We received several letters in that contest about Vietnam experiences. Here are a few of those personal accounts.

 My name is Dominic DeGrado, I served in Vietnam with Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Calvary Regiment.

I remember one incident back in April or May 1969. We were picked up around 14:00 hours and taken to a point north of Ah Kne near Highway 19 to set up an ambush to stop supplies from coming in to the NVA [North Vietnamese Army].

Well, it was about 16:00 by the time the whole company was in place, and like a hundred other times we would dig in for the night only to move the whole company by foot to another location very quietly after dark. So around 22:00 hours myself and 14 other men left the company area for the night.

We went to a ravine that we had located earlier in the day, about three hundred yards east and about two hundred yards north of the main company area.

About 0:300 hours one of the cherries who was on guard at the time came over to me and said, "Hey, Sergeant, I see them out there." So we got everybody up. They all took their positions and waited about five to 10 minutes, but did not see or hear anything, so I told the private to keep his ears and eyes open.

About 20 minutes later, he said, "Sergeant, I see them again," and damn, he was right. We heard thwnp-thwnp-thwnp and saw the flash from the mortar tubes; they were shelling the company area.

But they did not know the company had moved after dark. They were shelling an empty area. We had one star scoop and two M-60 machine guns and 2,000 rounds of ammo for the guns. After we opened up on them with the 60s and M-79 grenade launchers and small-arms fire, they turned their firepower on us.

We did succeed to knock out the mortar tubes, and now they were coming after our position with small-arms fire and automatic weapons. The first attack we blew our first line of Claymores after they ran in to our trip flares and held them off. I called the company commander's radio man, told them "we are under heavy fire from a force of two platoons, running out of ammo."

I told C.O. [commanding officer] we were going to blow all Claymores on the next attack, and I was ordering 12 men to make their way back to the company area.

The second attack came. We let them have all we had. The 12 men took off; the other two men (who volunteered to stay) and myself were left out there.

By this time, the sun was just starting to come up. After making my last transmission to the C.O. and the few rounds we had left, we destroyed the radio. We were out of ammo and surrounded by about 16 NVA.

Myself and the other two men were taken POW to a camp with our hands tied behind our backs and blindfolded. We were placed in a bamboo hooch.

But a girl was there who had sold us soda from her scooter sometime before. She remembered one of the men, and lo and behold after two days being asked a lot of questions, on the second night she let us out - and to never see her again.

If it was not for that girl, we may have never made it out of Vietnam.

That night, after the girl let us out, we started making our way back south. We finally found Highway 19 and kept walking south until we saw American troops.

We were taken to their C.O. and told him what happened two days ago. They gave us some C-rations and we were taken back to Ah Kne. When we did make it back to our company, we then knew the other twelve men from my squad had made it OK.

I gave my report to the C.O. He told me the morning we were taken, the company did go out to the ravine. The destroyed radio and two M60 were still there.

This will be something that will stay with me for the rest of my life, and to all POWs and MIAs, now I know what it is like to be in captivity, even for only two days.

About 36 years has past, since the incident and it will always stay with me.

- Dominic DeGrado