KEN'S vIET nAM pHOTOS AND sTORIES
Battle For Plei Ya Bo (3 Trees) Page 2
There were all sorts of of sounds snapping and whooshing overhead but the real roaring sound was on the ground ahead of us. I was at the front of the diamond therefore I was among the first to reach the "C"companys perimeter. I will never forget looking for cover on the battle side of the perimeter. I remember shooting at everything that moved to my front. I remeber shooting an enemy RPG ammo bearer in the mid-section thus killing him instantly and igniting all of his RPG rounds. Here comes our fighter support I heard someone shout. I looked back over my shoulder and I saw a F-100 was coming in ahead of its sound and a huge napalm canister appeared to be headed right towards me but it hit about 100 meters to my front . More fighters and more bombs. The Artillery was still firing. The shratnel was raining down all around me. Finally all of the Artillery had been shut off and now all the noises were slackening and finally silence. I will never forget a Dustoff Chopper (Medivac Chopper) landed and then another one. Men in the crucified position arms over their buddies shoulders, were hobbling towards the choppers. Men were walking on their own power with one hand gripping the field dressing on a bloody arm. Now we're going after them.We were going to chase the enemy. Back in diamond formation again. We walked across the "C" company perimeter, some of us fixing our bayonets, and into that wall of trees where the bullets and rockets and grenades had come from. In the wet leaves and vines were bloody bandages and strange blue-dyed cotton masks, all North Vietnamese, and in a minute we came to an open space in the trees where one of their mortars had been. I found a young ammo bearer crying in pain from his wounds. We stared at the tubular cartons that had held the shells they had rained down on us. Just a few yards from where I found the NVA, all of a sudden I saw two NVA in a foxhole with their AK-47s pointed right at me. I brought up my M16 and I had the safety off and the Rock & Roll position. Then they threw up threw their weapons right toward me and gave themselves up. The instant that I saw them my anger vanished. Two small Vietnamese in their thirties, bareheaded and wearing sandcolored uniform, had just given themselves up to me. They bowed repeatedly, as they stared up at me from their shallow foxhole, They raised both hands in the position of prayer, striking their foreheads in the Buddhist sign of mercy. One of them was slightly wounded. The engagement had started just beyond here at the widest part of this old logging road, when one of "C" company's platoons had been ambushed as they were coming back up this road, nearing the end of a patrol. About 50 yards on, beside the road, the American bodies were stacked like green logs with white and black arms protruding from them. An effort had been made be the reinforcements from "A" company to cover them with panchos, but the panchos kept slipping off. There had been no rounds fired by either side for a few minutes. A Chopper came in to take out the prisoners for a rapid interrogation to see if we could find out more about what we were up against. The Chopper landed, the North Vietnamese were led toward it, and a hail of shots came from the jungle, aimed at the North Vietnamese by their own men. A murderously personal high pitched snapping string of enemy machine-gun bullets came after us. The machine gun let loose another eerie burst, and then there was the sudden clanging sound of an M-16, right in there with it, dueling it. There was a short burst from the machine gun, a longer clip-emptying burst from the American weapon, and silence. I did not know it but one of my best friends Stanley Wesley Dix of New Orleans had just charged forward by himself, silencing the machine gun, killed three North Vietnamese, and died, winning a posthumous Silver Star for that day. It was later that I found out that Dix had laid down his life for his white and black comrades on the same day that there had been race riots in Newark, New Jersey, in which Americans killed other Americans.
