Maybe that was true in the animal kingdom, I remember thinking, but with human beings, the male was more dangerous. I changed my mind about this when I crossed paths with a very deadly lady with a rifle, who was intent on killing me and everyone around me. I was a young infantry officer doing a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1971–72. After a few months of combat, I mistakenly volunteered for a crappy job. I found myself leading a ten-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol, known as the Lurps. I was near the end of my tour, with twelve patrols under my belt, and all I could think about was getting home alive. We were patrolling near the Laotian border west of Khe Sanh, a hilly area of dense, semitropical rainforest broken up now and then by expanses of head-high elephant grass and bamboo thickets. The local population of indigenous Montagnard tribespeople had long since fled this free-fire zone for the safety of fortified compounds to the west. I had the feeling—which was total illusion—that I and my nine men were the only human beings in this Godforsaken place.
