U.S. Army's 6th Battalion/14th Artillery Regiment

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The 6/14 Arty is officially open but is still a work in progress. We hope that it will soon take form and someday proudly stand as a testament to the brave men of the 6th Battalion 14th Artillery Regiment.

Plei Djereng Rats - by Bill Hilton

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rat
Looking for a handout.
I was given a cot with mosquito netting tied at four corners to the ceiling of the bunker.  I hadnít noticed many mosquitoes and decided the netting was more trouble than it was worth.  I slept with it untucked and off to one side.

- Bill Hilton -

kids with days catch
Montagnard kids with the days catch.

 
Plei Djereng Rats - by Bill (Dickson) Hilton
I met my first rat shortly after arrival.  I was given a cot with mosquito netting tied at four corners to the ceiling of the bunker.  I hadnít noticed many mosquitoes and decided the netting was more trouble than it was worth.  I slept with it untucked and off to one side.

I was awakened by something taking a stroll up my chest, and there was enough light to see that it was a rat.  I figured my best bet was to stay still, and maybe I wouldnít get bit.  The rat made its way to my neck, took a right and went down alongside my head, and stuck its little rat nose in my ear.  Finding nothing good to eat, it left.

I got up and tucked in my netting.

The ceiling of the bunker was covered with parachute material.  This kept the dirt from settling down when the big guns were working.  The rats considered the space between the material and ceiling a sort of ìrat freewayî.  You could see their little feet on the material as they made their way across the bunker.

The rats provided entertainment for us and for the local Montagnard kids.  The kids could be seen taking rats for a walk, using a piece of string for a leash.  Our entertainment was more bloodthirsty, and consisted of finding ways to kill them.

Combat with rats in a weird sort of way mirrored the ways we had learned to kill in training: Hand To Hand, Rifle, and Bayonet.

Hand-To-Rat combat would occur when a rat dropped out of the ceiling and onto someoneís netting.  I suppose the rats considered the netting to be some sort of little ìrat trampolineî.  If the cot was occupied and the G.I. was quick enough, a good backhand would send the rat flying.

Shooting a rat required setting up an ambush.  There were of course some safety issues with shooting inside a bunker, but the ever-clever G.I. figured a way around them.  A bullet could be taken apart, the brass jabbed into a bar of soap, and ìviolaî, a ìsoap plug bulletî that was much safer for an indoor ambush.  Some food would be set out, an unsuspecting rat would eventually show up, and the G.I. usually won.  Ambushing rats seemed pretty normal at the time.  Decades later, however, the thought of a G.I. sitting in a bunker in the dark waiting to shoot a rat seems a little strange.

The more serious rat haters used the bayonet option.  A rat would be spotted in the ceiling, and bayonet practice would start. If it was a clean kill, all was good.  The material would be cut and the rat removed.  If, however, the rat was just wounded, things could get ugly.  The rat would go off to die somewhere, and the bunker smell (which in the best of times was not ìspringtime-freshî) was made even worse by the addition of  ìlíodeur de dead ratî

One of the more bizarre ways to deal with rats didnít involve traditional combat, but was more along the lines of ìPhysics Experimentî.  This consisted of dropping a rat down the barrel of one of the big guns just before firing it.  I suppose îdistanceî or ìtime-of-flightî or some other sort of observation was expected from these experiments.  To my knowledge, no actual values were ever recorded.

Bill Hilton
RTO/FDC A Btry
Oct. 67-Oct 68
 

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