Free Nam Sense by Jr. Arthur Wiknik

someone noticed a Chicom grenade in his left hand. The soldier was immediately gunned down. The grenade turned out to be a dud. After that, orders came down that there would be no prisoners taken. Our commanders correctly believed that any NVA fanatical enough to still be in the area would also be willing to fight to the death.
    Things got quiet again as we waited for other units to get into their final attack positions. While sitting there, I began to feel hunger pains. I suspect everybody did because we had not eaten for nearly twenty hours. The problem was the only food close by was my can of peaches. So I had to think of a way to eat them without being seen. It didn’t work. As soon as the can was open, everybody glared at me. They all wanted peaches. I couldn’t share them with 100 men, so I hunched over and wolfed them down just to get it over with. Nobody said anything, but their sneering sure made me uncomfortable.
    Shortly after 9:00 a.m., the hill was bombarded with a final onslaught of our artillery. This prep was the softening needed for us to make what was hoped to be the last assault. The fusillade was so intense that there was hardly a moment without an explosion. All the firebases in the A Shau fired with such incredible accuracy that the rounds impacted every square yard of the battle area for nearly an hour. The mountain was being raked by so much shrapnel that some of it struck the tall trees above us, knocking down branches. When this final barrage ended, Ap Bia Mountain had taken a total of 155 air strikes and 20,000 artillery rounds during the ten-day campaign.
    At exactly 10:00 a.m., we were given the command to assault. Everyone moved out from the vegetation cover, forming a long skirmish line. The hill was monstrous and, despite the fact that it was completely denuded from all the bombing, would still be a formidable obstacle to climb. Loose dirt, splintered logs, stumps with exposed roots, and deep bomb craters made the terrain look like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The extent of the destruction convinced many of us that there could not possibly be any NVA left to fight. In fact, when the assault began, the only shooting came from GIs when we laid down suppressive fire as a tactical precaution. To our surprise, the NVA were still there. Ten minutes into what was believed to be a one-way assault, distant units on our right met light resistance. We didn’t know it at the time but several hundred NVA continued to occupy the hill.
    Our advance was slow and deliberate, either crawling or moving diagonally from stump to hole, then waiting for the next person to catch up before moving again. By 10:30 a.m., most of my company had reached the first row of enemy bunkers. Although the bunkers were mostly destroyed and abandoned, we tossed grenades into them to be sure.
    As our skirmish line worked past the bunkers, a squad of NVA poured from a trench, attacking an element of the beleaguered 3/187th. Although eight or nine men were initially wounded, all the GIs in that area rallied to wipe out the enemy squad. Directly above the spot more NVA appeared, and a pitched battle of RPGs, hand grenades, and small arms fire began. As if on cue, the knoll in front of my position suddenly erupted as NVA poured out to attack us.
    Unaware of these events, I continued evasive action, still assuming the shooting in my area was only coming from our weapons. As I crawled forward the dirt in front and alongside of me spit as if subterranean air bubbles were rising to the surface. I thought I was witnessing a rare geological phenomenon until I realized bullets were hitting the ground and that I was the target! If there was a sporting event for the low-crawl, I set a new speed record crabbing my way to the nearest bomb crater. I looked to find the source of the shooting but the hill had no features left that could possibly hide enemy forces. The NVA must have survived the ten-day pounding by staying inside deep bunkers