Back In Nam

Back in Nam

By: Bill Marriott

Any story that starts with the phrase "back in nam" arouses vivid pictures of helicopters and napalm. And this one is no different, now to give you an idea of the country the people were nice except for the Vietcong, who were willing to do anything to stop you. The drugs there were cheap, a bag of reefer, and a bag is a black trash bag, ran about twenty dollars. In a troop, about eight to ten guys, one had to carry a mine detector. This weighed about twenty-eight pounds and was a quick was to get a backache after a thirty-clik hike, so we traded off. There were only seven guys in my troop as frank got blow up from a frag the day before. Now that you have an idea of the circumstances we were in a trail on the Mekong Delta going to Saigon, or so we thought.

It was a sunny day but still wet from the day before and we knew there was a group of Vietcong guerillas a few cliks up the trail, we called them gooks, so we decided to huddle down for a while and wait for them to pass. We had just finished digging our foxholes and were fixing our c-rations when we saw them up the trail. I had just crouched down when Johnny pulled the pin from a frag. A frag won't go off until twelve seconds after the trigger is released. Just then I heard the click from a mine in the trail. As the man stepped off of it the thing went off like a meteor hitting a cow. When this happens they call it pink mist because there is nothing left but smoke and blood mist. The other two men got up and I pulled out my pistol. One died from a .45 to the head and the other from two to the chest. We then finished our rations and were on our way.

We were about half way to Saigon when it was starting to get dark. Again we dug our foxholes and settled down for the night. No lights were allowed because they would be beacons for air raids. In the middle of the night mortar shells awaked me. We were in a rice patty and I started to bury myself in the mud the shield me from shrapnel and debris. They were raining down everywhere and that was the only thing to do. Rice stalks are hollow and supply air quite nicely and one quickly became a breathing tube. It was a long night and luckily we all survived. They must have fired nearly fifty shells that night.

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