Snake School, Clark AB, PI, 1971 At the E&E exercise area, we dismounted from the trucks and gathered for instruction. An area of jungle a few acres across had been outlined with colored markers for us to hide within. It had a few trails but consisted mostly of thick jungle foliage and underbrush. About fifty of us would hide in this area to be hunted by three Negrito trackers who would be awarded a fifty-pound bag of rice for every ten he “captured. We had thirty minutes to hide before the instructor announced that the hunt would begin. I walked briskly toward the middle of the area and slid into the foliage between two trails about twenty feet apart. I wriggled in about twelve feet off the trail I had used and eight feet from the second trail. That seemed brilliant on my part, because I had left no trace of entry from the nearest trail. The jungle proved so thick I could not perceive either trail from my hiding place and felt sure no one could detect me. As it turned out, I was one of the last captured, and the Negrito tracker had cheated, in my estimation. He tagged me from the trail I had not used and had apparently just been fishing in the area, since he had covered most of his designated patch of the exercise area and either felt one of the missing escapees must be in this area, or else he smelled me, which is how some thought they found us. After the E&E exercise, our instructors demonstrated various signaling techniques to alert rescue helicopters to our position. The first, a small handheld pyrotechnic rocket, could punch through a triple jungle canopy to allow the rescue chopper to identify our location. We held this in our hand pointed skyward, an inch-long miniature shotgun shell with a firing pin that mimicked a butane lighter mechanism, which we would flick downward and release so that a spring-loaded pin would jab into the bottom of the rocket and send it on its way. It took me a few tries to get comfortable with this hand rocket, since flicking the firing pin downward tended to cause my hand to jerk and ruin my aim. As instructed, we always held this high above our head before activating. Next came the multipurpose flare that resembled a stick of dynamite in size and shape. One end had small protruding nipples around the rim for identification in the dark. (I chuckled, thinking I had some experience finding nipples in the dark, har, har, har.) This end, when the tab on it was pulled, resulted in a standard effervescent torch-like flame effective after dark. The other end tab, when pulled, would begin pulsing out a vibrant orange smoke column for daytime identification. The final method for identification used a flashlight contraption slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes but shaped about the same. Turning on the unit produced an intense light pulse about twice a second. In actual use, this had presented problems because this light flash closely mimicked a rifle’s muzzle flash, sometimes making it difficult to distinguish the good guy trying to signal you from the bad guys shooting at the rescue chopper. For this reason, the apparatus had been equipped with an optional blue filter to distinguish the good guy so the chopper wouldn’t mistakenly fire on him […] The ride to jungle mountain went well, however, and the chopper dropped us on a clearing near the top of the mountain ridge. We ducked to avoid any chance of decapitation by the helo blades and walked into the jungle to our camp on a gradually sloping grade that eventually dropped steeply down the heavily forested mountainside. Once there, our instructors demonstrated fire-starting with sticks, something we couldn’t seem to get the knack of doing. They also demonstrated the cutting of “water vines” for water and pointed out edible vegetation and, conversely, tubers and leaves to avoid. After a campfire meal, we prepared our sleeping positions for the night. Rule One said we had to be suspended off the jungle floor, since any number of crawling things, especially ants, would want to join us should we lie on the ground. This meant stringing up a hammock between two trees. This took planning, since we all had to find two suitable trees the right distance apart to string our hammocks. After I had mine rigged up, I found myself suspended about two feet above the ground once the hammock sagged with my weight—not perfect, but sufficient to avoid the crawling things. Since there was precious little to do in the inky blackness after sunset, even with the campfire, we all climbed into our hammocks for the night. Sleep did not come easily. You cannot gracefully roll over in a hammock and, in trying, may roll yourself onto the ground with the creepy crawlers. Other disturbing events also occurred. After about an hour, I looked up the hammock line above my head that ran to the tree a few feet away. There, disconcertingly, I saw two bright, small eyes looking at me in the dim light from the campfire embers. Whatever it might have been seemed smaller than a cat but larger than an insect. I presumed whatever it was, it would not come walking down the hammock line to visit. I pulled my covers over my head, bravely, and wished it away. The second macabre event came in the early morning mist. Something awakened me, I’m not sure what exactly, but I peered outside my blanket and looked down the hillside toward the now-dormant campfire. A line of men walked silently up the hill toward me through the mist, clothed only in loincloths and carrying basic bows and arrows. If this were a planned demonstration, the instructors had really pulled off a good one. Soon, however, it became apparent this was not a planned event. For all I knew, these were head-hunting cannibals who had found a camp full of juicy meals. To my relief, instead of drawing their bows to skewer sleeping victims in their hammocks, they continued to walk through the encampment and to form a small camp just above us on the hillside. These were the country cousins of the suburban Negritos that had hunted us the day before near the base. The hunting party joined us for breakfast and some spoke pidgin English. Though we had rudimentary communication, we mostly sat and contemplated each other. I’m not sure which group viewed the other with more wonder. In addition to their bows and arrows, they had blow-dart tubes for picking birds or monkeys out of trees. They wanted to show off their bow and arrow prowess, much to our delight. They could nail a coconut off a stump at one hundred feet with aplomb and to cheers from us, the awkward, over-encumbered-with-equipment jungle neophytes who were about to depart on the big metal bird. They waved to us as we lifted into the sky, and they strode back into the jungle, each group on its separate missions. The Negritos would hunt monkeys with bows and arrows; I would eventually hunt other humans with strings of five-hundred-pound bombs as a B-52 pilot. I had to reexamine which group put the better face on humanity. The next day we caught the flight to Cam Ranh Bay, Republic of Vietnam, to begin our tours.” (Excerpt from “Flying the Line, an Air Force Pilot’s Journey,” e-book edition) Vine drinking photo by Peter Bird.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 14:15:21 +0000
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