While I was driver on A-17 I had by accident found this rather large ammo cache in the fall of 1967. We had circled the Troop in some cultivated fields during a search and destroy mission for some down time. I was starting to do some routine maintenance on the tank's tracks when I noticed a strange sealed box sticking out of the dry dirt. My track had pushed it up from under the dirt when I had done a 180 degree turn getting the tank into our defensive position. I picked it up and although it was sealed closed upon inspection I noticed it had Chinese writing all over it. I dug around it and found another one so I took them to Lt. See. He looked at it and cut the sealed box open. It contained 50 cal rounds. He sent a detail over to my tank and we began digging all around my tank and found all kinds of ammo just buried under a couple of inches of dirt. I moved my tank and we continued to dig up more boxes of 50 cal rounds plus RPG 2 and 7s, Recoilless Rifle rounds, mortar rounds, grenades, AK-47 ammo, and various other ammo. I was astounded by my lucky find. I was told at the time it was one of the largest ammo caches found by the 25th up until then. I had great satisfaction in the fact that this ammo would not be reaching the hands of our enemy and killing our troops. It was a good day.

Rick Avant
A17 67/68

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