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1 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai FSB Nguyen Trai was a strange place. It was located on a sandy sloping hill. The "sand" was really small rocks. I remember at night we would lay down a poncho, then put our air mattress on top of that to have a place to sleep. We always had to look around before you put the poncho down to make sure you weren't putting it on top of a pile of ants. There were lots of different kinds of ants, red ants, black ants, and "army" ants. The red ants could really sting. The "army" ants had great big pinchers. I can remember "army" ants eating right through a poncho an putting a hole in the air mattress. We would fix the holes in the air mattress by taping them with the small piece of tape that was on the bottom of the smoke grenades to keep the water out. It was close to being the same as duct tape. The big problem on Nguyen Trai was the scorpions. In the morning you would always find a couple of them under your poncho. 2 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai These are records of intelligence reports of the things that were around each of the "NDP" (night defensive positions) that each company was set up in the night of 1 May 1970. Remember we are now all located inside Cambodia! C company spots enemy C company starts finding stuff C company gets in contact and lose two of there guys. (1/8th Cavs 1st losses in Cambodia) 3 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai Here was some discussion about our company flying to Loc Ninh to be a "reactionary force". It never happened. 4 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai We were supposed to go on R&R but because of the Cambodian invasion and all of the activity that was taking place it was cancelled. 5 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai E company gets in contact 6 May 1970 D company on FSB Nguyen Trai E company gets in contact again A platoon of our company went on a patrol and found some documents. B company gets in contact E company gets in contact again We get ready to move to the area the E company is in 7 May 1970 D Company is supposed to move to the field Here we go (we think) E company finds a blood trail and the decide to leave them out in the field for the rest of the day 8 May 1970 D Company finally moves to field E company gets in contact. (Remember we are supposed to replace them in the field.) During the lift off for E company a helicopter take fire from the enemy. This is what was termed a "Hot LZ". Because of the "Hot LZ" they decided to put us out in the field in another location. But look where they put us! Because we knew the size of what we found and the fact that it would take days to get this stuff back hauled we requested to destroy everything right there. Remember right now everyone is getting into fire fights. The last thing we wanted to do was to have to sit in one place with "Shit Hooks" coming in and out for days at a time. This would really be asking for it! During this night I was on radio watch and thought I heard something move. Now remember I am in the main CP inside the perimeter so there should not be anything around me! I waited a couple of seconds and heard something again. I carried a flashlight that had a red lens on it so I thought "okay, if I just hit the button for a second I might be able to spot what ever is moving around." I picked up my M16, pointed it towards a spot and shined the flashlight on for a second. I saw hundreds of shiny little eyes looking back. We were infested with RATS. One of them was sitting on top of the commanding officers chest! I called on the radio and let everyone know that we had rats running around inside the perimeter. So if they heard anything not to shoot at it. Now my radio watch was over and it was time for me to go to sleep. Funny thing, I just laid down and fell asleep. No big deal! I am sure the rats had a great time! 9 May 1970 D company in field We got their attention We find more stuff and get permission to destroy some of the stuff but it looks like we are still going to be stuck there a while. Now the commanding general doesn't want anything destroyed. (the old hurry up and wait stuff again!) By noon this is what we had found. I remember being on the radio calling this stuff in for quite a while! A pink team is requested to help us find a PZ (pickup zone) so we can start flying this stuff out. Here's the "daily summary" of the cache we found 10 May 1970 D company in field (the log report from this day is missing.) One thing that I noticed when we went into Cambodia was that everything seemed larger than in Vietnam. The bugs were bigger, the rats were bigger, can't explain why it just seemed weird! 11 May 1970 D company in field Some discussion of moving us from the cache area to FSB Snuffy then back to secure a new LZ We find a trail, AK47 and some other munitions. They are moving us around. (we wound up at FSB Mo) 12 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo Here's the report on what we found the day before. This turned out to be a big deal! The "hootch" was as tall as a 3 story building! Here's a report about the size of the area we found. 13 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo B company gets into a fire fight and finds a bunch of stuff. list of wounded from B company C company finds some stuff 14 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company hears a truck C company finds the tire tracks 15 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company finds the jeep report on a helicopter door gunner being killed 16 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company finds some stuff E company finds some stuff C company finds a "truck stop" with a Jeep in it. 17 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo B company gets in a fire fight / 2 wounded GI's medevaced. C company gets in a fire fight at the same time! / 6 wounded GI's medevaced. 18 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo A company has a "automatic ambush" go off. Results in on NVA KIA. B company finds some stuff. C company finds bunkers that contain Opium. C company gets into a short fire fight C company gets into another fire fight with 1 NVA KIA Daily summary of stuff found and action of May 18th 19 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company finds more stuff A company has 12 enemy troops surrender (Chieu Hoi) to them. C company finds more rice! Summary report of C companys findings 20 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company finds a Dead NVA in the contact area of 18 May. This is a list of the documents they found on him. B company finds a bunch of cooking stuff 21 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo C company reports mortars being fired at them 22 May 1970 D company on FSB Mo E company recon spots enemy E company recon gets into fire fight / 3 NVA KIA 23 May 1970 D company moves to field C company has 2 trip flares go off at 2:20 AM A company has more individuals surrender I pick up Vietnamese talking on our radio frequency. We move back out to the field The have secondary explosions from artillery during our CA 24 May 1970 D company in field / view my handwritten notes for this day. We hear some chickens and get into contact We find their shoes. A company has more people surrender. They were on a major FSB that also had a landing strip. There were quite a few villages around that area which accounts for the number of surrenders. We have a claymore blown on us resulting in 2 of our guys being wounded. Our medevac helicopter shows up but only picks up one of our guys. They pick up the second guy. (I am not sure what happened here.) What we found when we swept the area. Also one of the very few things I was left with after being medevaced was my writing pad. I have scanned these documents and will include them. We get a hunter killer team to work with us and we both hear enemy mortars landing in the area. Summary of what we found They want us to move to the suspected cache site ASAP. 25 May 1970 D company in field We find the cache We start finding all kinds of stuff! And the area is booby trapped! Here's the request for equipment to extract what we found. A company gets into a fire fight and has trouble getting a medevac in. 26 May 1970 D company in field New policy from General Casey in regards to materials that might be left in Cambodia by US. B company gets a bunch of individuals surrendering on FSB Snuffy Info on some documents we found and a further update of the cache found on 25 May 27 May 1970 D company in field Here's a list of the nicknames and locations for the caches that were found so far. We start getting visitors. And more visitors Info on a pistol we found and request for A/C to pick up one of our guys that got some shrapnel from a booby trap. 28 May 1970 D company in field B company gets more individuals surrendering. and more! A company finds stuff Here is a request for a clearance box for heavy artillery. I found my log report record for this info. They are telling us to get out of the way of a planned air strike Here's a list of stuff extracted from the cache site so far A company has explosion of unknown orgin. resulted in 3 GI's being killed. 29 May 1970 D company in field Here's the official report on what happened to A company on the 28th. Turns out they set off their own Automatic Ambush. We find a mortar Report on number of sortes we have backhauled so far. Some confusion on what we could backhaul and what we couldn't Requested medevac for a gun shot wound to foot. (hummmm) Stuff that got backhauled this day 30 May 1970 D company in field We were still backhauling stuff this day. This was a major cache that required 3 trucks to move stuff from the cache site to the area we could load it on the choppers. Our company was securing the area for 3 days so we were very concerned that we could get attacked by the enemy. Here's the list of stuff we backhauled on this day. Here's the list of what A company backhauled on this day. 31 May 1970 D company in field Texas Tech didn't have a record for this day. Move forward to June 1970
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