Hunter-Liggett is a training/test area located about 60 miles down HWY 101, south of Fort Ord. If you saw the movie "We Were Soldiers", you have seen Hunter-Liggett, it was filmed there. I have defended the same creek bed that they did in the movie many times...it is a place the 7th Infantry goes to practice war. We were there on a graded exercise, that means there were swarms of senior NCOs and Officers with white bands on their hats following us around and making notes on everything we did and didn't do. They would get together with the bosses later and grade the unit on its performance. It was the third "jump" we had made, the first at night. Night moves are tricky, no matter what Bob Seger says, because even though you are playing war and there are people out there who are pretending to kill you...you have to be very careful not to REALLY kill anyone...can't be running over sleeping soldiers or stuff like that...the Army frowns on that. Being the second squad leader, I was designated to lead our platoon's portion of the advanced party, the group that goes into a new area first to mark out the area kind of like the director blocks out a stage before a play. Normally the first squad leader has that honor but since our platoon sergeant, Ole Whiskey Sours, was a ROAD warrior, he never went to the field with us...in fact...he never went anywhere with us. I rarely saw the guy.

The advanced party pulled into the new site just after dark had settled in. The OIC, Lt Abad, the Sheik of the Burning Tent (but that came later), pointed out the low hills that each platoon was responsible for, barely visible in the night. I was in charge of the 2nd Platoon's advance and as soon as we had our sector identified, we spread out to secure the area and mark out where our fighting positions would be and where the trucks would park and the tie-ins with 1st Platoon on our left and 3rd on our right. Our little hill was not much more than a mound and had a gentle slope. A welcome sight considering that the position we were leaving was on a very high hill with very steep slopes and loose, rocky ground.

I was feeling pretty proud of my guys, they were moving around the way they had been trained, treating everything like it was real, and doing a really fine job of it.

My buddy Paul was in charge of the 1st Platoon's advanced party. He called me on the radio and said he had movement in front of his position. This is important to us because there was an aggressor force (not VC...just GIs like us who were tasked to be the bad guys and try to kill us...but not really) out there somewhere, sometime. So we had to get real tactical real quick. My guys moved over the hill keeping a low profile and crawling over the crest, part of them moved around the side of the hill, we got to our positions and kept a real close watch. The moon had come up since we arrived and you could see a lot better. The Umpires, the guys with the white had bands, later commented on the way my guys handled themselves. I got into my position and watched the front. I didn't see anything but there was definitely something going on a hundred yards or so out in front of 1st Platoon. After a few tense minutes, Paul called me again and said he thought it was just some cows. I mentioned that Hunter-Liggett was a training/test area...it is also an open range area and sometimes we run into a cow or two. I heard the LT tell him to send a couple of guys out to make sure the aggressors weren't using the cows for cover to sneak up on us. It was quiet again for a while then Paul came back up on the air and said there was a bull in the group of cows and he was acting pretty huffy. The LT said to shoo them off. Silence. Didn't work. Well, shoot off some blanks at them, that always works in the cowboy movies.

What happened next was hilarious, but probably not so much for 1st Platoon. I guess that bull had never watched a cowboy movie so he didn't know that gunfire was supposed to start a stampede. As far as he was concerned, it was a irritating noise from his new irritating neighbors and the bull decided to run the irritating neighbors out of his area. I could hear the bull bellowing and snorting and crashing through the brush. He wasn't very tactical but he was effective. The whole 1st Platoon advanced party came screaming over the hill, running and stumbling, equipment flying every which way, ahead of one big, POed, Brahma Bull. There was a lot of running around, hiding behind and inside of trucks until the sergeant from the third platoon lit off an M80 artillery simulator, a very convincing device that makes one heck of a flash and bang (duh, it is supposed to simulate incoming artillery!). The bull didn't even stop to see what it was, 2 seconds after it went off there wasn't a cow, or bull, with in a quarter mile of our site.

Over the years I spent in the 7th Infantry at Fort Ord, I fought many battles in and around Hunter-Liggett, Camp Roberts, 29 Palms, Fort Irwin, Yermo, and other fun spots. But my favorite was that night on advance party. Paul never thought it was funny, but I did...and we named it the Third Battle of Bull Run.