The monsoon season of 1970 was one of the worst on record and we were right in the middle of every cloud it seemed. I started counting the consecutive days of rain for some reason soon after it began and the total ended up being 17 days and nights of rain without relief. It was not always a heavy rain but it never stopped in that time frame. It was of course impossible after a time to have anything dry; you didn't give up completely but you knew it was hopeless. I have many recollections from those weeks and none of them are good.

I remember walking from one day site to our night ambush site to our next day site on and on and on; walking, walking, walking in the rain. I was convinced it was going to rain forever. I don't know how I kept my M-60 from rusting shut or any of our weapons for that matter. I covered it as best I could but like everything else it stayed constantly damp. It's funny how things are taken for granted. Things like dry socks. I somehow had managed to have a dry pair on as we went to our ambush site one night. We were walking along a rice paddy dike, my foot slipped off the dike and into the water. Any other time it would not have bothered me but it seemed like the last straw. Such a minor detail staying with me all these years.

I recall how chilled we all were at night after having endured the heat of the summer. I'm sure the temperature did not drop all that much but it certainly seemed and felt like winter. Of course never being dry had a lot to do with that. I tell people about being cold over there and they just don't understand. No one can until they've been through a monsoon.

Being on an island we could tell that the waters around us were getting dangerously high very rapidly . We wondered what was to become of us. Had they forgotten we were out there? We knew that eventually we would have to be pulled off the island but did not have a clue what the "rear echelon" was up to. Finally one day the Navy showed up (one of the few times I was glad to see a swabbie!!!) and pulled us off. As it turned out with not much time to spare. Within hours of our rescue the entire island was covered with about five feet of water. Many of the poor locals were forced to seek refuge on the roofs of their houses. There was no one to rescue them.

We were taken to a small Navy compound near the coast. We stayed there a few days and I have to admit those guys treated us great. I think however that they begged to be relieved of us. We were eating up all their food!!! Which by the way was as good as I ever had anywhere in the service. I imagine they had never seen anything quite like a bunch of hungry Marines chowing down. We eventually packed up and walked a few miles down the beach to CAP 2-4-1. I think we stayed there one night and then made our way back to CACO.

When the waters subsided enough for us to return we got a chopper ride back to the island. It was the only time in Vietnam I was ever on one. I remember the pilot standing it in it's side as we started descending. I just knew we were all going to be killed. But we made it; back to just an awful mess. There were dead rats and other animals everywhere. What stands out in my mind is the rats floating in the wells. And the amount of mud everywhere. It took a long, long time for our routine to return to normal. Whatever normal in Vietnam meant.