Letters to Mike 8

 December 16, 1967 letter to Mike

Hi Bac Si (Vietnamese doctor),

I thought you said you were in the field; French fries, bowling (142?), playing cards – gee, I wish I had it rough. Have you found anyone who plays Euchre? I haven’t come across anyone who’s even HEARD of the game since basic. (We were unbeatable).

Sorry about the $75 extra but that’s war. You’d better make Spec 4 before Jan. 19^th or I’ll beat you to that too. (I’ve been told). You see, I’ll have $1,400 saved if I don’t go on R&R, but I can’t pass up an opportunity like Hong Kong so I guess I’ll have to settle for a measly $1,200.

Talk about all the Columbus boys from Basic. There’s a guy here in the platoon who took his basic at Knox (different company) and then went to Polk. He knew Rich (what’s his name) McKinney, Bill Kucher, and Bob Hoover, who were in his SIT company. (He’s from Kentucky).

I see you’re figuring on a drop on your ETs before Christmas. I thought of that myself. If you can’t count it that way, I can see that – 20 days.

Things have been lively here lately. The dry season is enabling easier movement by the Cong and therefore increased activity. We had a guy wounded pretty bad in the arm and stomach and an ARVN (one of the best and a personal friend of mine) was killed at the same time.

Broton, Anh, our squad leader – Sgt. Howerten, and I, were chasing an UNARMED VC. He ran up to a hedgerow and we all stopped and fired at him and saw him drop. They ran to the spot where he fell only to be surprised by him. He had merely jumped into his hole and grabbed his AK-47 (Chinese-Communist rifle) and waited silently for them. When they got about 30 feet away from him he popped up and let a 40 round burst (auto) fly. Anh was in front and hit in his abdomen and groin; he took 12 hits. Broton was hit in the right arm, shattering the bone and through the gall bladder. The Sarge made it to cover.

I saw the whole thing from about 50 meters away and immediately fired heavy fire at the hole – my only thought being to keep the VC down and prevent him from shooting any more. It all happened in a split second and I don’t think I actually thought of killing him.

I fired a whole 20 round magazine right at the spot he was in.  (With tracers I knew it was all going to the same spot.) When the clip was emptied, the VC jumped up, unhurt, and ran into the bushes and disappeared. I couldn’t do anything: with no time to change clips and no one there to fire beside me, he got away clean. If I had shot only 15 rounds and stopped I’m willing to bet he still would have run only I would have had 5 more bullet with his name on them.

Two nights later we had a mortar attack – no rounds in our compound. Four nights after that we had intel that we were going to be mortared again so we went out to try to stop it before it happened.  (At night).

We had searched our objectives and found nothing when, just as we were getting ready to go back in, all hell broke loose. We were about 1,500 meters from Bao Trai and we saw it all.

It started with automatic weapons fire followed immediately by mortar rounds We could see the tube flashes from the mortars and estimated their position to the ARVN artillery. I have never yet seen a heavier volume of fire from the automatic weapons and rifle on the bunker surrounding the town and from the 3 artillery locations (one 105 battery and 2 mortar sites). The night was lit up with tracers and exploding shell both going in and coming out of Bao Trai. It looked to us like the whole town was being overrun. In addition to the mortars we saw at least 3 rockets - something like our LAWs [light anti-tank weapons] fired in the town’s direction. Hairy night.

There was supposed to be an ARVN element – the 49^th Recon Company – with whom we’ve worked before in the area, as well as us. We saw no signs of them or VC during the sweep, but on our return we received sniper fire 4 different times. The 49^th is a trigger happy group and have shot at us before not realizing it was us. We figured this to be the case so we never returned fire – just dove into the paddies and hugged mother earth ‘till it stopped and silently cursed the 49^th.

When we got to the road the curses changed to prayer of thanks. The 49^th was there waiting for us. “What was all the shooting about?” the US advisor wanted to know. It seemed the 49^th had moved out of the area when the mortar attack started, and had been on the road ever since. Who WAS shooting at us???

We learned the next day that an estimated 100 - 200 man VC force was sighted in the area later on that night. Chances are good they were our snipers. Can you imagine what would have happened if our humble 90 man unit had opened up on that force? Actually the snipers were probably in small groups and only shooting because they didn’t know for sure who it was walking in front of them. If we’d fired back we would have given ourselves away and the large force would have gathered upon us in no time.

So it goes here in hell. It’s nearly Christmas and still 100 in the shade – the hot summer. The move to Trang Bang has been cancelled indefinitely so there’s still a chance we might see Bob Hope! Christmas would be better if we could.

Well take care of the Third Reich and keep counting our days.

Peace on Earth,

Bob