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Chapter 26
Moving North to the DMZ
Over the next several weeks A Company participated in operations and
sweeps . We found that the face of our enemy was changing —from the viet cong villager/guerilla to hard corps North Vietnamese army regulars who were well armed and well trained. The VC were still active and involved but our major concern was with the build up of the NVA. We began to run into more snipers and engage in more firefights —we were also seeing more mines and booby traps . Our patrols would normally engage in some type of enemy contact on a regular basis. On one such patrol we were skirting around a village which was surrounded—as usual with rice paddies—we were using the rice paddy dikes to maneuver around the village. I heard and felt the area around me suddenly erupt with the sound of ‘splat—splat—splat’—then I heard the sound of rifle shots
( bang—bang—bang ) in the distance several hundred meters away towards an outcropping in the rice paddy. The last ‘splat’ had actually hit there ground beneath the heel of my boot —like a hammer knocking me off stride and I realized that I was the target of a sniper who was probably adjusting his elevation at that very moment—-I quickly zig-zagged to cover behind one of the dikes while the sniper continued to try and pick off targets in the platoon—he missed. My
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