The butterflies would come as you could feel the choppers descend-you could never be sure what you were heading into.  Make sure you are locked and loaded-put that grenade into the launcher.  Often the machine gunners would open fire as we got near the ground, strafing hooches or the wood line. Hopefully the peasants, if they were in the hooches, took the warning of the sound of the approaching choppers and instinctively head for the bunker in the middle of the hut.  I was never sure whether they fired on the basis of intelligence or just did it for fun.  I figured that if someone was out there waiting for us, it would at least force them to keep their heads down, giving us a chance to run for cover.  That was the routine: hit the ground running and go for the nearest dike or other barrier.  While we were running for cover, the chieu hois, our scouts the VC turncoats, would be looking, necks outstretched, looking for any sign of movement.  They knew that  these first few seconds on the ground were the best chance to catch sight of one of their former comrades,  perhaps shifting their positions in response to our air assault.  Sometimes we would catch them in the middle of a meal of  fish and tea with the kettle still on the fire and no sign of them.  No c-rations here. The cobras would hit the surrounding brush or jungle with miniguns and automatic grenade launchers.  I couldn’t believe anyone in that area could survive such an onslaught as tops of palm trees, shrapnel and flying dirt mixed in the cloud which enveloped the target area.  But survive they often did if they found a protective trench or covered bunker.

  But this landing was quiet.  We raced as best we could through the rice paddy in waist deep water.  The water was deeper than usual and the weather was hotter and more humid than usual but no fire-at least we got a break there.  The water was not refreshing, but body temperature or warmer.  This was leech territory.  No matter how tightly the bottoms of the jungle fatigue pants were tucked into the tops of the jungle boots, the leeches would find a way to get in.  When you got a chance to unblouse the pants, they would just drop out, fat and happy.  It’s not that they hurt, they would just leave an opening in the skin which provided a gateway to whatever bacteria or fungi were prevalent.  Add to that a good dose of the military issue mosquito repellant spread liberally over exposed feet when we had a chance to take our boots off and you had a recipe for what was referred to in World War 1 as "trenchfoot".  Infections of various sorts, whether from contact with the environment or the local working girls, were rampant.  The medic had the answer: penicillin, a cure for many of these afflictions but not all.