Jungle Legends Vol. 2: Things Nobody Mentioned About Vietnam

The Critters, Burning the Shitters, Horse Pills, Monsoons, Monkey Butt, Jungle Rot and Other Unforgettable Experiences.

🪖 Brothers In Arms • Field Notes from Those Who Served

If the Enemy Didn’t Get You, the Wildlife Might

The Viet Cong weren’t the only things trying to ruin your day.

Vietnam’s wildlife seemed to have signed up for the North Vietnamese Army.

Rats as Big as Cats

People exaggerate fish stories.

Veterans exaggerate rat stories.

But not by much.

One night I woke up in my hooch playing tug-of-war with a rat over my poncho. He apparently thought it would make a fine addition to his bachelor pad, and I wasn’t about to let him have it.

He finally gave up.

I slept with one eye open the rest of the night.

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Tigers

I never saw one.

But every Marine heard stories about tigers dragging sleeping soldiers out of foxholes in the middle of the night.

Were all the stories true?

Probably not.

Did I believe every one of them when I was nineteen?

Absolutely.

It’s amazing how much louder the jungle sounds after someone mentions hungry tigers.

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Bamboo Vipers

Ask anyone who served in Vietnam what snake they feared most and many would answer…

The bamboo viper.

Small.

Well camouflaged.

Highly venomous.

They blended perfectly into the vegetation, which meant you were often looking for something you couldn’t actually see.

That’s not a comforting thought when you’re walking point through thick jungle.

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Cobras

Oddly enough, I never saw a cobra.

That didn’t stop me from looking for one every time I stepped over a log or reached into tall grass. I heard of an NCO that came across one on a patrol. When it reared up to nearly eye level and hissed that grunt had a heart attack on the spot and was listed KIA.

Combat teaches you to expect danger.

Vietnam taught us danger sometimes slithered.

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Centipedes

The centipedes in Vietnam looked like something designed by Hollywood.

Some grew close to a foot long.

Covered in legs.

Armed with venomous pincers.

Fast.

Very fast.

One crawling across your boot was enough to convince you that Mother Nature had a twisted sense of humor.

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Mosquitoes

If Vietnam had a state bird…

It would have been the mosquito.

I don’t remember them ever sleeping.

You could swat one…

…and two more would volunteer for the mission.

After a while you quit counting those red, itchy lumps.

The mosquitoes always won.

You swat at your own risk on an ambush site, giving away your position.

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Nature Was Neutral

Looking back, one thing stands out.

The jungle didn’t care whether you wore an American uniform or a North Vietnamese one.

The snakes.

The rats.

The insects.

The heat.

The diseases.

They treated everybody exactly the same.

Sometimes it felt like Vietnam itself had picked a side.

And it wasn’t ours.

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The Horse Pills

Every Vietnam veteran remembers the malaria pills.

We called them “horse pills” because they were about the size of an Alka-Seltzer tablet and twice as thick. Every so often, we’d line up and swallow one, because the alternative was malaria.

The pills were supposed to keep you from ending up in a M.A.S.H. unit with a fever of 105 degrees, shaking uncontrollably and wondering if you’d survive.

Unfortunately, they came with their own tactical disadvantage.

They gave you the runs.

This led to one of the great philosophical debates of the Vietnam War:

Which was worse?

Spending a couple of weeks in a field hospital with malaria, fever, and chills, attended by a pretty Army nurse?

Or staying healthy while humping through the bush with what Marines politely referred to as “monkey butt”?

The answer depended largely on whether you’d recently taken your horse pill.

Looking back, I’m still not sure we ever settled the question.

The Climate: Vietnam’s Other Enemy

If you’ve ever spent August in Washington, D.C. or St. Louis, you have some idea of what tropical heat feels like.

Now imagine turning the thermostat up another notch.

That was Vietnam.

During the hottest months—from April through August—temperatures often hovered around 98 degrees, with humidity somewhere between wet and underwater. The air itself seemed heavy. Everything was damp. Everything smelled damp. And sweating wasn’t something you did—it was simply your normal state of existence.

The rule was simple:

As long as you were sweating, you were okay.

If you stopped sweating, you were in trouble.

We were taught that if a Marine suffered heat stroke out in the bush and there wasn’t enough water available, you could cool him down with urine.

I kid you not.

Whether it actually worked or not, I never found out, and I wasn’t volunteering to test the theory.

We took salt tablets.

We drank water whenever we could.

It never seemed to be enough.

Thirst was just another constant companion.

Then came the winter months and the monsoon season.

The rain didn’t fall.

It attacked.

When the monsoons rolled in, the sky opened up and dumped water by the bucketful. Trails became rivers. Foxholes became swimming pools. Everything you owned became soaked.

And once your clothes got wet, they stayed wet.

The only exception was when the Mama Sans back in the rear areas washed uniforms and dried them using fires fueled by buffalo chips.

The process worked.

Mostly.

The downside was that your freshly cleaned jungle fatigues smelled faintly of smoke, buffalo manure, and whatever else happened to be burning that day.

Not that anyone noticed.

The truth was, after a few months in Vietnam, everybody smelled bad.

So when a clean uniform showed up—even one dried over burning buffalo chips—you were grateful.

In Vietnam, you learned very quickly that “clean” was a relative term.

Jungle Rot

Jungle Rot: When Your Feet Declare War on You

Combat wasn’t the only thing trying to kill you in Vietnam.

Sometimes your own feet joined the enemy.

We called it jungle rot, a catch-all term for the fungal and bacterial infections that thrived in the heat, humidity, mud, and standing water that defined life in Vietnam.

The problem was simple.

You were almost never dry.

Your jungle boots got wet.

Your socks got wet.

Your feet got wet.

And once everything got wet, it tended to stay that way.

The military constantly reminded us to take our boots off, air out our feet, and change socks whenever possible. That was easier said than done when you were living in the bush for days or weeks at a time.

The first sign was usually your skin turning pale and wrinkled, almost as if you’d spent too long in a bathtub.

Then came the pain.

The skin became tender.

Then raw.

Then it started peeling away.

Small cuts and scratches that would have been nothing back home could become infected in a matter of hours. What began as a little athlete’s foot often turned into something much uglier.

Walking became painful.

Running became miserable.

And yet, somehow, you still had to keep moving.

The military’s solution was generally straightforward:

“Dry your feet.”

That advice would have been more helpful if Vietnam had been interested in cooperating.

For many of us, jungle rot wasn’t a medical diagnosis.

It was simply another part of everyday life in Vietnam, right alongside mosquitoes, monsoons, and wondering what fresh misery tomorrow would bring.

Looking back, I’m convinced that keeping Marines walking on feet that looked like they belonged in a horror movie was one of the military’s more remarkable achievements.

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