Taken from the story. I haven’t done a good Rosco post in a while, so why not go to the source?
About fifteen of us were on a patrol in the surrounding’ hills. I was carrying my usual amount of medical supplies. Along with that I was also carrying two or three boxes of ammunition. My line of thinking in carrying the extra load was, the more fire—power there was between me and the NVA or VC the better. At any rate, I was carrying almost l00 pounds of equipment. And after walking most of that day through hot sticky jungle, I was needless to say, getting tired; very hot and very tired.
Moving slowly down into a ravine, the patrol suddenly came across a stream and everyone started to jump in. I stopped just long enough to remove my equipment. The normally crystal clear stream had become a little muddy by all the splashing but no one seemed to have taken any notice. The water looked too cool to even care. Still standing on the bank of the stream, I bent over to get a drink when I felt’ a foot In back of me and then a hard push. Falling face first into the water and mud I heard a shot. My heart started racing as my first thoughts were that we had been ambushed. Quickly I jumped out of the stream and looked back to see Rosco standing with his rifle pointing down at a pit viper, a highly poisonous snake, green and about eighteen inches long. It was laying next to where I had been standing cut in two by Rosco’s bullet.
Posted by Michael at June 14, 2004 08:18 PM