I woke up refreshed, ate as usual and cleaned my rifle. I was wondering whether we were going out on patrol today, when we got word that we were going to have to saddle up and move out in one hour.
I was packed and sitting by my gear when L/Cpl Thomas came back from talking to Sgt McCoy. L/Cpl Thomas said that we were flying out to another area where some NVA had been spotted from the air. He also said that as soon as the choppers landed, we would set up a perimeter and that our squad would be on the south side of this hill.
About an hour and a half later we were in the air again. About two minutes before we were landing, we got word from the helicopter crew chief that the landing zone was being hit by mortars and that we better jump as soon as the chopper touched down.
I checked myself out to make sure I had all my gear ready to move fast. We were all facing the rear of the chopper by then. The chopper bumped the ground once and every one was moving toward and out the door. We were about seven or eight feet off the ground. I jumped, hit and rolled about twice, I stood up, heard a mortar round explode and hit the dirt again.
My fire team leader yells for us to follow him. We were about half way down a forty foot ravine between two fingers of the hill we landed on. The terrain is covered with about five-foot tall elephant grass and a few trees scattered around in groups of ten to twenty. The mortars keep coming in. We keep moving from one place to another in what seems to me like confusion until our squad leader got us all together, but not too close. We make our way around to the south side of the hill. Once there, we move away down into a clump of trees and rock where the mortars aren’t coming in at all.
The helicopters kept coming in and so did the mortars. Finally some phantom jets came up and made a few air strikes about two clicks (click equals one thousand meters square, or one grid square) away. The incoming motors stooped.
When things calmed down some, we moved back up closer to the top of the hill. Every hour or so, we would get the
