We had a two-man rifle team directly to our front, and because we were up over the lip of the crater, we could fire over their heads. A machine-gun position was to our right front.

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Since our mortar ammo had been used up, we became riflemen. The two to our front were ‘busting caps’ (firing full automatic), and we scanned the tree line to our front. I thought I spotted movement in the grass between the riflemen and the machine gun. I pulled the pin on a frag (fragmentation) grenade and stood up to throw. Immediately I was hit in the right calf and dropped the live grenade. ‘Fire in the hole!’ I yelled, as the grenade exploded just outside our crater. I hadn’t been hit; my calf muscle had cramped up when I planted my right leg. Lynch and Shea looked over at me as if to say, ‘Stick to mortars, Sarge, stick to mortars.’ I thanked God the grenade hadn’t dropped inside the bomb crater.

As I lay inside the crater, working out the cramp, enemy 61mm mortar rounds began exploding inside our perimeter. When I looked up after an explosion, I could see the next round coming down. Each time I could follow the rounds back farther, until I spotted a green arm in an NVA mortar pit, dropping rounds into a tube less than 100 yards to our left front. The mortar tube was so close to the perimeter that it couldn’t be elevated high enough on its bipods to hit our lines. The rounds exploded harmlessly inside the perimeter. This demonstrated the rigidity of NVA training. We would have removed the bipods altogether and fired free-fire.

I called to the two riflemen in front of us and pointed out the NVA mortarman’s position. My plan was for three of us to open up on full automatic at the green arm. Although after taking mathematics courses I now know it would have been all but impossible, I figured we could fire above the tube when the next round came out and cause it to explode. At the count of three we opened up. The mortar fire stopped.

Nightfall came. We had no radio in our crater, but one Marine crawled from hole to hole, passing the word. He would be awarded the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the only medal I ever heard of that was voted upon by one’s peers. The spooky light generated by parachute flares covered the perimeter all night. We became the emergency room for a’snuffie’ (rifleman) who had been hit in the back and side by mortar shrapnel. His moans kept us on edge, but we knew he would make it if we could get him out by morning.

At one point, an NVA mortar opened up with about 40 rounds directly to our front. An NVA soldier tried to sneak up on our machine-gun position to our right front, but the gunner lobbed a frag grenade onto him. He screamed and moaned the rest of the night. ‘Throw a grenade on him and shut him up!’ somebody would yell occasionally.

Our runner crawled up to tell us the captain was going to call in airbursts from artillery and naval gunfire. For 20 minutes we dug little caves into the side of our crater. Then the artillery poured in. At first the NVA started talking excitedly, then came cries and moans as the incoming smothered them.

At dawn a bugle sounded. Then a rooster crowed. I argued with Shea about the rooster call. ‘I lived next to a chicken farm most of my life, Short Round,’ I told him. ‘That’s no rooster.’ Then suddenly we were told to saddle up and move out. The aerial observer reported the NVA were pulling back across the Ben Hai River. He called in artillery on them. The moaning NVA was dead. He was the only dead NVA I saw during the entire battle, although they gave us credit for 200 confirmed NVA dead. I picked up an NVA 61mm mortar round and strapped it into my empty grenade pouch. It’s on my mantel today.

As a mortarman, I was amazed at how the NVA could hit us with their mortars by firing for effect with no adjustment round. On a combined operation with Charlie Company, the CO told us to set up at the center edge of an LZ in a dried-up rice paddy near the DMZ. I thought we would be better off in the LZ’s corner and told the Charlie Company gunners, but he stayed put. As the squad leader I had final say on where to set up my gun, and we moved to the corner.

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