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War Stories

Shell Oil Cans in the Hobo

Bill Altenhofen

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I believe it was in November of 67, somewhere in the HOBO woods, the Squadron was on a recon of the area and ran into a section of rice paddies.  The tanks started getting stuck and had to be pulled out by the APC hooked in train fashion to get the tanks out of the mud. 

They brought in the Aerorifles because there was a section of elephant grass that they could not get to.  When we started to search I found a stack of five gallon oil cans, they had the "Shell Oil Co" logo on them.  It was a large number of them stacked in a pyramid.  As a guess I would say the lowest row was about fifteen cans square, and tiers of cans stacked up until it was about fifteen feet tall.  It was covered with dried grass, it would have been hard for the aircraft to identify what the pile was.

I called it in and was told to destroy it. I had no means of destroying all the cans so I ask if one of the aircraft had a heat grenade.  One of the ships came over and dropped a couple of them on the pile of cans.  The cans started burning and that was the way I left the area. 

Later we found a well and a pile of beans and rice stacked up. Again it was too much to carry away so they decided to destroy it. We dumped the beans in the well until it was full and scattered the rest on the ground.  While we were doing that the tanks were operating about a click away and got fire from a wood line.  A squad of infantry was sent over with the tanks, but the enemy fire was so intense the tanks backed off.  There had been talk of setting up an ambush by the well, but it started getting dark and we were taken back to the compound. 

I believe this was the action where Michael Greber got wounded.