On the road, in the hooch, in the bush, or in a comfy hotel or "Q" room, sleep was a shaky commodity in Vietnam. The expression "sleeping with one eye open..." is really not sleeping at all. No one can sleep with one eye open (except my little sister, who can sleep with BOTH eyes wide open...ugh...it's creepy). So, since the night belonged to "Charles", we all slept...both eyes shut...but very close to the surface. The least little noise would pop both eyes wide open. A crack of a dry branch, rustle of grass or leaves, a softly shut door, even someone coughing some distance away: all would bring one back to the conscious world quickly.

We were relatively safe in our hooch. We had only drawn the attention of the VC on a few occasions and none of them were very serious...well...one was but I already told you about that. But like all worthy REMFs, we knew that nasty could be visited upon us at any time, it was that kind of place. So we slept close to the surface...when we weren't medicated.

Operations all but shut down in our compound after dark. Late at night it was very quiet. You could hear the "war radio" chatter now and then, and there were some normal night sounds that the brain sort of absorbs and filters out. But a shrill, extremely loud, full throated scream was not part of the normal night sounds and it was that kind of sound that woke us ALL up on two separate occasions. And they were both very similar in nature.

The first was right in our room. Tommy woke us up screaming like life was near over, and we interpreted it that way. But we found that it wasn't the VC or NVA or an NCO bringing that kind of panic...it was a spider. We had Wolf Spiders in California, they could get up to an inch or two across. Furry looking and resembling a kind of long legged Tarantula. This Wolf Spider had climbed up the side of Tommy's mosquito net and was resting right about the level of his face. Tommy's proximity sensors went off and he opened his eyes to be face to face with this Wolf Spider...the biggest one any of us had ever seen. His span from side to side was bigger than my hand. His body had to be at least four inches long. He just hung there doing spider push ups on the net while Tommy screamed his lungs out.

The second was a similar situation, we had guard towers on each corner of our compound. They were made of 55 gallon drums stacked two high and welded together with a PSP floor and sand bag walls. There was chain link fencing around the whole thing to keep grenades and satchel charges out. The geniouses who controlled such things thought it a great idea to mount huge spotlights on top of the towers so we could see into the area around the outside of our perimeter. They served that purpose and also pinpointed the exact location of our guards in case the enemy wasn't sure. When it is in the very quiet of middle of the night, especially on guard, you hear all kinds of things. Usually it is nothing more than critters, but you always want to be sure. I was in the guard tower on the northeast corner and saw the guard in the northwest corner get up and sneak to his sandbags and peak over the side. At that point, he dropped his M-14, turned and ran out of the tower screaming louder than Tommy had. He never even touched the little stairs they had built into them for us, he just cut a chogie and left me wondering..."I wonder what he saw?"

What it was was a huge snake. He had heard it crawling toward the tower, then heard it in the chain link. Working under the assumption that it is better not to know, he didn't look to see what he was hearing. When curiousity or self preservation got the better of him, he did look. By that time the snake was right near the top of the sandbags and again, that old face to face meeting. I later asked him why he didn't just shoot the durn thing. He wasn't sure, he was sure he didn't mind letting the snake have the tower. The oddest part is that no one else saw the snake. I called the Commander of the Guard on my little field phone and by that time a crowd of variously dressed, armed men had  gotten to the other tower,  but snake was gone. I always thought it was a VC snake probing our perimeter for its weaknesses. And found them...the guards.