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In the timeline of American presence in Vietnam, the perimeter bunkers of Tay Ninh were ancient structures. They had been built maybe three or four years before my unit arrived, when the Army first established the base camp as a plug in the bottle of infiltration from Cambodia into III Corps, and Saigon. They were big, hulking affairs, half-buried, with earth piled up around a structure of heavy timbers, covered with two or three layers of sandbags. You entered from the rear, through a zig-zag grenade baffle built of shoulder-high sandbag walls, and found room inside to stand up. Probably space for three or four troops, and even a wooden bench built into the back wall as a sleeping platform. The front view/firing port looked out on the razor wire and mines laying across avenues of approach. The bunkers' age meant that they had been reaccepted as part of the landscape, as new homes for the wildlife of the area. Something of which I was not aware, but upon which I would soon become educated. Once enough of the Battalion's tanks had been broken by the jungle, we were pulled back from the Cambodian border to Tay Ninh for maintenance and R&R. The Post Commander immediately put all of our platoons on rotation for perimeter guard duty. Although this deprived us of much needed sleep, it was probably a safer location than the barracks we had been given. The enemy's mortars and rockets were targeted on our barracks. And they had frightening accuracy. When my recon platoon's turn came up, I used a borrowed jeep to distribute the men among four bunkers. I then returned to the main one, where our radio was, to pull watch. Until about 9:00 p.m., the four of us assigned to this bunker sat up on top in lawn chairs, shooting the breeze and casually manning the M60 machine gun. Since I wanted to get some sleep before pulling my early morning watch, I went below about that time to stretch out on the board bunk. I had a flashlight, but was determined not to use it. The light could be seen through the front viewport. A perfect aiming point like that would make us all nervous. The grenade baffle shut out all light from the rear. Consequently, I stepped into pitch darkness. I knew the sleeping platform was to my left, and started shuffling sideways, to lay down. As my leg came in contact with the boards, I stopped. There was a noise in the bunker. And a smell. (Damn, damn, my stomach is tightening again. It never fails.) The noise was a rustling, but a sharp, strange, clicking kind of rustling. It wasn't coming from any one point, but seemingly from everywhere in the bunker. I couldn't ignore it, I couldn't just throw myself down on the bunk. Things were not right. I had to see what was up. So I turned on the flashlight. It showed the bunk, the walls, and every flat surface writhing with the movement of huge Asian cockroaches. They were thick on the bunk where I had been about to lay down, and were actually dripping from the ceiling. They were moving, and clicking against each other, and sending out their evil cockroach smell. For me, it was like the scene from 1984 where Winston is put in a cell with rats, his greatest fear. I grunted and backed out of the bunker. And immediately heaved up my dinner. Panting and gasping, I leaned limply against the sandbags. When I finally had a grip on my stomach again, I wiped the tears from my eyes and climbed back up to the top of the bunker. "Hey, ELTee, I thought you were going to sleep." "No, there're some cockroaches down there. I think I'll be sleeping in the jeep." "Ah, cockroaches, jeez, I hate them. That's nasty. Cockroaches." We weren't allowed to simply abandon the inside of the bunker to the bugs, however. No more than five minutes later, we noticed movement topside. The roaches were swarming out of the sandbag cracks and crevices, going to the edge of the bunker, and flying off! Flying cockroaches! No, no, this wasn't right. With all we had to go through, with all we had to endure, not flying cockroaches. We sat there, on the top of the bunker, staring to the front, looking for bad guys to come through the wire, while cockroaches crawled over our feet and legs, and flew off into the night. Where the hell were they going? What were they doing - what was so urgent that they had to go flying off like that? Were they going to a cockroach Lovefest? We fervently prayed that if that were the explanation, they died after sex. A painful death, with their little cockroach weenies ripped out by the roots. And that all the girl cockroaches were ugly, and just laid there like lumps, checking the clock occasionally. Uhrawh, monster flying cockroaches. It just wasn't right. | ||
© 2001 by Rick Whitaker | ||
