30 Minutes Later

Hard to believe but that's me all soaked in sweat, sitting in the middle of a bunker complex about 30 minutes after finding the black, bloated, fly-covered body of a VC under a huge rock outcrop. This was late June 1971 and our company was southeast of FSB Fontaine up in a high saddle of a small mountain. We had just entered this bunker complex/supply depot in Binh Tuy Province minutes earlier and pulled a sweep to locate any remaining VC if they were still in our AO. Right after Range arrived at the entrance to the complex, my platoon leader, Lt. Frank Guidara (Range 6), had me belly-crawl under the outcrop to check for weapons, intel, or anything of military importance. And man, was I in for a surprise! It was pitch black under the rock and I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, all except for a sliver of light at the opposite end, and I crawled towards that ... at least until I heard the flies buzzing all around me. That's when I shifted my position and noticed a body within a couple feet of my face. At first I thought he was alive and it scared the hell out of me! I was ready to light him up with my 16 until I noticed he was already beyond anything I could do to him. Apparently the VC hadn't taken the time to bury their comrade killed in the air strike, so they drug his body about 20 feet back under the outcrop and left it there.

A day or two before we were sent in, a pink team had been snooping around in the area, and one of the VC took a couple of shots at them. The pink team fired them up, and saw the VC running around everywhere. Arty then hit the place with CS gas.

Some of the things we found in this huge bunker complex were a VC clothing factory, a huge food and rice cache consisting of over 24,000 pounds of flour, 2,300 pounds of polished rice, 1,400 pounds of salt, and 22 pounds of Fleischman's yeast. In the arms and ammo department, Delta found seven SKS rifles, one B-40 recoilless, four B-40 rockets, one B-40 booster, three M-79 grenade rounds, a box of 13 Chicom grenades, and one US M-26 grenade. In the clothing department were three Singer sewing machines, numerous black pajamas strung on clothes lines, 280 pounds of cloth in bolts, 100 pairs of unfinished black trousers, 41 ponchos, and a large assortment of buttons, thread, and other sewing equipment.

Last but not least were four brassieres and four pairs of women's pants along with other materiel. Unfortunately, I did not get to see the brassieres! This is the bulk of, but only a partial list of everything found. What really blew my mind was the fact that all the bags of rice we found were imprinted with the USAID logo ... straight from America. I got extremely angry when I saw that. I brought the SKS rifle (pictured), and one other SKS home with me as well as a camo beret. The enemy had fled in such haste that I found the beret and a GI canteen cup of half-eaten rice noodles sitting on a table, benches on either side, and a palm frond roof — their lunch must have been rudely interrupted by the pink team that lit them up. There was so much materiel in the cache, Echo Recon came in to help lift it all out over the next few days. We had a few, very busy days on that mission ... but we felt pretty good about the final outcome.

Thanks go to Frank Guidara, Mike Martin and Bill Neal for contributing some of the background details.