purple hearts
3 Dec '68: After three 12.7 mm began to rake us I became quickly prone. John Wayne would have wasted his breath yelling take cover.
Some of the men with me frantically began to scrape shallow trenches in the rocky clay soil, and I piled in on top of the third man. There was a new and unassigned man laying to my front and he was taking still pictures of this all -yes, I thought at the moment, this is incredible. I noticed an awful face occuring on this man as he looked me in the face, and almost simultaneously I realized why. Rounds began to kick up the dirt to my front at about six feet distance. There was a very slight hump in the ground there too. I screamed at the two men below me to let out their breath! I needed to get lower.
Then I saw in an instant the round hit a rock, and whump, it struck my neck.
Frightening. I felt for it and stuck my little left finger in the hole and could feel the end of what was a 7.62 round. The rock had dissapated just enough energy to keep the round from puncturing my artery, but then I became anxious that the jagged metal might cut into it as I moved. My fear was lost immediately by more shooting at me, next my collar was nipped, and I felt it.
I was forced off of that slit trench and ended up behind my computer sergeant's feet who was also crawling away. Then again crack, crack; yes you guys who have never experienced the other end of an AK or SKS, those firearms have their own distinctive sound, that experience imbeds in your memory. Sgt. Steadman, of FL, (he survived), if you're out there, was struck in the feet by rounds aimed at my head. I was an officer, and being hunted, it turns out from the tree tops. I only saw the leaves flap from the pressure wave, but some of my men returned fire to the trees and hours later the few who did survive cut down the enemy who had been tied up in there.
Later, in that long, and horrible battle, I had just turned around to prepare the last mortar rounds we had for firing in support of the men only 25 m to our front, when I felt the flash of heat and concussion wave strike me so forcefully that I was tumbled over in a summersault to my front; I had been kneeling at about four feet away from our 81 mm mortar tube which was hit by an RPG rocket round. The enemy were very good shots with those things.
(Miraculously, every one of my men had dropped away from the tube until the rounds were ready again _the tube was a beacon for small arms fire -even pinging off of it while my brave gunner Sgt. Charles White of Baltimore
cranked that handle for corrections; and none of those brave men were killed!
End of our fire mission. We had used all but a few of the round we were humping anyway. That mortar tube, tripod, and base plate were all hurled right over my head.
I took a piece of hot -hot! shrapnel in my back at that one. And it lodged in my rib, not penetrating the pleura. The airtight membrane that seals the lungs. I knews this right away too, since I was not gasping or laboring to breathe.
It was a long, and costly battle that day, and those others -wounded, but not killed fought on to live. Myself, I was so frightened, that unless I was killed outright, I intended to survive. The wounding was -Oh no! frightening, but forgotten by the fear of; I'm still alive, and they're still trying to kill us.
(Account of this battle at .military.com/Content/MoreContent1/?file=vn-noderos The author is Steve Banko III: recipient of two silver stars; some reguard as beyond the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Been through many battles in the Cavalry before that; that is all we did was ride time and again into "red" landing zones, but this battle was the worst by far.
Only saw flickers of the face of the enemy much of the time, except when we suprized them, like once walking up a jungle trail and five m away they sat on top of their bunker eating their lunch of rice balls wrapped in bananna leaves.
Have more emotional scars than ones on my body.
If you should ever suffer wounding, fight until you are unable. Remember your first aid training -it's invaluable, and ...use your sights -one shot at a time.