The first explosion sent two pieces of shrapnel through the soles of Dan McKinney’s boots and deep into the flesh of both feet. For an instant he felt nothing beyond the sharp jerk caused by the impact of the jagged pieces of metal as they struck. Then the burning began, like a hot iron pressing against the soles of his feet. Then shock. Surprise, even. He had been hit. The pain was unbelievable, but it was only his feet. It could have been worse. It soon was.

    Another explosion and more shrapnel tore through his legs, higher this time -- on the back of his right leg and the front of his left just below the knees. Like the wounds to his feet, the first sensations were of two sharp blows followed, after an instant of no feeling at all, by a fierce burning in the muscles of his calves. The intensity of this new pain took everything else from his mind. The fire in his feet was nearly forgotten. The next blast engulfed him as the first two had with a numbness followed by a searing, burning pain to the right side of his head where a red hot piece of metal ripped through his scalp, leaving a deep furrow just above the right ear as it skidded along his skull. Blood flowed freely from his feet, legs and head soaking into the cloth of his shirt and pants. McKinney jerked his right hand back, instinctively, when the next piece of shrapnel drilled between the bones of his index and middle fingers. The seventh wound, a bullet this time, hit him squarely in the back with a force that felt like he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. The soft tissue of skin and muscle did not alter the bullet’s course nor slow it down. It wasn’t until it struck a rib that the copper-jacketed lead nose mushroomed slightly then, with just the right combination of velocity and mass, continued on, slicing through the spongy tissue of the lung before finally expending it’s energy, and coming to rest. The air from McKinney’s now collapsed lung burst into the chest cavity with a whoosh.

    Medic Ron Slane was perhaps only 10 yards away when McKinney went down. Ten yards is not very far, but in the deadly geometry of the killing zone of an ambush even 10 inches can mean everything. Not one of the 92 men of Charlie Company now sprawled out on the road could say with any certainty that there was any place that was safe. Just being alive and not hit after the firing began was powerful motivation to stay put. I’m alive, unhurt, maybe they can’t see me, was a thought going through the mind of more than one man. It was a good argument for immobility. The few still able to react did not feel inclined to move. But Slane did not have the luxury of staying put, his job was treating the wounded and he could see McKinney’s blood had begun forming reddish black pools that were seeping across the asphalt of the road Charlie Company had been walking down when the ambush was sprung. The bleeding had to be stopped. Slane began to crawl toward him.

    Twenty yards off to the side of the road 1LT Nguyen Ngoc Nham watched the Americans dying in front of him. He looked on without emotion as the men of his company executed the ambush plan to perfection. It was almost more than he had hoped for. They had caught a large American force out in the open and were efficiently destroying it.

    Nham took pride in the fire discipline his young soldiers showed and the accuracy with which they cut down the enemy. The falling bodies did not look like people at all. The green clumps that were now scattered along the black asphalt reminded him of banana trees that had been cut down to be collected for burning. They were people of course, but he noted that only in an abstract way. Most important for the 34-year-old officer was that his men had the upper hand and the massive volume of fire that they were putting into the killing zone meant his enemy could not threaten his troops. The Americans were in disarray, caught so completely by surprise that they could not mount an effective defense against the withering fire his men were putting out. The 30 men of his company, one of six firing on the Americans, needed no instructions from him, or help. The former marksmanship instructor did not even feel the need to take his K-52 pistol out of its holster. Lieutenant Nham was commander of 1 Company 2nd Go Mon Battalion of the newly formed independent regiment named Quyet Thang. Quyet Thang, “determined to win,” was scoring the biggest success it would achieve during the years they fought in the war. Nham felt proud.

    The smooth efficiency of 1 Company was in stark contrast to the reaction from the Americans caught in the ambush. Dan McKinney’s platoon leader, 2LT Francis O’Laughlin, was frantic. All his training, his every instinct said he should get his men up and moving. One minute his platoon was scurrying down the road, trying to make up for a late start and get into position to begin a sweep to find the enemy, the next the enemy had found them and in the worst possible way, out in the open with no cover. His platoon was caught in the killing zone of an ambush. In seconds there were men down everywhere. Some dove to the asphalt others simply dropped awkwardly, dead before they hit the ground. Those still able were returning fire, shooting in every direction, wherever they guessed the enemy might be. Bursts of automatic rifle fire mixed with the steady chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk of machine guns in a deafening roar like some great machine chewing up everything in front of it. It seemed there were at least two machine guns and God knew how many automatic rifles tearing into O’Laughlin’s men as they lay exposed on the surface of highway number 248. He had no way of knowing it but there were nearly 200 weapons, mostly automatic rifles and several machine guns delivering accurate fire on the 92 men of Charlie Company. Even if he had known the extent of the firepower massed against his platoon and, in fact all of Charlie Company, it would not have changed his situation. Their only chance for survival, individually and as a group, was to get out of the killing zone.

    Seconds after the initial shock had registered, the 21-yeard-old lieutenant fought against his own instincts for self preservation and got to his feet, ignoring the snap of bullets whizzing past, gesturing wildly, screaming against the roar of the gunfire trying to get his platoon to “get up, move, move, assault right!” To the men there with him it seemed O’Laughlin wanted them to assault a tree line that was nearly 100 yards away across open rice paddies. They were all out in the open with no cover. There were no trees, no ditches along the roadway, no rice paddy dikes near enough to get behind. There was no protection of any kind from the guns the men figured must be in the trees on the other side of the rice paddies. To run forward along the road would be directly into a machine gun. To go back where they had come from would be to run a gauntlet of at least 400 yards while the Viet Cong fired from all sides. Assaulting right, across that huge expanse of empty rice paddies toward a tree line where the enemy just had to be seemed the very worst option. It was impossible. So they did nothing. To O’Laughlin his men had no other options. They had to assault toward the tree line, move past the ambushers and get out of the killing zone. There was no way of knowing if any of his men would make it, but they had to try. If they stayed where they were there was no question but that they all would die.