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As the morning convoy left Camp Carroll for Ca Lu, the countryside looked considerably more springlike than the bleak monsoon winter we had been experiencing. Back up the road at Camp Carroll, perched on its bald hill, my surroundings had principally consisted of trenches, bunkers, and sandbags, with little vegetation. Everything inside the perimeter was so congested that hardly anything grew in what was either the mud or dust, depending on the season. Outside of the perimeter, everything had been cut back for several hundred feet to allow clear ¤elds of ¤re, and that barren expanse removed us from the natural foliage and wildlife of the area. Even birds were rarely heard because of the ongoing artillery missions being ¤red. Riding down the road from Camp Carroll that morning, I was pleased to see trees and birds again. Life does go on, and being reminded of that helped a great deal. An uplifting mood buoyed us until we began approaching the Rockpile. Here again, that otherworldly foreboding of overhanging mountains with their mysterious jungles began to loom around us. I again had the ominous sense that unfriendly eyes watched, and the scalp at the back of my head tingled as we crept westward along narrow Route 9. Jungle reached out from the left, and for a way the river ran on our right. The scenery was beautiful, but there remained what seemed to be an almost physical presence, sinister in nature. Finally, rounding a bend in the valley road, we saw, imposing as ever, the fortresslike Rockpile looming upward in the middle of the valley surrounded by moun13 Ca Lu tains. Even though I had been away for months, the incredibly stirring spirit of the place remained as strong as ever. Those of us who had served here with 3/3 last summer were on full mental alert. Too much had happened for us to feel comfortable in these surroundings loaded with such traumatic memories. We paused brie®y at the Rockpile base camp to confer with the infantry battalion because they would be the closest help available if we were ambushed. Soon moving again down Route 9 between overhanging mountains, we passed by the sites of the big ambushes from last summer, with each curve and rock seeming to hold a memory for me. Here was the place where the CP group was ambushed. There was the rock that Corporal Olivari and I had jumped behind when the ambush began. It had been the only thing separating us from the NVA soldiers in the ditch on the other side. I reached down and felt the piece of shrapnel still remaining in my left hand from that encounter and remembered Major Harrington lying in the road. The memory made me wonder how he had fared after being medevaced. So many of the early players were gone now. That was the thing about Vietnam. The cast changed constantly because of KIAs, medevacs, or the unique feature in this war of people constantly rotating after thirteen months in country. We rarely heard the outcome of those who were seriously wounded and corresponded infrequently with those who had returned to the States. The out¤t that a Marine ¤nished with in ’Nam bore little resemblance, personnelwise, to the unit he began with. This was even more so with ¤eld artillery because those men often began their tours attached to the infantry and then rotated to the battery several months later. So for me this return to a familiar place, while holding many memories, had a whole new set of faces to go with it. Not only were those things different but also there was a sense of change in the air. The past was real, but the coming activities promised a new measure of assertiveness, something that had not been apparent before. Khe Sanh needed relief, and the powers that be seemed intent on doing something positive. I, of course, had no idea how this venture would unfold, but clearly we were taking a new, more aggressive posture on the DMZ. My experience had been that we mostly waited for the NVA to come to us, the notable exception having been the three186 IMPACT ZONE battalion sweep around Con Thien back in the fall. Now plans were afoot to reopen Route 9 all the way to Laos. General Davis continued to make it clear that Marines were going to become much more mobile than they had been and that the 105mm batteries would...

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