1st Battalion 22nd Infantry The Vietnamese rat

1st Battalion 22nd Infantry

The Vietnamese rat

by Michael Belis

The Vietnamese rat was a mighty creature. It lived everywhere the US infantryman went in Vietnam. Firebases, base camps,
mountains or coastal plains, no place was safe from its onslaught. It was ugly, big, fearless and hungry. An Eleven-Bravo
(infantryman) in Vietnam either killed rats or learned to live with them. Their presence was a fact of life.

Sergeant Huey Livingston was Squad Leader for 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon of Charlie Company, 1/22 Infantry, 4th Infantry Division
in the fall of 1970. He had guts and experience, two qualities that were very important for a Squad Leader in the jungle. He came
from the Deep South, a hard drinking dusty-haired good old boy in every sense of the word and he was an excellent man
to follow up and down those triple-canopied jungle covered mountains of Binh Dinh Province.

Livingston appeared to be afraid of nothing, most certainly neither man nor beast, with one exception. He really didn’t like rats.
The presence of one of the hairy animals could move him into furious spasms of action. His initial reaction was always the same.
A slow and orderly withdrawal was unthinkable. His plan of action called for immediate removal of himself from the area, bulldozing
anyone or anything in his way. Upon reaching safety he would then counterattack with ferocity unmatched in human history.
The rat that surprised Livingston sealed its own fate and found itself with only minutes, even seconds left to live.

Huey Livingston at the Base Camp at An Khe with his ever present can of
Pabst Blue Ribbon beer August 1970

Photo by Randy Cox

Sometime in October 1970 our Platoon was rotated to a firebase to get a breather from humping the jungle. The firebase
was small. It was on a hilltop that jutted out into a valley surrounded by three higher hilltops. There were two M102 105mm howitzers
there, I don’t remember for sure but they were probably from 4/42 Artillery. There was also a ground surveillance radar unit. As I recall
that unit was some kind of people detecting wizardry and at one time one of our guys came back from visiting the radar and its operators,
impressed that the radar had spotted several enemy soldiers walking in the jungle passing by us carrying what might have been B-40 rockets.

Our Weapons Platoon had been reassembled from the various Rifle Platoons its personnel had been assigned to and had their
81mm mortars set up at the firebase. We had moved deep into the mountains beyond the range of any artillery on any existing firebase.
Engineers had been flown out and together with Weapons Platoon they built this firebase so a couple of artillery pieces could cover
our movements. The hilltop this firebase had been built on was selected because it was devoid of trees, being covered instead with
razor grass which grew about four feet tall and was so named because the minutely serrated edges of each blade of grass could
scratch and cut exposed skin when rubbed against it.

I remember the firebase being called LZ Regular but Gary Rabideau from Weapons Platoon, who was one of the guys who actually
built the firebase remembers it being called LZ Popeye, so Popeye most likely was its official designation. Popeye was the nickname
of Weapons Platoon for our Company. Weapons Platoon guarded one half of the firebase and our Rifle Platoon
(nicknamed Sidewinder) guarded the other half.

Our outer perimeter consisted of sandbag-ringed foxholes with no overhead cover. The inner perimeter was made of covered bunkers
used as sleeping quarters. Gary and the guys from Weapons Platoon had large 4 foot wide semi-circle culvert sections on their side
of the firebase covered with sandbags as sleeping quarters. On our Rifle platoon side we had a square bunker used as sleeping quarters
for the position I was assigned to. This bunker was dug into the ground and had thick timbers for the roof which had been air lifted
out to the firebase by large Chinook helicopters. The timbers were covered by sheet plastic with a layer or two of sandbags on top
of that. The bunker had a single entrance and inside there was room for either 3 or 4 men to sleep side by side on their air mattresses.

The bunker was deep enough so you could sit upright in it or crawl on your hands and knees but not deep enough to stand up in.
The dirt just below the roof had been scraped out, making a recessed shelf that ran all the way around the inside. The shelf was
perfect for small items including a jungle candle (made from the wax and paper insulation wrappings of mortar shells) or the more customary,
a c-ration candle, made of a tin of peanut butter to which we would add liquid insect repellent. The oil from the peanut butter mixed with the
chemicals in the insect repellent burned like lamp oil in the small short tin the peanut butter came in and gave off light like a small hurricane lamp.

The rats of course got in our bunker as well and you could count on seeing one of them in the bunker just about every day.
An entrenching tool or a well-placed foot would usually dispatch them quickly enough. One day I went into our un-occupied bunker
to get something and was carrying my loaded rifle. As I came through the entrance, thanks to the light from a burning candle inside
the bunker I saw a rat on the shelf opposite me. I flipped off the safety on my rifle and blasted the rat.

Blast is the right word. In the confined and enclosed space of the bunker the single shot of the high velocity M16 rifle erupted
like an atom bomb. Since there were no windows or slits in the bunker and my body was blocking the only opening, the sound and
concussion had nowhere to go but right in my face. The sound was deafening and the pain from the sudden and violent displacement
of air molecules against my head, nose and ears was intense. I felt as if two giant hands had clapped together hard, with my head
in between them. I never again made that foolish mistake of firing a weapon inside an enclosed bunker.

Livingston had decided he wasn’t going to sleep inside the bunker with the rats anymore. He placed his air mattress on the
sandbagged roof of the bunker. One evening as three of us stood next to the bunker having a conversation Livingston settled
onto his mattress and lay on his back in the dimming light of dusk. Very soon after he fell asleep a rat appeared out of nowhere
and sat next to his feet. We watched with amusement as the rat climbed onto Livingston’s boot and slowly made its way up his body.
It would move a few inches, stop and rub its nose or wiggle its whiskers or just sit there looking so comical that we all started to
snicker and laugh. It would move a little farther and stop again and look at us and then look at Livingston before continuing its trek
up his leg, over his knee, up his thigh, carrying on its journey across Livingston’s body.

By the time it got to his waist we were doubled over with laughter, holding our hands over our mouths to stifle our sounds.
The rat continued and then stopped on his chest and at that moment Livingston awoke and found himself eyeball to eyeball
with the rat. We exploded with shrieks of laughter so deep it brought tears to our eyes. Shillings was laughing so hard
he was rolling on the ground.

Livingston jumped up and flew off that bunker ending up several yards down the hill. We all scrambled for cover
as he found his rifle and assaulted the rat. The rat however, had already sought refuge and was nowhere to be found.
Livingston’s curses could probably be heard throughout the whole valley. We enjoyed telling that story for weeks,
each time ending it with Livingston’s declaration “god-damn rats!”

Henry Shillings – a seasoned veteran who teased me unmercifully about being a new guy (FNG) when I was first assigned
to 1/22 Infantry. He and other experienced soldiers like Huey Livingston, Ron Sorrento and David Hester taught me a lot about
how to survive in the jungle. I took this photo at the Base Camp at Camp Radcliff, An Khe in late 1970 as we were posing for photos
with captured enemy weapons.

Photo by Michael Belis

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