White Lion

1. I don’t know why, but the smells of the jungle always drew my attention. There was the sweet smell of fresh vegetation, flowers and moist soil. The musky yet pleasing smell of rotting vegetation and the smell of fresh bananas and other fruits belied the terror and fear that lurked in the thick, almost impenetrable hell. There were other smells as well; gun powder, sulphur from the bombs, burned vegetation, rotting human corpses, the smell of death. Death was a smell we all feared; but I figured as long as I could smell it I was ok. I’d watched some of my friends die; I learned not to make too many friends because it was easier to let people go if I didn’t know much about them. I learned how to kill quickly and efficiently and not feel anything about doing it. I didn’t know my personality could change so quickly from an innocent country boy to a man whose job it was to kill the enemy. After six months in a place they call Viet Nam, the Republic of, I figured I was about as far from life back home as I could get. 2. One day I had to relieve myself and rolled over on my side. When I did a green tree snake slithered out from under my leg. I reached down and grabbed the snake behind its head and snapped its head from its spine to kill it. The snake was squirming and twitching and I threw it over at Jake. Jake put his foot on it until it quit squirming. These snakes are not poisonous but are pretty aggressive. I looked back at Olson and his face was as white as a bed sheet. I thought to myself, Olson is afraid of snakes. I looked at Jake and winked and nodded for him to look at Olson, Jake looked back at me and smiled. Olson had one eye on the snake and one eye on his spotting scope. Jake looked at me and asked, you hungry? I said yes, I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Jake peeled the skin down over the back of the snake and cut a piece of meat off and ate it. He then cut a piece of meat off the snake and handed it to me and I swallowed it whole. Jake looked at Olson who was our Sergeant and said the next piece is yours, sir. Olson was totally grossed out and after a few expletives didn’t talk to us the rest of the day. 3. Our life together was great, Trudy brought out a side of me that I thought had died. Trudy and Jeff gave me something as well as someone else to focus on besides myself. I was trying hard to break away from the hard hearted attitudes I had adopted to survive earlier in life. They were both vital in helping me do that as well as helping me to break the bondage of guilt I carried with me. As an evangelist, it was easy to allow people to put me up on a pedestal and if I wasn’t careful I could get to believing I belonged there. I had to constantly remind myself my job was to serve the people not them serve me.