Free Death in the Jungle by Gary Smith

gooks.
    Fortunately, we made it all the way to the extraction point with nothing more to show than a souvenir skull and five million mosquito-inflicted puncture wounds forthe seven of us. Four and a half million of them belonged to BT2 McCollum, our grenadier, who hadn’t worn his long johns. His facial expressions as we awaited the LCPL were a sight to behold, and his incessant scratching of his thighs told the whole story. He’d been had, royally.
    Twenty minutes later, though, we were all on board the Navy boat and were headed back to the barracks at Nha Be Naval Base. I glanced from one SEAL to another, all seated and chattering; strict noise discipline was off. Each guy was wet and dirty, caked with mud. Filthy as they were, they were downright ugly, but it was a good-looking ugly to me. They were the bravest and toughest men in the world. They were my teammates, my buddies, my brothers. I would fight to the death for any one of them.
    Personally, I was feeling really good, almost euphoric. I couldn’t wait to grab a shower, clean my gear, oil Sweet Lips, eat some vittles, and hit the rack. The thought of it all made me smile.
    Mission One was a complete success. Seven men out, seven came back, all alive and well. Only McCollum would argue the point. Scratch, scratch.

CHAPTER TWO
Mission Five
    “That is at bottom the only courage demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.”
    Rainer Maria Rilke,
Letters to a Young Poet
    DATE: 3, 4 September 1967
    TIME: 030315H to 041030H
    COORDINATES: YS143736
    UNITS INVOLVED: Foxtrot, 1st Squad, MST-3
    TASK: Line reconnaissance and river ambush
    METHOD OF INSERTION: LCM-6
(Mighty Moe)
    METHOD OF EXTRACTION: LCM-6
    TERRAIN: Mangrove swamp
    MOON: None
    WEATHER: Cloudy
    SEAL TEAM PERSONNEL:
    Lt. Meston, Patrol Leader/Rifleman, M-16
    RM2 Smith, Ass’t Patrol Leader/Point, shotgun
    MM2 Funkhouser, Automatic Weapons, M-60
    BT2 McCollum, Grenadier, M-79
    ADJ3 Bucklew, Radioman/Rifleman, CAR-15
    ENS Khan (LDNN SEAL), Rifleman, M-16
    AZIMUTHS: 000 degrees
    ESCAPE: 000 degreesCODE WORDS: Challenge and Reply—Two numbers total 10
    There I was, back on point with Sweet Lips. I was moving through the mud of a mangrove swamp on my fifth mission. In the previous two weeks I’d been point man on three other missions; all had been uneventful. I wasn’t complaining. I was glad we’d had the good fortune to get a few placid missions under our belts; we had needed to get our feet wet, which we’d done in every sense of the phrase.
    Mr. Meston liked me on point. He’d noticed my country-boy instincts and knew my Texas upbringing, so he’d put his faith in me. I’d reciprocated that trust. Since the first couple of missions, Mr. Meston had settled down and impressed me with his decision making. He was a well-balanced man, cautious yet creative, and not afraid to hear new ideas. My kind of leader.
    I glanced back at Meston. He was five meters behind me, just visible in the first light of day. Behind him, invisible to me, was Bucklew with the radio, then followed Funkhouser, Khan, who was a Vietnamese SEAL, and McCollum. All of them were likeable guys, especially McCollum.
    McCollum was a jovial fellow and had turned out to be the life of the party whenever there was a party, which was every available night. At Nha Be Naval Base, the Seabees had erected a prefabricated twenty-by-forty-foot shelter with a semicircular arching roof of corrugated metal. It was a Quonset hut over a concrete floor. Inside was a plywood bar, a large refrigerator for storing beer, a few tables with chairs, and a beat-up piano stolen from Saigon. It was there where many SEALs hung out, and where McCollum sat at the piano and sang endless off-color English and Australian ballads. Our platoon had nicknamed him “Muck,” whichwas simpler to say than McCollum, and is British for “engaging in aimless activity,” which was what hanging around the