In an interview for a book I am writing, I spoke with Cpl. Lionel Guerra, shown here, of Bravo Co. 3rd Recon Bn. working out of Khe Sanh in '67-'68, until he was medically evacuated on 20 January 1968.  He told me this story: 

“We were waiting for the helicopters to pick us up from a patrol. With me were Junior Reather, Kevin Macaulay, and the rest of the team. As we made our way down a hill toward a river, we kept hearing a strange noise behind us, but didn't know what it was. I whispered to the other guys that it sounded like a couple of water buffaloes having sex, and we all had a nervous laugh. We finally stopped and were positioned near the water and were being very quiet. We had seen an elephant that day as well as a lot of other wildlife, but it was quiet at the time. Suddenly we heard a very loud, scary noise. We weren't laughing anymore when at about that time, pushing its way through the underbrush, stepped this huge beautiful Bengal tiger not more than twenty feet away. I think it had been following us down the hill. The tiger looked and sniffed around, checking out the area, and then slowly walked over to the water and began to drink. It was a magnificent animal, well over eight-feet long. While we were watching it, Reather slowly took his camera out of his pack and took a picture. When the shudder went ‘click’ the tiger instantly looked directly at us. Our eyes were probably as big as saucers as he gave us the eye. We couldn't fire our weapons without giving away our position. The tiger stood motionless and stared at us for a moment and gave another loud roar. I thought he was going to charge us, and I did the only thing I knew to do; I roared back. The tiger looked at us for a few more moments and turned and casually walked back into the bush.”

PFC Wallace L. Reather, Jr. was killed by a mortar round on January 27, 1968 during the siege.

Ronnie D. Foster is a valued contributor to this historical site honoring the Warriors of Hill 881S.  The book mentioned here, One Day As A Lion, is currently in the editing and publishing process and chronicles the lives and deaths of the twenty young men from his home of Collin County, Texas, who were killed in Vietnam, five of which were Marines, one sailor, the others US Army including one Medal of Honor recipient.  One of those Marines, Cpl. Charles W. "Bill" Bryan, is featured in this site.

His first novel, Last Train Runnin,  is the story of a folk singer who ends up as a corpsman with a Marine rifle company in Vietnam, and his transform- ation from hippie to Marine.  Last Train Runnin is available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com.