Thoughts on a rainy day.

The rain has really been coming down since late this morning.  I'm sure that we're way above our average rainfall to date for the year. It's been raining like a cow pissin' on a flat rock.

I've been watching a movie on Netflix off and on for the past couple of days.  The title is "Proud". It's a docudrama about Blacks who served in the Navy during WWII.  "Proud" according to Wikipedia  While watching the movie my thoughts traveled back to my Vietnam experiences with Black soldiers.  On the advisory team that I commanded there were several Blacks.  Two of them I recall quite vividly, both of whom saved my life at least once.

Sgt. 1st Class Oscar Smoot from New York City was the first Black that I commanded.  When I took over the team Sgt. Smoot was in the middle of his second combat tour to Vietnam.  He was the team medic.  It was his duty to help keep the team members well and in top combat physical condition.  Another one of his duties was to assist the local villagers in health matters.  On many occasions, the team would provide security so that Sgt. Smoot could administer his healing talents to the sick & dying villagers.  He truly was an angel.  I admired and respected the man, although his past was dark.  He joined the Army some 15 years prior at the direction of a New York State Superior Court judge.  Enlistment in the Army was his punishment for attempted armed robbery of a bank in the city.  His past was of no concern of mine.  Sgt. Smoot took me under his wing and watched over me as we engaged the enemy in the jungles, certainly saving me from death on more than one occasion by his quick response to enemy threats.  I'll never forget Sgt. Smoot.

The other Black that I distinctly remember was another Sgt. 1st Class who served under my command. His name was Sgt. William Pope.  Sgt. Pope replaced Sgt. Smoot when Smoot rotated back home to New York. 

Sgt. Pope was an easy going guy.  He always talked about his family back home.  As I recall, he had a wife, two boys and a girl waiting for him at his home in Shelby, NC.  Sgt. Smoot saved my life on the night of April 1, 1970, April Fools Day.

We had just come back to our base camp after checking security ambushes around our perimeter.  It wasn't my time for my stint on radio watch, so I hit the sack for a couple hours sleep.  Sometime around 3am and unknown number of Viet Cong sappers (commandos) slipped through our protective ring of ambushes, crept up on my team bunker, and tossed 4 thirty pound satchel charges onto the bunker.  The explosion killed 3 of my team members almost immediately.  Sgt. Pope was suffered a neck wound when one satchel charge cooked off our ammo bunker.  He was unable to talk because of his wound.  So, that left me.  I was entangled in a maze of twisted metal, sand bags, and other debris. I was trapped in the dark haze.  The first blast had knocked me unconscious, and the last of the four blasts apparently awakened me.  I remember taking deep breaths, trying to breath.  But, it wasn't working.  I was suffocating.  The second blast, according to Vietnamese soldiers in a nearby compound, caused our underground 100 pound propane tank to explode.  Gas that wasn't ignited in the explosion lingered like a blanket of death inside the mangled ruins of the bunker.  I knew I only had minutes to find my way out before I died.  Suddenly, I felt someone grab me by one of my legs and pull me out of the mangled steel and through the debris of what was once our bunker.  Sgt. Pope got me out as I lost consciousness. All this time, we were caught in a cross fire between the nearby Vietnamese Army unit and the fleeing Viet Cong.  He carried me some 50 yards out of the cross fire and into the safety of a drainage ditch.  I helped him attend to his wounds as we lay there waiting for the sun to rise.  If it hadn't been for Sgt. Pope, April 1, 1970 would have been my last day on Earth.