Somewhere in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Early morning, and it is already hot. My jungle fatigues are soaked with sweat. I’m cussing the heavy, hot flak vest and the steel helmet. In this heat, the steel helmets are like a crockpot. Your brain just slowly cooks. But intelligence says there is an NVA division somewhere in this stinking jungle, so the CO has handed down the order that flak vests and steel pots will be worn at all times. I can’t be worrying about it. I’ve got to stay focused. I’m walking point this morning.

Nobody, unless he has been here too long and gone completely over the edge, looks forward to walking point. The mayfly—which crawls out of its pupae on the bottom of some trout stream, struggles to the surface, spreads its wings, finds a mate, does its thing, and then dies— has a better life expectancy rate than a point man. The point man usually takes the first hit if he walks into an ambush. And NVA snipers, not usually cool enough to wait and pick off an officer, will fire one shot from their deadly accurate SKS rifles and then disappear. That one shot usually results in another point man going home in a body bag. But booby traps are a point man’s worst nightmare. This jungle is littered with nearly invisible trip wires hooked up to explosives, mostly our own dud artillery rounds. Trip the wire and you are history. So are four or five of the guys following your lead.

There is no wind this morning. Never is in the jungle, it seems. In fact, it feels like there is not even any air to breathe. A branch on a tree 40 yards away sways gently in the breeze. But like I said, there is no breeze. I stop in mid-stride and drop my right hand to my side, palm facing back. Sixteen grunts pass the signal back down the line and all freeze. It might have been a bird. A monkey maybe. But I don’t think so. With the M16 on semi-auto, I very deliberately grid the branch that moved with a hailstorm of tiny bullets. An NVA sniper, still clutching his SKS, falls from the tree and lands with a wet thud on the eternally damp jungle floor.

That night, as we pull yet another ambush, I lay in the mud, the rain falling on my face, and let my mind take me back to a better place and time. Pa and I are walking slowly down one of the cow paths that wind through the woods where we hunt squirrels. No matter how dry and crunchy the leaves on either side may be, cow paths afford quiet going for the squirrel hunter. The plodding hooves of the Holsteins see to that.

Pa is a sitter with the patience of a stone. But at 8 years old, I have not yet developed much patience. I’ve had enough sitting this morning, so finally Pa gives in and we slip quietly down the path, me in the lead, cradling the little single-shot .22 rifle, Pa right on my tail. He sees the branch sway. I do not. Pa taps me on the shoulder, and when I turn to look at him he is pointing at an oak tree 20 yards away. I stare hard for a long time but see nothing and am about to turn to Pa to suggest we move on, when a gray squirrel slides out on the branch. As the gray reaches out for an acorn, I line up the crude iron sights on the squirrel’s head and squeeze the trigger. Pa insists on head shots. “Doesn’t ruin any meat, and the squirrel dies instantly,” he always said. “Besides, if a man can’t hit a squirrel in the head, he should not be carrying a rifle.” At the dull crack of the .22 Short, the only ammunition Pa ever let me use, the squirrel falls from the tree and lands with a thud in the carpet of oak leaves.
•••

Different mountain, different jungle, different day. On point again. A full platoon behind me this time. Early morning. We have been on the move for only a half-hour. As always, my senses are on full alert. I don’t know how to explain it, but in combat all of your senses are heightened to a degree unattainable in any other endeavor I am familiar with.

There is an opening in the jungle ahead of us. An abandoned rice paddy by the looks of it. The jungle is quickly taking the paddy back. These abandoned, overgrown paddies are not unusual. But my gut says something is wrong. The feeling is strong. I have not seen anything, have not heard anything. I have not smelled the smoke of the small fires the NVA sometimes use to cook their rice and brew their tea. But I have come to trust my gut. The platoon comes to a halt behind me. For a minute, maybe two, I snuggle tight to the trunk of a tree alongside the faint trail we have been following. I watch and listen. Nothing. The platoon leader, a young lieutenant fresh out of OTC, moves up alongside me, kneels down, and asks what’s wrong. I don’t know, I tell him, but something is not right. He looks at me like I’m crazy. Then it hits me. There is no sound. Nothing. No birds, no monkeys, not even the green lizards with their familiar two-note call. Nothing is bad I tell the lieutenant. We might be walking into an ambush. Again I can see in his eyes that he thinks I am nuts. The young lieutenant is hell-bent to find action, to rack up body counts. Most of them are, when they first arrive “in-country.” He stands up to wave the platoon forward, and all hell breaks loose as the NVA, unnerved by the long delay, prematurely unleash their ambush from the far side of the clearing. I holler for a medic, but know, even as I do, that it is too late for the new lieutenant.

“Don’t expect to see squirrels as soon as you sit down son,” Pa is telling me. “When you walk into the woods, you disturb the squirrels, the birds, and the rest of the critters. They either leave or they hide. Sometimes it’s so quiet you will swear that nothing exists in the woods, but they are there. They are just waiting to see what happens. If you sit quietly for 10 minutes or so, the critters will forget about you and resume business as usual. Remember, anytime it is quiet in the woods, something is wrong, and it is usually you.”
•••

Another time, my buddy Pete was walking point. I was the slack man, second in line. The slack man’s job is to cover the point man so the point man can focus on spotting booby traps, snipers, or an ambush. Pete and I had both been in-country for a long time. We were both “getting short.” Any grunt will tell you that the shorter you are the more scared you get. Making it to within weeks, or days, of going home and then getting it is every grunt’s worst nightmare. Okay, second worst. The worst is having a booby trap blow off your genitals.

Pete stopped in mid-stride. I automatically snapped the short-barreled pump 12-gauge to my shoulder and scanned both sides of the trail for any movement. Nothing beats a shotgun loaded with buckshot for close-range work. I saw nothing. I glanced at Pete. He was looking down, at the ground in front of his feet. I stepped to his right so that he no longer blocked my view and saw what he saw. The dirt in the trail had been disturbed. Not much. A city boy who had never hunted squirrels probably would never have noticed. But Pete grew up dirt poor in the Appalachians. Squirrels were not something you hunted for fun in Pete’s family. They were dinner.

When your belly is empty you learn to read sign real good. Like recognizing the little holes in the ground where a squirrel will cache an acorn. Only this time the “squirrel” had been wearing Ho Chi Minh sandals and the “acorn” he had buried in the trail was a small mine called a “Bouncing Betty.” Step on a Bouncing Betty and you activate the little sucker. When you take your weight off the mine, the little spring-loaded devil leaps up out of the ground and explodes, usually right about waist high. A young grunt’s worst nightmare.

When I came home from Nam, Pa and I went hunting. My father had served in World War II, so I did not have to tell him anything about combat. Instead, what I did was thank Pa for taking a 6-year-old boy and teaching that boy how to shoot and shoot well. For taking that boy with him to the woods and sharing with him what today we call woodsmanship. Basic training and advanced infantry training prepared me physically and in some ways mentally for what was to follow. But it was the lessons I learned as a squirrel hunter that so very often saved my life.
•••
Gary Clancy served in Vietnam from June 1969 to August 1970, or what he describes as “422 long days and 423 even longer nights.” He served with both the 1st Infantry Division, better known as “The Big Red One,” and with the 198th Light Infantry Brigade.