Actually taken from a North Vietnamese soldier killed by Echo Recon on May 30, 1970. The VC were really a separate force under the NLF (National Liberation Front),
but our Cambodian scouts always yelled, VC! VC! No matter who we encountered.
So, a VC knife.
And the scouts didn’t always yell, unless of course they were warning everyone we had been spotted and being silent no longer mattered then.
That day started out bad and got worse. We had spent the night alongside the Ho Chi Minh Trail near a Montagnard village. We were watching the trail where it was concealed by heavy jungle and were surprised by the appearance of a NVA patrol coming on a parallel trail that was completely exposed. We just did not expect to see someone coming with complete lack of concern for cover! So we weren’t in good position when they showed up…the resulting firefight left Tim Brown dead and one NVA also. Later in the morning when we were clearing the area, I pulled a dead NVA soldier from underneath a fallen tree, where he crawled after being hit. This is his knife.
We were then ordered to move North, up the trail. The monsoon rains had started and were pouring down as I lead the platoon across an exposed ridgetop. Luckily for me and everyone the rains had lulled the NVA into taking cover…perhaps they thought no one would be moving in such a tremendous storm. So we surprised them when they should have had the advantage! Lady Luck was with me…
We were in a completely exposed position and shooting ammo like there was no tomorrow. Hutch called in artillery support from the firebase and Cobra gunships flew out in that storm and came screaming out of the sky in steep dives with rockets, cannons and miniguns all firing.
Meanwhile on the ground the LT (F. Szczebak), Cossey, Martin and Ski had all been wounded. LT was the worst with a chunk of shrapnel in his leg and we had a “slick” (Huey UH-1) come in for him and got resupplied with ammo. The NVA pulled back, leaving their dead. We crept back up the trail and recovered everyone’s backpacks that had been dropped when the shooting started. We then moved out and spent a miserable night in the rain unable to sleep as everything rewound in our heads…Tim Brown dead!
22 NVA soldiers were killed by the combination of small arms, artillery and gunships.
Cossey, Martin and Ski all had very minor shrapnel wounds from the Chicom stick grenades they were throwing at us. Martin had them in the backs of his fingers. He had been using his pack as a shield. I don’t know why they threw so many his way, but I’m glad he wasn’t seriously hurt. I’ll never forget seeing the the RPG’s and grenades that came flying from the treeline! LT recovered quickly and was later our company CO, while we finished our tours back on the firebases, where we had adventures of a more humorous nature.
Bird-out
Mother commented: Memorial Day, 1970. A day most of us will never forget. When this day was over, Echo Recon knew what they were made of and I was proud to be one of them.
This was a signature day for EchoRecon. Tim Brown had joined us the previous day as a replacement for Stallion Springer as Stallion left the field. That evening I tried to get to know Tim a little. He said he had been in country a few months as a rifleman with B 1/5. He wanted to join Recon because he thought we were cool and we did not carry picks, shovels, or wear steel pots. I asked his nickname and he said Salty. I told him we weren’t mythical or heroes, just more grunts operating quietly, observing, and fighting when we had to. I wish I could have known him better, he was a good young kid of 19. I was on-line with him in the morning when he was shot. Mother immediately came to our side and we got Salty to where Doc Schramm could work on him. Nothing could be done to save him but Doc did his level best to try everything. After his body was evacuated we headed up the ridge as Bird describes. As we approached the tree line it all went down and it was quite a firefight. I saw Bird toss the Camel he was nursing under the brim of his Booney hat. I thought oh oh, shit’s hitting the fan now! When Bird opened up on their sentry I saw a poncho that was covering their fighting position fly in the air and the NVA opened up. I saw a RPGS fired and could see the projectile coming toward me so I hit the dirt. It landed flat between me and Kit Carson Scout, Sol, but just skipped off the wet turf and continued on. We all scrambled for what little cover there was. I remember that LT and Martin were close enough to the trench that they were being kept busy dodging grenades until they finally worked their way back to cover. We called in a Medi-Vac to extract LT. After the contact broke we gathered, got re supply of ammo and water, I think Suzy was on that bird helping re supply his buddies and wanting to hop off and rejoin us in our time of need. We then beat feet down through the Montagnards village. We stopped there long enough to take their village chief captive because he lied to us on the way in. Our Scouts weren’t very nice to him and when we got to the next hilltop a chopper picked him up to go back for interrogation. We proceeded until we came to some cover and set up, wet, freezing, and worried to let the adrenaline leave or bodies. The FO’s and RTO’s called in arty, ARA, and air strikes on the bunker complex. The next day a platoon (I think from C 1/5) joined us to again go back into the complex to search it. It was a large complex but they had removed everything but a couple of SKS carbines we captured. On the humorous side while clearing bunkers someone fragged an NVA latrine. After that I am not sure what happened but I think we went into FSB David for a couple of days before we were (asked?) told to help A Co. Get to a hilltop that appeared to have some type of materiel on it. But, that is the subject for a different blog entry. Livermore, out.