“Chief!….Chief!!! Danny was whispering loudly.

He was red in the face using his knife hand to point out the mostly naked sleeping Malaysians.

We had just completed the infiltration portion of this exercise and were moving onto phase II. I told the Malaysian L-T , a small affable guy, “well that sucked” referring to our infil. He smiled acknowledging the statement. “We’ll go to fifty percent and let the guys dry out and get some chow and some rest.” Fifty percent meaning one man of two can do what he needs to: Clean his weapon, eat, sleep, change, and in this case dry out. The other man remains alert and pulls security. Soldiers were out in two-man teams in a rough perimeter. US two-man teams were interspersed with Malaysian two-man teams.

Well that lasted roughly a nanosecond after we set up our perimeter. The Commandos “pulled the pin” on their rucksacks, clothes and gear went everywhere, on branches, on the ground, on bushes, and in the grass. Most stripped down to their skivvies, spread a poncho on the ground and Out. They. Went. Including the L-T. Resulting in one of my guys “Danny” going off. We were all reaching our threshold but he was particularly intense, rapport was not his strongpoint. He ran the safety team for the helocasting one iteration and was so hard over that the boats be in an “equilateral triangle” to visually queue the helo that he literally yelled at the Commandos. This resulted in the Commandos giving him a less than complimentary nickname in Bahasa that described unsavory animal parts.

I quietly crept over to Danny and told him I was not going to kick them in the ribs and wake them up. They barely made the infil. I also told him we would hold the line and maintain fifty percent, and lead by example like we had done throughout our time here. He was unsatisfied with this but accepted it. So we sat in the jungle, one man airing himself out, catching some shuteye, strapping on the feedbag and the other alert and watching. So we remained for roughly four hours.

During this time I was eagerly waiting for the support boat crew to show up so we could load our kayaks and get that off our plate. As an administrative constraint we literally could not move until that was done. Leaving expensive US equipment lying around third world countries was generally frowned upon. It had been three hours since we arrived and I had not heard from them. Finally around noon we heard the trucks coming and moved near the road to receive them and load our kayaks. 

My friend and fellow Warrant Officer got out with the safety crew in tow and they were clearly not happy. My Team Sergeant and I came out of the bush and sauntered over, shook their hands. Being support on an exercise is usually a high profile, zero stress, cool guy job. You aren’t tactical and can act how you want, to wit: the safety boat operation consisted of shorts, t-shirts, sandals, hats, sunglasses, a cooler full of cold drinks, portable music, lickey chewys (that’s code for good snacks), and a laissez faire attitude. This time it took a turn for the worst. “Where ya’ been?” I said as he removed his sunglasses. 

“Go ahead ask why it took so long?”

“Uh, why did it take so long?” I asked. 

“We had to carry that @#$## zodiac through 300 meters of thigh deep mud.” The look on his face said it all, his eyes off in the distance reliving it. It was what we refer to as an emotional event. The tide had gone out.  A zodiac weighs over 300lbs, then add the engine, the gear and the mud and wa-la 400+ pounds of “light weight” equipment to be moved (all our equipment seemingly gets labeled as light weight by people who never have to carry it). He and four other guys struggled mightily for close to three hours.

We were choking back laughs.

Then to our amusement he said “Ask me where my Teva’s are.”

I looked down and he was literally barefoot. “Where are your Teva’s?” I asked grinning. 

He put his hand up beside his face, palms up, fingers and thumb together above his palms, then suddenly dropped both to waist level opening his his fingers. Simultaneously he made a sucking sound followed by “puh, puh.” “GONE!” He said with absolute certainty. The mud had sucked his expensive sandals right off his feet.

OK, now we were openly laughing. But he was not finished.

“Ask me why my legs have red spots all over them?” His legs were freckled with hundreds of little red rash looking spots. 

In between laughs I asked “What’s with the spots…?”

“Oh that’s because there were @$@#$ jellyfish stingers in the mud.” Now everyone was laughing even him.

“Well you still have your sunglasses….” I stated blithely.

“Just barely.”

We then loaded the kayaks, said thank you, offered condolences on their event, and they returned to base.

The ramifications of this came like a bolt of lightning illuminating the dark parts of my brain (there are a lot of them). The team we were supposed to receive was infiltrating via helocast off of T’laboh in 16 hours. Two zodiacs full of troops and equipment and the tide would be going out. We discussed this briefly being mildly entertained by the idea of watching another team carry zodiacs through this kind of thing but quickly dismissed it (do unto others…).

We broke out a map and started looking for a landing zone (LZ) we could get to that was safe and tactically sound. We’d done some fastrope training and could use that. We’d split up, move to the LZ, receive the other team via fastrope and then link up at a bridge ID’d on the map and then move to the target.

I then got our counterparts and started forming this up. Two US soldiers would go with two Malaysian Commandos to the LZ, confirm it would work, secure it, and receive the other team that would fast rope in. They would then move to a link up point where myself, the rest of my team, and the rest of the Malaysian would meet and RON. Sgt. Johnny with two Malaysian soldiers had volunteered to go recon the bridge and come back before darkness. We then would move in the dark to the bridge and receive the incoming team and our own teammates returning from the LZ. From there we would send out a recon to the objective, confirm what we knew, finalize our plan then conduct the hit during the hours of darkness. Basically our timeline remained intact. We radioed the rear and explained the situation emphasizing the tide is a problem. Meanwhile the safety team was on their way back so if there was any doubt as to the veracity of the tide variance they could be the living proof that it’s a bad idea. 

Our Malaysian friends were up and running now, rucks slowly getting packed and many had foraged in the jungle around us and brought us mangoes, papaya, and a coconut. Even Danny got some despite his open dislike of how they operated. We sent out the LZ team and the link up recon and remained in our patrol base at fifty percent. I cross loaded communications gear over to my ruck from the communications sergeant as he was headed to the LZ. The comms guy always have the heaviest ruck. Our movement to the link up point was much shorter and those guys needed to be able to move fast to make mission.

Once cross loaded the various teams headed out. We maintained radio comms with the LZ team. They had successfully located the LZ, confirmed it was good to go, and waited for the other team and Commandos to come in. Meanwhile we waited for Sgt. Johnny to come back. He did just before dark and had confirmed the link up point. We waited until roughly 2100 (9pm) rucked up started moving for the link up point and the final portion of this exercise.