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Chapter 7
Friendly Fire Incident
Jul. 20, At approx. 2300 9@ all hell broke loose on one side of the perimeter— semi automatic rifle fire was taking place—I crouched and ran to the sound of the firing to see what what was happening—keeping low and crawling towards the position where the firing was coming from. Me and corporal Ingerson, the squad leader for the squad occupying that sector of the perimeter, arrived at the position about the same time and saw one of Ingerson’s squad members firing—we then heard a Marine on the left side of the position at another fox hole yell that we had casualties! The Marine that was firing was pumped up and wanted to continue firing at ‘some movement’ he had seen in front of his position—the problem was that he was facing partially inside the perimeter —looking directly at the foxhole next in line on the perimeter. By the time we got him under control and stopped the firing we heard Marines who had arrived at the foxhole where the the firing had been directed yell for the corpsman. I ran to that position and found that two of my Marines had been shot—and it was bad! We did everything we could to save them but both were gone—the shots had left no chance for either of them to survive and the corpsman, had to declare that they were officially dead. A med evacuation was called at daybreak and our two KIA were choppered back to Battalion HQ. The ‘friendly fire’ tragedy resulted in the first KIA casualties in the Battalion since landing at Qui Nhon! As I later stated in a written report of the
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