The line of march was the three Kit Carson scouts, me, Dai Uy, Doc Holmes with the radio, Barron, Waneous, Chief Bassett, Chamberlain, Eberle, Mr. Kleehammer, and others.
I was carrying my favorite weapon, my M-16 with an XM-148 40mm grenade launcher that was attached to the rifle’s barrel. I had an added gadget secured to the carrying handle of my M-16’s upper receiver. The “Singlepoint” gun sight produced a red dot that was radioactively illuminated day or night. Both of the shooter’s eyes were kept open while pointing and firing the weapon. The trick was to learn to point, not aim, in a manner similar to trap or skeet shooting. I especially liked it for night operations. While my right eye focused on the red dot, my left eye focused on the target. If I could make out a human silhouette or see muzzle flashes, I would simply place the dot on the enemy and fire with deadly accuracy. I wouldn’t have been able to do that at night very well, if at all, with peep sights. My weapon was great for applying the principles of “quick kill” out to two hundred yards.
I started the day’s op with sixty-three 40mm HE rounds, four 40mm para flares, four hand-initiated pop flares, two MK-13 day/night flares, two minifrag grenades, two mini-CS grenades, two M-26 frag grenades, six thirty-round M-16 magazines, three thirty-round M-16 magazines taped together and carried with one magazine inserted into the rifle, first-aid kit, two LRP meals, two to four quarts of water, strobe light with extra infrared, blue and red lenses, survival gear, and oneM-18A1 claymore antipersonnel mine. It was a heavy but ideal load for our short-duration operations, during which we inserted by helo and captured, killed, or liberated our targets and extracted within a couple of hours.
After we patrolled to the edge of the jungle near the reported location of the two tombs and cache, Dai Uy had me set up and command detonate one claymore mine at a time until I had blown a safe path through the booby traps and entangled jungle to the tombs. It was a trick that I had learned from the PRU in ’69.
The day was very hot and humid, the marshy terrain had deep bog holes of mud and slime, and worst of all, there wasn’t even a slight breeze to dry the sweat beads that kept flowing into my eyes and smearing my cammi paint. After several miserable hours of crawling through the muck and bramble, some of the guys were beginning to suffer from heat exhaustion.
Seaman Barron was our M-60 machine gunner and stood six feet two inches and weighed about 225 pounds. This was Barron’s first tour in Vietnam. He was a strong man and very fast with his hands and feet. Despite good motives, Barron had decided to carry twelve hundred rounds of 7.62mm bandoleers crossed around his chest plus all of the rest of his basic field gear. By 1400 hours one of his bandoleers had been dropped into the deep mud. In between the sucking noises of bodies being pulled out of the muddy pitfalls, I heard sniggering to the rear of our file. Later, I found out that poor Barron’s ammo dumping hadn’t gone unnoticed by the men behind him.
We progressed slowly toward the tombs until we came upon a lean- to and a bunker. There were cooking utensils, a box of radio batteries, and two twenty-round M-16 magazines lying under the lean-to. The bunker was located approximately fifteen meters forward of a well-camouflaged camp. Dai Uy had me shoot two 40mm HEsat the bunker to liven things up a bit and get everyone’s adrenaline flowing—we had all become a bit weary and needed bracing. Due to the HE rounds’ noisy detonation at a range of only fifteen meters, all hands were totally rejuvenated. Once the dust had settled, the scouts and I went forward to the bunker and threw an M-26 frag grenade inside it.
“No one home,” I told Mr. Fletcher disgustedly.
Dai Uy had us search the immediate area very carefully for the huge cache, while remaining watchful for booby traps. There were no
I was carrying my favorite weapon, my M-16 with an XM-148 40mm grenade launcher that was attached to the rifle’s barrel. I had an added gadget secured to the carrying handle of my M-16’s upper receiver. The “Singlepoint” gun sight produced a red dot that was radioactively illuminated day or night. Both of the shooter’s eyes were kept open while pointing and firing the weapon. The trick was to learn to point, not aim, in a manner similar to trap or skeet shooting. I especially liked it for night operations. While my right eye focused on the red dot, my left eye focused on the target. If I could make out a human silhouette or see muzzle flashes, I would simply place the dot on the enemy and fire with deadly accuracy. I wouldn’t have been able to do that at night very well, if at all, with peep sights. My weapon was great for applying the principles of “quick kill” out to two hundred yards.
I started the day’s op with sixty-three 40mm HE rounds, four 40mm para flares, four hand-initiated pop flares, two MK-13 day/night flares, two minifrag grenades, two mini-CS grenades, two M-26 frag grenades, six thirty-round M-16 magazines, three thirty-round M-16 magazines taped together and carried with one magazine inserted into the rifle, first-aid kit, two LRP meals, two to four quarts of water, strobe light with extra infrared, blue and red lenses, survival gear, and oneM-18A1 claymore antipersonnel mine. It was a heavy but ideal load for our short-duration operations, during which we inserted by helo and captured, killed, or liberated our targets and extracted within a couple of hours.
After we patrolled to the edge of the jungle near the reported location of the two tombs and cache, Dai Uy had me set up and command detonate one claymore mine at a time until I had blown a safe path through the booby traps and entangled jungle to the tombs. It was a trick that I had learned from the PRU in ’69.
The day was very hot and humid, the marshy terrain had deep bog holes of mud and slime, and worst of all, there wasn’t even a slight breeze to dry the sweat beads that kept flowing into my eyes and smearing my cammi paint. After several miserable hours of crawling through the muck and bramble, some of the guys were beginning to suffer from heat exhaustion.
Seaman Barron was our M-60 machine gunner and stood six feet two inches and weighed about 225 pounds. This was Barron’s first tour in Vietnam. He was a strong man and very fast with his hands and feet. Despite good motives, Barron had decided to carry twelve hundred rounds of 7.62mm bandoleers crossed around his chest plus all of the rest of his basic field gear. By 1400 hours one of his bandoleers had been dropped into the deep mud. In between the sucking noises of bodies being pulled out of the muddy pitfalls, I heard sniggering to the rear of our file. Later, I found out that poor Barron’s ammo dumping hadn’t gone unnoticed by the men behind him.
We progressed slowly toward the tombs until we came upon a lean- to and a bunker. There were cooking utensils, a box of radio batteries, and two twenty-round M-16 magazines lying under the lean-to. The bunker was located approximately fifteen meters forward of a well-camouflaged camp. Dai Uy had me shoot two 40mm HEsat the bunker to liven things up a bit and get everyone’s adrenaline flowing—we had all become a bit weary and needed bracing. Due to the HE rounds’ noisy detonation at a range of only fifteen meters, all hands were totally rejuvenated. Once the dust had settled, the scouts and I went forward to the bunker and threw an M-26 frag grenade inside it.
“No one home,” I told Mr. Fletcher disgustedly.
Dai Uy had us search the immediate area very carefully for the huge cache, while remaining watchful for booby traps. There were no
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