Caption for the Cover Photo

Photo taken in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Compound near Phu Tai, South Vietnam in 1970 by James Speed Hensinger.

Taken from a guard tower opposite the mountain across the full width of our compound during fire suppression of a Viet Cong sniper in the rocks above.

The red tracers are from three M-60 7.62mm machine guns. Every fifth round in the linked ammo belts is a tracer. This means that for every red tracer round you see there were four more non-tracer rounds fired.

The small white explosions with no tracers are from an M-2 Browning .50 cal. machine gun

The white tracers with explosions are from twin mounted 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft autocannons mounted on a M-41 light tank chassis. The combination was designated the M-42 Duster. Although the Bofors guns were designed as anti-aircraft weapons, they were used as anti-personnel weapons in Vietnam.

Long exposure using a cable release on a Nikon FTN with a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor lens using 35mm Ektachrome (ASA 64) film.