Scene from my book: Oscar Six hit with B-40 rockets!

There was a sudden blast: flame and shrapnel, wood and sand from the three-foot walls of Oscar Six... Gregg was hit... I was knocked down.  I knew I had wood splinters sticking in my left hand... shrapnel had penetrated the upper right part of my helmet.  I felt something warm flowing down between my right eye and ear, but I had no time to stop firing...

...I could now give Gregg some medical attention.  ...the bandage... was already partially soaked with blood -- my blood... Gregg was moaning in pain..."For the love of God, help me"!  With the small GI flashlight I saw Gregg's right arm was dangling, held in place by his uniform only!  There was blood all over the floor of the tower... rounds continued to pepper...the front wall of the big tower.

Some VC were right under the tower...firing up through the wooden floor...I hastily pushed Gregg into a corner of the tower and fell back, trying to cover my face and head with my arms, fearing a round would soon hit my buttocks, legs or worse...

The VC were obliterated by [machine-gun] Bunker 24...

I grabbed the radio: "Oscar Six, Gregg is down; need the corpsman now!"

...Oscar Six was out of commission. We were weakened and bloody; we were nearly out of ammunition.

After what seemed like another eternity, Chuck and a corpsman reached Oscar Six...

When Chuck and the corpsman pushed open the heavy wooden door to the tower cubicle, they came upon a scene worse than any Friday night, inner-city emergency room.  It was tough just to keep from slipping on the floor, now covered with spent shells and blood from Gregg -- and me.

An urgent call... to the commander of the 173rd Airborne for MASH-type triage units... entered Tuy Hoa air base at the south entrance near Oscar Three... they arrived and relieved me of my task of applying direct pressure to Gregg's nearly severed arm.  I fell back in the corner of the bullet-riddled tower... but soon realized that I too had lost a fair amount of blood...

Gregg was still somewhat conscious and heard Chuck's voice.  As if by instinct, Gregg reached out and grabbed Chuck's hand...

I wanted to see Gregg return home in twenty-seven days... ...the triage personnel and the corpsman struggled to get Gregg down the bullet-holed and tattered ladder... I now felt more at ease knowing that Gregg was now out of this man-made hell.

As I began to think somewhat more clearly, I could hear the distinct sound of a powerful propeller-driven aircraft... circling about two-thousand feet above Oscar Six.  ...It was Puff, the gunship, waiting for orders from commanders on the ground.

Its three, six-thousand-rounds-per-minute Gatling guns... could fill every square foot of ground with a 7.62 full metal jacket, armor-piercing round... bringing death to anything in its path.

End of scene.  Order my book from Amazon: The Battle for Oscar Six.

Gene DeLalla