I had brought the column to a halt and asked the CO to come up to my position. He was there in no time. I said, "Sir, do you see what I'm seeing? Sir, a 110 azimuth runs right up to the middle of this field to those trees. Are you sure you want me to go that way?" He said, "Hold on while I contact the battalion headquarters." From what I could hear of the conversation, the battalion commander didn't like his orders questioned. I could hear him screaming at the CO, "You got your orders, now follow them. You will be getting support from the rest of the batallion." What we didn't know at the time was that we were going to need all the support we could get. The NVA that I saw were part of an estimated two reinforced battalions of the 21st NVA regiment. The CO looked at me and said, "I believe you just heard the orders,now get ready to move up to that tree line." Within a minute I started up the incline, following as much of the gouges in the soil that were created from erosion as I could, hoping the gouges would offer some kind of cover for the rest of the company. As I started up, I noticed a young healthy Vietnamese male walking in the same direction as I was. Even though he was not in a uniform and didn't have a weapon on him, I was sure he was an NVA soldier. He was about 25 yards to my right front and heading for the same trees as I was. I thought this guy had a lot of guts, walking out in the open like this. When he started running the last 10 yards to enter the trees, I opened fire on him. I wasn't sure if I had hit him or if it was his own motion to cause him to fly through the air the last few yards into the trees. All I do know is that when I fired on him all hell broke-out from my front and to the right side of me. This was a well thought-out "L" shaped ambush and here we were walking right into the jaws of it. The whole area busted loose with gunfire and mortar rounds going off all around us. All of the company hit the deck and returned fire at the NVA soldiers. Up front where our platoon was positioned, we were receiving heavy automatic machine gun fire from the trees. In response, our platoon sergeant ordered McKinley's squad to move to the right and try a flanking maneuver into the right side of the trees. The squad never had a chance, only two of the twelve Marines in McKinley's squad made it back to where the rest of us were. They walked into about 50 well-entrenched NVA soldiers who were waiting for them. Mckinley was the only one of the two Marines who managed to get back unharmed. The other Marine was not as lucky, he was badly wounded.
