VC Elephant Ambush No 2

I'm grateful to Australia and her 9RAR and all of the other units of brave Aussies and Kiwis who stood shoulder to shoulder with the US during that turbulent time.

Thank you.

I was assigned to F Troop during the period of the 'VC Elephant Ambush'. I was assigned as driver on F-33 ( as my old recollections fade), I think...

F Troop had been in the field for a long time of tough, stressful work...they were dirty and tired to the bone. Our C.O., Captain McAdams had been KIA on 28 Feb. at the end of an extended firefight in a bunker complex. We had chased the Dong Nai Regiment for weeks leading up to that day. Our guys were on edge and frankly, a little dangerous.

I recall driving down a small trail off a hardball, then through a very small, dark hamlet...seem to remember we arrived at the small FSB in the afternoon or early evening.

We had been in a lot of rubber, and my old track, which was nearly junk anyway, had worn out the drive wheels driving over logs and snags, and we were inside the perimeter of the small FSB with the Kiwi arty and 9RAR. We actually had a light of some type, and were beating on the tracks after dark...which was making everyone pretty anxious, as I remember...I'm sure we were unappreciated by the original occupants of the FSB. I'm also very sure that we didn't really care what anybody thought about us...being Cav, and all that....

My crew gave up beating on the ACAV track, and the place quieted down.....

At some point in the early morning, a tiger was working the perimeter..I remember hearing him cough along one edge of the wire, then later hearing him at another point. I distinctly remember this tiger that night, and remarked to others about it .I had never heard one that close in before.

All at once a huge firefight broke out over toward a small valley or stream bed, where one of our platoons was set up for a blocking ambush.

I learned later that they had opened up on elephants.

Our First Sergeant kept a body count of little stenciled dinks with pointy hats, about 3-4 inches wide, in orange or red, on the Command track.

Within a few hours, a yellow stencil-painted elephant appeared neatly alongside the rows of little dead sluggos on the F Troop Command Track.

I always have marvelled at the prescience of the Aussies to have that little stencil and yellow paint ready....
It's as if they knew those damn VC elephants would hit us that night......