A War Story

There were five of us on the patrol boat. A Skipper, a corpsman, a navigator and two gunners of which I was the front gunner. With my position in the brow I could help navigate like I used to do in the swamps back home. I was seventeen years old, and thought I had the world by the tail, loved rock and roll, and thought I was the best dancer ever to walk out of the swamps of Louisiana. I had the feeling that bullets could bounce off me and had no fear entering combat. The guys used to laugh at me for my ability to make jokes during the skirmishes we got into.

It was early in the morning and we arrived at a village along the river. The village had been a place that was friendly to us for at least the last six months I had been in Vietnam. The village wasn’t too big and spread out a little because it had no running water, or pluming of any type. It seems that it had already seen ten generations of Vietnamese people grow up there. On this day it was all over.

We entered the village and it had no signs of life as we walked through the streets. All of the people seemed to be missing. That was until we reached the forest end of the village. We found a foul smell, One that haunts you in your dreams on the darkest of nights. It was a smell that could never be forgotten and one that is recognized in an instant as burning flesh, and we found the villagers.

In that instant we heard the sound of hand grenades exploding in the vicinity of our river boat followed by the roar of the fuel tanks exploding. At that we took off running into the nearby forest. Tropical plant leaves whipping at our faces as we ran, and then we found a trail. We stopped to take bearings and heard a large contingency chasing us so off we went. We hit some jig jag courses and tried dodging between trails in an attempt to throw them off our course. It seemed no matter what we did, they could track us.

In a short course the bullets started flying. One of the guys fell right away and didn’t move anymore. We began to run faster and faster trying to get further away, but that didn’t happen. It seemed the faster we moved the faster they moved. The four of us stopped to set up a firing line to try and lessen their numbers and engaged them in a short fire fight. Then the three of us were on the move again and after a few hundred yards there were only two of us left.

We ran into a open field covered with low grass and I was then on my own, My weapon was empty and I had no more ammo to put into it. All I had was my jungle knife and my empty weapon and they had me surrounded. They had circled me and it looked like one hundred or more of them and I was in the middle. So I figured I had them right where I wanted them and then charged!!!!!!!!

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What do you mean “What Happened?”

THEY KILLED ME.

Did you think I was going to tell you a real war story? Those are boring.

As is said, the difference between a war story and a fairy tale is that a fairy tale starts with "Once upon a time" and war stories start with "This is no shit". That's where the difference ends...