This is an email from my platoon leader, Joel Mayne, regarding the contact we had 6 March '69 near Polei Kleng. Joel was wounded that day and never returned to the company. Along with 2/B/1-35 were two APC's from 2/A/2-8. Later in the day 2 tanks from 1/A/1-69 broke through and reinforced us. I can not begin to express the feeling I had when the tanks arrived.

Dave Fogg

Dave,

Your memory pretty good. I think one of the APCs threw a tread is why we were stopped on that old road about 1/2 way up the hill. My tail end charlie called me on the radio and

said he saw somebody with a rifle near him. I told him if it was not an M-16 to open fire. He fired and the shit hit the fan immediately.

Glad we had those 50s. One of the drivers was wounded. We were up on the track out side the cupola reloading 50 cal and it was scary. Bullets flying by like bees as were really

exposed. He got hit in the stomach and it covered me. I had to take my glasses off to clean them as I could not see after that. I know I had bullet holes in my clothes and quite a few in

my flak jacket and some in me. My medic, Ponds I think, was so nervous he could not get the needle for the blood expander in my arm after the fight so I did it myself.

One of those guys in the APC was me. I died twice on the dust off and the medic brought me back, out of body experience and the whole works. Pretty weird, I'll tell you, to see your

self dead. Guess I am ready for Oprah or Jerry Springer, ha ha. We ran out of morphine so I gave all my wounded a beer if they wanted it but told the guy with stomach wound not to

swallow. They had to stick a knife in my chest to drain the blood out of my chest cavity or I was going to suffocate on my own blood. Jeez, lifted up my arm, took a big knife and stuck it

in my left side just below the arm pit and carved out a hole. No anesthetic or anything. Boy was that fun. Far as I know, all the wounded made it. I saw some of them at the 71st Evac in

Pleiku and they were ok to there.

Yes, I was pretty proud of everyone myself and felt they did a good job. I remember 360 degrees on the incoming and a couple of B-40s went by me while I was up on the tracks

loading 50s. I remember directing the tank gunner on the outside phone to blow a sniper out of the tree. I think he hit me once and got my M-60 gunner through the arm. I told Doc

Ponds not to move unless I gave the order. I had already lost Doc Thornton and Doc Reiser and my experience was to save the medic to do his work after the fight. I crawled out to

patch up the gunner and told Doc Ponds good medics were a hell of a lot harder to get than lieutenants. He wanted to come get me one of the times I got hit but I would not let him.

Thats when Aveline came out and worked on me and pulled me in.

I had pulled some intel on that area where we were that day and found the NVA had chewed up a couple of our rifle companies on two occasions by letting them attack. I had

decided that morning to use air, arty and the tanks before sending my men forward. I figured Charlie would expect the same old tactics and be in a defensive posture to chew us up on

the assault so my plan was to sit and chew them up. I never assaulted if technology would accomplish close to the same end. Since we never held territory I was not going to have my

men killed for it unless we had no other choice of tactics. I definitely think we did the right tactics that day. We saved most or all of our men and inflicted some pretty good smoke on the

enemy. I never inflated body counts but I am sure we did kill allot more than 14. I had reported 13.

Three incidents stick out in my mind. My platoon Sgt. looking at me and saying surely I was joking about the bayonet charge ( wish I had a picture of his face, it was priceless when I

gave the order}, I polled the men for alternatives when we ran out of ammo but no had any. I just remember all the bayonets seemed to go on with just one big click at the same time,

seemed like slow motion in the movies to me. I told them we would not surrender. I had two magazines and one grenade left when it was all over, my basic load was 48 mags and 6

grenades.

2. Another officer ran over to me and wanted to assault but I refused since still inflicting allot of heat on NVA with fire power and wanted them to come to us since they had shot up

those rifle companies so bad. I felt we may need to assault eventually but that was plan z in my book. I also felt they would get us with a secondary ambush before we got back. I really

wanted them to get whipped and leave, not chase us like a pack of dogs.

3. That sniper I blew out of the tree with the tank 90mm shot my M-16 completely in two just above the trigger finger. I was drawing a bead on an NVA and just squeezed the trigger

and nothing happened; first time the old smoke pole had ever failed me. I lowered it and the butt stock and pistol grip was in one hand and the bolt group, barrel and such in the other

hand. Knocked her completely in two.

Yep, I thought every one there did a real fine piece of work. I was cursing Col. English pretty heavily on the radio, for not keeping his promise on the tanks ( he was a good man and I

am sure was worried about the bigger picture of needing those tanks to save Polei Kleng ), when they finally told me they were going to court martial me if I did not ease up. I told Bn I

accepted the court martial and but to come down and get me so there would be some thing left to court martial.

That’s when I switched pushes and called Johnson in the tanks direct and explained if he did not disregard his orders we were toast. He came. He was above us on some high ground

firing in direct support. Since the NVA had not done too well knocking out the APC, I knew Johnson could kick some ass with those 48s. Don't know if my assessment of situation was

correct but ammo wise, and time of day wise, I felt it was getting a little thin for us. I had lost most of my blood so would not say I was in best state of mind. I know when Johnson

showed up the NVA hauled ass so felt it was a good call. We killed and wounded allot more of them than they of us. I was in the IA Drang valley twice and saw some too eager

commanders really get their asses kicked so I was pretty careful about falling into Charlie’s classic V ambush on the assault. Never ever got caught in a kill zone all the time I was

there. I did some dumb stuff but it never cost my men.

Later Joel