The South China Sea was so calm in the morning. The water was warm, clear, and a green blue color. It may have been cool in the morning, but you knew it's going to get hot later. We were there on the beach in Quang Nigh Providence, guarding a couple of tanks that were being repaired. It was a nice duty, just run patrols during the day, the usual watch at night, and time for swimming somewhere in between those duties. All that was needed was a couple of cold beers, surfboards, girls, but ?

This day started the same as almost every other day. Get up, chow down, and find out who gets to go on patrol. Same thing, different day. As luck would have it, I got to go out on patrol that day. It seems like I got to go almost everyday. It was an easy patrol, just follow the trail some tanks had made the day before through the sugar cane fields and then come back, only two or three clicks and home.

I don't remember what time we left the compound, but it was getting hot already. The trail was soft dirt where the tanks tracks churned it into a fine dust. Each step raised a cloud of dust so that the last guy, tail-end charley, could hardly see. We were just a squad, about nine or ten marines out for a walk. On a day like that, time drags on while you're walking with all that gear on.

We had been walking for about an hour or so and had just passed hooch with an old woman sitting out front chewing on her beetle nut and watching us pass. A couple of guys waved at her, but she just ignored us. We just kept moving, not really thinking about her, only about finishing and getting back for a swim.

We came to a big opening in the cane fields, spread out more and started to cross the opening keeping a lookout for any VC. The guy that was on point had just won a Bronze Star a few weeks before and was a little cocky and thought he was John Wayne or something. At the spot where the trail started to go back into the cane field, there was one strand of wire, almost like a fence. The only problem was that there wasn't supposed to be a wire across that trail. A tank had just made the path the day before. We all yelled at him, but it was too late.

It's hard to believe, but you can see an explosion forming. Time seems to slow down, and everything moves and sounds in slow motion. You can see the ground erupt. The air seems to turn into a brick wall when it hits you. The sound is unbelievable.

Most of us hit the ground when we saw him start to push the wire down. After the explosion, and everything stopped falling from the sky, we got up and looked around. Everyone formed a perimeter and a couple of guys went to help the injured men. The first four men in the squad were down, and the point man was nowhere to be found, or everywhere to found. The concussion from the explosion knocked the squad leader, radioman and another man unconscious. Looking at the hole where the point man had been, all I could do was shake my head and wonder what to do next. We didn't have a corpsman with us so we had to take care of the wounded men. Then I heard a yell from behind me and turned to see what was wrong. One of the new men had gone back to the old woman and hit her, now I knew we were in trouble. I put him under guard and went back to the wounded and helped move them to a shady spot.

I still wasn't sure what to do, so I began checking the radio to see if it still worked, and was rewarded with a loud clear nothing. Finally I got the thing to work, but couldn't call a medivac because I didn't know where the hell we were. The only people that knew were the squad leader and the Captain back at the Command Post.

I finally got through to the Captain and tried to tell him where I thought we were. I told him how long we had been walking and what the area looked like. The Captain said he had an idea where were and could send a medivac chopper. He gave me the channel and call sign of the chopper's radio and told us to pop a green flare as soon as we heard the chopper.

I went back to check on the wounded and they seemed to be all right, no serious wounds, but they couldn't hear a thing. In fact, most of us couldn't hear very well. It turns out they had concussions, but they weren't serious. The other men kept a lookout for any trouble and I had a man start to pick up the parts we could find of the point man. He was all over the place.

The Captain came out with the choppers and brought another squad. I tried to explain what happened but it wasn't easy. More men were trying to find the rest of our point man, and that new man was in trouble. I really couldn't blame him, that old women knew that booby trap was on the trail and she could have warned us. It was a 250lb bomb that was set to take out a tank.

After we cleaned up the mess, we walked back. Most of the men were still shook up. A few of the new men that came out with the Captain almost got sick. It was the first time they had seen a dead body, or should I say, parts of a body.

God, it was a long walk back.