| Description |
: |
This was the most surreal mission of my tour. The Blues were left to secure the hill as an LZ while the battle with the NVA 2nd division for control of Que Son and Hiep Duc valleys raged all around. There was little action during the day but at night, concentrations of tracers could be seen in several different areas everywhere as sporadic firefights flared and ebbed. Spooky and Firefly spent most of the night sparring with a 51cal. machine gun to our northeast. – Over and over firefly would illuminate an area which would draw an arc of green tracers toward it from the ground – Spooky would answer with a river of red tracers and the guttural roar of its guns. This went on for hours again and again. Meanwhile arty pounded the mountains to our north, south, and west providing a background noise of distant explosions and a light show of bright flashes. Tracer trails, the pop of AKs, the crack of M-16s, and the chatter of machine guns identified several firefights raging around the ville to our west. However the assault that I was expecting on the hill we were defending never came, thankfully, only a series of mortar rounds targeted at our defensive positions. There was no sleep for me for a few days – but it wasn’t missed because of the adrenelin flow. |
