The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

This young Marine popped into sight out of the Vietnam jungle, maybe 50-60 meters out and away from me, where I sat watching a peaceful tropical morning appear from the top of my sandbag bunker. It was a tranquill morning. And then it wasn’t. I had a locked and loaded M14 in my lap, a stomach that wanted breakfast, and now this startling appearance upsetting my mind.

Because mornings in Vietnam were lovely. Large, moisture-heavy clouds in the sky, their clean whiteness a stark contradiction to the olive-drab green that was everywhere around me; the olive green that was life in the army. I didn’t want to think anything was good about Vietnam, but those non-Monsoon skies sure were. Anyway, the best thing about my 24-hour bunker duty was that the night was over. And I was still there.

Because bad stuff happened at night. Human fear levels ratchet up significantly anyway when there is nothing but black. Combat bases are blackout condition at night. Back  in The World, when and if you think about it, when are you ever away from man-made electrical lighting? Over there? Night is black. 

To make a long story short, it was Christmas. Then. And it’s Christmas now, today. Where old memories come from, I don’t know, but this Marine that popped out of the jungle into my morning so long ago  came back to me last night, and kept me awake again. He does that for me, every once in a while. I say “for me” instead of “to me” because the funny-odd thing about him and all the rest of those memories from over there is that they’ve become old friends. Of a sort, I guess one would say.

They visit me, these old memories. They come. They don’t stay. They’re mine. Enough time has passed that their rough edges have softened, for the most part. Obviously, they and I had a happy ending, because I’m here writing about them. They make me wish I had more answers, but I’ve come to grips with even that. Some experiences just don’t have answers.

So I remember looking over triple-double-single rolls of razor-tipped concertina wire, at this young Marine out there. The little razor blades twinkled when the morning sun struck them just right.  They called it “concertina” wire, because like the little accordion-like instrument that you pull in and out, this wire is unrolled like a large slinky toy, stretched out.

If you wanted to get to me where I sat on top of that bunker, you not only had to get through that wire, you had to also get through the elephant wire, which was more of the razor stuff wired to stakes driven into the earth, about one foot off the ground, in triangle-shaped geometry. Impossible to run through; impossible to crawl under.

Besides, you couldn’t crawl under. We had Claymore mines trip-wired in the elephant wire. They were C-4 explosives with ball bearings embedded in them, pointed out away, toward the jungle. Nasty things. The marine knew they were there, which is why he didn’t come very far out from the jungle, just maybe a dozen meters out into the open grassland they we burned once a month, to make visibility  better.

As a marine, he carried even less stuff than they normally seemed to. Their mentality was, as I understood it at the time, that they didn’t need as much stuff as normal soldiers did. This guy had a soft cap on, an M16 slung under a shoulder, and not much else. Must have had a canteen, but I don’t remember it. I just remember thinking, like……what? Like, what’s he doing there? Like, where’s he coming from? Like, here’s another kid, thinks he’s going to live forever. By this point, I was 25 years old, and it had become apparent to me that not everyone did. Bunker duty, which was 24 hours for three of us, two on, four off, drove me crazy because the 18- and 19-year-olds would go to sleep up on top. No worries for them.

And now this guy. Quang Tri Combat Base was spending most of its time at this point in full alert status. And now this guy out of the jungle?

“Where’s the main gate?” he shouted at me. I pointed left, and replied: “About two klicks that way.” And with that, he turned and disappeared into the jungle. About one minute later, a major burst of small-arms fire in the jungle more or less in his direction of travel let loose. I heard the ChiCom AK-47 chop; the quicker softer M16.

This is one of those memories. What’s different about it? Maybe I’d like to know he made it. Maybe he’s somewhere in The World, a grandfather, like me. Maybe it was Christmas for him then. And maybe it’s Christmas for him now. Somewhere.

Maybe.