Catapult, aka Slingshot or "Bean Shooter"

[CharlesHarris]

My friend Mikey was a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam. He usually had either a .45 or an M16 close by, but being a true Arkansas country boy, he habitually carried his Whamo slingshot in his overalls pocket, keeping a handful of 10mm ball bearings from the engine repair shop tpo amuse himself.

He often worked on aircraft at night close to the perimeter fence and any unfamiliar noises were spooky. When hearing suspicious sounds too close for comfort he would "recon by bearing" hurling a ball in the direction of the noise. This usually ran off the water buffalo or whatever. There was always the lurking fear of enemy sappers cutting through the wire, but the last thing you wanted to do was fire a shot and have every machinegun having pre-registered fires set along the perimeter fence to be searching and traversing around your position!

One night he heard a noise and loosed a ball, the noise persisted and he hurled another, then heard a grunt and silence. He went back to work. The next day they found a sapper with a hole through his head hung up in the wire.... The security team was puzzled, "the shot must have come from a long way off, nobody heard it, and the bullet didn't exit his head, fellow was just unlucky I guess?"

Mikey kept whistling and went back to work.