In 1973 I was stationed at Lake Meade Nevada. I was assigned to the 820th Red Horse Squadron, kind of a combat construction team. I had ben selected as an instructor for survival training. During a 7 day field exercise, the instructors were suposed to be the aggressors and attack the encampment. About the third night my boss told me to sneak into the camp and create a diversion, any type, he left that up to me. Right after dark I started crawling into the camp. On my way in a ran across a small sidewinder rattlesnake, about 2 feet long. I caught it and stuffed it into a bag. I crawled right past the guards and over to the recreation tent. I thought I could use my little buddy in the bag to create quite a diversion. I pulled the little snake out cut off it's head, raised the bottom of the tent, and without looking inside slung it into the tent. It had the desired affect, guts were literally knocking the tent down trying to get out. Two differant people were screaming like something was killing them. Everyone in camp came running to see what was going on, even the people on guard duty. The instructors took the camp without much effort
The problem was that when I slung the snake into the tent, it had hit this Master Sargent right in the neck. The snakes headless body wrapped tightly around his neck. The MSgt was deathly afraid of snakes, he literally clawed his throught to ribbons trying to get rid of the snake. He then went into a seisure and had to be taken to the Hospital and given sedatives. When two other individuals seen the bloody snake around this guys neck, they went crazy, screaming, throwing things, and knocking down tent poles trying to get away. The rest of the people in the tent seen these three guys taking on so they figured something bad was going on and they needed to run, so they did, just like sheep. The next day the commander had me standing tall, he told me it was a wonder noone had a heart attack. Never was I to do that to any of his troops again.
