Ambushed First Night

My first battle experience was going out on patrol at night and on my first patrol I was ambushed. Being ambushed is something I don’t wish for anyone to have to suffer through, to go through let’s put it this way. But it just happens and in spite of the game, you know, night operations and so on. You are trained to do ambushing yourself. Personally it had many aspects. When I joined my platoon, most of the platoon people in my platoon were Veterans by that time. They had been there over six months. They knew the game. They knew how it was. And there you are a new lieutenant and say well who is he? But that’s part of it and the question is not to impose yourself but is to win their confidence. Really you had to prove yourself. And to prove yourself you don’t go overboard and expose them. That’s not the way to do it that’s for sure. And you don’t overdue it yourself either. But you have to react to a situation and during that particular patrol I was lucky that this was happening in pitch darkness lasts about five minutes and everything is over in five minutes. And there’s been hand to hand fighting. People are scratching. I have five wounded, three of them can’t walk. How do we get out of that situation? We are about a mile away. All that training and then the adrenalin comes out and you say, “Okay do it!” And fortunately I had good guys who had been there before me. And I said, “Okay I’m part of them now!” They have accepted me and they’re mine. And I guess that’s the worst, no not the worst, the big challenge of a young officer has to do is to get the confidence of his man.