Stripes

I enlisted in the Marines after HS graduation from St Paul Central in 1968, just as my Dad & brother Bill had.. needed a break, so the Corps took a chance, & it was love at 1st sight (just a USMC thing) i had little idea where Vietnam was till i got in country. 

At 18 Nam was part of life. Bill was already in Nam, so ya do what ya should.... you adapt, overcome & survive by telling yourself this is it.  

Spent my tour in the mountains, villes, paddies as Marines say "in the Bush". As a grunt i saw Life then death.. ya just had to survive + knowing you had each others back was an exta feeling of survival.... Semper Fi Do or Die. 

What i wasn't prepared for were bugs, leeches, centepides, mosquitoes even havin a tunnel collapse & trap me from my head to the middle of my back... in reality, Vietnam wanted 2 & did kick your butt.. on the nite of 5/19/70, was on a 3man KT into an area we called mortor valley, you knew the vc/nva owned the nite & they were on the move, so we just lay & wait. 

This nite the valley was alive with activity..artillery rounds exploding into the mountain, there was a firefight on the otherside of the valley.

I was on 1st alert (watch) & with a full moon your vision wasn't that strained.. b4 dark I would pick out points in the valley & get a mindset so your eyes didn't play mind games which in turn would raise the fear level. 

Around 9:30 I spotted movement headed towards our position, as I watched, waited & stayed focused on that area.. it got closer, you would loose site because of the tall grass & thicket in the valley.

When i did see what was headed right at our position, an unknown feeling hit me.. what I saw was a large tiger... then I lost site of the tiger in the valleys terrain.. so i stretched my head up for a closer look in that area, then I saw the tiger in a lowcrawl... at that point there was no other feeling but survival.. i guess he was within 25ft when I opened up. 

By this time, Dave & Scrap were up & shooting, at the same time there was automatic weapon fire from behind us in the valley. Capt St Clair was on the prc25 (radio) telling us we had compromised our position...told the 6 we had a tiger come into our site & had to shoot... as all this is going on the tiger is groaning but unable to move... so as Scrap covered our rear, Dave & me had to put the tiger out of his misery, Capt told us that we better have killed a tiger cause another sq in the valley was now at 100%...but in the same breath he wanted that tiger brought up the hill in the morning... in AM a husky came & brought us & the tiger to see the Capt then we had some rations, had a pic taken, then went back into the valley to find another spot for that nites ambush site...