Seemed like a good idea at the time.

About a year before I went into the Marine Corps I was visiting some relatives out in Montana with my mother and father, I had always dreamed of being a cowboy and when offered to go horseback riding with my cousin I jumped at the chance. One of the hired hands, Slim as he was called, rode along with us for a spell, but as the morning wore on Slim left us on our own to go look for some strays.  My cousin and I, Leland, rode home through the morning stopping to eat lunch about midday.

We rode maybe an hour more after that and by this time I was getting quite saddle sore and talk Leland into heading back to the ranch we were about halfway back when we saw Slim horse grazing without Slim.  Leland cought Slim horse and we started riding circles, bigger on each loop, looking to find Slim.  After about an hour of riding we found Slim sitting in a patch of cactuses.

Well Leland being quite puzzled, asks Slim how the heck he got a mixed all those cactuses. Slim answered, "I jumped in."  Leland then said, "what the hell did you do that for?"  Slim looked up and said rather apologetic, "well, at the time it seemed like a good idea."

A few years latter the Marine rifle company (B-1-6-2D) that I was serving with was sent to Guantánamo Bay Cuba for a tour of guard duty on the Windward side of the base. The three rifle companies walk the routes and stood the guard post in rotation, taking turns being on duty, on standby, or on base liberty. When you are you had to stand our wall your pose for eight hours, have eight hours off, and then another eight hours on. When your platoon was on standby you had to spend the day and night in your utilities with your boots on, ready to run at an instanced notice to back up to platoon that was on active guard duty in case they was an incursion. Liberty day was for you to figure out what to do with what was available. There was the slop shoot, or beer garden as some call it, a movie every night on outdoor screen, a stable with horses on the windward side that you could check out, and the ubiquitous cards games.

But I digress, the story I want to tell today is about my close encounter with a banana rat while was walking long and winding road that ran between two fixed guard stations. This was the only walking post that had to be manned. It stretched from the post that overlooked the Caribbean, to the post on the inland side of the salt marsh. The fence that separated the base from Cuba Randall along one side of the road, on the other side was an extensive salt flat that was to marshy to build a fixed guard post upon. This is why the road had to be walked because the guards in the fixed post at either end of the road could neither see nor hear one another. Each post had telephones which allowed the guards to communicate with all the other posts, but because of the distance between the two posts on either end all of the marsh, it had to be walked to ensure no breach had been made of the fence.

You had to walk this post in a random fashion for eight hours when you drew it. Rest for eight hours, and then walk it for another eight hours. I can assure you it was the least popular of all the post that you might draw. The night I'm telling about I had just left the post near the sea and was walking to the next post in one, maybe five or 6 miles it's hard to recall exactly, in any case, it was a good long walk. While I was a BAR man they let me walk this post carrying an M1.

I had just started my second eight hour walk all the day in the evening when I saw this God awful big rat, I never knew rats grew so big. I didn't think anybody would believe I saw such a thing. So I decided to prove that actually say it the best way would be to show it to them. I unslung the M1, chambered around, and took aim at the rat. However, before I fired I reconsidered. Every Marine that heard my report would undoubtedly think I had either shot a Cuban or one had shot me.

So I am unchambered round, put it back into the clips, and reset the clip into the magazine. All the while this huge humongous rat was staring at me intensively. And the whole while I was fiddling with my rifle he had not moved an inch just stood there without moving, or even blinking that I could tell. We were maybe 10 to 15 feet apart, as I had come around the curve of the road into the straight part of the salt flat he had built his way to the solid ground from which I had just come.

It was still in my mind to kill the rat so I could show it to my compadres, so I took my rifle by the barrel and lifted the stock up above my head like a baseball bat, and started a slow advance upon the rat.  The rat made up his mind, rather slowly at first that it was not going to cooperate with my intentions. At first, as I crept up on him, he backed up at the same speed I was moving forward. Before I could get within striking range he spun and took off a running.

You're not going to get away that easy I thought to myself and picked up my speed to a fast run. The rat was not as fast as I had feared him he may have been, but then neither was I fast enough to catch up with him, just maintain our distances. Will this race went on and on, with our distances slowly narrowing.  As we were running twilight was getting deeper, and dark was near upon us when we came to the end of the salt flat. By this time I was within a stride of being able to strike at him, remember during this whole run I have been holding my rifle as though it were a baseball bat. At the end of the flats for the road curved off to the right and the next guard post, there was what appeared to me in the near dark I growth of bushes.

The rat made a dive into the bushes, and swing my rifle hard as I could I dove in right behind. Immediately I forgot all about the rat for the bushes were not bushes, they were cactuses. And had I not had my arm in front of my face holding my rifle up high to swing the rat the cactus needles would have put my eyes out. As it was I had hundreds if not thousands of needles piercing my arms, my chest, and my legs. I even had so many that went through my combat boots that they had to be cut off from me when I got back to sickbay.

Well, that's where I was, sitting in the middle of that their cactus patch, picking needles out of my hands and arms when the relief truck drove by with its spotlight search in the roadside for me, as it went by I holler, really loud, over here! The sergeant of the guard walked over, as close as she could get, and asked me, "How in the hell did you get in there?" And I responded, "I jumped in." With a really pissed off look on his face, he asked me, "What the fuck did you do that for?" And of course, I responded, "Well Sarge at the time it seemed like a good idea."

They cut me out with machetes, carried me to the truck as the cactus needles did not allow me to walk very well, and took me straight to sickbay after relieving all the other guards. As I mentioned above the corpsman had to cut my boots off, cut my utilities off, and they pick bails out of me for two or three hours. Each needle to come out left its tip inside as it had a Barb on to remind me as they worked out over the next four or five years that not everything was done in what seems like a good idea at the time turns out to be such a good idea at any time.

This is not me, but the rat in nearly as big as the one I was chasing.