At that time our squad was asked to do recon in front of our lines to see what was left behind. It was here, not twenty feet from where I fought, that I found my first NVA sleeping under a poncho. I think I had three clips, I was now down to two. A Sgt. and I moved around a rather large tree and found two NVA sleeping. The Sgt. and I each used about a clip and now I am down to one. A little further we had a sniper in a tree, high up, being conservative, I used just five rounds and made them count. By this time we were ordered to return to LZ. As we were returning, we were about 300 yards from the LZ, a large group of Vietnamese soldiers got between us and the LZ. They were as confused by our location as we were. We thought they were South Vietnamese, but they were not. We engaged them in a fire fight for what seemed like hours. My ammo is now really low and I'm out of grenades.

As the fighting wound down, I knew I had to seek medical help fast or I would bleed to death. I literally rolled around our defensive positions until I made contact with the LZ and the platoon aid man, a man called "Alphabet". He did what he could and we waited for dust off, only to see choppers shot down. Around noon, medevac did land and as we were leaving, flying very low, I knew we were going to get shot down. We didn't thanks to the expert pilots. He flew me on to Battalion aid station, then onto the 85th Medevac for a stay, then onto Clark AFB in the Philippines, then Great Lakes Naval in Chicago. By the grace of GOD I finished by tour at Ft. Lee, VA and was discharged 22 Jan 68.