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other side of the stream bed—on the map—it appeared to be a small valley and was in the same area we had been told to check. I left two fire teams in place— to remain concealed until we returned —in no more that one hour—and to act as our ‘rear guard’. I proceeded to lead the team across the face of the waterfall—it was slow going—although it was dark we had a sliver of moonlight—which helped. the team followed my lead as we carefully picked our way across the face of the waterfall—as I reached the halfway point I placed my left foot on a rock —reached for another rock with my left hand while holding on to a crevice with my right—as I shifted my weight to my left foot from my right—the rock under my left foot gave way—my left hand slipped off the rock I had held onto—I started to fall backwards in to the abyss below—I couldn’t yell or scream because we would have given our location away to an enemy of unknown size—maybe a battalion —so I fell—and fell —until I hit the bottom of the waterfall—thinking I was going to die right there. I landed in a large tree sized bush on my back. The bush broke my fall along with a small pack on my back—it still knocked the wind out of me and left me stunned—blinking up at the waterfall above. My troops couldn’t see me—couldn’t call out to me and I couldn’t call out to them. We all held our position until we could determine if our enemy had heard anything. Soon, I could see a couple of my men moving down the side of the waterfall from the direction we had come—they moved toward me and helped me out of the bush and helped me stand up—which was difficult—the fall had hurt—badly—my back felt badly bruised—and I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t broken anything—I decided to keep moving and carry out our mission by climbing up the far side of
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