands, jerked my right foot out of the mud, and attempted to swing my leg up on the bank. There was so much mud weighing down my foot that I couldn’t quite perform the feat. After three futile attempts, I simply used my arms and pulled my body upward through the mud. By the time I dragged myself out of the creek bottom, I was a smelly, shiny black mess from chin to toe. I looked thrice as bad as I used to look when, as a five-year-old, I had thought stuff like this was fun.

I slid Sweet Lips back into my slimy hands, then executed a short recon up and down the creek bank. Again, I found numerous human tracks but nothing else to concern me. I secured a position beside a nipa palm tree and signaled Mr. Meston to send over the AW (automatic weapons) man and grenadier. This was a dangerous time for us. With SEALs fighting the mud in a creek bottom, we were tactically very vulnerable.

Katsma, carrying several grenades and an M-60 machine gun with five hundred rounds of 7.62mm linked ammo belted around him, was the first to come. He crossed the muddy bottom with surprising agility considering the weight he was lugging and the awful conditions. However, when he emerged from the hole, he looked just as sloppy as I.

McCollum, the grenadier, with the M-79 grenade launcher and eighty rounds of 40mm HE, was next. He had more trouble, but made it. As he crawled atop the bank, toting gobs of mud on every limb, he looked and smelled much worse than Katsma or me. The nickname Muck certainly fit McCollum at that moment in his hitch.

Mr. Meston crossed next, with Doc Brown behind him. Both carried M-16 rifles and various grenades and flares. Brown also packed the PRC-25 radio.

As Mr. Meston climbed up the bank successfully, Brown found himself floundering in the middle of the creek bed. He fought to free his right leg, which was sunk over the knee in the black mud. Failing in the attempt, he worked