My Vietnam

The only problem was that this was our first day out.  Ka-thump…most of us recognized the familiar sound.  It was a V/C, 82MM mortar round heading our way.  The first round hit right in front of us, which meant that they were not guessing our location…they knew.  Two more mortar tubes were sounding off.  We had to move and do it now.  It was too late to radio for a fire mission because we would all be dead before they got to us.  It was dark, and we did not have a plan for a secondary location.  We could not see each other…much less Charlie!  Bug Eye blew our claymores to help give us cover; so we would not have to leave them behind for the enemy to use on us.  The mortars were coming in rapidly one after another.  Curt and I ran down the hill together.  

All around us, mortars were detonating, when Curt said, “Doc, we can’t out run them.  They have range on us.  Let’s find cover”. 

Those were the last words that I could clearly remember.  A mortar round exploded right in front of me, at the base of a large tree.  I fell in the hole made by the mortar, as a tree root hit me upside the head so hard that I saw little white stars.  When I fell into the mortar hole, the bottom of the hole collapsed.  I continued to fall right into a V/C tunnel.  My ears were ringing and my eyes were blurred.  I shook my head several times…I was in a stupor…I blinked my eyes several times.  When they cleared enough for me to see, I was staring at the yellow flames of several candles, which had been placed on the walls of the tunnel.  Slowly I looked around to see if Curt had met the same fate.  I was alone except for the two V/C standing right in front of me smiling…as if Buddha had given them a gift from above.  Using the side of the tunnel wall as a support, I pushed myself up onto my feet.  My senses were coming back, I still could not hear anything, but I could see much better.  The V/C on the left had his AK-47 pointed right into my face.  The other one, still smiling, had a knife sheathed in his waist belt.  Slowly, I raised two fingers of my left hand to my lips, motioning to him for a cigarette.  He laughed as he pulled out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth.  Then he showed me his lighter, which was a Marine Zippo lighter, just like mine.  The moment that he lit his cigarette, I grabbed my bug spray out of my right leg pocket and set him on fire with burning bug spray…lots of bug spray!  The other V/C was stunned and hesitated before he pulled his knife.  Quickly, I grabbed his head with both hands…a hard twist to the left… a much harder one to the right; as he fell, I used my knee to snap his back.  Looking up, I saw the hole that I had fallen through.  With my hands outstretched, I could reach the top of the hole, but I did not have anything to pull myself up, so I tried jumping