1st Battalion 22nd Infantry Kuhn's Story Page 5

1st Battalion 22nd Infantry

2nd FIELD TRIP
July 1971

By the end of June and after only 3 months in country I had been promoted to Spec 4 (specialist 4th class)
and awarded the CIB (combat infantryman badge). Now we are headed back to An Khe to go out to the field again.
The night before we left Tuy Hoa I was playing around in a mock fight with one of the Sergeants.
It wasn’t serious, we were just fooling around and having fun. The guys were standing around watching and laughing.
I pulled out my knife and swung it at him and came around and hit a sand bag. My knife closed up hard on my finger
and cut it pretty bad. I was able to stop the bleeding and just taped it up. The next morning on the convoy
my finger was thumping pretty badly. When we got to Firebase Action I saw a medic who then decided that I should be sent
to Firebase Buffalo to see the head medic there for stitches. The rest of the Company remained at FB Action for a few days
before heading out into the bush. I got a couple of stitches and a big fat bandage put on it.

After missing the first week in the field, I was sent out on a re-supply chopper to join the company. I soon found out
that while I was away one of our guys got killed. A squad from one of the other platoons was out on ambush when one of the
guys left the night ambush site for a few minutes. Later I heard that the guy was probably just out there to take a leak.
One of the other guys in the squad woke up and heard someone outside the area and fired him up. They call that friendly fire.
Chief’s words popped into my head “If you ever hear anything move out there, kill it!” I heard the
shooter was sent back to headquarters and never returned, refusing to ever pick up a weapon again.

We were in the Central Highlands again and this time we found lots of caches. Once again I couldn’t tell you if the stuff
belonged to the Montagnards (mountain yard people) or the VC. A cache is a place where they hide valuables and weapons.
They had all this stuff stashed inside of holes that were dug out under and around big rocks on the mountain side.
I don’t know what all was found by the other platoons that were ahead of us, but we found clothes, food, French coins,
and jewelry such as bracelets and necklaces made out of beads. There was more stuff to be found but it was late and we
were told to keep moving so we could find a place to set up a perimeter for the night. Once set up, my buddy Councilman
and I decided to go back up the mountain on our own to look for more caches. A few of our buddies knew that we went up there
but nobody else did. We had no idea that the CO was going to call in artillery to blow up the entire area to destroy any remaining
caches. Councilman and I were up on the mountain when we heard the first incoming round. The explosion was deafening as it landed
dangerously close. We took off running back down the mountain. I never was a good runner but I never ran so fast in my life.
Councilman was gone in a flash; he is taller and ran really a lot faster than I could. He was out of sight when the entire barrage of shells
started exploding all around me one after another. I don’t know how I didn’t get hit. While I was running down that steep trail,
I thought I saw a black pajama wearing VC out of the corner of my eye. My eyes might have been playing tricks on me
since they were watering so bad from being so scared. I pulled up to shoot him but he was gone just that quick.
I don’t know if he was just an illusion of my fear or not but I kept running. If he was real, I am sure that he was running like hell
to get away from all of the explosions too! They really blew up that mountain side and never knew that we were up there.
I’ll never go back out into the jungle alone again.

some items found in the cache's

French coins found in the cache's

It rained every day now and we were wet all the time. It was really hot and humid. It must have been 100 degrees.
The bugs and mosquitoes were really bad. We carried bug juice (insect repellant) in the band of our steel pots (helmets).
One day it rained a brief but hard shower and suddenly a swarm of white flying bugs emerged from the wet ground.
They were like white winged flying moths. I have never seen anything like it before. The eggs or larvae must have been
lying dormant in the ground and the rain or heat must have suddenly hatched them all at the same time, millions of them.
There were so many bugs in the air swarming around us that I was afraid I might inhale them and suffocate.
I was literally concerned about being able to breath and was afraid of choking. We had to cover our mouths and
nose with tee-shirts or towels to breathe. It was really freaky, like some kind of science fiction movie.
The white flying insects were all over us, in our hair and inside our shirts, everyone was jumping around trying
to brush them off. The bugs only swarmed for a few minutes when it started to rain again and as fast as they came to life,
they suddenly all died and fell to the ground like snow. It was the oddest thing to witness.

The other problem that we had to watch out for in the wet jungle was leeches. We had to check our legs daily, especially around
the tops of our boots. The leeches would latch on and suck your blood and you never even felt it. Guys were always burning the
leeches off with cigarettes. They told me this was the beginning of the summer monsoon season.

I think that it was on this trip to the highlands that I saw Montagnard people for the first time.
I don’t know the correct pronunciation but we just called them Mountainyards. We were leaving the field and going
back to the firebase when we saw them. They were primitive people that lived in the mountains. They looked like
something right out of an old national geographic magazine. I never had any interaction with them.
We just watched them come down off the mountain. They ignored us as they walked by. They were carrying
bundles of something on their backs. Maybe they were going to trade with the villagers.

Montagnards

We had returned from the jungle and were now back at another firebase
again pulling guard duty and ambushes for the next two weeks.

LZ Buffalo

I really think they brought us back early because the weather was so bad and a lot of guys were getting sick from being out
in the rain all the time, mostly just minor colds or sore throats. Doc (the company medic) would pass out little bottles of coricidin.
I guess all medics are called Doc. As far as I can remember our company had two of them. I have no idea what kind of medical
training they had but they were not real doctors. Doc did carry a rifle but the other company medic didn’t. When we were in
the field he carried a big walking stick

BACK