BOXED IN
Seven North Vietnamese Army soldiers, carrying packs and rifles, strode nonchalantly down the trail toward a small stream that slowly meandered through an overgrown rice paddy at the base of the hill. As the NVA column approached one of the numerous bomb craters dotting the surrounding landscape, something caught one soldier’s attention. He glanced in that direction—an instinctive act that signed his death warrant. Suddenly a concentrated burst of small-arms fire from concealed Marines in a 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company team scythed through the North Vietnamese formation. Moments later the recon team itself was under fire and would spend two days trying to survive deadly combat with an overwhelming enemy force in February 1968.
The eight-man Force Reconnaissance Team 2-1, call sign “Box Score,” led by 2nd Lt. Terrence C. “Terry” Graves, was assigned to “conduct reconnaissance and surveillance in zone to determine enemy activity, paying particular attention to the many trails to determine if the enemy was using them.” Secondarily, the team was told to plot potential helicopter landing zones and “make every effort to capture a prisoner.”
The members of Box Score under Graves’ command were Cpl. Robert B. Thomson, Cpl. Danny M. Slocum, Lance Cpl. Steven E. Emrick and Pfcs. James Earl Honeycutt, Adrian S. Lopez and Michael P. Nation. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Stephen R. Thompson, a hospital corpsman, was also on the team.
This was Graves’ fourth patrol but his first as patrol leader. The other team members had worked together on several missions.
The team’s reconnaissance zone was 2½ to 3 miles northeast of the Marine artillery position at Firebase Charlie-2, about 8 miles northwest of a major Marine base at Dong Ha, in an area the Leathernecks called “Indian Country,” Old West slang for largely unpopulated, dangerous territory with many enemy soldiers.
The NVA used it as a main infiltration route to
