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James Barkley's Complete Patrol Story We had stopped for lunch. A chopper pilot radioed down and asked if we were moving around. Lt Crisp responded with "No." The pilot came back with, "I see 50-60 men moving around with rifles." I thought that we needed to put our butts in the wind. Lt Crisp said to us, "We are moving out in 30 seconds." Some ding dong said, "What about my lunch? Crisp's reaction was, "Screw your lunch." We basically ran for about 20 minutes - a walk so fast that if we were going any faster, it would have been a flat out run. Later in the day, the dog handler said, "Stop! There are VC up ahead, the dog is reacting." We stopped & fired M79 rounds at the woods ahead of us. A few of us walked ahead & saw the grass bent over where they had been kneeling down and waiting for us. Lt Crisp called in about the events & asked to change the route - that request was denied. I said, "We are out here alone." Lt Crisp and the dog handler decided to alter the route on their own. We kept several hundred yards from the route. Evidently the route we were following was predetermined and the VC knew that route. It looked to me as the VC had split the force and 7-8 of them were going to ambush us. I was the assistant machine gunner. I would have been number three man hit (radio man, machine gunner, assistant machine gunner). I asked LT Crisp if we could have artillery rounds fired on out rear & flanks to cover our retreat. He fold me that we "were out of range." It was obvious to me that we were over extended & on our own. After we got back to Camp Enari, I decided to hang with Crisp for rest of my tour- that was one 2LT who was very smart & decided that our lives were more important than following rules from someone totally isolated from events in the field. I always wondered what happened to LT Crisp. Do you remember his first name?
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