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Light hearted moment if you will. Shortly before the end of my first tour I flew front seat (gunner) in Snakes for about 2 weeks. Different perspective for sure. We were on a mission in support of our infantry platoon that was doing a recon in force in what I recall was known as Elephant Valley, to the west of Quang Tri. The valley was west of the first high ridge that separated the coastal lowlands from the high mountains.

In the midst of all this fun we were in contact with a multi unit team of long range patrol (LRPs) and they had a radio relay on top of one of the peaks nearby. Common construct intended to maintain radio contact with all units. Another ace up the sleeve were a series of sensors previously put in place by the Air Force. They were typically delivered is a style one would expect such as acoustic sensors on or near trails, seismic sensors adjacent to roads etc. They were delivered much in the same way as bombs and initial appearance was quite similar, but after deployment they would typically embed the nose section and deploy an antenna that looked a bit like a bush w/o leaves. Olive drab in color they were not that easy to spot. And we had 10 digit coordinates on their location, meaning we could place them within about 10 meters with use of a tactical map. On this occasion the radio relay team was wired into several of the acoustic sensors and they had a Vietnamese on the team who could translate dink-speak.

So, were were keeping an eye on things when we got a call that the dinks near sensor X were discussing the set up of an ambush on our troops, and the sensor ID was passed along. Took a few moments for me to locate it on the map, then the terrain and finally to brief the back seat boss where it was. Mission control told us to whack their butts and as we rolled in the relay team called to advise the ambush had been canceled because the dinks only had SKS guns, not AKs. Seconds after that call this was my view from the front seat.



The next call from the relay team...laughing hysterically....we were on target. In the background we could faintly hear screaming and such. I might have smiled for a day or two afterwards.