My first firefight took place along that river a week or so earlier. David Call (he lives in Wheatland, Wyoming) and Tom Yolkiewicz were both shot in the back less than an arms length from me. Tom died of his wounds in a minute or two, he just laid there and drowned in his own blood. While going to the Univ. of Wyoming I got in touch with David. He ended up losing a big part of one lung. He told me that the bullet missed his spine and heart by less than an inch. But he seemed to be doing well. I think I will carry to my grave the sound of Yolkiewicz dying. Two CH-47's were shot down trying to medi-vac the wounded. The platoon radioman was killed trying to land the second chopper, his name was Clyde Saxon. He was standing up in the open, I don't know what he was doing, perhaps he was getting ready to load the wounded. We were lying around a bomb crater. Where we were had been swept clean by the blast, all around us were trees and very heavy brush and the pilot turned on his landing light to see where he was sitting down. Saxon was caught in the light and shot. I think the date was March 18, 1969. Our platoon commander was relieved of his command for the whole thing.
If you leave Hill 22 and follow the fishhook shaped road back to the main road and turn left and go a mile or two you come to a Catholic village, if you look you'll see the map symbol for a church. This was one of the few, perhaps the only, village I saw over there that wasn't a shit hole. It was clean and I noted in my diary that it had no beggers. The red dot at the junction of the main road and the Hill 22 road marks the site of the August 12th road sweep fight. On February 23, 1969 Golf's road sweep was ambushed at about this same area. There were 6 killed and several wounded.
Ray Rankin made his first patrol on the ridge running along the Hill 22 road. They walked along for awhile and stopped to wait for dark by some holes the gooks had probably dug (they were big diggers, you could find fighting holes of all shapes and descriptions just about every where). Just about dark a black guy named Berry(?) came up to him and said if he wanted a last smoke he should jump in one of the holes and light up, so he did. Then he had another. When he looked out everybody was gone, they had just walked off and left him. It was a pretty rough night for him. He had only been in country for a few days and hardly knew where he was. In the morning he walked back to Hill 22.
If you can find Hotel Battery, just below battalion headquarters, you will see a line marked like this x--x--x--. On the evening of August 13th Golf and another company took off, generally following that line. As 1st Platoon had lost both of their corpsmen the day before we had gotten a brand new one named Litzinger (he was from Columbus, OH, I believe he got home ok). Just before leaving he asked me how much distance he should leave between him and the guy in front of him (the Marine in front of him was a radioman named Riley). I told him, "Lots, if we are out in the open, but close it up when we get in bush." And we took off. Out of two whole companies we were tail end Charlie. There was Riley, Doc Litzinger, myself, Southard, Pedro, and Peleiholani (Peleiholani was another one of those unlucky Hawaiians, he was killed by a mortor on the evening of August 26). It was pretty clear around the base and just like I told him the Doc let Riley get way ahead, too far ahead it turned out. As we approached the heavier brush I told Doc to try and close it up. It got dark there pretty quickly, so not more than 15-20 minutes after getting in the brush it was pitch black. Pretty soon Doc stops, so we stop. He sits down, so we sit down. Nothing unusual about this, stop and go was common at night. A little time goes by and I ask him if he can still see Riley. He looks up the trail a bit and says yes. After a little while one of the others comes up and says if we are going to be here a while let's set up watches and get some sleep. Sounded good to me so I sent him on up the line to ask Sgt. Ferguson how long we were going to be here. He came back pretty quickly and said, "There's nobody up there." Doc Litzinger had been watching a bush. So we spent a worrisome night, but at least we had each other for company. We walked back in the next morning. You can bet the platoon commander and company commander were plenty proud of me that morning, the company had spent half the night looking for us. But they did calm down when I told my story and we all kissed and made up.