MORE ON THE FREE FIRE ZONE

MORE ON THE FREE FIRE ZONE

About that November 15 post that had me going into a free fire zone and meeting up with a cobra. Yes that story is true. I left out a couple of things that weren’t relevant. There was an American soils engineer with me. He and I worked together on many jobs over the years. We had a few brush cutters we hired from the local village. There was also an American mechanic who came out a couple of times to service our dozer. Other than that, no one visited our project while I was there, even the people who were supposed to be in charge of the project.

But let me clarify. My actions in going into the free fire zone virtually alone were not as reckless as they might seem because:

The VC did not like to operate in areas protected by Korean troops. The Koreans had a reputation for being ungentlemanly.

I paid the local village chief to “advise” me when it would be best to take a day off. We took off two or three days during our weeks in those boonies. (This was advice I couldn’t pass on for fear of compromising the source.)

I informed the local chopper company about where we were and what we were doing. Every outgoing and incoming chopper seemed to make it a point to give us a flyover

.

So I wasn’t as crazy as it might appear.