A VC Road mine explodes on Highway One. Moments later, a shower of debris, gravel and shrapnel raines down on the photographer, crouching in a nearby rice paddy.

Road Mine Kills Two

Stapleman and I were driving south on Highway with a team of our Surveyors behind us. Trucks and civilian vehicles filled this narrow, lane-and-a-half dirt road. It was stop and go. A hot day. We were eating dust in the open jeep from the traffic ahead, so Stapleman hung back and we put up the windshield. A few vehicles ahead, a Marine convoy with two six-by troop carriers full of Marines was shepherding a large 50,000 gallon JP5 tanker heading for a Marine Huey camp near Quango Ngai. We could just see the top of the tanker ahead.

     Then it happened.

     A tremendous explosion erupted up ahead. Stapleton slammed on the breaks and pulled the jeep off the road, nearly landing us in a rice paddy, Wagnor and his team behind us did the same. Dick grabbed his rifle and we both slid into four inches of mud amid small rice shoots in the paddy.  A road mine had gone off up ahead. It had blown the dump body on the lead truck into the air. A mine explosion could be followed by an ambush—so the Marine instructors had taught us during combat training in Camp LaJune.

     “Get out of the vehicle, get off the road and take cover,” the Marine Sergeant yelled at us in combat  

training school. “A road mine will stop traffic. A perfect time for the snipers to open up.” Traffic stopped. The  Marines jumped off the truck just ahead of us, ran past the tanker, searching the rice patties along the roadside for an ambush. I ran with them, my camera in one hand my .45 M1911 in the other.

     The lead six-by in the three truck convoy had hit a road mine, blowing off the rear tires, throwing the dump body and its occupants through the air. Marines pulled the still unconscious driver and his shotgun out of the cab as the  truck burned. The dump body had held four Marines and had not been sand-bagged. Two Marines were found a hundred feet from the road in a rice paddy—dead.

     I stood watching all this, beside the tanker as the driver and his shotgun climbed down. Both were shaking, their faces white under their tropical tans. The gas tank on the truck ahead let go, engulfing it in flames. During those few minutes we stood watching the Marines drag their buddies away from the flaming truck, time stood still . . . . my full story appeared in the Stars and Stripes a few weeks later. A more detailed story appears in Seabee71 in Chu Lai.