Just Another Day in the Nam
John Cleveland, Lieutenant, US Army, 173rd Airborne Brigade,
Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam, May 1970
We had just completed a mission in the highlands surrounding our Company area of operations. The mission targeted a Viet Cong base camp. The enemy scattered before we could do any significant damage to them but we destroyed the camp and their supplies. I was in charge of First Platoon and we had a fairly long march back to our base camp but at least this leg of the mission was all downhill.
It was late afternoon on a sunny, hot, humid day. The platoon was tired from the long march up into the mountains and we had been moving basically all day. The way back to base camp had us going downhill on a rocky, sandy trail surrounded by light brush. Normally we avoided trails but the Company had used this one earlier in the day in our march up into the highlands and we did not expect trouble.
In our platoon size unit, I was third in line behind the point man and slack man, my normal patrol position.
It happened as we got about three quarters of the way down the slope of this large hill. The “it” was my point man suddenly hollering out Oh Shit! He had hit a trip wire on an enemy booby trap. As he tripped the wire, I could hear the click of a pin pulled on an enemy booby trapped Chinese grenade. I didn’t have time to dive for cover so I basically just fell in place flat on my back and braced for the impact and blast. We waited the longest three seconds of our lives. Then to my direct right about ten feet away, I hear a PFFFFT! In my peripheral vision I see and then smell a small puff of gray smoke. The Chinese grenade failed to go off, it was a dud. In a couple of heartbeats, I had just experienced sheer terror, enormous relief, and then pure joy. The three of us who were in the kill zone got up, looked at each other and then started laughing our asses off. We were alive, not a scratch. It was, as we would say, just another day in the Nam.
Thanks for creating this blog.