By June, the neglect became more tangible in small but significant ways. I remember my frustration with having to wear filthy fatigues, saturated with bacteria, mold and mud. After a week or more without a change, the accumulation in the fabric would burn like fire as it pulled across our skin during normal activity. When the supply chopper brought replacement fatigues, the swapped clothes had been washed but also frequently had holes in them or were missing sleeves and lower legs. One’s imagination could go wild with thoughts of the places our fatigues had been and of the violence their previous wearers had endured. Besides, in the jungle, if we could not button sleeves and tie off pant legs, the leeches and ticks had a free run toward the soft, warm places under our clothes. Nevertheless, we tried to carry on with dignity.

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The unsung heroes of the infantry were the commissioned and noncommissioned officers serving at the platoon level. They were the big brothers and the father figures who kept the Army on the move. These heroes endured every bit of hardship that the men at the bottom experienced, while bearing the responsibility for the life and death of their men. The NCOs and lieutenants of the infantry platoons were the men in the middle, who walked a difficult line between taking orders and giving them. They were expected to have expert knowledge in numerous areas of day-to-day survival, weaponry and human psychology. They were not able to choose the men of their units. Soldiers often came to them as boys and grew to manhood under their leadership.

Occasionally these leaders were assigned individuals with troubled pasts, men who had experienced conflict with the law or trouble with authority. Leadership in the war zone was especially difficult when some of the men you were assigned to lead could not be trusted. You had to watch your back and trust that other men would help along the way, all the while knowing that platoon officers were the enemy’s preferred targets at the outset of every firefight. Facing danger from potential ignorance and incompetence higher in the chain of command, as well as from some men below, platoon-level leaders toiled on through seemingly endless missions, trying to keep their young troops alive and functioning as an effective unit. Staff Sergeant Andujar was such a man.

I can tell the story of how Andujar died because I was hit in the same firefight in which he was killed. After several prior operations involving accidental friendly fire, booby traps and various contacts, my platoon, led by Lieutenant Peter Joannides and Staff Sgt. Eugene Elias, had dwindled to 14 men. The platoon led by Lieutenant Gary Grady and Staff Sgt. Andujar was also short of men, and on that day, the men of Grady and Andujar’s platoon were our point.

As usual, each man walked alone to avoid group casualties from automatic-weapons fire. Delta Company was spaced for nearly a mile through the mountainous jungle. A radiotelephone operator broke the silence to report that two NVA had been spotted moving across our line. Our point later caught a glimpse of another NVA soldier, a trail watcher. The forward element of our unit split up, and Andujar was the ranking man in a squad that worked its way down the jungle growth of a large hill. At the bottom these men found themselves right under an NVA encampment, with bunkers hidden in foliage at the crest of a ridge. Andujar halted his men, moved them to cover and quietly explained that he smelled rice cooking. Then, within seconds, as Andujar stepped back out to investigate, he was hit by AK-47 fire.

After three months with the unit as a rifleman, I had been assigned to carry the M-60 machine gun and .45-caliber pistol. Although my training included these weapons, I lacked solid experience with them in the field. Our platoon had been positioned in the middle of Delta Company that day, and I remember the silent hand signal to halt. With the delay, some of the men sat down and rested, waiting for orders. Suddenly, distant small arms ruptured the silence.

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