Glancing down at his watch, he saw that it was two thirty in the morning. Keeping the luminous dial turned inward, he yawned and ever so slowly brushed the mosquitos away from his face. It was a force of habit to do so because they were ferocious. He was sweating in the ninety-degree heat and no mosquito could land on him. It was a common joke among his buddies that a mosquito would come in for a landing and slide right off.
Tonight was his turn to man the listening post out in front of the camp’s perimeter. He had done it before and knew his way back through the razor-wire defenses. He wanted no part of it after he saw what happened to a buddy who got spooked and tried to run through it. He had bled out before the medics could get it stopped.
Now he was out there all by himself with orders not to reveal his position. He had his pistol, knife, and radio and that was it. Not much to defend yourself with if the VC attacked.
There was only a sliver of a moon in the sky so it was almost pitch black. It was easy for his imagination to take over because every little sound could be a VC stalking him.
One day last week his best buddy, Will, was at a listening post. He never reported in and they found him with his throat slit. It shook him up and it also made him mad. He hated the Vietnamese and didn’t trust any of them.
He was struggling to keep his eyes open when he heard it. There was something or somebody out there. He could sense it.
Adrenaline rushing, now he was wide awake, his eyes searching through the darkness for what it was.
The night birds stopped their calling and all he heard was the constant buzzing hum of mosquitos. He thought about calling in and decided against it. All it would do was cause the spotlights to be lit and he would be exposed. He would also receive a tongue-lashing from the sergeant. That was the last thing he wanted. So, he sat there on pins and needles. To say he was afraid would be an understatement.
He knew something was out there. Every fiber of his being screamed it at him. Taking the safety off his Browning, he leaned forward, and then he was gone.
At daybreak, they went searching for him. What they found was startling. At the edge of his post, they found big cat tracks in the mud. A pool of blood was at the bottom of the listening post along with his Browning and radio.
A trail, where something had been drug led off into the jungle. A search party was formed and in a few minutes they found him, or what was left of him. One of the men found long, orange hairs by the corpse.
“Tiger?” one of the men asked.
“Looks like it.”
“How many does that make?”
“Three was the last I heard.”
They wrapped him in a blanket and carried him back to the outpost. Not a word was said along the way. Every man was deep in thought, knowing their time was coming to sit alone in the listening post.
Fighting the Viet Song was bad enough. Snakes, rats, and bugs they could deal with. Tigers were something else. A five-hundred-pound tiger in your foxhole was terrifying.
From that moment on, they enlarged the listening post and assigned twee-men teams. That, for the most part, took care of it and it was good.
June 25, 2023