The end of the month saw a change for Alpha company, as Captain Carnes finished his tour and was headed back to Texas. He was replaced by Captain Schweibach, a West Point graduate. He was a professional and dedicated officer and easy to talk with, and also disappointed that he had missed so much action! We got along well; he had previously served with and respected other officers from Texas A&M.

September had arrived with combat activity similar to what we had experienced throughout July; we searched, they hid, or moved away when we came close. Intelligence was that the NVA and VC had sustained significant casualties during the August offensive. A captured NVA soldier had reported that his battalion was less than half strength. They were surely needing time to replenish personnel and material. We were fine with that, because August had been hard on us, both physically and emotionally; we had lost nearly a dozen killed and even more seriously wounded.

The weather was being more cooperative with more moderate temperatures and occasional rain showers. But then, on September 8^th we spent the most miserable night that I had, or since have, ever experienced! Searching the side of a steep mountain, we spent the night in a rocky ravine. Just after nightfall the skies opened up, and the rain came in torrents. There was no flat ground, and before long the water was rushing across the ground throughout our position. I placed my helmet upside down and used it as a stool to sit on, covered myself with my poncho, and leaned back against a boulder. I stayed in that position for the entire night, feeling the rain pounding on my head and shoulders, and swirling around my feet. Eventually, it actually leaked through the poncho, providing a slow soak of my entirety. It was impossible to even drowse off, let alone sleep!! By first light, the rain had stopped, and I uncovered, chilled and soaked, with my hands and feet looking like prunes, and every joint in my hips and legs aching from hours in one position. Although the sun rose brightly, the jungle canopy kept us shaded and wet! Trudging down the remainder of that steep ravine was tough on long soaked feet!! We spent most of the day resting in the sunshine, drying out and getting our feet in better condition, and tending to other issues. During the first few weeks in country, scrapes, scratches, and cuts would rapidly heal, but after a couple of months, a minor cut would soon fester, and if not treated properly, would lead to infection.

On September 10^th, we returned to San Juan Hill for our week of rest and guard duty. My boss, Captain Monday, was scheduled for a three day R&R and I was to fill in for him as Liaison Officer for the Infantry Battalion. I was thrilled to be granted the responsibility, and to sleep on his cot in his bunker! On the first day, I had to plan the artillery preparation for a combat assault for one of the companies. The “LZ prep”, as it was called, required coordination of several artillery batteries to blow the crap out of the location just prior to the choppers going in to drop off the troops. It was such a cool thing to watch from the command chopper. Later that day, I was on the command chopper as we did reconnaissance, when one of the companies was ambushed in a riverbed. They had some badly wounded men, so we went in to pick them up. As we set down to pull the men aboard, the battle continued, and a lot of fire was placed on our bird. The sound of bullets hitting the metal skin of the chopper, or the whiz as they fly past you, is unforgettable. The door gunners were spraying the forest with their M-60 machine-guns, and the battalion commander and myself were adding return fire with our M-16’s, as the wounded were frantically dumped, bleeding and groaning, onto the floor of the chopper. We weren’t on the ground more than ten or fifteen seconds, but it seemed like an eternity before the bird lifted slightly, tilted forward, and sped away down the river. Thankfully, none of us were hit, and we were able to give what comfort we could to the men we had just rescued, as we headed for the medical facilities back at Duc Pho. Only afterwards did I feel the chill along the spine from the close call that we had escaped. I gained an increased respect for the chopper crews who routinely went in to hot LZ’s.

On the 18^th we went back into the field, and were CA’d farther into the mountains, to search a series of valleys that hadn’t been patrolled in several months. We were dropped off in a wide riverbed and had to ford the river to check out some “hootches”, typical bamboo shelters used by the mountain people, known as Montagnards, but also built by VC and NVA. When we emerged form the chest deep water, one of the men discovered a leach on his arm. We made certain the area was secure, then practically disrobed, to check for them. I had two handsome ones about and inch and a half long on my abdomen and a small one on my back. We used cigarette lighters to burn them so they would turn loose. The river was apparently teeming with them. Once they were extracted, it would take a minute or two for the bleeding to stop. Afterward, thinking about them caused more chills up the spine. We spent the night in that area, after destroying a number of hootches and some corn crops and bags of rice that we found. We had to deny the enemy as much food supply as we could.

The next day we moved a few hundred yards to a small hilltop and set up for reconnaissance. While the platoons were out, we noticed a couple of VC rummaging around where we had spent the night. Captain Schweibach told the mortar platoon to drop a few rounds on the position. When the VC heard the sound of the rounds firing from the mortar, they began running back toward the jungle. And, that is when I witnessed another remarkable sight. I was watching through my binoculars as a couple rounds landed behind them. The second man was running a ways behind the first when suddenly there was an air-burst (an explosion before the round hits the ground) and the man disappeared!! At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but then I realized that the mortar round had actually hit him on the head or shoulder, vaporizing him in a split second!! I turned and asked if everyone saw what I had seen. We simply stared at each other for a few seconds before the mortar platoon broke into cheers. What were the chances?! We joked about what the first man must have thought after he reached the cover of the trees, and his buddy was nowhere to be found!

We continued our rampage through the small valleys, destroying food sources, killing pigs and chickens, and tearing down shelters. We roamed out to the farthest reaches of our artillery support. I made sport of firing “Willie Pete”, a nickname for white phosphorous rounds that exploded and burned at very high temperatures, at distant structures and corn fields. We saw no one, but we could guess that we were being watched from afar.

Then came September 21, 1969…”a day that would live in infamy” no doubt, for many of us!! We were picked up from our distant location and dropped on a ridge about two miles from San Juan Hill. We were to search down the side of the ridge into the valley below, looking for a supposed base camp. It wasn’t there…so, we moved farther down to a large flat area of abandoned rice paddies, where two valleys converged, hardly more than a mile from our fire base. We set up for our night defensive position and received our re-supply and our evening meal. It had been nearly a month since the heavy action of late August, and everyone was in a good mood and managing the day to day life as we knew it. As the sun dropped behind the distant ridge, men began ambling back to their foxholes to prepare for the night. I had just noticed a tiny leach on the back of my hand and was about to burn it off when there came the familiar “whump, whump” sound of mortar rounds leaving their tube. “Incoming” was yelled all around as bodies were scrambling into foxholes!

I ran the short distance to the command foxhole, then paused to listen…the mortar was somewhere in the tree line directly between us and our fire base. How wonderful!!! The most dangerous position in relation to artillery is in the line of flight, because the most likely failure of a round to hit a target is to fall long or short! With the enemy between me and the guns, I couldn’t be as confident in bringing it in close without risking a long round that could fall on our position. I slid into the foxhole and found that the rice paddy dike in front of us was too high to see over. Scrambling back out, I crouched on my knees behind the dike, just as the first rounds landed outside of our perimeter. The mortar was still pumping out rounds, and the next ones were landing at the outer foxholes and then inside the perimeter. I knew right away that these guys were good…they were pretty accurate to start, and were “walking” the rounds straight across our position!! As they were falling closer to me, I felt, for the first time, that I might not live through that.

I was already on the radio, calling for fire on one of my defensive targets closest to the sound of the mortar. Then, just a little beyond the dike, I saw dirt fly into the air…and then I found myself laying on my stomach against the dike. My first sensation, as I pushed myself back upright, was a burning feeling in the small of my back, and as I picked up the radio handset, I felt stabbing pains in my gut. I knew that I had been hit!! I started to reach around to feel my back, but I stopped, realizing that I didn’t want to know how bad it was. Instead, I concentrated on making adjustments to our rounds behind the treeline, and we needed flare rounds as well, because it was getting dark. The commander was trying to communicate with the platoons, and one wasn’t answering. The mortar rounds had stopped falling, and there was a moment of almost silence…broken by multiple screams for the medic. I looked behind me and saw that our mortar had been hit and was likely inoperable! One platoon called in direct hits on foxholes! My next fear was a ground assault, and we were vulnerable. I remember wondering if I had the nerve to call the artillery on our position should we be over-run.

Shortly, I was working four of the howitzers, one for flares and three as close as I could to the treeline on three sides of our position, hoping to dissuade any attempt to attack us. At times it was hard to concentrate over the pain in my gut…I had never felt anything like it! My callsign on the radio was Lancer two six; Captain Monday at HQ was Lancer six. My only communication with him came while I was involved in adjusting fire when he radioed “two six, this is six, are you hit”, and my response was simply “roger”. He had suspected so because of the strain in voice that was different from any time before. I eventually asked my radio operator to take a look at my back. Just a small hole was his analysis. I felt somewhat better…I had imagined a gaping gash!

By now, there was controlled chaos…seriously wounded were being brought to the center of our position, and we were getting an assessment of the situation. Within an hour the Air Force had “Puff, the Magic Dragon”, also called “Spooky” (an AC-47 with three mini-guns mounted on one side) on site to give suppressing fire and drop flares, and I was able to shut down the artillery. A med-evac chopper started a series of round-trips to carry the wounded to Duc Pho. There was no attempt at an assault by the enemy. We had been very unfortunate for their accuracy with mortars, but yet, very fortunate that they had not been more aggressive. By midnight, the worst of the wounded had been dusted off, the dead had been collected to the command area, and the perimeter re-established with troops in every position. The final count of casualties stood at eleven killed and twenty-six wounded. One third of the company had been hit in a two minute barrage. It was hard to look at all those black plastic body-bags laying on the ground. I knew that one of them contained a staff sergeant in his late thirties, with six children back at home, and for whom I had taken a great liking…I cried for the first time! They wouldn’t be collected until morning….

When the final dust-off was on the way in, Captain Shweibach told me to go in to the hospital. I didn’t think it was necessary, and I really hated to leave the guys at a time like that. But, when he made it an order, I had no choice. It was a very lonely ride in the dark.

It turned out that my wound was not at all serious, but the concussion had done a number on my insides, causing all the pain. It would be well over a week before I was back to normal. As I reflected on the incident, I realized that I had experienced a Miracle!! The mortar round had landed about twelve feet behind me, well inside the 25 foot 100% kill zone. My rucksack, less than sixteen inches square, had been laying on the ground beside my left knee, and had over twenty holes in it, and my four water canteens were punctured. And yet, with me upright on my knees, I was hit by one small piece of shrapnel. I was largely agnostic at the time, but that horrific night brought me to a realization that God did truly exist, and, for whatever reason, He cared enough about my existence to spare me certain death!! It was the saddest of all the days that I spent in Vietnam, but one that had a huge bearing on the remainder of my life.

I spent four days at LZ Bronco before returning to the field for a couple of days before the company was due to go to Chu Lai on stand-down for four days of relaxation. The commander told me that the word from intelligence was that we were hit by a NVA battalion moving through our area. They stopped to harass us with some mortar action before continuing their march to the South. My neck hair stood up at the thought of roughly 500 NVA against one depleted infantry company with no mortar. Had they not been on their way to bigger things, I could likely have had to make that decision to call fire on our position!!

Stand-down was like a mini-vacation of four days away from the war. Two Chinook helicopters carried the entire company up to Chu Lai where we were housed in barracks near the beach. There were volleyball nets, horseshoes, table tennis, footballs, frisbees, and USO shows, all on the beach. There was a thatch-roofed shelter with a long charcoal grill made of barrels cut in half. That was the First-Sergeant’s domain, where he spent all day, each day, grilling meat for the men to grab as often as they wanted. We were supplied with 200 cases of soft drinks…200 cases of beer…100 quarts of hard liquor…several hundred pounds of steak, chicken, and burgers…all for 135 men over two and a half days. It was quite a sight to see the men laughing, letting off steam, and enjoying life as much as possible, especially after what they had been through just a week prior. I spent the time relaxing (much of the time around the grill) and observing the goings-on, and letting my brain clear from what had passed and what remained.

On the 30^th we returned to San Juan Hill. As soon as we arrived, Captain Monday met me and instructed me to report immediately to Artillery Battalion HQ at Bronco. I caught a mid-afternoon flight and as soon as I arrived I was sent to see Col Gleave. He informed me that I was relieved of my position as Forward Observer, as of that day. I wouldn’t be returning to San Juan Hill!! He was assigning me to the Fourth Battalion, Twenty-First Infantry as Artillery Liaison Officer, reporting the next day!! WOW, getting out of the field was fabulous news, but this was more than I could have expected. “LNO” was a Captain position. The battalion had two excess Captains and four open Lieutenant positions, yet he had selected me to handle such an important role! There had been suggestions that, at some point, I might become Executive Officer for the battery on San Juan Hill…this position was far, far better. I would be in charge of all fire support for the infantry battalion, working directly with the battalion commander, and reporting directly to our battalion HQ. It was the best news I had received since I arrived in Vietnam.