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Chapter 14
The Big Snake
Our days through August and Sept. were spent running patrols, conducting sweeps and participating in Battalion operations. As most Marines will tell you we had a range of enemies other than the VC and The NVA. Those ‘other ‘ enemies were leeches—they we picked up while traveling in the flooded rice paddies and certain streams, dysentary from the water we drank, snakes , large mosquitos and rats. On one patrol our platoon was crossing a valley covered with ‘elephant grass’. The grass was eight-ten ft. tall and when standing on a ridge line looking down on it —-it appeared to be just regular grass. Once we were in it we realized we were invisible from the hills and —we couldn’t see a thing in front of us except the Marine’s back that was breaking the trail. I had a fire team ( four Marines ) on point and we were in column formation crossing the valley—all I could see up ahead was the back of the trailing member of the Fire team—about half way across the valley I noticed that one after the other —the Marines were stepping over a ‘log’—as I approached the ‘log’ —it moved! That got our attention—the platoon gathered around in a circle to watch the largest snake any of us had ever seen—it was indeed, as big around ‘as a log’! We don’t know how long it was—we never saw the head—but the snake moved
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