I was the Operations Officer, called the "S-3", of an airborne infantry battalion and a major. It was my second tour in Viet Nam, since I had already spent a year as an advisor to the Vietnamese Army. I had spent most of this year in the boonies, sleeping on firebases in the jungle to be near the rifle companies. Now, though, the battalion commander and I had changed the way the battalion operated. Instead of having the companies trek through the jungle chasing the elusive enemy, usually with no success, we kept them around the village, ambushing all the roads and trails. This was working out well and an added advantage for me was that I spent most of every day and night in the basecamp. I now had a tent, a cot, and even a wall locker for my clothes.

Busy most of the day and into the night, I had little time to contemplate weighty matters or do much of anything but work. I did make time every evening to write to my wife and kids, even though all I had to write about was the war, which I had a hard time making interesting. The most interesting things that happened every day were not things I would write to them about. For example, one day my helicopter was shot down over thick jungle filled with enemy. How the pilot managed to land the helicopter without crashing and burning I don't know. Why the bad guys didn't immediately attack and wipe us out, I don't know. That day my life had been filled with gut-tightening excitement, but I couldn't write that to my family, already living in terror that I wouldn't return alive.

One evening I was sitting on my bunk opening the day's mail and writing a letter home. I was sampling some fudge that had come from my mother. It was extremely rich and tasted pretty good even though, according to the postmark, the package had probably been lost in the mail for weeks. It was now about six weeks old.

Suddenly I was hit with stomach cramps and ran for the latrine. Then, drained of all energy by the heat, the rigors of the day, the cramping and the diarrhea, I crawled under the sheets and tried to sleep. I was awakened half an hour later by the sound of scratching and clawing. At first I couldn't figure out what it was, but after a few minutes I was able to make out, in the darkness, the silhouette of a huge rat which was, I couldnÕt quite believe, climbing up the metal wall locker. It would go up a few inches and slide back, but it wouldn't give up. I watched, fascinated, as the beast noisily worked its way up the tall obstacle. As soon as it reached the top it grabbed a piece of the fudge and leapt to the ground. I went back to sleep.

A little later I was again awakened by the sound of rat claws on metal. I looked over at the wall locker and saw the beast going up again. This was too much. I got up and heaved a boot at the wall locker, scaring the rat away for the moment. It was a long night, though, interupted often by the scritching of rat claws. The next day I asked the supply officer for a rat trap.

I hadn't eaten the fudge for a couple of reasons. First, I thought it was spoiled and was causing my stomach problems. Second, it had rat tooth and claw marks all over it. And, the rat trap wasnÕt working. No rats were tempted by the cheese and peanut butter I had baited it with. Still, I was awakened almost every night by the rat climbing the wall locker. I have to admit I admired that rat.

Everyone I told about it suggested throwing away the fudge, but I couldn't. My mother had made it, packed it and mailed it. I owed it to her to at least eat some more of it.

Then it occured to me that if that rat would climb a wall locker for fudge, it would surely fall for it as bait in the trap. I baited the trap with fudge that night and went to bed. Within five minutes I heard the trap spring, followed by the screams of a wounded rat. The beast dragged the trap around the tent, moaning and screaming for what seemed like an eternity before dying. In my job, I dealt with death every day, so I was satisfied that this was indisputably a Viet Cong rat who had met his just fate. Now, I thought that at last I would get a good night's sleep.

Some minutes later, just as I was dozing off, there was the scratching again. "Wait a minute," I thought. "I killed that SOB!" I checked the trap and there it was, dead. I heard a climbing rat scurrying off. Well, there was no choice. I had to get this second guy. I took the dead rat outside (man, he was huge!), emptied the trap, rebaited with some more fudge and went back to bed. Five minutes later the trap sprung. More screaming, dragging, moaning and eventual death. This happened three times before I got up, took the fudge off the top of the wall locker, and pitched it into a trash can far from my tent, along with the trap and the latest rat.

I consoled himself that I would no longer suffer from the cramps that seemed to accompany every sampling of the fudge. But, a few days later they were back. It was then I realized that my pattern of fudge eating had been set by the "resulting" cramps. I would wait until I was well over them before trying some more fudge. They would return and I would wait some more. As it happened, I was eating the fudge every Sunday. Sunday was the day everyone took his weekly malaria pill. That pill had always caused me diarrhea, but as time went on it became worse and worse. Now it had reached the point where it nearly incapacitated me for several days. It had never been the fudge.

Actually, this wasn't my first up close and personal encounter with rats. During my first Viet Nam tour, I had been awakened one night by a rat on my face. Of course, I was startled and horrified. I felt the rat's claws on my skin as it scrambled away when I woke up. I vowed never to have a rat on my face again.

The problem was that I was living in about as rat-free an environment as was possible, given that I was in Viet Nam. The South Vietnamese are wonderfully gentle people. That needs to be put into context. Political scientists have determined that some nations have a strong tendency to be at war. They call them "warrior nations." Viet Nam, which includes both the northern and southern halves, of course, is a warrior nation. It has been at war with someone for as long as we can trace its history. But, the people who live in the southern part of Viet Nam are unusually gentle. The expression "he wouldnÕt hurt a fly" is appropo to most South Vietnamese. The saying in Viet Nam is, "Kill one fly and a hundred come to take his place." It is commonplace to see a Vietnamese totally oblivious to the flies walking on his face. They are equally at home with rats.

That isn't to say that rats aren't killed in South Viet Nam. The rats that live in the rice paddies eating the grain which falls to the ground, are themselves harvested as food. During Tet that year, I was invited by the Vietnamese I advised to attend a big dinner each night. Every night the meat served was unusual. I knew better than to ask, but I did anyway, and my Vietnamese counterparts told me that it was rabbit. I thought, "I've never seen a rabbit in this country, and they would have to be very small rabbits to have bones this small, anyway. Good grief, I'm eating rat!"

I started paying more attention to the activity in the paddies during harvest. When the rice was cut from the paddies and the paddies were drained of water, the rats were exposed. The farmers had their rat-catching dogs with them, and the dogs went crazy chasing and catching the rats. The rats were killed, skinned, and hung on tall poles. The dogs were given the skins to eat.

However, in town the rats lived on garbage and sewage. These rats were left alone, that is to say, not eaten. The same attitude existed about rats as about flies. They weren't killed as a means of reducing their number since the belief was that somehow more came to take their place. In that benign environment, and given the abundance of food available to them, the rats were numerous and huge.

After the rat on my face, I renewed my efforts to obtain a cat. I had spoken to my interpreter about getting a cat almost immediately after my arrival, but the interpreter hadn't succeeded in getting one. According to Tang, the interpreter, cats were so hightly prized by the population that none were ever available. I didn't buy that argument. I saw cats in the village and knew they existed there. I felt that everything had a price and I was willing to go as high as it took. I was even willing to "rent" a cat, since I would be leaving in less than a year, anyway. Still, Tang claimed he couldn't get one.

The morning of the rat, I told Tang about it and said I wanted a cat and I wanted it now. I told Tang to go into the village and find a cat no matter what it took. Tang, being a sympathetic soul, finally set out to actually find one.

Tang was a bright young lad but one of those guys who can't do anything right. When the Senior Advisor assigned Tang to me, he told me that the rules were that American advisors were not authorized to drive in Viet Nam, so the interpreters were also their drivers. Tang, however, couldn't drive, so I would drive my own jeep. I used to let Tang drive the jeep for an hour or so everyday thereafter, far out in the ranges where there was nothing to hit, and after many jaunts through ditches and off the edge of the road, Tang seemed to be getting the hang of it. One day, as we were about to go out to training, Tang asked if he could get the jeep and bring it out the gate to the front of the American compound. I decided he could handle that trip of about 25 feet, and told him to go ahead. Minutes later I heard the inevitable crash as Tang took out the front gate. That was the last time Tang drove the jeep.

Since I often went off the post into the field, my only protection, besides my own carbine, was from Tang. Tang admitted he couldn't shoot. My department was conducting marksmanship training nearly everyday, so I had Tang take part in the training on many occasions. Tang never hit a target.

Worst of all, Tang was a lousy interpreter. He spoke English well enough, but he didn't know anything about military subjects in either language. I had been given only six weeks of Vietnamese language training, and only half days at that, but I realized immediately that Tang was translating horribly. I did almost all of my advising without translation, using my own limited Vietnamese and a few English words, where necessary.

So, given Tang's general incompetence and his resolute failure to obtain a cat up to that point, I wasn't very optimistic about getting a cat, even after the rat on my face. But, late that afternoon Tang came back and said that he had obtained the promise of a kitten. The kitten was very young and not very healthy. The seller wanted 300 dong for the kitten, nearly $3, which Tang considered an outrage. He advised against buying it. I gave him 300 dong and told him to bring the kitten the next morning.

Tang and the kitten showed up the next morning and the kitten was a sorry sight. He was sick and unable to clean himself, and was covered with fleas. He was so small that the fleas looked huge on him. I wasn't sure the kitten would live long enough to keep any rats away. I took him to my room, fixed up a box for him to sleep in, got him some food, and went off to work.

When I got back that night the kitten was still alive but not looking any better. I went to see the medic and asked him if he had anything that would kill the fleas. No one else in the Team thought that having a kitten was a good idea, including the medic, so no one was offering any help. Still, the medic said he had some louse powder which might work. I dusted the kitten with the powder, only to have the kitten go to work as hard as he could to lick it all off. The louse powder must have had a lot of poison in it, because that little kitten got a whole lot sicker after he licked it off. It was touch and go for about a week.

After a week or so, the kitten started running and playing like a kitten usually does, and growing, too. He was still just a kitten, and a small one at that, the first time I took him outside. I could let him run free since he was so small that I could catch him before he got very far away. I let him get a little too far away one time and he came face to face with an enormous rat. I was about to jump up to try to scare off the rat and save the kitten, when I heard the rat scream and saw him running for his life. The rat was three or four times bigger than the kitten, but he was scared out of his mind.

I had the kitten for about six weeks until I left for a week. When I returned the kitten was gone. My roommate claimed the kitten had run away. I doubted that, but it didn't seem to matter. We never saw a rat in the room again. Was it the odor of cat? Did the rats put some sort of marking at the door? Don't know. But it worked. Best three dollar investment I ever made.