Slippery Red Clay
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2 NOV 1968
After the incident with the giant Anaconda yesterday I noticed that when we
moved out this morning the
point man moved forward much more slowly than the day before. We found
no evidence of any casualties from the
road runner artillery firing last night, except a single Ho Chi Minh sandal
left hastily on the trail. We are moving to a hilltop about three
klicks away to set up a base to run squad sized
ambush patrols out of for a few days. The fact that this ridge line
has such a clear trail on top means that it is being used regularly. The patrols
are told to setup alongside the trail, put out
claymores, prefire some artillery targets and wait for someone to come
along. When the enemy is in the kill zone, they are to blow the
claymores, fire a mad minute, and pull back to our perimeter as the
artillery is fired behind them in a blocking maneuver. No one is spotted the
first night, but we do see some flashlights on the opposite ridgeline and call
in some 105mm artillery fire on them. The next day the
CO wants us to send someone over to see if we got anyone. I tell him
that it almost killed us getting up the ridge the first time. To go down,
then up the other, search it, come back down only to have to climb back up this
ridge line again is simply not an option. If they made
contact while on the opposite ridge, I could not get to them in time to
help. He tries real hard to get me to do it, but I refuse. He then
orders me to break up into three night
ambushes instead of the one. I send out two reinforced squads, one in
each direction along the ridge and keep the third with me in the perimeter we
have setup. That night we heard movement about half way down the ridge towards
the valley. They had obviously spotted us and were going around our
position by traveling in the valley. I made the mistake of telling the
CO what I thought and of course he wanted us to setup an
ambush in the valley. Now that was real dumb, so I made another
suggestion. Why not sneak off and move to the other ridge line where we
had sighted the lights and setup a platoon sized
ambush on that trail. He liked the sound of that, so we packed up and
began the move. I had one squad stay behind and make enough noise to keep
the enemy thinking we were still all there. I also fired some blocking
artillery targets along the ridge to discourage anyone from moving up on the
stay behind element. We split up their packs and took most of their gear
with us, so they could make good time when I called them to move out and catch
up with us.
By 11:00am we were in the valley filling our canteens in the stream. It
was not as hot as it had been the last time we climbed a ridge, but it was still
over 90 degrees. About noon, just after we started climbing the ridge, it
started raining. The cool rain really felt good and soon cooled things
down quite a bit. The ground was so hot that there was steam everywhere.
It became so humid that the sweat just poured off us, irritating our eyes.
While we appreciated the respite from the heat, the rain also made the red clay
very slippery. About an hour up the ridge, someone slipped down the hill
nearly 50 feet, stopping when he was impaled on a stump of bamboo cut by the
point man while clearing a path.
He was in total agony. I came back to his
position and was shocked by what I saw. He had about a foot of bamboo jammed
right up his butt. Doc had given him some morphine to calm him down and
ease the pain. Everyone was stumped about what to do next. Doc said
that if we lifted him off the bamboo, he would probably bleed to death before we
could get him to an
LZ. I sent the first squad up to the top to find an
LZ, then called Battalion and told them the situation. We decided that
we had to cut the bamboo off and leave it in place, then carry him up the hill
to the
LZ for Medevac. The only thing we had to cut the bamboo with was the
serrated back of a K-bar knife. Four of us held the guy while they cut at
the bamboo. It was nearly two inches in diameter and every saw with the
K-bar was agony for the poor guy even with the morphine.
Finally we got him free. We made a litter from his poncho and two bamboo
poles, then tied him into it. Them we just took a rope and tied it to the
litter and had five or six men up front pull, while several of us on either side
lifted the litter. Each heave would get him about three feet up the ridge,
then the rope guys would hold him until we moved up alongside again and we would
then hold the litter in place until the rope guys were in position to pull
again. I still do not know where we found the strength to keep that up
long enough to reach the top. At first the adrenalin helped, but that soon
wore off and it was sheer will power. When we got him to the top, the
first squad took over and moved him to the
LZ, which was only a fifty meter section of
elephant grass about 50 meters down the ridge line. The
chopper had to hover with only one skid on the ground as we loaded him into
the cargo bay. That, of course, ruined all chances of any surprise ambush
on the ridge line, so we were sent to a hill top about four klicks south to
setup a company sized perimeter in preparation for the rest of the company to
join up with us the following day.
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