SNAKES & THE DARK
Snakes are cute, cuddly and make great pets.... No, wait a minute, that's not it. Many people have an unreasonable fear of snakes and it turns out that I am one of them. It's well-earned.
As a kid in Texas, we had rattle snakes, coral snakes and a variety of aggressive, non-poisonous snakes. When I was 6, my step father did battle with some kind of non-poisonous, six foot snake. We were puling out the gravel road from our property. He stopped the car and told me to run back and get a shovel. I brought it back and he got out. I still remember the clang sound of that snake's head hitting the shovel as he struck. I was only 6, but this snake was a monster and he was pissed. He died defending his ground and later became a belt. Another time, I stepped on a coral snake and discovered that I had extraordinary vertical leap ability. In college, the guy across the hall had 5 water snakes in a big box. They weren't poisonous, but they were not happy snakes. One morning, he casually shouted to no one in particular that the snakes were gone. I found one as it struck me from my closet.
While reading the Stars and Stripes one day in the RVN, there was a picture of some Army squad down in the delta, holding a giant snake, something like seventeen feet long, 300 pounds. I remember thinking, "I'm glad I haven't seen any snakes, this place is weird enough". Of course, that started my month of snakes.
The first was coming back from a shower, walked through the S-1 hooch (when 1/1 up with 1stMar Reg), stepped on the first of two steps, when a snake came from under the hooch, right at my feet. I shouted and awkwardly threw a K-bar at him as he slithered away. No danger, but now I have knowledge that not only are the snakes in Viet Nam, they are inside the compound and under my house. great.
Within a few days after that, I was out with the Battalion CP. Normally, the CP is surrounded by a company of Marines, so there is no perimeter responsibility. This night, me and couple of others did have responsibility for an area. We were dug in next to a rice paddy dike. The paddy had been long abandoned and thick bamboo was growing along the dike. I don't remember who set us there, but the orders were "don't let anybody come through here". Sure enough, in the middle of the night, there are noises coming from the other side of the paddy. Viet Nam is a dark place. If there's no moon, it's just black. You can't see anything, like being in a cave. This night there was no moon. We all jump to the dike in a prone position with our rifles poking through the bamboo. Everyone has a full adrenaline pump. We don't really know where we are in relation to anyone else, who's in charge, or what to do because we can't see anything, just the rustling 20 meters away. Oh boy, this is it, first fire fight! Just then a giant flare comes up behind us. Where the noise was coming from was just outside the area of the flare, but we were fully exposed. What's the rule if you get caught in a flare? Oh yeah, freeze, movement is easily picked up under flares. Meanwhile, out of the corner or my eye, I see a snake coming through the bamboo about seven feet to my left. The flare goes down and now it's dark again. Another flare comes up and he's still coming my way, about a foot from the top of the dike. He was about a foot long and a little thicker than a finger. When the second flare went down, I started sliding back until I had a the minimum grip you can have on an M16 stock and still feel like you have control of it. As the third flare came up, I am less concerned about the noises that have now stopped and more worried about what kind of snake this is. I watch as this snake goes through my front sight assembly and continue through the bamboo on down the line. We stayed awake all night waiting for trouble to start, but it never did. I was on the right-hand end of the line and nobody else saw that snake.
My final snake episode was when I was again out with the Battalion CP. I was sleeping under a shelter half hooch with an 18 year old Corporal who had been in country about two weeks. This was his first time out. Most of his Marine Corps career was spent in Vietnamese language school. We were about 40 feet from an Amtrac that all the comm gear in it. I was sound asleep. Everybody eventually develops and 'instant on capability'. Regardless of how deep asleep you are, you are instantly alert at any number of things. It's discreet. Outgoing rounds, people laughing, helicopters landing don't normally disturb sleep. Other noises or feelings put weapons in your hands and give you two steps in the right direction before you know you're awake. Your body just knows. I instantly awoke, clutching my utility trousers with my left hand, right at the lower pocket on my left pant leg. I have a death grip on a snake, inside my trousers on the outside of my left thigh. I have what I think and hope is the head in my hand, because the other end is flipping around on my bare leg inside the trousers. I start kicking the new guy who finally wakes up. I tell him to take of my boots. I told him in a low, clear tone, with a hint of this is an important thing to do. He started of with "why do you want your boots". I had to use the clenched teeth, "take my boots off, NOW" to get him to do it. I took the trousers off and threw them as far as I could. Again it was Viet Nam dark and there was not going to be any dealing with the snake. I standing there, naked from the waist down, thinking, "do these bastards travel in pairs", when every mosquito in the grid square discovers there is fresh meat. I had another pair of utilities in my pack. At first light, I cautiously retrieved the original trousers.
Now I'm quite comfortable with the dark. If I'm home alone, I usually don't even turn on the lights. I can navigate my house in total darkness. I still don't like snakes.
