After the day before yesterday, the rest of the trip should be much less emotional.
    Our guide was a 58 year old gentle man - a gentleman, too - who had served as a guerilla on the side of the former South Vietnam, defending his village. He had seen and experienced much that no man should have to. (In the retreat before the rapidly advancing NVA, he had pulled hot rocket fragments from his brother’s back and his little nephew, shot in the head, died in his arms.) After all that and more, I do not think that I have never met a more thoughtful, peaceful man. I learned more than the details of what we were seeing from him.
    Had we planned a little further in advance, we could have had dinner with Buffalo. Once on the opposing side from our guide, Buffalo was the sole survivor of his 30 man Viet Cong platoon, apparently wiped out in an airstrike. Nick-named for the traditional beast of burden here, he carried his unit’s machine gun.
    Now, Mr. Huynh said, he is a “little crazy,” wandering the mountains called Charlie Hill and Rocket Ridge, taking pictures and writing poetry. Standing on the former runway at Dak To, looking out at those battle scenes, our guide read one of Buffalo’s poems. I attempted to read something that means a lot to me, but was unable to do so. Rick read it from the scrap of paper I keep in my wallet. If I ever return here, it will be to spend some time with Buffalo.

    Dak Seang translates as “River of Blood.”
    In early April of 1970, the Battle of Dak Seang began. What first appeared to be a serious, but smaller scale attack on the Special Forces camp there, soon proved to be a major NVA attempt to completely overrun a US garrison and the several hundred man indigenous force they operated with. Over one hundred NVA troops were killed in the first human wave attack.  More hundreds died in the next few days.
    I was on the alert crew that day at Vung Tau, well south in the Mekong Delta. If memory serves, I was on my way to the airplane when the higher-ups made the decision to only support Dak Seang with air drops using crews and airplanes from the Caribou squadrons at the northern base of Phu Cat. In the ensuing battle, twenty five or so of the Phu Cat airplanes were shot up. Three Caribous and crews were lost in the first four days. (Google: Battle of Dak Seang, Caribou, etc.)
    Visiting the location of the camp was spooky. The site has been planted in rubber trees. It is quiet, shady and cool. We had an eerie feeling in the now peaceful few acres where hundreds died in that brief, fierce battle. The Trieng tribe Montagnards have moved back to the spot. The short runway that served the camp is now the main street of their village. During the day, only the pieces of personal military equipment, unexploded mortar and other shells - some quite dangerous - and remnants of bunkers and foxholes give evidence of what happened there. The Trieng continue to report large numbers of ghosts, the wandering souls of those who died in the fight, drifting through the trees. A haunting feeling stayed with us and neither Rick nor I slept well that night.