From our pal Bud Gibson

“I normally carried a captured and modified machine gun the Russians called the RPD. I did not like the AK, and I’m glad Charlie had it. It was too powerful a rifle for the little VC and NYA, and they Wouldn’t manage the recoil. After the first shot, everything else was going to be over your head! That was kind of a blessing. If they had had the M16, that would have been a different story. liked the RPD because it probably had the best buffer group of any automatic weapon anywhere. It fired 7.62×39-millimeter ammo from a drum under the weapon. Unlike the M60 used by most American units, the RPD was balanced. Charlie recognized the sound of the RPD when it fired, and he usually stopped to think when he heard it: Is that our guys? If that slowed him down for just a second, you could get out of his ambush kill zone, get up to the side, and then flank the ambush. We took off the bipod, cut off the barrel, and put a sling on it. Then you had a very good weapon. The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it used 25 round, nondisintegrating link belts. In combat, you found yourself reaching down to retrieve those segments from the ground because they were hard to come by. It was a fantastic weapon, accurate, powerful, easy to use. I carried one, and some of the other guys were believers too. But other weapons were also powerful, and 1 of our guys carried a little Swedish K. also carried a cut down 40mm M79 grenade launcher, with most of the stock cut off and the barrel chopped down to look just like a pistol. The range was unchanged, and it was really useful. We could shoot accurately with it to 200 m’s , normally with the HE round.I carried a cut-down pump shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot. There is no question that a guy knew he’d been shot when you hit him with a load of 00 buckshot.”Unlike the dart” rounds that would go right through the guy but would leave him shooting at you
because he didn’t know he was dead yet! The stock was cut at the pistol grip, and a loop of “dummy cord” was tied to it. I carried it in my rucksack, muzzle down, with the grip sticking up over my shoulder. I could pull it out w/o taking the ruck off.”