Jungle Mission by René Riesen

Author:René Riesen [Riesen, René]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, Vietnam War, United States, Special Forces, Strategy
ISBN: 9781787205611
Google: LA0qDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2017-06-28T15:56:38+00:00

The men stopped at the foot of some thorn-trees. Then they bent down like any French peasant to gather the mushrooms which grew like sticks of asparagus—the young shoots which were such a luxury to them. The following day we should have them boiled, and I must admit that, with a red pepper sauce, I would enjoy them too.

Once they had been gathered we set off again—and there at last were the animal’s eyes, hypnotized so that he could not move. His head swayed and nodded, but he never thought of turning round, the foolish creature, though trying to escape from this dazzling daylight, so hard to understand in the hours of darkness.

We stopped and I went forward cautiously, stepping with great care to prevent the crackle of twigs or dead leaves. Then the animal also moved towards us, so that I could make out his shadow, then his head, then his breast. I came to a halt, and he stopped too. When I moved again he kept still. The roebuck, if it was one, had got a whiff of us—a quiver of the nostrils, and he would be off.

Very slowly I brought my gun to the shoulder. I fired—and there was nothing to be seen. I went forward faster, keeping the beam of the torch directed on the same spot. There were two points of light on the ground—the creature’s eyes—and its body quivered in a final convulsive jerk. As I put my hand on the neck, the terrified stare of a dumb animal was fixed upon us. The legs made a last attempt to move, but the Hrés were already there, striking at the throat with a knife to drain the meat.

I turned aside, for at such moments I was ashamed and disgusted, feeling like an executioner. But the excitement of hunting, and even more than that the wonders of those prowls in the darkness when one seemed to be walking in a dream, would obliterate all such feelings, and the following evening I would be at it again.

It was in the course of one of these roebuck hunts that I came across a tiger in the shadows of the jungle. We had been going along a wider path than usual. On such tracks, used in previous expeditions, the game could recognize the smell of the white man and avoid his light. I had to shift my ground, for the torch no longer had a hypnotic effect—the opposite, in fact, for it was recognized as the prelude to the crash of death, and the game made off in terrified flight.

On the fresh ground the hunter, with his torch and gun, was unknown to the creatures of the jungle.

Then in the glades where shrubs alternated with bamboos, and in the breathless silence of the jungle, I heard a strange murmur in the night. As the Hrés said nothing I thought at first that it was the distorted sound of running water, though it did not seem quite like anything I had heard before.

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