Death and dieing is something that comes to us  all, yet for the most part I think that we tend to ignore this fact of life, myself not excluded.  During my tour of duty in Nam I seldom if ever thought about the possiblity of dieing, even though there were certainly times of absolute fear.  Yet in spite of the fear, I don't recall ever putting a name to it or examining it.  Usually I had a feeling of invincibility; a certainty that I couldn't be touched; they couldn't get me.  That was a feeling that was usually there, sometimes as a conscious frame of mind, but most often just as an underlieing certainty of survival.  The fear was there too, but beneath it was always that certainty of survival. 

I remember once while with the Infantry my company was going on a company sized sweep in an area we were working in.  We were moving across an open field and our point element had just gotten into the wood line when sudden gunfire broke out, not heavy but just a few shots in a short quick burst.   We immediately moved as quickly as possible into the wood line for the cover it afforded us while our lead element returned the fire.  As it turned out the point man had been hit in that first burst, wounded but not too badly.  Apparently it wasn't a full scale ambush set up, but just a scout patrol that he had been on the verge of walking into so they opened up on him.  We moved up to surround his position while a medic attended to him, and our mortar section began firing into the woods ahead of us.  We had a battalion size NDP (Night Defensive Positon) set up back across the clearing we had just crossed, and our mortar platoon was set up there to provide suupport for us.

 After the wounded man was taken care of and withdrawn back across the clearing to be picked up by a medivac helicopter, it was determined by the Battalion Commander to pull us back and pound the woods with mortar fire before moving us back to sweep the area and continue on with our original mission.  I was in the last rear guard squad to cross that field back to our NDP, and I was running sort of hunkered down and zig zagging  to make myself as difficult a target as possible.  There was a small tree in the clearing, and as I neared it suddenly a burst of wood fragments about eye level exploded out of the side nearest me, apparently struck by a bullet.  I saw that and just laughed, zigging a little faster, zagging a little wider.  I knew they couldn't get me.  That was the attitude I had in the moment.  Maybe dumb, but it was just the feeling I had.

 There was another time, though, when that feeling deserted me.   My battalion one time set up in an NDP  just outside a small village on a road clearing mission.  We had to clear the road of mines and potential ambushes in preparation to run a supply convoy through.  I was by this time one of two radio men in my platoon.  Radio men were called RTO's, for Radio Telephone Operator.  Each platoon had two, one for the Platoon Leader, one for the Platoon Sergeant.  I was the Platoon Sergeant's RTO.

 We set up our position during the day, digging in and running patrols up and down the road in preparation for the more extensive clearing that we would be doing over the next few days.  We had some combat engineers with us, and they brought some metal detectors with them that we called mine detectors.  They had already swept a short distance down the road with them by the time we were dug in and set up for the night.

 We were told that we would be running sporadic patrols down the road through the night, perhaps three or four times, to make sure that Charley didn't come in during the night and try to re-mine the section that had already been cleared.  My platoon had that duty, and I was scheduled to go out with the first patrol as RTO.

 The other RTO in the platoon was a guy named Berg.  He was the Lieutenant's RTO.  For some reason he wanted to go out with the first patrol, the one that I was scheduled to go on.  I didn't care.  First, last or in between, I was going to be out there.  So I agreed to swap with him, letting him take my place on that first patrol.  They waited until it was fully dark before sending them out in the direction of the village.

We had a dog man out with the battalion on that operation, and he and his dog were taking the point on that first patrol.   The whole patrol was barely out on the road, no more than about 50 to 100 meters from our line when Charley popped a claymore mine on them.  A claymore is an above ground command detonated mine, fired by means of a hand held detonator with battery in it and wires running from it to an explosive detonating device in or on the mine to blow it when the hand held device is depressed to complete the circuit and send the electrical signal to set the charge off.  The claymore is set up facing the direction that the enemy is expected to be coming from.  Essentially, it is simply an explosive device that is constructed in such a way that the back of it is the explosive, while the front is packed with pieces of metal of some sort.   Ours were packed with round pellets like buck shot, while Charley packed his with just about anything he could find to do the damage he wanted to inflict on his enemy.

 The dog was killed instantly, the dog man was severely wounded and a couple of other guys also were, including Berg.  No shots were fired, just the single claymore set off.  Whoever had set it off had apparently just fired it off and then withdrawn, and the patrol was instructed to pull back with their wounded, which they did rather hastily; so hastily in fact that they left some equipment behind including the dog man's little folding stock carbine.  We immediatly had to send another patrol out to recover the equipment they had left, particularly that little carbine.  And I was to go as the radio man.  My platoon Sergeant informed us of this, at the same time telling us that it looked like most of the meat of one of Berg's lower legs was blown away.

 When I learned of this, my feeling of invincibility for the first time deserted me.  I thought that for sure we were going to get hit also, but with more than just a claymore.  I thought sure we were walking into an ambush, and I wasn't coming back.  My best friend was a Kentucky kid named Ronnie Pigg.  He wasn't going, and I said nothing to him about what I was feeling.  But I pulled my wallet out and asked him to hold it for me until I got back.  There wasn't much of anything in it, just a few dollars and some pictures.  But I didn't want Charley to get it.  He took it, I picked up my radio and weapon and joined the recovery squad.

 When all was ready, we moved out.  We cleared the line and moved up along side the road to the point where the patrol had been when it was hit, forming a small perimeter around the area  while the sergeant and a couple of men swept back and forth picking up the carbine and other equipment.  When they were done, we moved back into our NDP.  Not a single shot was fired, nor did we see anything that looked hostile or suspicious, outside of our own fears.  When I returned to our platoon area, Ronnie handed me my wallet back without a word.  I took it, put it back in my pocket and nothing was ever said by either of us about it, then or later. 

 As I said, it was the first time my feeling of complete protection and safety had ever deserted me.  I didn't think about it at the time or at any time soon thereafter, but I have thought about it many times over the years.  And the only conclusion I can draw as to why my feeling of protection deserted me was simply that even though I wasn't thinking about it at the time, I was supposed to have been the radio man on that patrol.  Berg took my place.    And though I wasn't thinking of that in the moment, it was a fact in my subconscious, finding its only conscious expression in an irrational fear and certainty of imminent death. 

I never saw Berg again.  I don't know if he ever recovered enough to be returned to the unit.  I've wondered many times what the result of his wounds were; what resulted in the remainder of his life because he took my place on that patrol.  I would like to know.  It isn't of course a certainty that had I gone on that first one that I would likewise have been wounded, even though he took my place.  I wouldn't have walked exactly as he walked.  I wouldn't have moved exactly as he moved.  I may have been over just sufficently to have avoided most or even all of the shrapnel that hit him.  Or I may have been killed.  Wondering about things like that simply does no good, in the long run, because we can never know.  It isn't what happened.  Instead, it's the things that do happen that we have to deal with.  And that night, I walked out with the recovery squad certain that I was walking out to my death.  And nothing happened.  I've found that many fears are like that.  They eat away at us; they nearly drive us mad; and then we just go ahead and go, and nothing happens at all that we were so fearful of, and then we breathe a sigh of relief, maybe even laugh about it, and wonder what it was that had us so fearful in the first place.

 And yet still I sometimes find myself crippled by an irrational fear of trying.