Thursday, April 19, 2012

Don’t think I’ve ever blogged about random trivia before, but this little ditty is just too priceless to not shine the spotlight on.  During the Vietnam War, there were many unpleasantries the soldiers had to deal with, not the least of which were leeches as they trudged their way through near stagnant bodies of water.  Don’t think I have to stress just how uncomfortable it would be to have leeches latch onto one’s body parts—each and all of them that became exposed by being submerged in the water. 

Since our soldiers were resourceful, they came up with a creative solution to keep the leeches from being able to attach to them—stockings.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Our Vietnam soldiers, well, the resourceful ones, would don full stockings under their fatigues to disallow the leeches from being able to gain good suction. 

At first glance, this seems like it was a brilliant idea.  And it was…to a point.  But all good ideas have can fall prey to…challenges.  This plan was amongst those.  Seeing as our American soldiers were considerably taller and built larger, overall, than their Vietnamese counterparts, it proved challenging for our soldiers, the ones who weren’t smaller in stature, to locate stocking large enough to fit their bodies.

As I wrote that last bit, I couldn’t help but smirk, thinking of the soldiers who, bent on locating the right sized stockings had to explain to the local shop keepers why they needed such large stockings.