When Jake Parsons saw this picture he sent me the story below.
When Mayo was a FNG, on his very first night patol with my squad, he was hit in the face with shrapnel from a "watermelon". Let me explain. We were out in Elephant Valley on a platoon size three day patrol. I was the Plt. Sgt/Sq. leader and left the platoon up on a hill nearby as we pulled a night time ambush at a fork in the river. As we approached our designated ambush site that was on an overlay from our battalion S-3 shop, we noticed a freshly dug rocket site about 100 yards back from the river. Well, we got to the river and the current was so strong that the noise was over whelming. I knew we would be an easy mark as we couldn't hear the enemy if they were calling our names :).
I also knew there was something wrong with the site picked by S-3. So I moved us to the New Rocket site and we all got down and waited for them to come to us. It was a good "L" shaped site with the M-60 gun set up at the corner for total coverage. Mayo was the A-gunner so we gave him the first watch because we felt he would be ok for the first couple of hours.
About 30 minutes into the ambush I heard Whiskey Battery open up with what we called "Watermelon" H&I fire. It was 3 155mm and 6 105mm rounds all coming in on one location. The location this evening was our ambush site at the fork in the river. I new the moment they fired, it was coming our way. I yelled, "Get down" and we were ripping our buttons off to get closer to the ground. Mayo just sat behing his gun and watched like a kid in a candy shop. How only one of us got hit that night is a real miracle. I was yelling, "Cease fire, cease fire." When the said, "Where?" I said, "Quang Nam provence." That meant all of 1st MarDiv's area. Old "Water Bo" Saunders heard me and got on the line from his FO possition and ordered them to cease fire all Quang Nam province. As Mayo was hit he got up in a panic and started to run by me. I tackled him and called Doc Stubbs over. At first I thought he was hit in the canteen because the sound of water hitting the ground was so loud. I couldn't beleive a man could bleed that much and that fast. We put him under a poncho and Doc had the bleeding slowed down pretty fast.
I called for a medavac and was ordered to fly in with him. I was met at battalion by the Staff Duty Officer and taken to the battalion CP for an ass chewing. I yelled so loud in the CO's face he almost shit. Then I went to the plotting board and begin to inspect the overlay. It seems the S-3 officer had done two overlays, one for me and one for the Arty officer and they were exactly the same.
So that's how Mayo got medavaced out of country. I didn't think he would be coming back. Just goes to show how much I know about wounds. |
