MIKE COMPANY RETURNS FROM THE BUSH

Mike Company had been in the bush for a couple of weeks and you could tell they were glad to be back in the rear. You could hear them coming. They were hooping and hollering and making alot of noise. They seemed glad to see us new recruits. The squad leader found out that I was assigned to his gun squad so he took me over to the tent where the rest of the team was and introduced me to them. I was first introduced to the team leader Mike Coleman, a lanky, black haired Louisianan who wore military glasses. We shook hands. Then he introduced me to the gunner who was from Texas. They called him Tex. Then I was introduced to the A-gunner whose name was Etscorn. He was from the mid-west somewhere. The first thing I learned from them was to forget everything they taught you from text books back in the States. "This war isn't run like they teach you out of books", they would tell me. Things were changing in the war and you had to adapt to the situation. Mike and Tex had been up north in the battle of Kai Sahn so they had a little experience and knew what they were talking about. Etscorn was fairly new to the team. He didn't have as much experience as them but he was pretty knowedgable and taught me quite a bit.

Mike Company was going to stay in the rear for a few weeks so they got to eat in the chow hall and take showers and see a flick every night when ever they had them. I was going to start learning how to stand guard at night in the bunkers around the perimeter. I was kind of glad to finally get to be involved in somethng rather then just going through the motions. Training was over. This was the real thing.

STANDING GUARD

As night fell I was to man a bunker with Etscorn. We were assigned to a bunker on the south side of the perimeter. It was expected that we were going to get hit that night so we had to be extra alert. For the first couple of hours we sat around and talked while keeping an eye out on the front of our position. Etscorn began to fill me in on what it was like out in the bush and gave me pointers on what I should and shouldn't do, and ways to keep alive.

We started our watches at 10 PM. He would take the first watch. Then after 2 hours he would wake me up and I would stand watch for 2 hours. We did this until 2 guys were sent over to help us out. One of them was a guy that I went to machine gun school with. We recognized each other and renewed our friendship. We filled each other in on what we knew about some of the other guys we trained with. We continued our watches until daylight the next morning when we all went back to our tents. Nothing of significance happened that first night. Only a rat crawled over my legs during the night while I was trying to sleep.