Being very young man in Vietnam, we did some crazy things. I remember one day, some soldier pulled the pin on a hand grenade and handed it to a “cherry” (new guy). He looked at the grenade in his hand seeing the pin was missing, and wrongly believed it would blow up. Hence, he threw it, instantly hit the huge water bladder, blew a hole into it, and they lost all their water on tock. The cherry didn’t get in trouble, but the man that handed him the grenade without the pin did.

We had this skinny black soldier that came over from Alpha company; he had trouble with someone in the alpha company, so we traded our problem soldier in charlie company for theirs, both companies hoping they made a better deal. I don’t remember his name; he was wounded soon after this incident. The second morning he was in the company, we found a little snake that I swear was the ugliest meanest looking little snake you ever saw; the soldier that caught it was an expert on snakes, so we all handled it. The black soldier was on guard, and I was the next man, so I stayed awake because it was almost my turn to releave him. The snake soldier takes the snake and puts it into the boot of the black soldier’s just for safekeeping; he “says” and goes to sleep. The following day the black soldier putting on his boot got the scare of his life. The snake had found safety in the front toe section of the soldier’s boot; when he put his foot into the boot, the snake bit him repeatedly; when his foot came back out of the boot with the snake biting it, he was screaming so loud it woke up HO CHI Minh in Hanoi. The soldier was so traumatized that Captain had to send him on the med-vac to ensure the snake wasn’t poisoned. Sometimes you can’t win.

Jumping from height to great, I made a habit of exiting the chopper quickly when the LZ was hot, and I would ride on the strut of the helicopter and jump off when we got close to the ground. My rack sack and m-60 machine gun, and ammo were 150 pounds plus. Riding in a chopper going into hot LZ with rockets tracers and the sound of bullets hitting the side of the bird scares the hell out of you. Once going in, the bullet killed the door gunner and wounded some soldiers. I jumped only to realize we were a long way from the ground, maybe 50 or so feet I didn’t have time to measure. Going down, I realized my mistake because it seemed to take forever. I hit the ground and sunk into the mud up to my waist. The other problem was I was amongst the enemy so that either side could kill me. In confusion, they ran right past me without a second look or care.(I had no way to move it took two men to pull me out.) My biggest problem was our American side, with our artillery falling like rain. I survived, but I wrote a story on this in the past.

I will write some more later. GOD BLESS