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this region anytime soon. The VC guerrilla activity continued along with the hard corps. PAVN activities. We came upon mines and booby traps almost every day. On one such occasion we were passing near a village—I entered a gate behind a village hut and my radioman, PFC Harris called out ‘stop’ Lt.!—I stopped. Harris said ‘don’t move ‘—I didn’t! PFC Harris pointed at my right heel—approx. one inch behind it was the head of an 81mm mortar round barely protruding from the ground—I had missed stepping on it by a mere ‘inch’—I still didn’t know whether it was ‘spring loaded’ or wired to be detonated remotely—I directed the platoon to move away from the area—including PFC Harris —who had remained cool throughout this situation. @34
I then carefully but quickly moved my foot away from the mortar round and moved as fast as I could to a covered position on the ground—no explosion. We called HQ and they directed us to use a couple of grenades to blow the mortar round up—which we did by putting one on each side of the round, pulling the
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