Page Three
| deer or man? Then three more sharp jerks - it was at least one man, still unseen by the Sergeant but surely seen by the alert striker three more jerks now interrupted by a voice whispering yet in the still mist it was like a shout. Slowly and carefully he eased back the cocking handle on the antique weapon he held in his hand, he repeated to himself, "one eye, one eye, one eye" meaning to close one eye tightly against the muzzle flash from the deadly at short range, MIAI Thompson sub machine gun loaded with 30 rounds of 45 caliber bullets. Any one of which could kill a man. Or punch a hole the size of an orange in flesh. There! Movement! Now he could see the shadowy form of one, no, two people well across the stream and moving slowly toward him. He willed them to bunch up, tighten up you bastards! Still a ways from him, but now there were more, two were carrying large objects, baskets of some kind, the two in front definitely had rifles of some sort. Now it WAS WORKING they were bunching up now 5, 7 now he could count 11 with no problem. They had stopped and were whispering among themselves, then having reached their decision they began to come down the trail, slowly and carefully, but still now bunched in the two groups. Carefully aligning his gun barrel, he squeezed his left eye tightly closed and waited, holding his breath and taking up the slight trigger slack he said to himself. Wait, wait, wait, then a sudden roar. Bright light split the air, now the still night was split by 10 weapons on full auto roaring into the night, he had fired directly into the chest of the first figure and had seen him spin and fall. Then he ejected the magazine and slammed in a new one and opening his left eye stared out and down the trail - all he could see now was several dark shapes lying on the ground. Then he heard a half gasp half groan that was immediately fired upon by one of the striker, then silence, PURE DEAD SILENCE. It was rapidly growing lighter, now it was a misty gray, not black, soon the sun would cast its feeble glow on the tree tops and it would be full dawn. Then they would leave the holes, then and not before. Take no chances now! The smell of gun powder and blood was overpowering. IF each man had followed his orders, 330 rounds of ammunition had been fired, for each man had a full 30 round magazine in his weapon. When day light came, it was clear that it had worked all to well, there were fourteen corpses on the ground, 12 male and 2 females. Some had only a few wounds, others had been, like the man leading the group literally been torn apart by the hail of heavy 45 slugs that ripped into their small bodies. Recovered were 10 rifles, one 7.62 pistol and 48 Chinese type hand grenades 36 of which were in woven baskets carried by the women. There was no way of course to tell if this group had been raiding the local villages. It was enough to know that they were the enemy, no matter how just their cause was to them, they were the declared enemy of the official government of South Viet Nam and the United States as well. It was some comfort to be absolutely |