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incident this was an accident that should never have happened. The Marine shooter had apparently been facing in the proper direction in his fox hole — observing his sector of responsibility—had become sleepy, dozed off and unconsciously rotated his body back and to the right side of his position When he woke up he was actually now facing down the perimeter looking directly towards the next position on his left—approximately ten yards. Meanwhile the two Marines in that fox hole had broken a platoon rule by sitting on the lip of the hole instead of inside the hole—this couldn’t be seen by the squad leader in the darkness from his position—so the Marine shooter woke up from dozing off— looked at the movement he saw—thinking it was in front of his position which he had been facing—he saw movement—thinking the VC were breeching the perimeter and opened fire—emptying his magazine into the other two Marines. There was nothing we could do. We took the errant shooter’s weapon and placed him under arrest until we could transport him back to HQ for disposition. The platoon was obviously upset at what had happened and we mourned the loss of two of our platoon ‘family’ in such a senseless manner.
The routine was pretty much the same day to day through the hot days of July and August. The days and nights were tiring, hot and frustrating . We had occasional enemy contact—mostly on our recon patrols where ‘hit and run’ tactics were used by the VC to harass our patrols. From time to time we killed or captured the VC that were involved in those attacks. Occasionally, one of our Marines would get hit and either killed or wounded by these ‘hit and run’ tactics.
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