On another occasion around the same time, either Lorin or John was scouting with me again out to the west of Dong Tam sorter NW of the Wagon Wheel. It was early morning as we were en-route to our AO and we had already dropped down from altitude in preparation to enter our scout sector. There was a heavy early morning ground fog laying in the paddy areas and I recall being somewhat surprised when my crew chief announced that he had seen what appeared to be a company or so of ARVN soldiers moving across a far paddy area which was separated from the one that we were flying over by a thin tree line. Well, having received no pre-flight briefing info regarding friendlies to be in our AO, I called upstairs to inform the C&C ship. After about a minute we were excitedly informed that there were no ARVN units reported in this area and that these troops must be Charles. Having already passed this paddy now for about a quarter of a mile in distance, we nearly broke the cyclic stinks off in trying to turn around to get back. To say the least, I was dumb enough to think that somehow we were still going to surprise them and it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel...Wrong!!! Instead these fellows (NVA's from the uniforms they were wearing) had already deployed into fire and maneuver elements and when we crossed the tree line things quickly got serious. One group would engage us while the other group maneuvered and then the maneuvering groups would stop and engage us while the other groups maneuvered. It was all such a surprise and coupled with our being almost on the deck with them we inflicted hardly any damage as I best recall before they made it into the jungle. It had been a picture perfect situation for the Crusaders but I suppose our already being into the zone really screwed up a great opportunity for them.  All I can say is that I learned a very quick and valuable lesson both about infantry tactics that day and also when to Hold'um and when to Fold'um....in short, when in doubt Call in the Snakes and stand back!