LZ Ross.  This was probably taken just before I went on R&R in mid September.  The row of tents are where Golf Co. people would have stayed when at Ross.  Each tent had its own sandbag bunker in front of it.  In front of the first bunker is a Lister bag.  Water in the bag slowly soaking through and evaporating cooled the water quite a bit.  Lying beside the first bunker are a bunch of LAAWS.  These are small rockets with a range of 5-600 meters or so, they packed a suprising amount of punch.  Just over the small hill was a battery of 175's.   Behind the tents a little ways was the helicopter landing pad. The large hill in the distance is 953 where Lt. John Picket was killed on October 13, 1969. I have no idea who the people in the picture are.

From Travis Skaggs

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From Travis Skaggs

Hiep Duc Valley.  The red line is Golf's approximate route in approaching the valley.  Lord, it was hot.  We were absolutely melting.  It was so hot that they let us leave our flackjackets at Ross hoping to cut down on heat casualities, we still had three or four.  This was the only time they ever did this while I was there.  Not only was it hot but the brush was incredibly thick, it was about as hard going as I ever saw.

I was extremely glad to get my flackjacket back.  The feeling of protection it offered might exceed the actual protection, but I sure welcomed that feeling.

Where the red line stops is about where we were when 2nd platoon started getting some sniper fire from about where the 1 is.  We had been sitting there for an hour or so before they shot at us.  There was a well there.  I remember dipping in the well and just reveling in that cool water.  Lord, it was hot.

The 1 is where all the action took place on August 23rd & 24th.  The 2 marks the area where Richard Shelton was killed.  I fired about all of my ammo up (600 rounds) in an hour.  Tom Ferguson brought me some more when I told him I was getting low, but it wasn't in magazines.  I wanted to stay down while filling my magazines so I rolled over on my backt.  I rolled over onto my rifle and on an extremely hot barrel.  I thought for sure I had been shot.  It raised a blister completely across my back.  For the next couple of days carrying a pack was a real trial.

The 3 marks the area where we were mortared on the evening of the 26th.  I'm thinking we took about 15 casualities in some 20 minutes

LZ West was an artillary base, they supported us heavly while we were in the valley.  On the night of the 24th we were set up in the middle of the valley.  Some gook with a 50 caliber started shooting from near the top of 441 toward LZ West and some guy on West started shooting back with his 50 caliber.  We could watch the tracers arcing across the valley both ways.  It must have been two miles or more.

Hill 185 is marked on the map.  There is a picture of Hiep Duc Valley taken from this hill somewhere on this site.

The large red X marks my best guess as to where we were ambushed on August 29th, and it is largely a guess.  There were 12 of us left in the platoon that night.  The hill marked "OP" is where OP Lion was.

It was about 12 miles or so to LZ Baldy.  Somewhere along this road, on September 16, 1969 the famous sniper, Carlos Hathcock, was badly burned trying to get other Marines out of a burning APC.  A few days before that Sgt. Jake Spohn made the trip from Baldy to Ross.  There was a whole convey.  A truck carrying fuel was hit by a RPG.  I remember him telling me how the two men in the cab got out covered in burning gas

Hill 441 is named Nui Chom.  Nui is Vietnamese for mountain.  Song (pronounced Som, with a long o) is Vietnamese for river, just in case this ever comes up in casual conversation.

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