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Chapter 18
Cook Fire Explosion
Unexpected injuries occur with great frequency in a combat zone—sometimes in surprising ways. We subsisted on C rations when we were operating away from the Battalion perimeter—which was most of the time. Often we had to eat the rations cold because we couldn’t chance a ‘cook fire’. When we did have the opportunity or our circumstance allowed we would make a small fire and everyone would take turns cooking their chow, making a cup of coffee etc. Often we would simply bend the can lid into a handle and place the can on a rock near the fire —it would heat the meal and we would then remove said can from the fire by holding onto the can lid with a piece of cloth from our pack. We became quite good at mixing certain rations together or combining them with ‘hot’ peppers we were able to scrounge while passing thru a village. Most Marines carried a sock filled with rice which you could bargain for when passing thru the villages—that too could be mixed with our ‘C’s ‘ for a tasty dish. One evening as I was preparing one of these ‘gourmet’ meals over the cook fire , I was bending over the fire when the fire ‘exploded’! The explosion threw me backwards and I landed on my back—my eyes were in pain and I couldn’t open them—the explosion had ‘blinded’ me. At first we didn’t know what had happened—the platoon shifted into a secure perimeter thinking it could have been a grenade or a 60 mm mortar. Meanwhile, I was writhing in pain on the ground—the debris from
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