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After humpin' the boonies for miles and miles all over Northern I Corp, our company pulled into a base camp along Highway One, named LZ Dragon. This was a little north of LZ Bronco, our headquarters at DUC Pho, along the South China Sea. It was nice to be at a base camp for a change instead of out in the boonies where there was practically no civilization. It was comforting to be in a fenced in perimeter where there were lots of men, cannons, machine guns, and sand bag bunkers to sleep in. Digging a different foxhole every night to sleep by out in the wilderness gets to be a real drag after so many days, weeks, and months. It was really hot during this month of August, 1968. Since our arrival to Vietnam in December, we'd lost a lot of men through numerous bloody and exhausting combat missions. I'd worn out two sets of boots and was on my third pair. I'd had so many close calls with bullets and bombs from both sides, that I didn't know how, or why I was still alive. I was so conditioned from getting shot at that when Charlie started shooting at us, I was always the first one to hit the ground. The guys around me would say, "Truman, are you hit?" I guess I was trying to prevent the inevitable, that simply by the process of elimination, my turn to die, or get hit was gonna be next. Our job at LZ Dragon was to help secure the base and to go out on patrols not far from the LZ.

From LZ Dragon you could see the edge of the ocean, a little less than a mile away. Even though I knew we could be attacked at any time by Charlie, it seemed great to be able to sleep in a secured perimeter where we had all kinds of protection. The bunkers unfortunately, were a home for rats, but that's not a big deal. They'd entertain us, walking in and out of the bunker while we pulled guard duty at night. However, they liked to walk a little too much around my feet down inside while I tried to sleep. It really bothered me and I wanted so much to shoot them down around my feet with my 45, but it probably would have blown my ear drums out. Our beds in these bunkers consisted of two or three boards which was wonderful compared to sleeping on the ground. There was enough room inside to make them two layers high. A lot of men died during the monsoon seasons in bunkers when the heavy rain soaked sand bags collapsed on them while they slept.

This LZ had at least one APC with a 155 Howitzer mounted on the back of it. The cannon barrel itself could be lengthened, or telescoped far above the APC, enabling it to reach a target a very long ways away. From what I can remember, it went off about once every hour. When it did, you could feel the ground shake just about anywhere inside the perimeter. The sound of the blast at close distance was devastating. As infantrymen, these guns commanded our respect... One afternoon at LZ dragon while standing on top of my bunker, I saw a flash, clear down at the beach which was about a mile away. I was drinking a lukewarm can of beer and listening to a song on my transistor radio that I thought was really great at the time. It was a new song called "Spooky". Anyway, the next thing I knew, I had an RPG, ( recoiless penetrating gun,) buzzing closely over my head. It exploded a couple of feet behind my bunker. Talk about a close call...!! You can't get much closer than that.

I must have provided a pretty nice target for Charlie, standing on top of my bunker. It was as though it was intended for me, but once again, it apparently wasn't my time to go. Most of the guys around me dove down into their bunkers. For some reason, even though this thing just missed my head, I didn't sense the need to panic. Instead, I turned my transistor radio off, set my can of beer down and got down into the bunker. After all, what was there to worry about, with all this fire power at the LZ? Shortly thereafter, the all clear signal was sounded. This was after several men commenced firing out into the distance, not knowing what they were shooting at. I think I was the only one who saw the flash, and while standing there trying to figure out what it was, it went over my head. I think it was the first time I'd been shot at with an RPG....

We went out on a lot of ambush patrols from LZ Dragon. Our squads took turns each night. That means that we would have to go out about every third or fourth night. Sometimes we'd have some extra men with us to strengthen our squad, making it to be about fifteen or sixteen men. None of us looked forward to going out on these patrols but, there wasn't any way we could refuse to go unless we had some kind of severe medical problem or some other serious reason.