I was coordinating spotters for a Forward Fire Control unit outside of Song Te during my second shift in country. Some of my spotters doubled up with some Search and Destroy missions in the hopes of doubling their mission count and therefore getting out in half the time. For some it worked, for some it didn't.

Some of the S&D missions were brutal. But then again, by their nature, they have to be. One of my spotters that was doubling was a friend I had made stateside. He was one of my best, could call in Willy Pete to within feet of the actual target by eye. Not many can drop White Phosphorous rounds without some kind of navigation aid. Old Roger could. Damned good eye.

So good they gave him the high-powered rifle with the super-scope. He told me once that the scope could function as a star-lite, infra-red, or optical, and the rifle was accurate to three thousand yards. You gotta love it, some nitwit telling me that he had a rifle accurate to almost two miles. I started ribbing him, but the look on his face stopped me.

There is only one way to get that look. He knew about the accuracy, because he had done it. Some where, some time, for some reason, according to orders, Roger had taken out someone at a range of three thousand yards. Nine thousand feet. Almost two miles. Whether or not you agree with the morality of war, you have to admire someone that can fire a round with the accuracy to take out a target at almost two miles range. Hell, the toys the Air Force used in Desert Storm, those laser guided jobs? Old Roger had the accuracy without the laser.

I got the impression, several times, from Roger that the S&D missions were becoming more enjoyable. That bothered me because I knew that Roger had been getting more and more missions. He had even gotten orders relieving him from Spotter and dedicating him to S&D. After that, I didn't see him much any more. I heard about him from time to time, but I didn't see him.

One day, I was minding my own business trying to rearrange the duty matrix, when a captain from the 457th Resupply came in fuming and fussing. Seems that he was hiding in a village where some NVA were 'interrogating' some of the locals, when the NVA guys fun was cut short by a long distance sniper.

The single shot did several things. The man that it killed was being tortured by the NVA, and would have died anyway, the bullet just put the poor villager out of his misery. The bullet, with a report that came an eternity later, spooked the NVA and they pulled up stakes and split. That's what allowed the captain from the 457th to be up and walking around.

After he made it back to his unit, he made it a point to find out who might have delivered that fatal bullet. Seems this captain was a fundamentalist and was determined to bring to justice the man who 'murdered' a friendly. I told him that the object of his quest no longer worked under me and the man stormed out of my hooch. I threw down my pencil and walked over to the duty tent.

I wished I hadn't. As I walked in the tent, I could hear Roger over one of the frequencies we monitor. He was requesting a fire mission. He was looking for a mix of High Explosive and Willy Pete. From the mix it sounded like he was tracking a large number of troops. It was hard to understand him on the radio, it sounded like he was whispering.

The operator that was communicating with Roger gave me a slip of paper with the coordinates that described the target of the artillery assault. I picked up one of the unoccupied field phones and rang up the 47th Artillery Battalion, passing on the fire coordinates, and had them hold for the fire order. I heard the word, in Rogers voice, from the speaker, sounding tinny and unreal, and passed on the go-ahead to the gunnery sergeant. Within seconds I heard, from Roger's radio, the beginnings of the barrage. It sounded close, and moving closer, to Roger's position. Then the transmission ceased.

I sent out some Recon to check it out. It was what it sounded like. Roger had found himself, somehow, hidden in the jungle surrounded by at least a division of NVA regulars, positioning to surround Song Te. The coordinates he had given were the coordinates that he sat on. The range and drift the 47th had incorporated pretty well decimated the NVA division. And there was no sign of where Roger might have been during the maelstrom of High Explosive and White Phosphorous shells in the clearing that used to be thick jungle.

A few days after that, the loudmouth Supply Captain returned. He was still hot under the collar, and was still looking to bust Roger. I was a little taken aback. Slapping my shirt pocket for a smoke, I remembered. I had stuffed the piece of paper with Rogers map coordinates in my pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to the captain, telling him those coordinates were the last known, to my knowledge, whereabouts of the target of his wrath. He stormed out, looking for a map. I'm sure he went to the location.

I heard, just before that, the NVA had come back in, and taken the part of the jungle that Roger had cleaned out. I silently wished the captain luck.

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