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coordination with the reserve squad if that became necessary. We dug ‘dummy positions’ for daytime observation by the enemy —those were intended to confuse the VC as to where the actual positions were located further up on the hill. A few nights later we were faced with our first ‘test’ of our new outpost. At approx. 0300 the squad located on the North side of our perimeter detected movement at the base of the hill —approx. 100 meters away—the squad leader alerted me—the entire perimeter was also alerted—we held our fire—I attempted to see what the ‘movement’ was thru my field glasses—it was dark but with a little moonlight—I saw several dark figures moving on a line approximately thirty yards away moving toward our perimeter. I alerted the platoon that I was going to fire a flare to give us a better view. I fired the flare and we saw a line of approximately 10 VC and another 50-75 scattered in the field immediately behind them—we opened fire from the entire squad on the North side of the perimeter and cut down the line of VC closest to our position. We also threw several grenades into the group of VC. While this was going on we noticed one of our new Marines reaching into the grenade box and throwing grenades down the hill—with a little shock we realized he was throwing them without pulling the pin! This we stopped immediately —he was embarrassed as his squad was ribbing him about it already.—the problem was that we saw those grenades coming back at us —the VC couldn’t throw the grenades up the hill as easily as we had thrown them down—they started falling short of the perimeter but still got our attention—within minutes the VC dispersed, running for cover in the tree lined area nearby. I called for 81mm flares from Battalion and they responded
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