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This enemy did not ‘stand and fight’ unless they had superior numbers or were surprised. 35@ They picked their battles for the most part and when they fought they had a plan to remove their dead and wounded and escape among the many hidden trails and tunnel networks that were available to them in this godawful region.
Near the end of Jan. ’66 my platoon was assigned to set up an ‘outpost’ at Ky Phu—a well known passageway for the VC to resupply and infiltrate the region from the mountain trails linking it to the Ho Chi Minh trail. 1/4 was assuming the TAOR of 2/4 which was moving further North—our outpost was part of that plan . Out chosen site was a good sized hill near Ky Phu. We moved to that position and went about the process of digging in, setting up the concertina wire, claymore mines and laying in our overlapping fields of fire, etc. We would be running patrols from this location day and night. As usual we set up our ‘attack plan’ in case we had an assault on the outpost. We rotated two squads on the perimeter with the third squad in reserve. We were reinforced with four m-60 machine gun crews which were disbursed around the perimeter. I established radio communications with Company HQ located a couple of clicks away near the AnTan Bridge 36@—I also established contact with Battalion Artillery support including the 81mm mortar section. We determined likely target areas around the base of the hill and pre set those coordinates with the forward observer. We disbursed our grenade boxes to each squad area—each Marine was given several grenades which would be used upon command. We rehearsed the possibilities of attack points around the perimeter with each squad and the
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