PLATOON AMBUSHED 3 KM W-NW OF GIO LINH VILLAGE 19680109
UTM grid reference is YD196742

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Tommy D. Hill

Information Related to your TWS Remembrance Profile #41758

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The Death of Louis Timothy Hazzard, Mike Company at Gio Linh.
Posted for: LOUIS TIMOTHY HAZZARD:

From the book entitled, "No Shining Armor The Marines At War In Vietnam, An Oral History," by Otto J. Lehrack. Verbatim from the book in the words of PFC John Mick,Chapter 27, page 209-210.

In my first combat I lost three of my best buddies. There was four of us sleeping in a bunker there at Gio Linh. This happened January 9th, 1968. We went out on a search-and-destroy operation. Recon spotted some movement or something out there and they wanted Mike Company to go out and see if anything was out there.

My squad, the 3d Squad, went out first. Woppo, this guy named Grez, and I we were all walking more or less up in front and all of a sudden Woppo told us to get down. He wants to look over the map, so he sat down and started looking over the map. Grez
and I walked a little bit further up and we were at this little hedgerow and I saw three guys sitting in a bomb crater and they had a machine gun. This was the first time I've ever seen an assault machine gun. I knew it wasn't ours, but I didn't know if they were South Vietnamese. I'd never seen them before, this type of uniform.

The next thing I know I saw the haircuts. I'd seen a few dead gooks and I seen how they had their hair all straight up like these guys. I knew the South Vietnamese soldiers didn't have theirs like that. About that time I saw all three of the guys bend down real low and they grabbed that machine gun and jumped up. I just about opened up and Woppo pulled my rifle down. He said, "Don't open up on them. Wait until the rest of them gets here." Well, he got the radio operator, called him over to tell the other squads what we have up here, Lieutenant Miller came up with us and the next thing I know, he said, "What'd you see?" And I explained to him and he said, "Where? Don't just point to the hole, just go over there."

We got in there and we could see they had hot rice and everything still sitting there waiting. And there was a trail, you could see all kinds of tracks on it. He said, "Let's follow the trail." We all lined up and we started walking on a line, and the next thing I know I heard Bruce Thomas saying, "Hey, I hear voices and they don't sound like ours." Right in front of us laying in the grass was about five NVA soldiers laying down. They opened up and just hit Bruce Thomas when he was talking. They must have thought he was the officer in charge. They killed him right there on the spot. We jumped up, ran to the right, crossed this little trail, and set in. About this time there was another little trail to our right and we were taking the machine-gun fire from there.

Lieutenant Miller told Tim Hazzard to jump across that trail. He jumped up and caught a round in his right armpit and he fell down. They drug him into a hole-Doc Winslow, Lieutenant Miller, and Al Winters. A chicom was thrown into the hole with them and even though Tim knew...he rolled over on the grenade.

So Tim Hazzard was killed. Bruce Thomas was killed. The next thing I know I heard them say, "Smitty, bring your machine-gun team up." Well, Smitty stood up. When he did, he got two .50-cal rounds,one over his right boob and the other one almost square in the middle of his chest. Now this guy fell right next to me. This was the first time I've actually seen an American this close to me, dead. I've seen guys wounded and hit from shrapnel and from mortars and artillery. But it was the first time I actually looked down and seen somebody that was dead. All three of them that was killed were from the same bunker that I was in. It hit me kind of hard.

It was still raining that day pretty heavy and we couldn't get any air support. An AO(air observer) did come out and spot a lot of gooks moving on the ridge line above us. They said they were setting up machine guns. But we couldn't get any jets in here to drop napalm or drop any bombs on them. We had to pull back and leave two of the dead out there. David Cutshall was hit and we had somebody else helping him coming back. When we got back to the position, I was crying my eyes out. Lieutenant Miller said, "I'm going back after my guys."

Email Address: thill2@woh.rr.com
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Hazzard, Louis Timothy (Tim), PFC