THE DELTA

The Delta is unique and life-changing. Once exposed, the intruder is shrouded with impressions, impressions that remain forever-it is not a place that allows escape. It will be with you always as an unseen scar on your life. While it may be treated, it cannot be excised.

Hot, humid and wet. Always wet. You are never truly dry. You are just unwet…for a while. Then you are.

Everything is beauty and ugliness. Your choice of choice. There is no middle ground.

Things are seen at long distances or barely at all. Five feet of elevation is a mountaintop.

An horizon of thatch villages emitting small tendrils of curling blue smoke. If it becomes a bad village, you may introduce green, red and black colors. Medevac. I see Goofy Grape, Over.

Interminable, coursing, intersecting, confusing waterways. Those born to it, understand. Intruders depend on compasses and aerial spotting. You will be lost. Fire one round WP 400 up.

A hasty ambush both for and against you. Fast, deadly and inconclusive. Just another day.

Home for really big snakes. Be careful, the small ones are deadly.

Navy makes an Army home.

Geese guard bridges.

Mekong-always there. Brooding, shimmering and huge. Wide, powerful and a force from the ages that transcends man. The Mekong dictates the place.

Incredibly delicious pineapples and sweet papayas. It’s not Hawaii. Keep your T paper dry.

Smoke smells damp and a little bit rotten.

Sampans with their coughing engines, family groups, rotten smelling cargo and suspicious circumstances.

The fascinating red spiral curve of the Spooky working out at a distance.

The wire you didn’t see when reaching for growth on the opposite bank.

The rice paddy where the Starlight can’t reach as far as you detect movement.

The random sniper shot from the distance that hits the new guy.

A small ville where the women have kids but no men. A continuous condition.

You are almost wiped out. Where did all those people come from? How did they get here? Why didn’t we know?

Our cool patrol boats. Always riding to work. Crew looks like pirates. Serious firepower.

Some real mountains. Seven of them. Filled with bad guys. Hard to move. R&R center but not for us.

Spit shines land in starched fatigues and tell you to work harder.

The joy of a dry cigarette.

Medics treat issues they have never seen before. And too many they have.

Rat for breakfast.

Imaginitive booby traps. Simply mortal. We are a test bed.

Bad guys are really good at hiding…And then finding you.

This is not home, even if you are from Louisiana or Okefenokee.

Leeches. Some as large as hot dogs and others almost

microscopic….before they start sucking on you.

Different colors of the many waters crossed. Each has its own smell and unwelcome surprises. Waterways are broad and narrow, benign and deadly. You never know until you find out.

Huge rice crops collected in 100 kilo bags. That basecamp had a bunch of those.

Houses have roofs of beer can tins, walls of palm fronds and curious people. Did you see how wide their toes were spaced? Dirt both wet and dry.

Heat and humidity join together and can be seen twisting and rising over the rice planters.

Combat is really close….Or far away. There isn’t a middle ground. Bad is normal.

Clean is an unrealized concept. After a while, you don’t notice or care.

Dawn and darkness are incredibly beautiful. Immense clouds full of ruby, silver and glimmering golds.

Helicopters can find you. Usually after someone on the ground has first.

Anything wrong with you gets worse.

The grass really cuts.

Both men and women here act badly.

Showers, ice cream, air conditioning and decent food. Why didn’t I join the Marines? Oh yeah….They are way up there. No house boats.

There is no cover.

Large tea glasses filled with beer and slabs of ice coated with wheat chaff. Still damn good.

Water buffalos are really mean and only small boys can handle them.

You have to get rid of the bodies in a hurry.

Watching the flares spiral a green twisting glow over someone else’s problem.

Everyone on the boat looks friendly…But isn’t. You find out later.

The rice paddies are really hot and the jungle not much cooler.

The water stinks. You are always in it.

Conical straw hats.

You need a clean weapon. Dry is a non-starter.

The Delta in all its forms, assails the senses and challenges life. It is an incubator of life and death with moisture as its medium and a combined heat and humidity as the catalysts for both outcomes. It is water everywhere. Water always. Distant villages, different people, bad smells, occasional beauty and often a beast. It harbors a corrosion to life while nurturing its birth. Only leeches and fish prosper, and they have to eat shit to do it. So do you.

The Delta is always.

FOTO;USArmy