Vietnam 68-69

View of Song BO River, where we ambushed vietcong in a sampan.

After striping down to his fatigue bottoms he dove into the river and swam out to where we last saw the sampan.  When reached the middle of the river he dove down and it wasn’t long before he located the sampan.  After a few more dives he came up with an AK-47.   He swam it to shore and then returned to dive a few more times, but didn’t find anything else to retrieve.

Our platoon leader wanted us to do some sweeps of the area on the other side of the river, so he requested helicopters be sent out to ferry us across the river.   We patrolled down the side of the river to see if there was anything before the helicopters arrived, then moved to an area where the helicopters could land to pick us up.  The Huey’s arrived and picked us up for the short hop across the river.  The AK-47 we recovered was given to one of the door gunners to be returned to Camp Evans.

Once everybody was on the ground we did a sweep of the area along the river.  We didn’t find any dead VC or anything to indicate that anybody made it out of the river.  While checking the shoreline, I found a piece of shrapnel from the big gun’s rounds.  The piece was about eight inches long and as sharp as a knife.  I showed it to all the guys and at some point trough it aside.  We were glad that none of us got hit by any of the shrapnel.

Our platoon broke into squads to RIF the entire area.  We spent a good part of the day looking for signs of the enemy, but found nothing.  Late in the day we picked out an area near the river the setup another night ambush.   The area was flat so there was room to set up a good ambush NDP.  Watch detail was assigned, those not on watch went to sleep.  I was one that didn’t have to pull guard until after midnight, so I went to sleep shortly after nightfall.  I’m not sure what time it was, but those who were sleeping were awaken by those on guard.  One of the men said they had seen two or three VC approaching our NDP, appearently they heard something from our position, turned and disappeared into the dark.   We went on high alert, not knowing if they would return and attack our position.  The remainder of the night was quiet.

The next morning we patrolled the hills above the river, looking for the enemy or their caches.  We didn’t find anything.  We heard that there was another platoon downstream from our ambush site.  We were told that they found atleast one VC body along the river.

When we returned to Camp Evans, there was an article about our night ambush in the Stars Stripes newspaper, it said the enemy body count was close to 400.  We couldn’t believe what we were reading, we thought maybe we killed 4 VC, not 400.

Leech Island, 1st Platoon, on patrol by ourselves, as usual.  Now Leech Island is a good name for the place we were.  It was double canopy jungle, deep, dark and damp, but not an island.  We were on a well worn trail that wove it’s way through the jungle.  The jungle growth along the trail contained wait-a-minute vines, and oh yeah leeches.  The hazy light filtered through the mist and trees.  My squad (3rd) was on point this particular morning and I was about fourth in our echelon.  We came to a semi open area and the trail made a sharp turn to the right.  As we turned the corner the point man saw an NVA on the trail ahead of us.  He immediately raised his M-16 and fired as the man turned and fled.  The bullet hit a low hanging tree branch between the two men and them kept running.  All our point man heard when he pulled the trigger again was a click, his M-16 had jammed.  I saw a flash of a dark figure as he disappeared into the jungle.  I couldn’t get a clear shot and didn’t want to hit any nearby branches with an HE round, like the M-16 bullet had.  There could have been worse consequences if that happened.  We examined the bullet whole in the tree after we made sure that any NVA had left the area.  The branch was large enough that the bullet didn’t go all the way through.  I thought about how lucky that NVA soldier was and wondered if he had more luck to make it through the war in one piece.

On occasion we would encounter giant centipedes when we were on missions in the jungle.  I had never seen an insect so big in all my life.  They weren’t hard to miss because of their size.  It’s colors were a brownish red, purple and dark yellow and it’s body and legs had a soft plastic like sheen.  I would say that the ones we saw were a good six inches long and they looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

One morning we were breaking camp and getting ready to move out.  One of the guys in my squad was putting on his fatigue top, when all of a sudden he let out a yell and threw his it off.  He explained that something had bit or stung him on the arm.  Someone else picked up his fatigue and started shaking it.  Out fell one of those huge centipedes and everybody watched it crawl away.  Anyway, the guy that was bitten by it was alright, the centipedes were not poisonous.  Needless to say we all started checking before we put any of our clothing back on.  Click the link below to see a picture of a giant Vietnamese centipede that looks very much like the ones we saw in the jungle.      http://www.swiftinverts.com/pix/Vietnamesecentipede1.jpg

Val Wuthrich with full pack. Ready for another mission in the jungle.

Ready for another mission in the jungle.  Helicopters will be coming to pick us up and fly us into the jungle somewhere.  I’m not sure which fire base we were departing from.  You can see hills in the background.  I’m sure we weren’t to far from either the DMZ or the A Shau valley.