Continue to March
Sgt. Terry Foote
Company C, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 12th Cavalry
In reflection of the battle at An Qui, there are so many little things that you
begin to remember. I can remember when I had gone back across the open area for
the second time trying to get back to our lines the M-60 had jammed and there I
was with no weapon. I had made it across the open area and picked up a wounded
man's M-16. That weapon belonged to Peace who I had told you about earlier. He
had a bandage wrapped around his head and was full of blood but the strange
thing was he had a smile on his face. I'll never forget him sitting there
against a built up hedgerow dike. I remember asking what in the world happened.
He just looked up at me and smiled and said "I guess I got shot" like it was
nothing. Apparently what had happened was a round had hit the front site of his
rifle (for those of you that don't know about the sight on the M-16 it sticks up
a couple of inches in a triangle on the front of the weapon). When the round hit
the front site it deflected it just enough for the round to crease the top of
his forehead and part of his head. It wasn't a horrible wound but when you think
about the possibility of what would have happened had the round been 1/4 inch to
the right or left it would have hit him right between the eyes and there was no
doubt he would have been killed. God works in very strange ways. Peace got on
the medevac and only had the same amount of time left in country as I did he
never came back to the field again.
Then there was a big black guy by the name of Shedrack (sp). He was sitting next
to Peace with his rifle broken down running a cleaning rod down the barrel to
get a round out that had jammed. (The M-16 was notorious for jamming. A tiny
grain of sand would jam it so it had to be kept clean all the time). When I was
picking up Peace's weapon for another trip across the field I looked down at
Shedrack and just kind of laughed. He looked up and smiled and said "darn M-16".
He was never a slacker at all. He could always be counted on. He was an
extremely religious man and you would never hear him curse no matter what
happened.
Charles Thoms, a New York City kid was on the other M-60 was pouring rounds into
the village. I slipped around him and let him know where I would be so he didn't
fire in that direction. I got about half way across the field from another
direction with more cover and slipped down behind a tree. As I began to pour
magazine after magazine into the village I had just made it out of just in case
the NVA had moved back into the bunkers to catch our trapped our last squad
coming out. I kept the covering fire up until our last man was out of the
village and we moved out of the village. We took up positions out in the dry
rice paddies while the artillery, ARA (gun ships) and the jets pounded the
village. I remember the Phantom coming in with their bombs. When they exploded
we heard the awful sound of ppfft...ppfft...ppfft hitting all around us. We were
too close to the village and the shrapnel was landing all around us. The RTO got
on the radio and screamed to call them off until we could get back about another
hundred yards. When we got down and covered up Goode (another rather large black
man) was lying on his back next to me. His eyes were as big as saucers. He was in
the squad to the right of mine going into the village. They got pinned down
immediately and couldn't move an inch. The gunships came in and laid down fire
so precise he said it was about 25 feet in front of them and worked over the NVA
positions so they could pull back.
There were simply so many little things that come back to me when I begin to
think about it. It seems like it was yesterday. I remember when I went back in
to show them where the bodies were. Sgt. Dunn was lying on top of a bunker as
was Sgt. Neese. Dunn had one hole in his stomach that was so small I could see
his intestines sticking out the hole. Sgt. Neese had most of his head gone. The
new guy had been shot several times. He had bandages on his head where Doc Word
had patched him up while he was still alive. That just wasn't enough. He had
several holes in his chest also that he had take after Doc had patched him up.
Doc was on the end of him where his head was while patching him up when he got
hit several more times in his chest. I remember asking Doc about it and he was
crying. He thought he had saved him so we could get him out to a medevac but as
he was working on him he got raked again. I could tell by Doc's face that he was
just frustrated because he could have saved the man had they not raked those
bushes again. I guess it's hard to imagine how Doc felt sometimes. He was a
wonderful man, as brave a man as you would ever meet. Our medics knew no fear.
They saved so many lives with their pure guts.
Webmaster note: C Company received the
Valorous Unit Award for it's
actions at An Qui from May 31 to June 1, 1967.
But the fight was over and we were back on English drinking a warm beer waiting
for a couple days until we had some replacements and were ready to go back to
the bush. The next day we got a new Lieutenant that was gung ho. He was the type
that thought he was a hard ass. This was a guy that wanted to be a hero and was
apt to get some people killed. The night before we were going back into the bush
I began to run a high fever. The battalion surgeon took me to his tent, gave me
an IV and iced me down. He told me to stay there. About 10PM that evening the
new Lt. came into the surgeon's tent and told me I had damned well better be on
those choppers going to the field the next morning. To begin with he didn't know
me from Adam. He was simply an asshole. That's as simple as it gets.
There are two different types of malaria. One is called Plasmodium vivax which
is gone forever once cured. The other is Plasmodium falciparum and is the life
threatening malaria. It never leaves you blood stream and can come back if you
are in the wrong climate for years after you have had it. That was the kind I
had caught early in my tour. Never the less the next morning I pulled the IV out
of my arm, rucked up and moved out with my company as I had been ordered. We had
set up in a small abandoned village and were sending platoon patrols into the
mountains out of that location. The new platoon leader had threatened to bust me
down to a PFC from a Sgt if I didn't get out of that bed and hit the choppers
with my unit. Needless to say, I was pretty well torqued at him. Before my
platoon moved out I was talking to the third platoon leader, Lt. Radcliff, great
guy, West Point Man and great leader. I tried to get him to move me into his
platoon before I decked this young Lt. He said he would love to have me but he
blew smoke up my ass and told me I was too good a man to take out of that
inexperienced platoon (yeah, right, and my mama's a possum). So, I went back to
my platoon to begin patrol. I was walking third in the column but we had one guy
with a month in walking point and an FNG walking second. I was pissed anyway and
itching for a fight. I told the point man to take my place and I'd take the
point. The new Lt. told me no way and I told him to go f*** himself, it was my
squad. He told me when we got back to English he was going to Article 15 me and
bust me. Like I really cared. I told him to do as he pleased and moved out.
Along the trail I began to feel like hell again. Doc word came up again and
stopped the column on the spot. He called the platoon leader's RTO up and called
for a medevac. I heard the battalion commander on the radio ask Doc "is it
Foote?". Doc told him yes and the battalion commander, a Lt. Col. brought in his
own chopper to pick me up. The Battalion surgeon came to the chopper when the
Col set it down and asked me why in hell I left the tent that morning. I told
him what had happened and the Lt. Col. simply lifted his chopper off and flew me
to Cam Rahn Bay immediately. It only took two weeks to knock this bout out and I
was right back with the unit ready to go healthy as a horse. Funny thing was
when I got there we had a new platoon leader. The new Lt. had been replaced the
day the battalion commander picked me up. They apparently sent him back to some
unit where he would do administrative duties rather than lead an infantry
platoon. I remember Lt. Radcliff came over me, shook my hand and said he was
glad to see me back so soon and the problem had been rectified the day I was
lifted out. Some people just aren't meant to lead. I'm sure that Lt. didn't go
far in the military.
But on we went. It was getting close to the first of June and I was getting what
they call "short". I had about 75 days left in country and was hoping we would
get a nice quiet area to hump for a couple of months. No such luck, we headed
further north than the Kim Song in the direction of the A Shau valley. It became
known as the "Valley of Death" when the Cav first entered it. The Bong Son area
was mild next to the A Shau. We didn't enter the A Shau but we were close enough
to begin running into a LOT of NVA platoon size plus units and the fights became
more numerous. When I returned to the platoon there were several new faces and a
couple new sergeants plus a couple sergeants missing. One had finished his tour
and the other had been killed. As we patrolled closer to the border causalities
began to mount as did enemy contact. I thought to myself "I just knew I should
have found a way to stay in that hospital". Problem being we had a lot of new
faces and they needed all the older guys they could scare up to help the FNG's
survive. So on I went back into the same old grind, climbing up the mountains,
setting up for the night on top of a mountain, hoping Charlie wouldn't want that
particular piece of Viet Nam that night. It became routine again. Most of the
older guys would get a night on English now and then just to get a break and a
good night's sleep. We all needed it. I can remember some of the newer guys kind
of resented that but they would simply have to deal with it.
It was getting close to July and no major fights since An Qui but we knew there
was one coming soon. We were seeing way too many signs of heavy troop movement
and that wasn't a good thing. They were massing again. We just didn't know
where.