Frontal Assault
By Sarge on Aug 24, 2013 | In Humor
It was the middle of April and Charlie Co, along with the battalion, was patrolling the Michelin Rubber Plantation every day. This included some combat assaults along with some operations that lasted for a week while we spent our time in NL (night laager) sites. This always invited a evening welcome by the VC who liked to send some mortars our way just to see if we were paying attention. That wasn't hard to do when the ground was so hard we couldn't dig in very well. At the sound of "incoming" we would find any low spot we could for cover.
During one of these operations, we had taken some gunfire from a hedgerow to our front. 1Lt Jay Hickey, our C.O at the time, ordered the company to get online and we were going to assault the hedgerow. As the command was given we all jumped up and started to march forward.
PFC Sydney Fowler, who arrived at the same time as many of us in March, was a rifleman from Georgia. For what ever reason he jumped out in from of everyone and started to sprint across the formation about the same time as we started to fire into the woodline. PFC Barry Price, was a M-60 gunnner who hailed from, Loretto, KY. A tall figure of a man, soft spoken with a slight southern accent and strong but gangly with jet black hair. Just as he started to light up his ’60, Fowler jumped into his line of fire. One round from the machine gun hit the back of Fowler’s steel pot and he tumbled to the ground.
Holy Shit! Price though he had killed the guy and quickly told his ammo bearer not to say anything. Not say anything? Hell, Price just shot the guy in front of the whole company. Well, Fowler was only grazed by the bullet. Once it hit the helmet, the bullet deflected downward grazing Sydney in the process. They medevac’d him back to Dau Tieng to get patched up. While he was there healing up, he got the notion that he should have all his teeth pulled since they weren't in good shape anyway. Apparently some army regulation says “no teeth, no frontline duty”. After that, Sydney was reassigned to resupply support and served the rest of his tour in that capacity. It seemed months before I saw him again when he showed up with a resupply convoy out in the field riding in a jeep.
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