Leeches


by Doc Dave Pfeifer


W hen ever we went thru water,rivers rice paddies etc.(which was all the time),we had to check for leeches.They had a habit of getting in to the damndest places to suck blood. Usually the space between the top of your boots and the bottom of your pants.But they could be anywhere and you couldn't always feel them,so a visual check was necessary.

Well, we had a 2ndlt for plt leader an no one liked him.

He was always bitching an complaining about someone.

This one particular day we had been in and out of water all day.After wading thru a stream about waist deep,we came out and one after another stripped down to check for leeches.The lt yelled 'doc-doc', and when I ran over to him, he had his pants down around his ankles, and was pointing down.Well on one of his testicles was a leech getting bigger than hell from the blood it was sucking out.

There were two ways to get rid of leeches;1.to lite a cigg and put there cherry of the cigg up against the leech and it would drop off to get away from the fire.2.The other way was to squirt it with that rancid ass mosquito repellant they gave us.The leeches would clamp on with two little fangs to puncture the skin, and then they secreted a anticoagulant to keep the blood from clotting, so they could go on draining the blood all day.If you pulled them off the fangs stayed in an the blood kept flowing for a long time.The trick was to make them let go voluntarilly and the closed right away.

Therefore ,either the insect repellant or the hot cigg did the job.

So as I neared this lt,these thoughts went thru my mind quickly, along with this, lt. was asking me to take care of this leech on his privates, and I resented he didn't take care of his personal stuff like the other guys did.I remembered how he was an asshole to the guys too. So,loudly I said lt thats easy to take care of, we'll just hit it with bug juice and I proceded to cover his entire genital area with the nasty stuff.Sure enough the leech curled up and dropped off.The lt yelled thanks doc, and pulled up his pants and moved out.

In about 15 minutes he was yelling and jumping up and down that he was on fire, doc-doc, you got to do something.

I told him he must have gotten some kind of infection form the leech.So I medivaced him to the rear, and they gave him a three day stand down.

The guys all cheered and when he returned he was real quite and stayed away from me.I'm not sure if he ever figured out what happened,but he had a lot of problems after that, especially when he found out his shot records were lost.

Doc Dave
Medic, Vietnam