Snipers and Snakes:
Let’s talk about Burmese Pythons. Burmese Pythons are big snakes and big problems. Not as big as snipers but big anyway. In Vietnam, our soldiers got to see both Burmese Python snakes and snipers.
My neighbor has three purple hearts from Vietnam and taught at Columbia University, Emory, and Kennesaw University while starting a successful business. He was drafted into the Army out of Law School. We had ice cream with him and his wife one Sunday afternoon and we started talking about fishing and the subject turned to snakes….and snipers.
While headed to a landing zone with his platoon (he was in the 25th Division Wolfhounds) they were crossing the berms on a small rice paddy when they came under sniper fire. He said the Viet Cong did not have a lot of regular snipers but used .51 Caliber Heavy machine guns that could kill at a range of about three miles. They would open fire from a distance at patrols and men in the open hoping to hit whomever they could.
His 24 man unit all dove into the rice paddy which they hated because they were filled with leeches and caused serious ring worm problems. They noticed a big wake moving across the 50 foot square section and some of the men started trying to see what it was. Their best marksman was keeping his head down and trying to get a shot at whatever it was. (They had called in air support to handle the heavy machine gun and two cobra helicopters eventually came and blew them away.)They finally saw the head pop up from the water and he described it as at least as big as a catcher’s mitt.
Picture from Wikipedia.
Their shooter put a round through the head of the 19 foot Burmese Python! The men lifted up the snake together and one of the soldiers took a picture of everyone holding up the snake. (He said he got on the tail end!) They mailed the film to Australia and the pictures came back in about 5 weeks and there were not enough to go around so he did not get one. He said he had really wanted one. All this was going on while the machine gun was still operational but when they got to camp he said there was no conversation about the machine gun and all the men could talk about was the snake!
According to Wikipedia, over 90,000 of the Burmese snakes have been imported into the US for pets and many have been released in the wild causing growing problems in areas like the Everglades. They have had a negative impact on deer, possums and panthers and other native animals. Their importation is now banned, but maybe too late. Some experts believe the snakes are here to stay.
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