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then we were positive his troops were close by—his brand new pistol was another powerful clue—it still had the packing grease on it—a resupply of new weapons had just arrived. This capture occurred in the days preceding ‘Operation Harvest Moon’. My old outfit —the Second Battalion Seventh Marines along with units from the ARVN, the Third Marines , the First Marines and the ninth Marines—engaged several NVA battalions From Dec. 8th-18th in what was to become one of the bloodiest battles of the War. I learned later that the Company that replaced the original E co. ( from 1/4 ) and was now the new E Co. 2/7 walked into a hornet’s nest in the early stages of that fight and took heavy casualties 28@—including the first platoon which would’ve been my old platoon if we hadn’t been ‘mixmastered’ into 1/4 . They had 8 KIA and over 18 WIA and had to be pulled back because of those heavy casualties—units from the ninth Marines in Da Nang were called in as reinforcements. I’ve never for the life of me understood why the First Bn., Fourth Marines wasn’t invited to the fight! We were available—within reasonable distance where we could have been transported —7/10 miles—yet we were never called up. We found out later that the 1/4 Battalion Commander Lt. Col Parrich was being transferred out and Col Sullivan was coming in to replace him—another case of the ‘musical chairs’ taking place that, I believe , affected the tactical situations going on in our TAOR and —-possibly cost the lives of our Marines.
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