Terry and The Beast
- Thread starter Lawrence
- Start date
O.K., a show of hands. How many people first thought, "Hey, my mother-in law!"
Jefferson3000
Expert Expediter
Just remember: Behind every great man, stands a surprised mother-in-law.
I have always thought that the plaque was a caricature of Terry first thing in the morning before Rene' fixed him up!
Falligator
Expert Expediter
And Sasquatches dooooo exist! .....j/k.....That's just what I look like after I fill my gas tank.....
late4dinner
Seasoned Expediter
Most of the time a man has to get really, really drunk, but it appears that Terry has a smile on his face.
OK, now that you've all had a laugh at my expense and that of a revered creature of high repute, I'll share the little known details of an adventure my crew and I had in Vietnam.
We were completing a special operation on the Perfume River in the province of Thua Thien, quite a few kilometers south of the city of Hue. It had been an eerily calm day and, because this area was particularly dangerous, due to heavy NVA and VC activity, we had each of our weapons manned (a .50 cal mounted piggy-back on a trigger fired 81mm mortar and 4 additional .50 cal mounted on the rails)
It was approaching dusk so we were headed back out to the relative safety of the ocean where we normally patrolled the coast in support of our primary mission, Operation Market Time, the interception of arms and supplies from the north. As we approached a narrowing of the channel at a bend in the river, I slowed to about 10 knots, or so. Almost immediately one of the .50 gunners saw a commotion near the river bank ahead; he hastily trained his weapon in the direction of the stir and as he reported the sighting, the bow and other port side gunner brought their weapons to bear on an unbelievable sight. A woman and a young girl were treed by an animal, the likes of which none of us had previously seen. It had a body that looked a bit like a cougar but it had dog like legs and seemed to have wanted to, but was unable to climb the tree. One of the gunners let go a burst on his .50 and blew the haunches clear off the beast.
The woman in the tree was amazingly calm and seemed more frightened of us that the animal that drove her and the child up the tree. I put the bow of the boat up against the river bank and one of our enginemen, a Texan, jumped ashore and helped the reluctant folks out of the tree. They were pointing to the creature and were yelling something in Vietnamese that was unintelligible to us, but the Texan said she was calling the animal something that sounded like "sabine river fajita"; thus, the origin of the name Sabine River Fajita. The Texan cut the beast's head off with his K-Bar knife, leapt back aboard and disappeared below deck to the engineroom where he cleaned up the head, bagged it and put it in the freezer chest. A couple of day later, we returned to our homeport of Danang.
I retrieved the head of the animal from the freezer and took an interpreter assigned to our Division into a local village where we found the Vietnamese equivalent of a taxidermist. We bartered a bit and he finally agreed to stuff and mount our Sabine River Fajita for two cartons of American cigarettes. That was two dollars for me but a lofty price by local standards. By the time the head was ready, the Texan had rotated Stateside, so I kept the head for myself; it's called command prerogative. The crew decided that our new mascot should have a name. We decided on Chieu Hoi, Vietnamese for "open arms", a program in which the enemy could surrender with a safe conduct pass.
We're still not sure what this thing is and are content to think that Chieu Hoi is really a Sabine River Fajita. We did find out later that the male of the species is a carnivore and the smaller female is an herbivore. The meat of the male is darker than the female and they say it tastes a lot like mild beef. The lighter colored flesh of the vegetarian female is said to taste somewhat like chicken. We got a big laugh out of that because of the name the big Texan thought the woman in the tree called the thing. We decided that this animal must be the origin of fajita meat; where else could it come from?
We were completing a special operation on the Perfume River in the province of Thua Thien, quite a few kilometers south of the city of Hue. It had been an eerily calm day and, because this area was particularly dangerous, due to heavy NVA and VC activity, we had each of our weapons manned (a .50 cal mounted piggy-back on a trigger fired 81mm mortar and 4 additional .50 cal mounted on the rails)
It was approaching dusk so we were headed back out to the relative safety of the ocean where we normally patrolled the coast in support of our primary mission, Operation Market Time, the interception of arms and supplies from the north. As we approached a narrowing of the channel at a bend in the river, I slowed to about 10 knots, or so. Almost immediately one of the .50 gunners saw a commotion near the river bank ahead; he hastily trained his weapon in the direction of the stir and as he reported the sighting, the bow and other port side gunner brought their weapons to bear on an unbelievable sight. A woman and a young girl were treed by an animal, the likes of which none of us had previously seen. It had a body that looked a bit like a cougar but it had dog like legs and seemed to have wanted to, but was unable to climb the tree. One of the gunners let go a burst on his .50 and blew the haunches clear off the beast.
The woman in the tree was amazingly calm and seemed more frightened of us that the animal that drove her and the child up the tree. I put the bow of the boat up against the river bank and one of our enginemen, a Texan, jumped ashore and helped the reluctant folks out of the tree. They were pointing to the creature and were yelling something in Vietnamese that was unintelligible to us, but the Texan said she was calling the animal something that sounded like "sabine river fajita"; thus, the origin of the name Sabine River Fajita. The Texan cut the beast's head off with his K-Bar knife, leapt back aboard and disappeared below deck to the engineroom where he cleaned up the head, bagged it and put it in the freezer chest. A couple of day later, we returned to our homeport of Danang.
I retrieved the head of the animal from the freezer and took an interpreter assigned to our Division into a local village where we found the Vietnamese equivalent of a taxidermist. We bartered a bit and he finally agreed to stuff and mount our Sabine River Fajita for two cartons of American cigarettes. That was two dollars for me but a lofty price by local standards. By the time the head was ready, the Texan had rotated Stateside, so I kept the head for myself; it's called command prerogative. The crew decided that our new mascot should have a name. We decided on Chieu Hoi, Vietnamese for "open arms", a program in which the enemy could surrender with a safe conduct pass.
We're still not sure what this thing is and are content to think that Chieu Hoi is really a Sabine River Fajita. We did find out later that the male of the species is a carnivore and the smaller female is an herbivore. The meat of the male is darker than the female and they say it tastes a lot like mild beef. The lighter colored flesh of the vegetarian female is said to taste somewhat like chicken. We got a big laugh out of that because of the name the big Texan thought the woman in the tree called the thing. We decided that this animal must be the origin of fajita meat; where else could it come from?
Terry
You should be a recruiter.
You should be a recruiter.
I thought that was the beginning to a truck driver story!!
Tennesseahawk
Veteran Expediter
...And he had 6,000 chicken fajitas for dinner.
OK I give up. Which one is Terry?