I joined the Army because I didn't want to work on the farm. At that age I didn't want to be controlled. When I wanted to run around, I didn't want anyone stopping me.

The farm was about 20 miles north of Witchita Kansas. I went to boot camp in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. We called it "little Korea." It was hot. That was in '63. I went into tanks and was stationed with the 1st Cav in Korea in '64-'65. From Korea I went to Vietnam. I was a driver on a tank but I went straight to the infantry…

I knew it was serious (the fighting on April 11) right away. The firing came from all around.

I remember a guy threw a tear gas canister into the wind. Men were putting on their gas masks. They were killed because of it (the gas obscured their vision – TD). I found one guy who was dead. I didn’t know where he was wounded until I took his gas mask off and his brains fell out.

I didn’t wear a gas mask, I wasn’t in that area.

When I got hit I was up on one knee. That was later. About a couple of hours later...after it had started. I didn't even know I had been hit. It numbed my whole arm up to my shoulder. I didn't know it until I looked down and saw my thumb hanging there. I had my rifle up next to my face, you know, aiming. The bullet came down and into the topside of my thumb and shattered my thumb and went into where the plastic stock went into the metal part of the M16. Part of that stuck me in the side of the nect. If I hadn't had my weapon there the bullet probably would have gone into my neck and down into my lungs. I grabbed my thumb and wrapped it myself. I killed three gooks out there on a trail to my left. They were just standing out there. I emptied my magazine into them. I killed the sniper that got me.

I quit high school and joined the Army in April of 1964. I was seventeen and a half. I wasn’t doing very good in school at the time and me and the police weren’t getting along too good, so I figured the best thing for me was the get out of that little town (Florence, Wisconsin) and make something of myself – so I joined the Army.

After basic I did advanced infantry training at Ft. Ord, California. From there I went to Ft. Carson, Colorado. From there I got orders to go to Vietnam. Before I left a sergeant called me in and told me that when I got over there (Vietnam) to make friends, but not real good friends. Real good friends got killed.

I was in a security platoon at MACV. That’s where Jimmy Robinson was, Leo Inkelaar. I got there in April or May of ’65. There was a big officers compound outside of Tan Son Nhut, I pulled guard there while Westmoreland was there a few days. I didn’t like the security detail – standing on rooftops, at dark street corners, pulling guard over officers, high ranking NCOs, it seemed more spooky than being in the jungle. So I volunteered for the First Infantry Division.

This was in January of ’66, I went to the First Sergeant and there was a platoon sergeant there, Sergeant Sutterfield. There was someone with me, but they went to second platoon. Sutterfield was a good man. He didn’t take shit from anyone. When he talked you listened, because he watched out for you. He drank heavy but when you went out to the field he was there.

THE FIRST FEW DAYS

You walked and walked and walked. The first time I got shot at we were walking across a big old rice paddy. It was open, the treeline a couple of hundred yards away. The column stopped – we were supposed to eat dinner. We just sat down on the dikes when they started sniping at us. The first few shots came so close that the dirt started kicking up around me. I think it was Robinson who yelled out, “on line for squad!” I thought, “what the hell is going on here.”

So we made an on line assault across that rice paddy to the treeline. That was the first time I saw napalm, it exploded in the trees ahead of us. No one in the squad was hit. We didn’t shoot at anything, just moved up. Get on the line and go.

We didn’t have even eight men in the squad.

ON THE RADIO

Sutterfield was picking the younger men to go into a more secure area, assignment you know? Middle of the column, you know. I was put on Lt. Devoe’s radio in March.

I only saw Padilla twice (Padilla took over for Capt. Canady in March.) I heard he came to the wrong company.

THE BATTLE

Around 11:30 or sometime around there we stopped for lunch. We heard a shot to the front of us. Sutterfield got pissed off because he thought someone didn’t have his safety on. There were a couple of more shots. We finished eating and moved out. Then we started getting shots from the rear. Sutterfield most have known all along that things were horseshit. It was just the way he looked. He knew something was wrong. When you see an old veteran like Sutterfield acting like that you get nervous. He had been through a lot. We moved forward – they were pulling us in. They did a hell of a good job of what they did.

Then they locked the back door and we were screwed.

When the short rounds came in, that’s when I got wounded. I had a piece (of shrapnel) fall on each leg and burn. Then I got that little scrap across my chest. I went back to the little landing strip that they had cut out. I don’t know, I think I was the next one or the one after that when it really opened up. I saw Pitsenbarger wave them off. I saw him him talking into his radio. He wanted to stay on the ground.

I went back to where Roger Harris was sitting. The way the bark was flying off the trees – I was watching that and I could see that everytime the son-of-a-bitch fired the leaves would move so I told Roger Harris (Bobby only had a .45, remember he was Devoe’s RTO). Harris dropped him down with his second shot.

Everybody was hollering and screaming, dying and the smoke was so thick and the jungle was so thick and people were calling for their mothers. Whistles blowing. I thought I was going to die or be captured.

They (the VC) were sneaky little bastards, they moved from tree to tree, they were camouflaged.

I saw one guy kneeling down get hit across his chest and one hit in the jugular vein. There was blood everywhere. There was nothing anyone else that could be done for him.

I know come daylight there were people sitting all around me, against trees, some were dead, some were crying.

The worst part of the battle for me was when Bravo Company came in. You see these guys staring at you like, “what the hell are you doing alive.” They didn’t say anything, they just set up there perimeter. .

I was with Charlie Company from Ft. Riley and took the boat over with them, landed at Vung Tau and went up to Bien Hoa. Most of the people I knew were from this area in Wisconsin. But they had rotated back just prior to the battle so I didn’t know a lot of people. We had a big influx of people.

We moved that morning (April 11) and later that afternoon and from what I remember someone spotted a couple of VC and pretty soon the whole company was saddled up moving into the jungle. We started getting a little fire here and a little fire there and one thing led to another and all of a sudden we are catching all kinds of fire.

People were inside the perimeter outside the perimeter, and we were trying to get a force to sustain ourselves. I remember everyone was hitting the ground, taking up positions and laying down a field of fire. I was selectively firing. I was trying to find targets. One that I know for sure. He was about fifteen feet from me and I shot him right through the head. He was crawling toward me and came over a log and I shot him. I saw one running I don’t know if I hit him or not. This sergeant started screaming that we were all going to die because we were really getting hit hard. Artillery and mortars were coming down. He was behind me. I went back to try and get him squared away and that’s when I was wounded.

I was on top of this sergeant and get him to calm down and get into the fight – he had lost it – when I got hit that kind of snapped him out of it. I was hit in the buttocks and upper thigh and the shrapnel destroyed the stock on my rifle.

At that time there was a soldier that was already dead and he was laying there and the helicopters were coming over head and throwing out boxes of ammo for us and this box of ammo came down right on his chest and …auh…squashed him.

After I got hit a medic came and I dropped my drawers – I wanted to make sure the “boys” were OK. It felt like someone had put gasoline on my rear end and put a match to it. At that time Sergeant Langston came by and I talked to him. “I got hit, I’m sure I’m OK. I can walk.” Langston said "You're getting out of here. You got any ammo?"

I was wounded and the basket came down I rolled into it and they took me into the chopper. That’s the extent of my battle.

I was in the field hospital for sixty days. It turned out that my wound was just a big flesh wound. A big hole but no infection or damage.