It was a very muggy night. I was very tired but was feeling rather good about having survived another long week of being in country. My short timer’s calendar was filling up. I was at about the half way point in my tour of duty in Nam and ready for an R & R to Japan in just a few hours. I was looking forward to some relief to all the mud and the muggy heat.

It was around midnight and I was laying out on my bunk, my buddy was still awake on his bunk just above me. Everyone else had long been asleep, except for the two of us. I was hyped up about leaving in the morning on a helicopter flight to Saigon (actually, Tan Son Nhut Air Base). That was where I would hook up with my R & R flight to Japan. So, I was just laying there wishing the hours away, in my underwear. I began to hear some sounds. These were not the same sounds as the more normal and familiar nightly bursts of artillery fire, that our base camp would engage in for hours. This had a whole different quality to it. I laid there listening and trying to place this new sound that I was hearing.

My buddy leaned over from the top bunk. He was hearing the same thing as I was. He wondered aloud what we were both thinking – INCOMING! Yes, these sounds were the sounds of some kind of rockets or mortars coming in on top of our base camp. We both realized what it was at once. We shouted out to the others to wake up and get dressed. But just as everyone was beginning to roll out of their bunks I felt myself being lifted through the air. I must have flown a full 15 feet before dropping head first onto the cement floor. The noise that accompanied that lift off, temporarily deafened me. It felt and sounded like a freight train had run right through our small wooden hooch.

My head felt like it had a thousand pound weight on it. My vision was all fuzzy and I could hardly stand up. I felt like I was floating on a cloud – real light headed. A huge bump was forming on my head as I struggled to get my bearings. I yelled out for everyone to get into the bunkers, which were just outside the doors at each end of the hooch. One of the men was sitting on the floor next to me. He was holding the back of his neck where he had blood oozing out of it. A small piece of sharp metal was sticking in a hole just below the hair line. He was okay but concerned, since he could not see behind himself and could not see the nature of his wound. He crawled out one end of the hooch as I checked to make sure that everyone was out.

As I stood up, I looked at our rifle rack , where we had all our M-16’s stored. The barrels of all of them were bent at an angle. It seems that the force of the explosion had bent these steel rifle barrels. The gun rack was just about 5 feet in front of where I had been. The blast had went off behind me and had thrown me in the air over the top of the rack. It hit home how powerful that explosion was.

I was still in my under shorts and tee shirt. I did manage to grab my boots as I stumbled out the door. I jumped into the sand bag bunker sitting right outside the door. I landed in about 2 feet of cold muddy water. I was also crowded in with a host of others trying to keep out of harms way.

We had no weapons and most of us were not even dressed. We hudled close together as more explosions rocked and jolted the camp. The whole earth shook each time one hit near by us. One of the younger guys (must have been about 18 years old) grabbed hold of me with both his arms. He had wrapped himself as close to me as possible. He was shaking and ready to cry.

The explosion would shake the sand bags on the metal top, over our bunker. Sand and dirt would cascade down on top of us. I looked outside the bunker and saw that the sky was all bright with red flames. It seems that most of the rocket rounds had hit our air field and a few helicopters were burning and also exploding. I could see from the shadows cast by the fires, that there were large holes in the earth, right by our hooch. We had apparently taken some real close hits from what turned out to be Russian made rockets. (That night we were hit with 250 mortars and rockets, according to the after battle briefing later on.)

Then we heard someone yelling about the perimeter being breached by the VC. That meant that there were now enemy forces within our compound. We had no rifles and our machine guns were down by the air field, close to where the helicopters were burning. That location seemed to be the likely target of the VC as they penetrated our outer defenses and came inside. None of us wanted to go down there yet.

I decided to get out of the bunker and locate the Sargent Major. I thought he would need all the information available about what was happening. I ran over to his bunker, while overhead, I could hear more rockets dropping inside our camp. When I appeared at the entry to his bunker, I thought he was going to shot me. He had his pistol right in my face. He had heard the same stories about VC inside the camp too and he was not taking any chances. I briefed him quickly. I then went back and got my door gunner and we ran for the air field to get some M-60’s and check out our helicopter. We found a couple of pilots on the way and all of us went looking for a flyable aircraft. We mounted the guns and did the quickest preflight inspection in history, then got airborne as fast as it was possible.

We headed out to the only spot in the dark sky, where there were no tracers coming or going. We were greatly concerned that we could be hit from our own troops, as well as the VC. We pulled up into darkness but left our running lights off. We got on the radio and heard that help was on the way. "Puff The Magic Dragon" had been summoned for duty. It would just be a matter of a few more minutes and this big old Air Force bird would lay a blanket of fire across the surrounding jungles. In a few moments, that old aircraft would devastate every living thing within its target zone, with just a few bursts of fire.

We wanted to make sure we were not in that killing zone and pulled up to a higher altitude to ensure that we would be above "Puff". We watched as it flew around the outside boarders of our camp unloading hell on those below. It was a most impressive sight to watch as "Puff" rolled into action. It was like watching something from the old movie " War of The Worlds". The solid line of tracers coming down looked like a shower of fire. It did not last very long. The ground fighting got very quiet, real quickly.

We came back down and checked to see if our services were needed for any "Dust Offs" (medical evacuations). Once the night sky cleared and we were on the ground again, the camp looked like hell. There were surprisingly just a few destroyed helicopters sitting at the pads. It seems most of the rounds had missed direct targets. However, there was a lot of damage and things needed to be repaired and fixed up.

I went back to my hooch and found my bunk and locker. There were holes in my locker (next to my bed) and my record player and speakers were destroyed. There were also holes in some of my uniforms and hats that all had been hanging in my locker. It was rather an odd feeling realizing how close all that damaged stuff was from where I was at when the rocket hit us. It was about this moment that my head reminded me once again, that I was in pain. Great pain!

I had a flight leaving for my R & R trip in about 15 minutes. I was not about to spoil that by reporting any injuries. So, I took my hat and pulled it over the bump on my head and walked out towards the flight line to find a chopper to hop on. I wanted to get out of that place as badly as anyone ever could.

The smoke was still rising slowly from small fires around the camp, as we pulled off the run way. I looked back at my hooch and saw my buddies waving up to me as we passed overhead. I looked down and felt a little guilty about leaving them there. I did not know what the next night would bring them. We circled back over the camp. You could still see several VC bodies laying across the bared wire, in the morning sunlight.

I was going to be in Japan, sometime later that day. It just felt so unreal that I could be living in a world were such contrasts existed. It was almost like a parallel universe. My head was killing me. However, nothing was going to stop me from boarding my flight out of Nam. It was my time for an R & R and I was ready to go!