Rats were important to the ‘Yards in and around Dak Pek as they were considered to be delicacies and an important source of protein. The strikers usual diet consisted of rice, a fresh vegetable or two when there were any, maybe a small fish from the river (mostly caught with hand grenades) and occasionally a tiny bit of beef or pork. Live cows and pigs were dropped by parachute weekly to provide food for the seven hundred or so ‘Yards on our payroll. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that each person got very little meat. Hunting in the jungle was not an attractive option, considering the mines, booby traps, and the pop-up-shoot-back targets that skulked in the woods.
It was fascinating to watch a group of ‘Yards when they spotted a rat. Once I watched as a group of them saw a rat run into a brush pile. They surrounded the pile and one jumped up and down on top of it until the rat ran out. The lucky ‘Yard who caught it was as happy as he could be. He held the rat aloft, grinning happily as the rat bit him until the blood dripped from his elbow. The favor was soon returned to the rat.
However, that rat was not the most famous rat at Dak Pek. The most famous Dak Pek rat never existed. Let me explain.
We had a one-room shack of rough boards to house our supplies. This supply room was about fifteen by twenty five feet. It was just a shell, with open rafters and a dirt floor. In the supply room we stored food and the scores of other non-explosive things we needed to survive.
The ‘Yards lived in the bunkers with their families, and at dark, it was, well, dark. Flashlights to them were precious. Shortly after we got a shipment of a couple of cases of flashlights, ‘Yards began coming to the team house asking for flashlight batteries. The first one or two got them, but soon there were a couple of dozen and we simply couldn’t get enough batteries to supply them all. On questioning them, we found that one of the Vietnamese strikers had branched out into a new entrepreneurial endeavor. He was selling new flashlights to the ‘Yards and telling them they could get batteries for them from us. When we checked the supply room, we discovered where the enterprising entrepreneur was getting the flashlights, and how. He had pried a board loose on the back of the supply room, and at night would slip in to take whatever he thought he could sell to the ‘Yards. Flashlights were a hot item in more ways than one.
We wanted to stop the thefts without making a big issue of it, and besides, we hadn’t been able to identify the thief. Since there was no way we could make the supply room secure from a determined person, we looked for a way to make the supply room an unattractive target. So I came up with a scheme to make that happen.
On the appointed day, when the designated supply sergeant got ready to leave the supply room at the end of the day, he telephoned the team house where the rest of the team was assembled. According to plan, the telephone wires were disconnected from the field phones at both ends. The supply sergeant prepared a piece of plastique explosive about the size of a golf ball primed with an electric blasting cap. This he suspended from a rafter where the explosion could not harm the supplies or start a fire, and then attached the blasting cap wires to the phone lines. He locked the supply room and returned to the team house as usual. We waited for a few minutes for things to settle down, and then got on our web gear, steel pots and weapons. After we attached the telephone wires to the phone in the team house, we gave it an energetic crank. When you crank the handle of a field phone, it sends a significant jolt of electricity over the line.
The bang in the supply room alerted the whole camp. We poured out of the team house and quickly surrounded the supply room. Dozens of strikers gathered to see what was happening. In the best SWAT team fashion, we entered the supply room ready to do battle. A few minutes later I came out and announced to those assembled that the explosion had been the hand grenade booby trap we had rigged to catch a thief, but that it had instead been triggered by a rat. Thefts from the supply room came to a screeching halt.
So now you know why the most famous Dak Pek rat never existed.
Copyright 1999
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