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about the moment when the amtrak hits the beach and the ramp goes down and they are exposed to whatever is waiting for them in the sand dunes ahead. Some Marines silently pray—some simply stare ahead and brace themselves for what’s to come. For some unknown reason the BLT command decided to announce that this would be an ‘opposed’ landing—knowing that there were no known VC in the area where we landed—no identified gun emplacements, no enemy units spotted in the area—instead we found women, children and innocent villagers watching the landing from the dunes as if this was a Hollywood production! Knowing the anxiety factor —why would our Commanders add to the stress of the landing by misleading us with erroneous information??
The amtrak's began moving off the ramp of the ship at approx. 0400—the feeling of ‘inevitability’ was prevalent among the troops—-the amtraks become ‘boats’ once they’re in the water—in every ‘ship to shore’ movement there is definitely a ‘risk’ factor involving the equipment—some amtraks have been known to sink when they roll off the ship—the troops were very aware of that fact and there was an obvious happy moment when the vehicle began to float and move forward after leaving the ship—a few nervous smiles showed up among the troops. The amtraks continued to roll off the ship and began circling off shore until all vehicles were off the ship—the order was given from the command staff to line up parallel to the beach which was approx. one mile away—all amtraks moved into position —dawn was beginning to break—the line of amtraks loaded with our troops began moving toward the beach. I gave the command to lock and load—each
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