As July progressed we continued trudging through the jungle and the open valleys, climbing and descending hills and mountains, as the days went by slowly, with seldom any combat activity. There were small skirmishes, and distant sightings, but most everywhere we went, they were gone, as if avoiding contact. We were almost wishing for some action, but why would we complain? Our biggest complaint was generally the heat and humidity, and the lack of clean clothing. The four companies in the battalion rotated guarding San Juan Hill, spending three weeks in the field, then one week on the hill. Re-supply of socks and towels was pretty much all we saw during those three week stents. The lightweight jungle fatigues were designed to dry quickly, but they stayed wet with perspiration all day long and dried only partially at night. Everyone wore their fatigue trousers and a T-shirt, with a towel over their shoulders to wipe the sweat from their face. After a couple of weeks, the trousers could almost stand on their own when dry, due to the amount of salt and dirt embedded in the fabric. We all smelled horrific, but it was something to which we became accustomed. Occasionally, we stayed the night by a stream and could wash off somewhat, but the smelly clothes remained, and by the end of another day it really didn’t matter. A lot of the streams were infested with leaches, so any bathing required immediate removal of the little suckers (pun intended)!! When we finally returned to the fire base, a shower (below a 55 gallon barrel), shave, and fresh clothing was the first thing on everyone’s mind. Eating three cooked meals per day was also a treat!

In late July, intelligence pointed to a build-up for a late summer offensive by the North Vietnamese Army. We may have been feeling bored at times, but we hoped it was wrong. However, the situation around San Juan Hill was changing. The NVA had managed to set up two 51 caliber anti-aircraft guns on the high hills to the south and north of the firebase. They were shooting at the choppers coming in with supplies. It appeared that they wanted to “starve” us out so that we would be more vulnerable without enough ammunition to defend the hill. Our Artillery battery had to fire directly at both hills to try to keep the gun operators under cover as choppers came in. The rear supply was putting our supplies in big cargo nets that were slung under the choppers, which came in low and up the side of the hill, hovered for a second over the landing pad, dropped the load, and then sped down the opposite side. They were bringing mainly water, food, and ammunition at the time. We were pretty happy to be in the field!

On the 29^th of July we climbed a high hill overlooking two valleys to the East of the fire base, where we were to spend two days sitting and observing the area. I didn’t fire DTs for our location because it could be a tip-off that we were there. Down one side of the hill there was a view into a narrow ravine filled with forest and a large banana grove near a wide stream. The Garden of Eden must have looked a lot like that, green, serene, and unspoiled. The second day we noticed NVA bathing in the stream and entering the banana grove. They were about 300 feet below us and probably a half mile up the ravine, which was too far for small arms fire. Captain Carnes radioed headquarters and briefed them on the situation. Then someone with binoculars noticed three women bathing. Women weren’t part of small NVA units, and with the cover afforded in that area, it was considered that there could be a battalion with nurses hiding there. The final word from headquarters was to blow it away! That was my job!

As I set up the fire mission I was in a quandary about killing women, and made my concerns known.

I was reminded that, given the chance, even those women would take my life…so, just do it!! I gave the order to fire. The first round was a white smoke air-burst to verify the coordinates. The bathers looked up from the stream when the shell burst high above them, and began scrambling from the water. My next command was “fire for effect”. They were entering the banana grove as the first shells impacted. Ten minutes and twenty or more rounds of high explosives later, the area had been changed dramatically. Gone was the serenity, the unspoiled was transformed into a scarred landscape, the banana grove was less than half its size and lay in disarray. Smoke rose all around the area as some smaller explosions echoed up the hill, likely indicating ammunition cooking off from their armaments. We weren’t allowed to leave our position to inspect the area, so we never knew what had become of our adversaries.

“It was probably the one time that I failed to celebrate the effect of my actions. By my sole volition, with my willful calculation, and my voice through a radio, I had rained destruction on the garden, and on other humans, including women. It stuck in my mind for the rest of the day, until I relented to the idea that it was them or me. It’s a well worn phrase, most often spoken abstractedly, but…WAR IS HELL !!!”

We descended the hill through the jungle on the other side, and as we were moving I noticed several men ahead of me weaving to the left and turning to speak. As the RTO ahead of me weaved left around a large bush with crisscrossed branches and very little foliage, he turned his head and said “two-stepper”. And there, laying atop some of the branches, was a Krait snake, one of the deadliest snakes in Vietnam. It’s curare-like venom attacks the nervous system and paralyzes the lungs, causing suffocation. It was called two-stepper from a myth that one is dead in two steps. Without anti-venom, It doesn’t take a lot longer than that, and I had no intention of testing the timing. I shivered at the thought of how many times I could have come close to one in some of the denser jungle!

July had passed and we continued our fruitless attempts at finding the NVA or any Viet Cong. On August 5^th, we made our way back to San Juan Hill for our week of rest and defense. It was an interesting week, being cautious moving around the firebase while knowing that those AA guns could fire at any moment. They were well hidden in the jungle, so we couldn’t detect muzzle flashes when they fired. Fortunately, it seemed they were only interested in shooting at choppers. They had managed to hit one Chinook chopper that came in with a big load, but it was able to limp back to Duc Pho. While on the hill, we saw some amazing things. The Cobra helicopter was a heavily armed attack chopper that was designed to be very difficult to defend against. The body of the chopper was only 36 inches wide, making it difficult to shoot at from underneath, and particularly difficult from the front, as it made a pass at a target. Cobras were being used to hit the areas where we thought the AA guns may be located, and one day, one of them took a hit in the bottom of the body near the engine. Fortunately it was able to land in a valley nearby, from where a Chinook was able to lift it up and rescue the two-man crew. We felt that the AA gunner was either very good or very lucky to make such a shot! However, that was nothing compared to what I would witness a couple of days later.

The Infantry battalion had decided to bring one of the companies on a combat assault to the top of the south hill, where they could search downward to attempt to find that gun. The CA flights of six Hueys were flying in single file along the ridge to our west. I was sitting on the edge of the command bunker watching the flight when one of the birds suddenly fell from the sky, straight down about a hundred feet or so, crashing onto the edge of the ridge, exploding in flames, and rolling down the side of the grassy hill, leaving a fiery trail behind it. In that moment of astonishment, Captain Carnes yelled to look above the ridge. There, in the air, were the rotors from the downed chopper, spinning alone, still in balance. As we watched in disbelief, they slowly tilted and began a slow descent down the ravine below our hill until they finally crashed into the jungle a half mile away! It was like some eerie epitaph to the burning wreckage that had taken at least ten lives in only a few seconds. We had heard the AA gun fire just before the chopper fell, and afterwards, we knew that we were spectators to one of the luckiest shots ever fired. The round from the gun must have hit somewhere at the base of the rotor shaft to cause it to separate from the bird like that. I doubt that anyone has ever seen anything like it. We were all in a state of shock for the rest of the day, but found some solace in the fact that the company was successful in finding and capturing that gun.

What a week we were experiencing! We were still taking in-coming from the gun to the north, but air strikes were called in on that hill and they managed to silence either the gun or the crew manning it. Our last night on San Juan Hill provided more evidence of the anticipated offensive.

“During the early evening of August 12^th, our last day on the hill, our radar picked up a large number of enemy advancing on one side of the hill. I was called to the Operations Center and shown the location, then instructed to bring fire on that area. I called in a fire mission from the eight inch guns at LZ Liz on the coast. Those big guns were the most accurate of all artillery, and I had to bring them in fairly close. Shortly, activity was noticed on other areas of the hill, and I found myself bouncing around in the relative dark, adjusting fire in other areas. They retreated amid the defensive onslaught, and as I finished my work and hopped off my perch, I realized that I had spent the last half hour or so atop the….INFANTRY AMMUNITION BUNKER!!!”

The next morning, a platoon did a sweep of the sides of the hill, and found a wounded NVA soldier. Upon interrogation, he revealed that there were large numbers of NVA in several base camps around our area, and that they had been probing us to see how well defended we were. That afternoon we walked off the hill, into one of the valleys below, wondering what we might encounter during our next three weeks in the field.

By the 15^th of the month, there were increased sightings of enemy units, and skirmishes had picked up all around the province the last few days. Bravo Company of our battalion had been hit hard near the base of San Juan Hill, and after that fight they had confirmed 30 enemy killed. It was obvious they weren’t playing around…and, likely, the summer offensive that we had hoped was a rumor, had begun.

On the morning of the 16^th, at 5:00 AM, we were attacked in our night position. We were hit with small arms, hand grenades, and RPG’s (Rocket Propelled Grenades). The action lasted for less than fifteen minutes, and I had barely gotten the Artillery ready to support us. We had no casualties, but found blood trails where they had dragged away bodies. This was the most serious attack we had experienced since I arrived.

The next morning at 3:00 AM we were hit again, but harder. For nearly an hour we were besieged in the same way. This time I was able to work Artillery in fairly close behind them and maybe do some damage on their retreat. When they attacked in this manner, they could be within 100 feet of our perimeter, or closer. I needed to keep the Artillery rounds about 600 feet away from us to prevent an errant round from hitting our position. We had two wounded during this fight, but after daylight we found several bodies, weapons, ammo, and lots of blood trails.
I was amazed at their tenacity in facing the firepower of an infantry company, especially when dug-in in a defensive position, with Artillery back-up.

At 1:00 AM on the 18^th we were at it again, this time for an hour and a half, with the same results!!
Except for a lack of sleep, I was strangely beginning to almost enjoy the action. I believe I was experiencing the rush of being able to utilize my expertise in adjusting the artillery around our position, bringing it in close to the enemy, but managing that safe buffer from ourselves. We had several wounded this time, but we hadn’t lost a man as yet.

By the about the fifth night of action I found myself and Captain Carnes sitting on the edge of the foxhole, with a warm beer or soda, and our radios, and a better view for directing our side of the action. I can still remember the zzzzz sound of bullets as they passed very near to us. It was foolish not being down in the foxhole, but it had almost become sport!

By the 24^th, we had been attacked eight out of nine nights! Lack of sleep was wearing on us, and the mid-summer heat was exhausting as well. The temperatures were running 110 to 115, with humidity in the eighties and nineties. The jungle fatigues designed to dry quickly, stayed wet from sweat most of the day. Even hot water, laced with the taste of iodine, was guzzled continuously. It was miserable enough without warding off pesky North Vietnamese. Some of the men were becoming worn psychologically, as well, because the ferocity of the fighting had resulted in several deaths among us over the last couple of days. Some of them had lost longtime friends. When it hits so close, we tend to reassess our own vulnerability, and anger can more quickly feed the hatred of the opposition. It is amazing how we mourn for our own, while literally rejoicing as we count the numbers of the dead on the other side!

The morning of August 25^th, orders came down to stay in place and do nothing, because the weather forecast was dangerous. In fact, by midday the temperature hit 125 with humidity near 100%!!!

Not even the NVA were moving. For two days we stayed in the same location, remaining in the shade, sitting still, drinking and sweating. It was the most miserable I had ever felt, and there was no way to escape it. The jungle was truly like an oven. There were times when it was an effort to take a breath of the heavy air. I had been out there long enough to forget what air conditioning felt like, but I promised myself that, if I made it home, I would never again complain about the heat. To top it off, re-supply was curtailed to a minimum, because the air was too heavy for helicopters to fly safely, if at all!! During the last ten days, re-supply was held to a minimum. Food, water, and ammunition were the highest priority during this period.

We had four days without action and were feeling as though the offensive may be winding down. Then on the 29^th, they showed us that they weren’t done yet. We had a hell of a fight that night, lasting better than two hours. We suffered more dead and wounded on our side!!

You see a lot of unforgettable things in war, many of which you might try to block out, but some are simply astounding. After the heaviest part of the attack, we had some seriously wounded that needed dust-off. A med-evac chopper came in and set down in the center of our position, even as the fighting continued (which they often did, God bless them!!), loaded those in worst condition, and lifted off. The doors were always left open for the gunners on each side. Just as it was becoming air borne, I saw an RPG fired from nearby, and fly through the cabin of the bird, leaving its trail of sparks as it flew off and exploded beyond us. God had to have been with those men, the crew, the medics, the wounded, as they came within literal inches of death. If it had been a foot or two in any direction it would have found its mark and there would have been pure mayhem on the ground with the chopper crashing and exploding inside our perimeter. It would have been no more than thirty feet from where I was watching!

We assumed that this attack was their last gasp, because we saw no more action for the next two weeks.