The Barracks Rat VN

The Barracks Rat VN

(C) James J Alonzo

In Viet Nam at the base camp of 2/17 Calvary 101 rst Airborne Division, the sleeping quarters, or our hooch, for enlisted men in our small base camp had sandbag walls with some wood posts in the walls to help support the tent roof on them. Our hooch walls was long enough for four cots that ran along the wall on one side of the room and four cots on along the other wall with only maybe a space of four foot wide aisle between the cots. 

We were near our squadron headquarters, so we were fortunate to have electricity. The sandbag walls of our place were no more than two sandbags thick and the only opening in the walls was two doors, one at each end of our hooch. 

Since we were in the Delta of the Mekong river, in the tropics, we had rats! We had a big rat we called Victor Charlie (VC for short) that lived in the sandbag walls. And like his name sake he became a real pain in the ass. Every once in awhile Victor Charlie would tunnel inside our room. 

This was our fault, because we left a lot of preferred rat food laying around. Candy, cakes, cookies, food, goodie packages from home with food snacks, etc. If you didn't keep your food stuff in a steel ammo box this rat would chew his way to the food. You always knew he was in your food, because he always left his rat turds behind!

Though all of us tried to kill Victor Charlie, we proved to be inept at it. From throwing knives, unarmed grenades, bayonets or anything we could think of at the time, at Victor Charlie when he did this. One of my squad members Terry Yater, that slept on a corner cot, thinking he had outsmarted the rat, had nailed a wooden box on a post in the wall about 4 foot above his cot. 

He kept some food stuff, and snacks in the box, and on top of the box he kept some spare magazines for his M 16 and a couple of grenades. Terry had happily assured himself that the rat wouldn't get at his stuff.  

There was no stars or moon out that night, and it was pitch black visibility in the hooch when the screaming started, all of us were sound asleep in our small hooch and suddenly being awaken at 2 a.m. It was a blood curdling scream, and as loud as an air raid warning. 

When the first scream erupted. all hell broke loose in our hooch, flashlights being turned on, soldiers dropping them, scrambling around looking for weapons! I immediately sprang out of my cot only to hit head first into the head of the soldier getting out of his cot across the aisle from me. I hit him so hard I knocked him back over his cot and against the wall behind him. My head felt like I had been hit with a baseball bat. 

Meanwhile there were similar actions happening adding to the chaos of the moment. Soldiers that managed to stand were tripping over the others that had been knocked to the floor when they scrambled for their rifles. All during this, someone in our room continued to scream.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity of chaos, someone in our room found the light switch for our lone light bulb and turned it on. Terry Yater in the corner with the 105 mm box was still laying on his cot. He was holding his testicles with both hands while he rolled side to side on his cot still uttering sounds that told you he was in great pain. Next to his cot on the floor lay one of his grenades! 

It seems Victor Charlie the Rat had made a new tunnel in our walls during the night that came out into our room level with the top of Terry's wooden box. There, Victor Charlie working his way into box must of decided that the grenades were in his way, tossed out one of the grenades, scoring a direct hit on Terry's testicles sleeping below it. 

One or two of us may have deserved a purple heart that night. Also it was a good thing we were all young men for an older one may have suffered a heart attack from the blood curdling screams Terry had let out. In the few seconds of mayhem in our small room we had put some serious hurt on each other scrambling out of our cots in that completely dark small room.

*For the record, Victor Charlie was alive when I went home to the USA, and I never heard from my squad members that he ever was killed.