Overrun, The Battle for Firebase 14.

Twinkling Lights!

It looked like lights were twinkling in the distant Truong Son Mountains that cut across the country of South Vietnam. Within seconds, the entire jungle and tall grass several hundred meters across the river erupted in a sea of flames. The twinkling lights must have been flashes of large-caliber muzzle flashes from unfriendly fire coming from those distant mountains.

The heat and shock waves mowed down the trees and stripped the foliage from the trees surrounding our medical area. Many of our troops were injured from the torrent of shrapnel and splinters from the trees. The marine brass was on the radio immediately.

Where is our support?

The chances of our getting out of this crazy dung hole of a firebase were getting more remote by the minute. The injured were packed into our makeshift hospital. The corpsmen were busy administering pain meds and starting IV lines, digging out shrapnel, and stitching patients back together. Even with a myriad of injuries, most of these men wanted to get back to their squads for support and action.

Broken Arrow…. Broken Arrow!

The major was screaming into the radio. The gomers had tunnels under the Firebase. Jose, our “tunnel rat” had gone into the tunnels with a flashlight and a 45-caliber hand-gun to follow the tunnel. He discovered the opening a couple hundred meters outside the firebase. We learned to expect a B-52 air-drop. The ordinance would be surrounding our firebase at 0930 hours. We were warned to take cover and dig deep. We didn’t know it, but all hell was about to break loose.