A Shot of Snake on the Rocks

A Shot of Snake on the Rocks

I was only eighteen. And yet, I had already won the rank of Lance Corporal in the USMC as well as the right to carry the M-60 machine gun. The M-60 was the most powerful weapon my unit was issued and there was only one per platoon. That totaled five M-60’s in a company of 250 marines. One marine with an M-60 and a nine-yard striing of rounds can kill an entire platoon in less than ten seconds. I was the only Marine carrying one who was not a non-commissioned officer. I had been in the Coprs less than two years, so to become one of those five made me the object of a lot of jealousy. There were sergeants and staff-sergeants who had been after an M-60 for years.
It was one of those sergeants that gave me an all night watch when we were on maneuvers in the Mojave desert. It was the single most boring assignment I had ever pulled. We were in base camp. There was a communication system in the command tent that required twenty-four hour attention. I got the midnight til six a.m. shift. It was a six hour stretch of silence that went totally unbroken. The only thing I had to occupy myself with was a handbook on desert survival. Towards the back of the book was a section on desert dwelling animals. Since I was in the Mojave desert, the page on the Mojave Rattle Snake caught my attention. It is the only page in the whole book that I still remember.
It said the Mojave rattler was unique among rattle snakes for two reasons. First: its venom is both a neurotoxin and a hemotoxin. It poisons your blood and your nervous system. Most poisonous snakes do one or the other. Very few do both. Second: it is one of the few snakes in the world (not just rattle snakes) that has an aggressive personality and is known to attack opponents bigger than itself without being provoked. Most snakes will leave you alone if you leave them alone. The Mojave rattler attacks. After I finished the handbook I had five hours to think about Mojave rattlers.
Three days later my platoon went out into the field for a week. We had live ammunition. On the morning of the fourth day we were awake and moving before the sun rose. I was exhausted from the march. I was tired from lack of sleep. I was hungry because we started before breakfast and I knew we wouldn’t stop for about three hours. We were walking through a narrow corridor. There were all kinds of brush, undergrowth, and cacti growing around the rocks. Just as the path bent and a large pillar of rock cast a shadow across the road, I heard it.
At first I thought a metal clasp had broken loose from my pack. Then I realized that the clicks were much faster than my pace. I stopped. The rattle did not stop. I looked to my left at a rock the size of a jeep’s tire. The rattle was still rattling. The survival handbook page on the Mojave rattler flashed through my mind. The words “venom” and “aggressive” stood in the fore front. Something under the right lip of the rock moved. My hand reacted without me telling it to. I fired half my string of bullets at the ground under and around the rock. Marines scattered in every direction, diving for cover. When the echoes died the platoon got to their feet. No one was hurt, except for the sergeant who gave me the overnight watch. He landed on a cactus. There had been something under the rock. I don’t know what it was because we only found a few pieces of it.
When we got back to base camp I got yelled at by an entire tent full of men with brass on their shoulders. They did not take the M-60 from me. In fact, they didn’t give me any sort of punishment at all beyond the yelling. As I was leaving the tent with my tail tucked properly between my legs I heard on of them say, At least he hit what he was shooting at.”
I never got invited back out to the desert. I can’t imagine why.