The TERRIFYING Job of Manning a Listening Post in Vietnam

Every night in Vietnam, while most of the firebase slept behind barbed wire and sandbags, two or three men crawled out into total darkness and disappeared into the jungle. Their job had no glory attached to it, no medals waiting at the end. They were the Listening Post, sent a hundred yards beyond the perimeter to lie in the mud, stay perfectly still, and listen for the sound of an enemy that could be moving inches away in the black of night. This is the story of what it meant to man an LP, the psychological toll of knowing you were the first line of defense and the first target if the jungle came alive with gunfire, and how ordinary soldiers found the nerve to volunteer, night after night, for a job that made them a human tripwire between safety and slaughter.