I had been out in the boonies for 2-3 days by myself. Each night I hunkered down in a tree to sleep. I tied myself in so I wouldn't fall out. Needless to say I never got much sleep. It seemed every sound woke me up. This night I was about 50 ft up in a tree I heard a lot of small arms fire.... AKs, M16s, M14s and M60s... and it was all coming my way.

My rifle was equipped with a silencer and a night vision scope. Five men were being chased by a large group of VC. I could hear the 5 men and tell they were our guys. They hid in a ditch to make a last stand. It was quiet evident that ehy would quickly be over run.They weren't firing a lot, they were trying to make each round count.

I quietly got myself into position in the tree. I had a limb that made a very convenient rifle rest. I watched for rifle flashes and began to systematically pick off the enemy. After awhile the firing began to subside. "Our guys" knew I was close by but didn't know where. They soon took the opportunity to slip off into the night.

I hit 3 or 4 more targets before theVC too disappeared.

I climbed down out of my tree and made my escape from the area. During the next 2 days I had to hide from the VC. A few times I could have reached out and touched them.

On the 3d day I got back to Mach Air and Mr Jones gave me a debreifing even before I could take a shower.

Mr Jones first question was "how many rounds did you get back with?"....3 that was all I had except for the ammo in my pistol.

I gave Mr Jones all the details of my recon trip and that night. Mr Jones said that I had saved the lives of 5 American special ops men. The next day a recon patrol was looking for the special ops men and came upon where they had made their stand. There were 37 dead VC there. The special ops men were down to 24 rounds between them when they decided to make their last stand where they did. Most of the dead were killed by head shots. So they must have been mine.