The
other animal incident happened late one morning a month or so later. A
marine (I cannot remember who he was) had completed his 13 months of duty
in Vietnam and was due to go back to the World. While waiting for a convoy
that would take him back to Dong Ha he was lounging in his bunker and had
dozed off. He felt something moving slowly across his chest and woke up to
find a 6 foot long Python crawling across him. He captured the snake and
brought it up to the Command Post. It was suspected that the Python was
simply looking for rats that also inhabited some of our bunkers. The snake
was put in an empty sandbag and taken out on the next patrol and let go
outside our compound.
A young Python found in a bunke at Ca Lu.
Marine on left is Lima XO 1st
Lt. Tom Bailey and below is Capt. John W Ripley
