It’s sometimes hard to win a land war

By Alan Linda | The Daily Journal

Published Tuesday, November 13, 2007

I pulled back on the wrist rocket slingshot, and let go into the tall grass behind the bunker line in Vietnam with about a quarter ounce of lead solder. In the darkness of night, I heard the ripping sound of the more or less round ball as it tore through the bamboo grass. I immediately picked up the starlight scope to see if my shot had found its mark.

It hadn’t. I loaded another round and aimed at the last place I had seen in the scope the shimmering outline of a human crawling up behind me, maybe two house lengths away. It was hot. Sticky jungle humid, and miserable. I let the second round go, and checked again with the night scope.

Again I had missed. I saw through the scope that the person I was shooting at was frozen motionless, trying to figure out what that sound was. So I was missing pretty close, judging from the reaction. I readied another round.

OK, you’ve figured out by now that this isn’t just another hunting story. In fact, it was 1969, I was pulling 24-hour bunker duty at Quang Tri Combat Base, about 8 klicks south of the DMZ, and it was about midnight. In other words, dark.

I was on top of what really looked more like a child’s fort than anything else. It was a bunker made out of sandbags, like everything else in my world there, with a three-foot wall around the top, where one might expect Charley to come calling, should he be able to get through the concertina wire, the elephant wire, and the Claymore mines that were woven into the entire formation.

I at that point didn’t care much about what was going on in the jungle out front; I was more interested in Sgt. Rust, a lifer whose sole goal seemed to be to catch someone sleeping on bunker duty, steal his rifle, and report this to the officer of the guard.

Having done so, he would apparently feel that his efforts toward the war were achieved.

He was a jerk, an uneducated, ignorant lifer, a lot like most of the noncommissioned officers that the army was full of during that time. They’d feel good to put in 20 and get out an E-7.

They’d be lucky to get out an E-6. You may not know much about army rank, but I’ll tell you, neither of those life goals set the mark very high. These were the leaders upon whom we bet our lives, and I found out very quickly that getting out of Vietnam alive depended upon figuring out how these guys were most likely to get you killed and avoid it.

I was at the moment enjoying avoiding Sgt. Rust. See, the way bunker duty worked was three soldiers looked at a roster, saw their names up there, and reported for duty at 5 p.m. During that time, you were up on top of the bunker two hours, then off for four. We ate the old World War 2 C-rations that we were issued, and only left the bunker to defecate or urinate, which we did in that tall grass behind us.

During the four hours you were off, you depended upon the guy on top to stay awake, the sum result of which kept you from getting your throat cut like happened to the soldier three bunkers down from the one I was on a few nights previously.

No, that wasn’t Sgt. Rust. They found the concertina wire cut, along with the kid’s throat, and a satchel charge that hadn’t gone off behind the bunker that housed the officer of the guard.

Of course, when the alarm was sounded in the middle of the night, suddenly everyone is trigger happy and very excited, and you’re just as liable to get yourself shot as you are to shoot the enemy. It’s not a good situation.

One of the pieces of equipment that I, due to a top secret civilian clearance, was assigned to work on was the starlight scope, and in the process, I had assembled my own. A major no-no, should I get caught with it.

I let another slingshot round go into the grass, loaded another one quick as I could, and let that one rip too. I grabbed the scope and checked out Sgt. Rust. Once again, he was confused, looking around. Boy, if he only knew I had this scope, he’d have busted me back to LBJ in a heartbeat. Lon Bien jail. Bad place.

I hit him in the tin pot with the next shot, and he stood up and took off running. I later heard that he was heard to say as he was drinking in the NCO hootch that he’d been hit by a spent round.

I wrote the folks for some real steel balls for the slingshot. I figured I’d at least have something to defend myself with, if Charley came through.

All our ammunition was locked up. It’s hard to win a land war in southeast Asia when the ammo is locked up.

Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.