Vietnam 68-69

Leech Island, 1st Platoon, on patrol by ourselves, as usual.  Now Leech Island is a good name for the place we were.  It was double canopy jungle, deep, dark and damp, but not an island.  We were on a well worn trail that wove it’s way through the jungle.  The jungle growth along the trail contained wait-a-minute vines, and oh yeah leeches.  The hazy light filtered through the mist and trees.  My squad (3rd) was on point this particular morning and I was about fourth in our echelon.  We came to a semi open area and the trail made a sharp turn to the right.  As we turned the corner the point man saw an NVA on the trail ahead of us.  He immediately raised his M-16 and fired as the man turned and fled.  The bullet hit a low hanging tree branch between the two men and them kept running.  All our point man heard when he pulled the trigger again was a click, his M-16 had jammed.  I saw a flash of a dark figure as he disappeared into the jungle.  I couldn’t get a clear shot and didn’t want to hit any nearby branches with an HE round, like the M-16 bullet had.  There could have been worse consequences if that happened.  We examined the bullet whole in the tree after we made sure that any NVA had left the area.  The branch was large enough that the bullet didn’t go all the way through.  I thought about how lucky that NVA soldier was and wondered if he had more luck to make it through the war in one piece.

On occasion we would encounter giant centipedes when we were on missions in the jungle.  I had never seen an insect so big in all my life.  They weren’t hard to miss because of their size.  It’s colors were a brownish red, purple and dark yellow and it’s body and legs had a soft plastic like sheen.  I would say that the ones we saw were a good six inches long and they looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

One morning we were breaking camp and getting ready to move out.  One of the guys in my squad was putting on his fatigue top, when all of a sudden he let out a yell and threw his it off.  He explained that something had bit or stung him on the arm.  Someone else picked up his fatigue and started shaking it.  Out fell one of those huge centipedes and everybody watched it crawl away.  Anyway, the guy that was bitten by it was alright, the centipedes were not poisonous.  Needless to say we all started checking before we put any of our clothing back on.  Click the link below to see a picture of a giant Vietnamese centipede that looks very much like the ones we saw in the jungle.      http://www.swiftinverts.com/pix/Vietnamesecentipede1.jpg

Val Wuthrich with full pack. Ready for another mission in the jungle.

Ready for another mission in the jungle.  Helicopters will be coming to pick us up and fly us into the jungle somewhere.  I’m not sure which fire base we were departing from.  You can see hills in the background.  I’m sure we weren’t to far from either the DMZ or the A Shau valley.