[Penn]

Meeting up with the rest of our small team, the squad leader and the senior medic pull out their map and plot another direction to the rendezvous point. Exhaust by effort, fear, and soaking wet, the cold mountain air has us shivering, so we huddle together under the triple canopy sharing our body warmth, trying in vain to avoid the rain, while finding deep comfort in our togetherness, we look at each other, using our eyes to communicate silently that we are ok.

Then, out of nowhere, an enemy soldier walks directly into the squad leader and the senior medic, who grabs the fully dressed NVA soldier by the neck as the E6 squad leader all but decapitates him. The violence of action was so quick we never moved. Hand singling us to move, we grab the body and four of us carry it deep into the undergrowth. Returning, we move out as quickly as possible, following a monsoon made stream in the valley for several kilometers, before turning and clawing our way up to another ridgeline.

That evening there is a break in the weather and overcast, reaching our new extraction point, we are picked up within minutes of arrival. The flight to Hue feels over in a few minutes but was much more. We are taken to some units mess hall and then their shower facilities. I remember standing under the hot steaming water shivering like mad until that stopped. The next morning, we were asked to write up what happened on our way to the extraction point.

The following morning, standing in a loose formation, we are told by the senior medic “Big Doc” that the MedCap program was being shutdown and that we would all return to our assigned units. We all just look at each other in disbelief, we had huddled together sharing our body heat to keep warm, sat in night LP’s for hours together, being eaten alive by the fire ants and bugs, we know longer knew anyone back at LZ Bronco, our squad and place was here. “Little Doc” seeing our reaction, “Men, it’s temporary, we’ll be touch.” We all knew that it was over, but we apricated the gesture.

I am certain, looking back at that intense experience is when the loss of innocents and rebirth into the world occurred. And that those few months under the vigilance and tutelage of those men, cemented the acceptance that fear and hypervigilance in its infancy then was a good thing, that later would destroy many future relationships as the demand for attention to detail morphed into an unnatural exactness.
An exactness regimented in the rigor of military discipline to survive any encounter for the sake of the mission, to always be aware, would dovetail seamlessly into a future unknown career, which would demand the same excellence in preparation and execution to succeed.

Back on Bronco at the aid station they assigned me to a TDY with the “C” 1/3 198Inf Bdg. The squad leader, Brian was from Scranton, Pa., so we had some common ground, but when I informed him that I was not the medic they were looking for, he responds by telling me that’s ok, and hands me a rifle.

And then God intercedes, and I am pulled into a perimeter patrol squad, whose sole responsibility is to check all the perimeters at all the LZ’s in the 11th Inf brigade’s AOR biweekly. It’s another small 8-man squad, led by an Lt., a senior E-7 and a junior E-6 sergeants, with a commo guy and four grunts.