Death in the Jungle Gary Smith (mobi reader txt) 📖

by twenty feet. The bunkers were made with mud and logs and were built on muddy ground, designed to absorb the shock of aerial bombings and ground vibrations. Craters from U.S. bombs lay within twenty-five yards of some bunkers but appeared to have done little or no damage to them.

Foxtrot 1st and 2nd Squads were divided into four teams of three men apiece. Funkhouser, McCollum, and I were assigned two bunkers on the eastern edge of the complex. We were to enter the bunkers with flashlights, looking carefully for booby traps. After placing C-3 explosives at strategic reinforcement points within each bunker, we were to detonate the charges to destroy them.

As the three of us approached our first bunker, Funkhouser halted in his tracks and pointed at a crater just ten meters from the bunker entrance.

“Oh, my gosh,” he said, his mouth agape, “look at that ten-foot hole!”

I looked. “That’s what a thousand-pound bomb will do for you.”

McCollum stopped beside us, gazing at the crater. He snorted, then said, “Maybe we got lucky and a dink was standin’ there takin’ a leak.”

I chuckled. “That’s what I’d like to think. Another slopehead became a dead head.” Ignoring noise discipline, we all laughed. With the enemy far away, we were not being real tactical about security.

“You go in first, Mr. Point Man,” McCollum said to me at the entrance to the bunker.

I clicked on my flashlight and aimed the beam inside. “No sweat,” I told him, happy to lead the way.

“Just watch out for a cobra,” warned Funkhouser, half seriously.

“Or a man-eating man-a-cheetah,” added McCollum quickly.

I looked back at my teammates before stepping inside the bunker.

“Anything else, fellas?”

Funkhouser glanced at McCollum, who shrugged his shoulder and said, “Don’t forget the booby traps.”

I nodded my head, pointed the flashlight and my rifle into the bunker and stepped inside. My flashlight beam probed every nook and cranny of the large chamber. After a minute of exploration, I was sure that no gooks or goblins awaited me.

McCollum and Funkhouser entered the bunker and all of us looked for the best place to position our breaching charges. McCollum checked out the roof and quickly made a suggestion.

“Right here is the main log in the overhead,” he said, pointing at the beam. “What do you think?”

Funky and I agreed with Muck’s assessment. “Let’s do it,” Funky affirmed.

I took the ten pounds of C-3 that I’d been carrying and fastened it to the log with a piece of parachute suspension line. At the same time, McCollum attached five pounds of C-3 to a corner support post. I then ran sensitized detonation cord from my charge to McCollum’s. Funky handed me two six-foot lengths of safety fuse. On one end was a nonelectric blasting cap and on the other was an M-60 fuse lighter. We double-primed our charges, as always, in case one of the nonelectric caps was a dud. McCollum helped me tape the two nonelectric caps to the center of the det cord.

Just before we lit up our handiwork, Funkhouser went outside to make sure no other SEALs were nearby and yelled, “Fire in the hole,” three times. A few seconds later, he stuck his head back into the bunker and called to us, “The coast is clear!” Then McCollum and Funky left and walked seventy meters to where a convenient crater, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force, welcomed us.

I pulled the two M-60 fuse lighters, and as the safety fuse started smoking, I hustled out of the bunker and followed Muck and Funky.

“The charges should go off in five minutes and ten seconds,” stated Funky. We hid down in the hole, peeking over the top so as not to miss the fireworks.

After five minutes had passed, McCollum gave a verbal five-second countdown. “Five, four, three, two …” Before he could say, “One,” the C-3 blew.

“You’re one second off, Funky!” Muck commented.

“Eat your heart out!” barked Funky from deep within the crater.

I saw little of the blast as my natural reflex action was to duck my head, especially when the charge was but seventy meters from our cover. The detonation, however, was muffled, and when I raised my head, I saw that the bunker was still standing. There was a sizable hole in the roof and a smaller one through a side wall, but that was all. Top-notch design and construction of the bunker had enabled it to shrug off most of the effects of our modified breach charges.

“Hoo-yah!” shouted Funkhouser, waving an arm over his head in a celebratory gesture.

“Whoa-yeah!” McCollum yelled in my ear, then he slapped me on the back. “I love playin’ demo man!”

“Me, too,” I told him, “but we didn’t play too well. The damn bunker’s a long way from being destroyed.”

McCollum climbed out of the crater, chuckling. “Hell,” he said, “that don’t matter. We’ll just blow the son of a bitch again!” He waved five pounds of C-3 under my nose. “This should be good for bustin’ another air vent through the roof.” He grinned at me, and I grinned back.

As we set the next charge, several blasts were heard from other areas of the bunker complex where our teammates were taking care of business. We wasted little time in adding to the ruckus. Back in the crater again, we kept our heads up this time and watched as sticks and mud blew into the air. The roof of the bunker was now half gone and the remaining portion was ruptured and loose enough for us to tear apart by hand.

After pulling apart the ceiling and knocking down the bunker walls, we used Funkhouser’s ten pounds of C-3 on the second bunker to rip a huge hole in the roof. Another charge or two was needed to wreck the sturdy bunker, but the three of us were then devoid of explosives.

I located Mr. Meston and told him of our predicament. He cussed the strength of the VC bunkers and said all four of our groups were experiencing the same problems. He immediately