Barbecued
C's
1966

Having come in on an air assault on a "cold" LZ, our company sat around waiting on our usual supplies after establishing a safe perimeter. It was a simple task of getting on the radio with the supply copters coming in and verifying "smoke". Since this wasn't considered such a complicated or dangerous task, we managed to find an FNG (frickin' new guy) to pop the appropriate colored smoke that was requested.

      I don't even remember what color smoke was to be popped, but what was thrown by our FNG was a WP (white phosphorous) grenade that lit up the LZ to the max! We were stunned on the ground and could see the Hueys immediately turning and gaining altitude.

      Apparently, this was not the first time that these experienced pilots had seen the wrong colored smoke popped and a calm and gentle voice came over the radio saying, "Aborted supply run, reconfirm color smoke or we can dump your C's on the barbecue fire."

      We finally straightened out the mess but after a few days on C-Rats, we wondered if maybe it would had been better if those C-Rations had been dumped on the WP fire.

APVNV Pat (Beanie) Camunes
D/4/31 196th Lt Inf Bde
Tay Ninh 12/66-04/67; Tam Ky 04/67-12/67