By Scott Longman
The chief shut down the engines, both to conserve fuel and, more importantly, to avoid the sound signature.
Everyone on the Patrol Boat, River (PBR) felt as relaxed as they could under the circumstances, which was to say not even slightly. To be stationary on a river in dangerous territory is to cede the advantage to the enemy, even with the PBR tucked into and under the foliage of the bank. They were up the Nung River, into Cambodia, and damn near everything on the other side of the green wanted to kill them.
They sat stationary because two of the crew had gone ashore into that opaque triple-canopy jungle.
Watchful, tense waiting.
Then, the sound of synapse-fusing bursts of two M16A1s on full-auto erupted, and the whole crew scrambled within the first instant. The chief jumped to the helm, followed by the bellowing roar of enormous twin Detroit Diesels. The M2HB .50 gunner ran for the twin bow turret. The third crewman grabbed one of the M60s, all eyes and muzzles on the treeline.
Seconds later, the first man tears through the green, throwing his rifle aboard and launching himself horizontally after it. Then, the second man flashed over the gunwale, and the PBR jetted instantly away, with the M60 gunner going full-cyclic, hosing down the foliage, diesels blazing a full-throttle escape.
The first guy aboard was ranting, screaming, nearly incoherent. Between the din of the engines and the shattering blast of the 60, nobody could understand what the hell he was yelling.
It took a few tries, but then they heard:“Fucking tiger!”
Right. Tiger. The shore party hadn’t run from the VC or NVA. They had been attacked by a massive Bengal tiger.
While screenwriter John Milius and co-writer/director Francis Ford Coppola invented that particular attack (and, for that matter, the Nung River) for the legendary movie Apocalypse Now, the attack was all too grounded in boots-on fact. But, more importantly, it was representative of a far larger issue: the huge number of non-hostile deaths in Vietnam.
Quite apart from any kinetic thing that the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese Army were concocting, Vietnam itself was relentlessly lethal. Non-combat American deaths were a staggering 10,786. For context, the twenty years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan produced a death toll—from both combat and non-combat causes—of 6,923. In Vietnam, many non-hostile fatalities were to be sadly expected, like aircraft crashes, but many others ranged from the surprising to the bizarre—like getting attacked by tigers.
It was December 22, 1968, a few miles east of the border with Laos, when Marines from the 3rd Recon Battalion settled in for the night because weather set back their air extraction. Sgt. Goolden reclined next to his brother-in-arms, PFC Roy Regan, and having that battle buddy turned out to be a phenomenally good choice.
After sleep overcame them, Regan bolted awake to an anguished, primal scream from Goolden—the sort of thing that pierces the soul—and to his enormous credit and without further thought, he solo-launched in defense. What actual nightmare Regan confronted was a gargantuan cat, with his friend held in its jaws like a dog bone. In a show of proper masculinity, he immediately lunged at the beast. While the cat did not drop Sgt. Goolden, it did back off and jump into a nearby bomb crater.
The whole Marine force, now well and truly out of REM sleep, rallied up and threw their selector switches to “sieve.” There is no record of how many rounds the amped up Marines fired to save their friend, but save him they did. They stabilized him and got him out at daybreak. He survived.
But not every tiger attack wrapped up with that kind of happy ending. On May 5, 1970, a Marine Sergeant, Robert C. Phleger, was operating in a place called the A Shau Valley, as a 1st Force Recon Team Leader. His higher command had already agreed that, since he was getting short on his tour, this would be his last risky venture into the green. They didn’t know how right they were but for the tragically wrong reasons.
That team’s mission was not to engage the enemy but to observe, report, and call in airstrikes. Toward that end, getting to high ground was essential. So they did a quad-blasting, lung-searing climb up a towering ridge, one which gave them all the views they could possibly want.
While the ridge provided a tactically superior position for their offensive mission, it proved less than ideal from a defensive standpoint as the terrain precluded them from employing their standard overnight circular set up. Aptly named Razorback Ridge, it presented a knife-edge of rock not permitting anything but a linear formation.
Well, as a squared away leader, Phleger put himself at one end of the line, the way they had come up, the point of most likely enemy contact.
Unclear how the watch setup worked—it would have seemed likely that the watch would be out at the end where he slept—but apparently it wasn’t, and they heard lymph-curdling anguished screams. The team could not use lights and couldn’t fire blind for fear of hitting him, so they, instead, low-crawled to his position. He was not there.
After a short call to higher-ups for orders, they waited until daylight before following up. What they first found was his poncho liner, deeply soaked in blood. That, and a heavy drag path.
Figuring it for an ambush, they were as amped up as anybody has ever been, locked and loaded with grenade spoons held.
What they found was the unfathomably grisly horror of what remained of their teammate. His legs were intact, but the soft tissue north of his beltline mostly eaten.
The excitement wasn’t over just yet. Predators of many flavors have a proven history of staking out their kills, no doubt to maximize the nutrition they feel they’ve rightly earned. So, the gigantic beast lurked within contact range. It roared and launched, to be met with a tremendous hailstorm of 5.56 and even an M67 grenade. The monster di-di maued, escaping.
And there is a third documented tiger attack. The real point of this one is their sheer, calculating fearlessness. Apparently, Bengal tigers, like the recently Internet-feted honey badger, just don’t care.
A unit was getting extracted from the bush in a CH-46 helicopter. Those are imposing aircraft: they stand nearly 17 feet high and have a 44 foot long fuselage. They have twin rotors, with each slashing a huge fifty-foot diameter. Each such hulk is powered by two General Electric turbines, those both producing 1,870 shaft horsepower: even at idle, the rotor wash will make you reconsider any number of your life choices. And the sound of all that turbine-engined freedom is very literally deafening.
And the tiger came for him anyway.
When loading a helicopter, it is always somebody’s job to count as troops board, to make sure nobody gets left behind. In this case, Sgt. Michael Larkins was that last man in. He positioned himself next to the ramp.
Inside, a couple of the troops were looking back at Sgt. Larkins, and they noticed movement in the grass behind him. The din of the engines meant that yelling was no good: instead, they urgently hand signaled Larkins to turn around.
Larkins spun, snapped up his M16, and mag-dumped on the charging tiger. The great beast dropped only a few steps away from the ramp. Larkins wasn’t scratched, and they recovered the cat, bringing a surprise back for their commanding officer, Lt. Col. W.C. Drumwright. (Editor’s note: Sgt. Larkins, Lt. Col. Drumwright, and the tiger are shown on the cover of this magazine.)
The lethal threat didn’t have to come roaring and charging: Vietnam has about 200 species of snakes, of which 43 are venomous. Among them is the king cobra, which can grow up to a grotesque 17 feet. When they confront humans, they will often rear up to eye level, flare their hoods and hiss in your face. Their venom is of the belt-and-suspenders type, including both cytotoxins and neurotoxins, making it highly deadly. Vietnam also hosts an impressive collection of various kinds of vipers and kraits, all of which are also brutally lethal. Opportunities for contact with them were limitless: you could step on them, have them fall out of a tree on you, snuggle up to you while sleeping for warmth and, most disconcertingly, find them looking up at you from the pit of the outhouse.
How many soldiers got bit? The records show that it varied from about 25 to 50 bites per year. The statistics do not, however, break down how many of those bites resulted in death, although there were at least some: one source notes that there were a total of 742 non-hostile deaths in the field, with snakebite listed as one of the causes.
What’s worse than encountering a poisonous snake in the bush? Encountering one that has been specifically weaponized to attack you. Yes, the VC developed at least three ways to use snakes as weapons. The pit viper appears to have been the primary snake of choice, although the krait may have been used as well. The most basic was digging a pit deep enough that the snakes could not get out, then putting a lightweight camouflaged cover over it. Falling on top of a bunch of already agitated snakes is, at a minimum, a surefire medevac. The second VC method, unbelievable as it seems, was stuffing one of these fang-monsters into their own rucksacks, with the prospect that if they dropped the ruck or got killed, an unwary GI searching through it would get a horrible surprise.
The third method was perhaps the most ingenious. The VC had enormous, elaborate tunnel systems, some dating back to the days of fighting the French. The bigger ones amounted to underground bases, with meeting rooms, sleeping quarters, mess halls, hospitals, storage facilities, electricity and positive ventilation.
With that huge effort invested, they went to some lengths to protect it, one of the methods being boobytraps of many different types, including snakes. They hit upon the idea of putting a viper in a length of bamboo (presumably, a junior rank job) then wedging it crossways on the tunnel ceiling, with a tripline. Step over the tripline, no problem, but run into it, and you get a very pissed off snake on your back.
Believe it or not, there is one more snake threat, and it was arguably even more horrifying than the rest. Vietnam is home to a couple of species of colossal python, including those that get to be about the size of a telephone pole. Most snakes will leave you alone unless they feel threatened. They won’t hunt you for the simple reason that they can’t eat you. Not so the big pythons: they will actively and aggressively pursue human prey because they can and will put you on the menu. Their historic attacks are both extensive and well documented.
Did any service members fall prey to them? There is no way to know. There were many recorded incidents of troops finding them in the bush but no accounts of fatal attacks. But then, reports would be unlikely: pythons are ambush predators. They set up in places where prey moves and wait. They have been shown to let groups of people pass by, only to later target a person walking alone. They launch themselves explosively and silently, instantly coiling around the target and crushing it to death. They then swallow it whole and slither off to digest it. Is it possible that they did that to troops? It is only supposition, but consider that to this day, there are more than 1,500 MIAs outstanding.
Taken together, these threats confirm the advice of Martin Sheen’s character, Captain B.L. Willard, concerning Vietnam: “Never get out of the boat.”
