we were inserted on the hill (i dont remember whether east or west of lao bao) without incident. we started working our way to the edge of the hill and as we started down the hill into the heavey foilage, we stopped, i wondered what was going on, we needed to get out of the area fast before the anti-recon teams showed up. we were surrounded buy dense under growth and i couldnt see what was up, i could here some whispering, the guy in front of me said "go back", i asked what the problem was, he said "MOVE", I did. we moved back to the insertion point on the top of the hill. the sun was unbareable, the top of the hill was exposed to the sun, i crawled under some bushes with the others.

   Our point man was laotion, and he said that he had served on that hill with the "french" ,when he was a kid, it was a base camp and the hill was "mined" all around. the team leader had us spread out on the top of the hill while he worked the radios, no more water but lots of dried rations called lrrp's, i was thirsty.

    i crawled under some bushes to get out of the sun and there i found an opening in the ground. I crawled over to the team leader and told him about it, he said "you found it you check it out", i stripped out of web my gear and pack, with flash light and car-15, i crawled in. the tunnel went down at an angle and ended in a large room, the room was dry and stacked from ceiling to floor with U.S. AMMO mostly 50 cal, i checked for booby traps as best i could and opened a can of 50 cal it was full i took out some of the bullets and put them in my pocket, then i crawled back up the tunnel with one of the ammo cans.

   we stayed the nite for extraction in the morning. early the next morning just before lite the enemy came up the hill, there were 5-6 large explosions, they tripped some of the mines. we started to take small arms fire, and morters, then the sky was filled with jets and a1-e's (a propeller driven aircraft). we had a view of the entire area from the top of our hill, it was like a movie, the team leader said they were taking anti-aircraft fire from the mountains, you could see the planes come down a pass between mountain tops and that is where they were getting hit by anti-aircraft fire, I could look straight out from our hill and the a1e's looked like they were right next to you. they would drop a bomb that would open up and i could see hundreds of little bombs scatter out, the mortering stopped. the sky was filled with planes, it was amazing. they dropped thousands of those little bombs, rockets, and napalm.

   Then the choppers came in for us. i jumped onto the ladder of the second one and snapped in. as we took off we took small arms fire and we fired back. then a jet flew over the top of our hill, dropped a bomb and the top of the hill exploded with tremendous force, lifting dirt high into the air. i was told later that the large explosion was due to secondarys going off, maybe there was more there than ammo.

   when we got back to the launch site, as the chopper was hovering and lowering us to the ground one of the guys ran out and handed me an "ORANGE CRUSH" ice cold, the ladder came down and i found myself sitting on the ground still snapped in drinking orange crush. my favorite drink ever since.