Rocketed While In the Shower

In Cu Chi, Vietnam, my first tour, we had to make many of our own facilities. The officer’s shower was a little building that had four showerheads and tanks overhead to warm the water. The water tanks stored water overhead and some unreliable heaters were supposed to heat the water so we could have a good hot shower. There were periods when the heaters didn’t work and we relied on solar power to warm the water.

When rockets or mortar rounds started to land nearby the best thing that a person could do was find a hole to jump into. That way a rocket or mortar would have to land right on top of the person for them to be injured. If the person was standing or in the open, the flying shrapnel will likely hit them even if the rocket did not hit them directly. Around the troop area there were bunkers for troops to get into during an attack. Sometimes the bunkers weren’t close by and that was the case with the officer’s shower. If a bunker was not close the other good place to get down into was the drainage ditch, which ran around the troop area. Most of the time the drainage ditch was not preferred because it was muddy and nasty.

When a mortar round landed it sounded like a “thud”, and the 122 millimeter rocket that the Viet Cong used had a very sharp “crack” followed by the flying shrapnel. There was a distinct difference in the sounds the two made and it didn’t take the troops long to learn the sounds. The rockets carried the most punch and were the most feared. We had rockets land in Cu Chi often enough that everyone was familiar that sound.

One of the things that happened quite often was when a fairly new officer was in the shower and had shampoo on his head a “rocket” would hit near the shower. One officer would be assigned to signal when the new officer had shampoo on his head. When he gave the signal another officer would throw a three-inch diameter rock towards the steel roof of the shower followed immediately by a handful of small stones from the other hand. The big rock would hit the roof making a sharp crack and the small stones would sound like flying shrapnel hitting the roof. At that point the new officer would come flying out of the shower as he was dressed in the shower and dive into the nearest drainage ditch. Then the group that was standing there to watch the show would break up in laughter. That would bring a bewildered new officer up out of the muddy ditch wanting to know what was going on. Often the muddy new officer would then have unkind things to say before he returned to a really needed shower. Being the victim of this practice never seemed to stop the new guys from helping to do it to someone else in a month or two.

It’s good that most of us get over those times when we look foolish. Sooner or later everyone gets mud on their face and looks foolish. And it normally seems to happen in front of a crowd or those to whom we want to look good. Laugh it off! Forget it and move on! It’s sad that there are those who can’t let things go. They remember embarrassments and grudges and keep living them over and over again! The wise get up out of the ditch and say, “You really got me on that one” and get a laugh out of it too!