Becoming More Cautious
Sgt. Terry Foote
Company C, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 12th Cavalry
By this time of my tour there were several of us getting "short" (close to DEROS
(date of rotation to the states)). We were as anxious to avoid contact as we had
ever been. We had a lot of FNG's coming in and several of us that been
replacements the previous August. There weren't very many of us that had made it
for 9 1/2 months without a Purple Heart and none of us wanted one.
Promotions
weren't automatic as some thought. There were an awful lot of infantrymen that
spent their tour in the bush and came home as a Spec-4 (E-4). It wasn't that
they weren't good soldiers, they held their own and didn't slack off at all,
they just weren't leaders that could react decisively in a hurry. They were
great soldiers but they were followers. Nothing wrong with that. I saw some men
come in and within three months were promoted from PFC to SGT. There was no
favoritism or butt kissing in the bush. Men were promoted as their actions
deemed.
One thing you could bet was medals weren't handed out just to be handing them
out. They were awarded for a special kind of valor.
We spent the next month humping mostly the mountains. It was the day to day
grind again. We were still picking up signs of heavy troop movement by the NVA.
We knew something was coming. What we didn't know was they spent about 6-8
months getting their units into position for the TET offensive of '68. That was
one of the reasons we noticed a decrease in fights of any size. We still ran
into the booby traps and they were the type that were manufactured just like
weapons were manufactured then hauled down the Ho Chi Minh Trail by the NVA.
Those things were all over the place. We placed our older guys on point. That
may seem unfair to the guys almost ready to go home but, to the contrary, it was
safer for them because they could spot a booby trap a lot faster than a new man.
We simply wanted to make it like a hike through the mountains nice and safe. We
avoided trails as much as possible. We ran across trails wide enough for carts
being pulled by animals to get down. We certainly got the hell away from those
kind of trail.
We would be set out on night ambushes almost every night somebody got the honor
of these treats. It didn't matter, nobody ambushed anybody because there were
simply too many enemy in the area. We would set up on a trail then back off the
trail about 50 meters so the enemy didn't see us and spend the night like that.
We got through the end of June without any heavy fighting which was a blessing.
That left me with about 45 more days to stay alive along with several others
that came in as replacements with me. We were all counting days now.