Dean Hendrickson, Ft Dodge Ia (formerly Fairmont, Mn) in Combat Gear, 11th Inf Bde, Quang Ngai Province, Oct 1969. Photo by Sgt Douglas Koning, Holland, MI (KIA Feb 1970). Close Encounter by Dean Hendrickson. “It had been a long hard ten mile sweep of lowland jungle and rice paddies that day, and we were just dropping our 50 lb rucksacks when the “good” news came down: “2nd squad, keep your shit on! You’re pulling ambush tonight! The CO (company commander) was a real Gung-Ho ROTC Ranger who was trying to make a name for himself. He didn’t mind sacrificing a few of us in the process. This was a real sore subject among the line troops who had been in country longer than him and knew as much or more than he did. He had spotted an area a few clicks back that he thought looked like a good spot to set up an all-night ambush position. Our squad’s job was to find our way back to that position in the dark with no lights (without getting ambushed ourselves!) and stay up all night waiting for the enemy to enter our kill zone. Ambush duty meant you humped for 12 hours, stayed up all night on ambush, and then humped again the next day for 12 hours. The 4 of us started out at dusk as it started to drizzle. We had an M-60 machine gunner, 2 riflemen with M-16’s and myself, the RTO or radioman. An RTO was basically a rifleman with the additional responsibility (and payload) of PRC-25 backpack radio. When we reached the ambush site we split up into 2 positions. It was too dark to try to establish fields of fire, so we didn’t split up very far. We barely knew we were in the right position at all. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and the rain muffled the noise quite a bit. My partner Dennis and I sat together and pulled a poncho over our heads to keep as warm and dry as possible, and proceeded to open up some C Rations. We knew we shouldn’t eat on ambush because of the aroma of the food, but we were starved from humping all day. We would adhere to the other rules – no smoking, no noise, and no lights. The ambush site the CO picked out was actually pretty good. We were all concealed by vegetation and below us was a well-used trail. Rice paddies stretched out beyond that. My partner, Dennis Amaro, from Palo Alto, California and I had been together since basic training. We sat in total darkness, whispering about home and the surreal things we had been dealing with since we got to Nam, still finding it hard to believe that we were stuck out in the middle of this God-forsaken jungle. We both went through Basic and Infantry Training at Fort Lewis, Washington in Feb 1969 (Jungle Training in the snow!) and now we were both assigned to the 3rd platoon of Charlie Company, 3rd of the 1st, 11th light Infantry, the brigade that was in the news for the My Lai Massacre. We were incredulous about the number of civilians reported killed and somewhat sympathetic to Lt Calley because we felt that responsibility for My Lai travelled much higher up the chain of command. Dennis would eventually be wounded twice and be reassigned to a rear job in Duc Pho. I spent 8 mos in the field and was then assigned to our Awards and Decorations section in Duc Pho. Suddenly, we both froze. Through the sound of the light rainfall something else was commanding our attention. We ate our C Rats, occasionally checking our rifles and the radio frequency and volume. We wondered how the other 2 squad members were doing. We couldn’t see or hear them. The conditions were less than ideal. It was almost like a sixth sense, or a premonition, and we strained our ears to try to confirm what our intuition was telling us. All our attention was focused on the sound. The raindrops sounded like explosions. The ringing in our ears and our pounding hearts drowned out most of the sound. We held our breath and strained to hear into the darkness until the object of our attention finally unveiled itself: footsteps in the rice paddy! I reached over to Dennis.”