| The day began like any other with clear skies and bright
sunshine at Kham Due, South Viet Nam. Only routine training was on the
program for my A Detachment's Strike Force soldiers. Strike Force was the
name given to the native soldiers we were supposed to train and then lead
in battle.
Often this was a misnomer as some Strike Force units were very reluctant to fight at all. My Detachment, or team, had recently been shifted to Kham Duc from a miserable place called TA KO .We had been placed atop a mountain that had no water supply. no tactical or strategic value and was in a dumb location to begin with. Those problems might have been over come if we had had some decent Montagnard troops. Our troops. however, were the dregs of South Viet Nam. Petty criminals and deserters and draft dodgers that had been rounded up and forced into service.They could not be trusted and thus were never allowed to leave the base except to go on operations. No, they were not very good at anything except personal survival. So the mistake was corrected and TA KO was closed and we relocated to a new area. Now our ten men were part of a larger force at Kham Duc located near the bottom part of the First Corps area. Normally there would be twelve men on an A team. One of ours, Ron Terr3i, was on detached duty with the Delta project and another, Master Sergeant Robert White had suffered a fatal heart attack at TA KO and as yet no replacement had arrived for him . My team , A 324, was commanded by Captain Bobby G. Moon. The executive officer was Frank L,. Henry. Our two medical personnel were Dale E. Worley and Frank Robertson and they were two of the best, both as medics and soldiers. Communications, a very vital component, was well in hand with Jack Cede and Jack Nichols holding down that job. Our two weapons guys were Bob Lammers and Garry Stamm, again the very best at their line of work. Our engineer section was handled by a young trooper named Mark R.Chase, the other man was Terry, who was detached to Delta. Since White's death, I had been both Team Sergeant and Intelligence Sergeant for the team. The troop commitment at Kham Due was high, as there was a B
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