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The routes encompassed known and suspected areas of enemy activity—much like a police officer’s ‘beat’ our job was to be seen— to set up ambushes on known enemy routes and raid any suspected location where VC tended to inhabit —to sniff out possible enemy activity—supply routes and to prevent a sudden ‘build up’ of enemy units in each of our TAOR’s. Over time our Battalion killed or captured hundreds of VC and /or Regular NVA soldiers —capturing supplies intended for distribution to the enemy units along with weapons and valuable intelligence info.@ 32 On one such long range patrol we were investigating the possible presence of a NVA battalion at the extreme western end of our TAOR—I took Corporal Ingerson’s squad with me and left the remainder of the platoon at our Platoon CP. This patrol required a great deal of stealth as we knew we were going into a possible hornet’s nest. We timed our route so that we would be at or near our objective area by dark. The terrain was rough—steep and hilly terrain with thick underbrush. We approached a large stream bed that looked like it was closer to a river during the monsoon season—it was mostly dry at the moment. I sent a fire team downstream—to the left and another upstream to the right—they were to check for a place to cross the stream bed that wasn’t so open—within minutes they both returned—they had spotted campfires in both directions — down stream and upstream—-immediately in front of us was a dried up waterfall —approximately thirty yards across and maybe fifty feet high. I decided to take one fire team with me across the face of the waterfall so our silhouettes wouldn’t be seen from both directions. The face of the waterfall was a cliff face actually but there appeared to be plenty of footholds —I wanted to see what was on the
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