Quiet
 

when it got real quite, I mean so quite that your heart beating is to loud, the dark starts to play tricks on you, or it did on me anyway, I sat there and watched a bush and forgot to breath, the bush would move, I swear, and I would breath. In the morning the bush would be just where it was just a few hours ago when shitting your pants was an option. Funny what dark and a bush can do to your mind.
In the morning, somehow the fog of morning and the sliver of sun make getting your pack on a little easier. Then the jokes start and you forget all about that damm bush that moved a few hours ago.
Ron

Pitch black also
 

Down beneath the canopy, but there was a lot of bug and nature noises. until something or somebody moved then it was quiet, real quiet. Your heart sounded like a big drum beat. Then you noticed you weren't breathing. slow breaths very shallow. Then the noises started again. It normally took a good 20 to 30 minutes for your vision to fully adapt to night vision, you learned to look to the side of your eyes because you could see better than straight ahead.

Kept the whole platoon awake all night cause I could hear a mortor team dugging in. No body else could hear the noise I knew was them. We didn't get hit that night

Weird
 

August 5th, 1967 a bunch of bad guys were trying to over run our position. During that morning one of the bad guys threw a frag right in front of our two man fighting position. I got hit with small pieces, one was only John Kerry size, but it did cause a hole in my left eye. The explosion didn?t rip the front of the eyeball but rather cause a tiny hole next to the optic nerve.

Once released from the hospital went back to the field. First night out I pulled guard duty (of course). After an hour or so put the Starlight up to my left eye. I could the damage to the eye. Where I didn?t have any vision - it was black. Weird, very weird.

Stay healthy,
Andy

The quietest, safest night I ever felt in Vietnam was the night we later got a ground attack and partially overrun.

I Woud Kneel
 

During those long dark nights of the soul, I would kneel most of the time to stay awake. Or sit on something sharp. Sure taught you to be still.
You right as rain, Ron, the dark and your imagination cn play some tricks on you.
Don't forget the drugs the Army would load us up on also like codeine and dextroamphetamines--forerunner to meth.
They gave us these things like popcorn if we wantd and I took th dextroamphetamines a few times. Once out in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere to us--to the NVA it was downtown--after about 2 days of uppers, in the middle of the night, I saw my first sgt coming towards me. I was aware at the time it was a hllucintion but was till very real--I actually talked to him, which woke up my buds. We decided to call for evac--can't have the lrrp pointman hallucinating, its well, unlucky. . Course its not he kind of thing you want to put down on a report, thats also unlucky. This was one of the 2 times out of about 30 patrols I was on when we faked a story to get us out of the field. Cooked up a story and then fired off a few magazines apiece, threw some grenades and then called for evac.
I didn't sleep for days afterward. We stopped taking those.
Sorry if this lost the war, i know you other guys tried so hard.
Stay good
James

Yup, sure did think things were moving out there while on LP or on Guard at night. Not only feeling the deep breathing but could sometimes feel all the pulses in my body beating.

You guys are going to laugh at me for this one. after being anchored about 6 miles up the siagon river one night I was standing the mid watch on the bridge when I seen somthing that looked like bubbles coming down the river toward us the moon had just popped out and was full that night . so I tell the officer of the deck what I see and he says he see's it also so we go to general quarters. the man on the bridge 50 opens up and we can't do squat with our big guns because we can't aim that low. well to make a long story short it was just phorpherious in the water glowing with the moon light . I felt pretty stupid but we all made it through the imagianed attack. oh ya you ought to see 300 men scrabbling in the dark for their GQ stations alot of mixups

good training
 

No one got hurt, better safe than sorry, You did nothing wrong and everyone on your boat should have thanked you for your good eye .


I knew a guy that shot a tree stup, 3 times, No one said anything to him except keep shooting the stup if he thinks it should be shot. The dark plays tricks on you and its much better to say Im sorry than to pick up your dead friends.

Ron

I never sat in the bonnies at night but spent a lot of them on the perimeter bunkers. It was hard to stay awake because of driving all day. Sometimes we'd see dim lights like cigerett's on the other side of the wire. I think they were watching us while we were watching for them. One night the bunker to our right called to say they saw people out there in back of the wire. I said you guys are seeing things. Then, oh no they aren't. I started firing and then both bunkers really open up with 60's, m-16's and m-79's. When I first fired, one of them kinda jumped up in the air a little.