2Q  THE LUCKIEST VIET CONG ON EARTH

One of my side jobs as executive officer on Nui Ba Den was to give visiting VIPs a tour of our perimeter defenses. On one such tour, the visiting colonel asked me if I had ever seen any enemy soldiers on the adjacent mountain. I was replying, “no,” when he interrupted me and pointed to a large boulder with an enemy soldier on top, sunning himself.
As I observed through a pair of binoculars, it was obvious that the enemy soldier was not worried about our defenses as he picked a spot facing our positions. I decided to have a little fun with this opportunity and informed the bunker line what was happening, and to ignore what was about to happen. The enemy soldier was way beyond the maximum range of all but our 4.2-inch mortars. To get his attention, I fired twenty bullets from one of our .50 Cal machine guns towards his location, but the tracers burned out about a third of the way to his position so we could not adjust our fire. I had the colonel spotting for us, but the enemy soldier did not move or even look up at us.
We finally got his attention when I called in a fire mission with the 4.2-inch mortar squad. The first white phosphorus spotting round fell short and to the left. The second round was closer and got his attention. I made more adjustments and then fired three high-explosive rounds, walking them up to his location. He stood up, gave us the finger, and went into a cave as the rounds were landing around his position. I had our fire direction team memorize his exact location in case he decided to get a darker tan.