William writes “It was around sept or oct of 1970. My battalion had been activated to go to Vietnam and we were doing some intense training to get ready. The training was taking place in the heavy forests of Fort Jackson SC.
It was very dark that night and my platoon was on the left flank of the main body and we were moving to attack and capture the aggressor force opposing us. I was a PFC at the time and was a squad leader. Orders came down for my squad to move up and scout ahead of the main body. We were moving from tree to tree slowly and as quietly as possible. I moved ahead to this really large tree and got down to a prone position and just listened. All I could hear was silence, no bugs, no frogs, no nothing! I put my hand down to push up to my feet and all hell broke loose. What I had put my hand down on was a boogers foot. He roared so loudly I couldn’t hear for the next 15 minutes.
Well I shot up and backed up shouting for the rest of my squad to retreat all the while firing my M-16 (don’t worry they were blanks!) With all the noise and my entire platoon racing towards me the booger took off crashing through the woods. After all had quieted down, you could see was the destruction it had made getting the hell out of there. Later, after a bunch of guys all dressed in black had come asking a lot of questions, measuring, and who knows what else, I found out the booger was 8ft 11in tall and they said around 900 to 1000 lbs. Looking back I don’t think it was there to hurt anyone, he just was curious.”