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

Funkhouser and Ty escorted the woodcutter onto one of the two LCPLs. Lieutenant Meston and Brown followed. McCollum, Flynn, and I stepped onto the other steel-hulled landing craft. The two boats backed away from the shore, the bows swung downstream, then the engines kicked into forward gear.

I took a final look at the small boy. He was still standing in his sampan, peering my way, and I saw him stick a piece of gum in his mouth. He flashed another smile as the rain tore at his tattered clothing.

We pulled away, and I threw a sharp salute at the boy. I froze his image in my mind, then closed my eyes and turned around.

“Chao, little fella,” I whispered into the wind.

At the Nha Be base, I escorted the woodcutter to Marine First Lieutenant Winsenson, an old mustang (an officer who came up through the ranks), who was to handle the interrogation. After telling Mr. Winsenson the details of the man’s capture, I ate at the chow hall, grabbed a shower, then stretched out in my bed until 1630 hours.

The rest felt good but it was not very long. We were to board an LCPL at 1700 hours and head for another ambush site on the Tac Ong Nghia River about eight hundred meters southwest of the previous site.

I put on fresh long johns and camouflage clothing, fed Bolivar some insects, then grabbed my gear and walked to the dock. The rain had stopped, thank goodness. If it didn’t start up again, I’d stay dry for another hour before we inserted. Then I’d be up to my neck in water, as we were inserting at high tide. That’s when I’d wish I were a duck and not a schmuck weighted down with tons of gear.

We boarded the LCPL with the same personnel, along with the addition of PR1 Pearson and his M-79 grenade launcher, BT2 Moses, and ADJ2 Markel, both carrying M-16s. That gave us ten men this time. I welcomed the added firepower since we were going back fairly close to a compromised area.

The late afternoon was muggy, and I was glad when the boat got going. I took off my hat to let the air rush over my head as we sped along the Long Tau River. During the hour-and-a-half ride, I contemplated the usual preinsertion topics: life and death. The topic sentence for the first was “Gary Roger Smith is alive and well right now.” For the second, “Gary Roger Smith may be dead within the hour.”

Since I liked the first topic sentence much better than the second, I’d prepared well to keep the truth of it perpetual. Sweet Lips was my companion, and I was loaded down with ammunition, grenades, claymore mines, flares, food, and water. I was prepared for living. Other people would have to die from time to time for me to live; so dictated a thing called war. I had a strong feeling someone would die that night. My instincts told me this. But my will to live told me it wasn’t gonna be me. And I intended to help make sure it wouldn’t be any of my teammates.

Since a dry boat ride was a lot more enjoyable than a waterlogged recon, the scheduled hour-and-a-half trip seemed to end in half the time.

Mr. Meston called out for us to lock and load. That meant the fun was over and the ferocity would begin. As the LCPL slowed, I moved to the starboard side of the bow. When the coxswain cut the engine to just above an idle, I got ready to insert. Lieutenant Meston, Brown, and Flynn collected behind me. The other men grouped on the port side.

As the bow touched into the branches of a nipa palm tree, Lieutenant Meston told me to go. I tossed the cargo net over the bow and climbed down it. I let go and dropped into almost five feet of cool water, and my first thought was, “Thank God I made the riverbank!” If I had fallen short, I would be blowing bubbles where the barracuda and stinging jellyfish played.

Without pause, I waded several paces ahead, making room for the other men to enter the deep water. I heard them splashing behind me as I moved around nipa palm branches, keeping my eyes on the swampland before me. Feeling my way with my legs and feet, every part of me was underwater except my head and neck. All of my gear, and even Sweet Lips, took the wet route. But I’d done this before: I’d gone where no ordinary soldier would go, and that was the key to our success as SEALs. No one was expecting us in the places where they ran into us, which gave us the greatest weapon of them all: the element of surprise.

Our objective was to set up an overnight ambush just a hundred and fifty meters northwest of our point of insertion. That was where a small stream branched off the Tac Ong Nghia. Mr. Meston, using his compass, pointed the way. I looked at my wrist compass for a rough azimuth and eyed the top of a tree standing higher than the rest. With this for my landmark, I headed out. The others fell in line behind me.

Walking in the water was tough. The palms were thick, making for slow going. I found no high spots at all, which kept the water lapping from our waists to our Adam’s apples without relief. Darkness was coming fast, bringing with it the eerie atmosphere I’d experienced in the early morning. A ghoulish, ominous ambience surrounded me, and it was beautiful in a swampy sort of way.

Since we discovered no high ground on which to stop and rest, Mr. Meston kept us going until we reached the spot where the small stream should have been. We could see a thirty-meter-wide finger extending through the swamp where no vegetation showed above the deep