Shadows In the Jungle by Larry Alexander Page A

trench knife.
    The standard uniform was an olive green herringbone or two-piece camouflage fatigues with soft cap and high quarter hobnail shoes with optional leggings. Rank insignia was worn during training but was not to be worn in action. Officers’ bars were an invitation for an enemy bullet in the field.
    The teams, on average, were equipped with two pairs of binoculars, two map cases, two compasses, and two canteens per man. Each man carried a personal knife (no machetes) and one hundred rounds of ammo—which was found to be too much and was cut back—four flares, two Handi-Talkie radios, and a rubber boat, complete with CO2 capsule, although some also relied on hand pumps.
    A physical examination was next, after which the men were led to the dock area.
    â€œYou now have some free swimming time,” they were told. “Controlled swimming starts tomorrow. Jump in and have fun.”
    The men did, but soon learned that nothing in the Scouts would be “free.” The water was deep, twenty-eight feet, which meant the men had to paddle around. Those who tired before the “free swim” was over and had to get out or be pulled out were shipped back to their units.
    Controlled swimming meant that the men had to paddle from the dock to a point about half a mile out and back. Sometimes they were taken a mile or more out and dumped over the side and told to swim.
    â€œChow will be ready when you get in,” the instructor barked.
    On occasion, the men had to swim carrying gear, the rationale being that their boat might capsize and they would have to save their equipment. Another drill involved swimming out to a waiting boat, where they would find their gear. There, they had to put it on, while still in the water, and swim back. Sometimes strings were stretched out across the water, and when a man came to one, he had to swim under it.
    Lt. Robert “Red” Sumner recalled his first day of training when he and his team, fully dressed, were taken half a mile out into the bay on an LCVP landing craft. Then, by the half-mile buoy, the ramp was lowered and they were told to get off.
    â€œI gathered my squad and off the ramp we went, jump or dive, and about twenty minutes later we were on the beach, somewhat tired but none the worse,” he wrote years later. “From this point on, we were off and running for our six weeks.”
    One especially memorable, and frightening, drill was on how to avoid enemy fire while in the water. As the swimmers approached a boat or a pier, an instructor stood, brandishing a Tommy gun.
    â€œDuck,” he would yell, and the men went down as fast and deep as they could, moving left or right as they dove, for an instant later, the water where their heads had been was peppered with submachine-gun fire.
    Teeples recalled one drill where the men dove into the water on one side of the pier, then swam underwater around the front of the pier, to the other side, a distance of sixty or seventy feet.
    Littlefield recalled the intense training and how easy it was for a man to get booted out of the ASTC. His tent mate, for example, was a “helluva fine soldier,” Littlefield recalled, who was sent back to his unit because he snored loudly, which would never do for someone behind enemy lines.
    Bob Buschur worried. He was not a great swimmer, and swimming was an important part of Scout training. During his first time swimming out to the rubber boat, he recalled reaching it and placing his hands on the boat to rest. An instructor on board the boat stepped on Buschur’s fingers, forcing the young man to let go.
    â€œYou came out here to swim and practice diving, not to rest,” he was gruffly told.
    By far, the most physically demanding and dangerous part of the water training was learning to handle the ungainly rubber boats. Ten hours a week were devoted to this, including rowing the boats through the hazardous coral spray on the windward side of a cove