[ Home | Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Dinkidow
Date: 12 Feb 2004
Time: 10:27 PM
Seems the board needs another story so......... It was the middle of 69, few weeks into June if I recall. We'd been choppered north this time towards Hue. Our usual stomping grounds were the Antenna Valley near Chu Lai. We'd been humping all day as usual, when we finally settled in to a NDP. Before I even got a chance to heat some spagetti c- rats our squad was given ambush duty, so I wolfed down my unheated spaghetti and meat balls and and headed out with the guys. Our Sergeant was a two tour man and a very sharp NCO, but he wasn't especially gung ho.I think he'd been hit his first tour and wasn't in the mood to get hit again. Usually we would "sandbag" our ambushes when he was in charge."Sandbag" is a term you grunts might recall, to others well....it doesn't really matter. On that night we were supposed to set our ambush down by the river we crossed on the way in to the NDP.We had noticed a well worn trail on the way in, big enough to have been a cattle trail, and it sure wasn't cattle making that trail. Instead we set up about a klick up from the river in the narrow edge of a valley about 1/2 way between the river and the NDP. It was a full moon that night and we had a good view of the small valley not that it seemed to matter.Night was settling into morning and it was about 2:00am when my buddy Bill tapped me on the side and whispered "take a look at this sh**". Down in the valley heading straight for the draw where we were, I saw about fifty NVA. There were even more coming into view from thier rear.Great! No they couldn't be heading a little to the left of us or a little to the right of us, they had to come right at us. Sarge radioed the Lt. and I heard the Lt. say at one point "I have a gunship on the way". This was great except these NVA were only about 2 mins. from us and the gunship was about 5 mins. away. Besides I didn't relish the thought of a gattling gun getting me any more than an AK-47.Geeze they just kept coming. There wasn't really a way out. The trail we came in on we boobytrapped with a claymore(which we'd never see in the dark)or we could make our way up the hill by breaking brush like a heard of elephants. Both were losing propositions. They're were at about 50 yards and when I figured my life was about to take a huge turn for the worse....guess what happened? You guessed it, a UFO appeared. Hovering over the valley it scared the hell out of the dinks, cause they started running. I know it scared me. Lucky for us the dinks ran back towards the river rather than on top of us. Then the UFO gave a short burst of an orange colored beam , and all the dinks froze like ice. They didn't move after that , like ststues they were frozen still. Then the UFO just vanished . It didn't seem to fly away, it seemed to narrow itself into a sliver of light, then vanish.The gunship finally arrived and dropped a boxflare but they didn't open fire.Our Sarge was on the PRC with the Lt. and the Lt. told us to stay in place and not move. Finally the gunship ,(AC-47 I think), flew away and we sat there watching a bunch of frozen orange colored dinks. When morning finally arrived, three black chinooks came and landed in the valley. I had never seen soldiers like these guys . They didn't wear jungle fatigues. In very short order these guys (about 8 per chinook) loaded the frozen dinks up.They didn't even make a fuss, it was like they did this every day. After a short time they flew away. Well we went back to the NDP and linked up with the platoon to move out. I remember telling a guy who stayed at the NDP that night the story. He just looked at me and said, "Yeah sure". This was not the last time I would encounter a UFO. Things became more interesting beginning with the second encounter.