Post by Don Smith on Jun 30, 2007 8:55:58 GMT -5
We had been pulled out of the bush in a hurry. We went to an open spot, using it as an LZ, loaded up and were on our way.
A tank had been leading a green platoon of mechanized cavalry down the main route of road Delta south of Ban Me Thuit and, surprise, it had been disabled by an anti tank mine.
We were to help provide security for these dumb asses.
To go down the main route without clearing it with engineers, without point elements, without flank security, all the basic stuff had been ignored in their haste to get to their objective. They had been in country less than a week.
We had been playing hide and seek with the N.V.A. for almost a year. We were ready to go back to the world.
Now we were pinned down as infantry support for the biggest, noisiest , most screwed up situation imaginable.
Battalion said that we were the closest unit available to help these guys out, and we would be relieved in the morning.
We jumped off the Hueys as it was getting dark, so there was little time to check out the ground, there was poor concealment and little cover. The ground sloped down gradually in the 90 degrees of the perimeter we held, we dug some very shallow slit trenches and held our breath, waiting for the next act in this mess. In the tropics, there is no "twilight time", that period of slowly lowering light which is so much a part of the image in the sunrise and sunset of our experience. It is light, or dark, very quickly, and no time to do more than look at the stars as they come out. I knew I was a long way from home when I first arrived in 'Nam by the fact that the Big Dipper was way down on the horizon, I felt a sense of distance from the familiar, and I missed the friendly skies of the northern hemisphere in a visceral way.
The rest of the defensive position was being held by nearly a company of cavalry, all new guys, without any heavy weapons, no mortars, some machine guns, and no sense of what the hell they were doing.
My squad was on the left flank of the position, I had set up both teams in line, pulling one "old hand" from each team to stay back with me as a reserve. We were doing our best to dig in without making noise, watching the jungle to our right, about 100 meters distant, for any motion or signs of action, animals would be the first to tip us off if anything were pushing through there, as they would flee forward of the troops which flushed them out.
My Platoon Leader came down and told me to take a rifleman with me and check out the 'cav unit on my immediate left, help them out if I could and report back to him within the hour.
We walked right up on them without their even noticing us, though I can understand it in a way, we were coming from behind them, an area they intuitively thought of as "safe". They were sitting on top of their armored vehicles, hatches open, lights glowing warmly inside, I could hear rock music playing as I glanced at the men sitting up smoking and talking as if they were back on the beach in California or at the park, waiting for the cold beer to arrive.
I glanced at our senior medic, who had come along with me on this errand. I shook my head, "Shit", I whispered, "these fuckers are going to get us all killed!" John was R. A., Regular Army, that meant he had volunteered to join the fun, while most of us were U.S., draftees. I enjoyed reminding him that I would be a civilian for a year before he was released from his active duty.
We went up to the first personnel carrier, "Who's in charge here?" I asked.
The man on top stuck his head down through the hatch and I could hear the muffled tones of a quick conversation.
A young man popped up at the hatch, "I am, sir."
We had no badges of rank, nothing that could show reflective light on our uniforms, so when the 2nd Lt. came out of the A.P.C. he assumed that I was an officer.
I didn't bother with military courtesy, "Lieutenant, get these men out of those vehicles, enforce strict light and noise discipline and get with the program right now!'
He started to bark orders at the nearest N.C.O's. "Lieutenant, keep it down, no noise, O.K?" I called him up short.
I think he sensed an edge of fear and the seriousness with which I felt, as I was very frustrated that all this had to be outlined to a company grade officer in a combat zone.
I did not wait around to see what they did, I only went back to the rifle team next to my squad and gave them some instructions on their arc of fire and where my guys would be in relation to their position.
My fears were more than the normal anxiety about being stuck out in the open as a target. We learned that a full company had been over-run that afternoon not a mile from where we were sitting.
As I had been platoon radioman for most of my time in country, I took the job of calling in predetermined detonation communications. The new platoon R.T.O. watched and listened to me as I called in the 4.2 inch mortar salvo areas from our Battalion. This was done with flares, by adjusting the fire and setting up a code, it was possible to have a heavy volume of fire brought in quickly, without having to adjust for range, as the area was already charted and the grid numbers set.
Heavy 8 inch guns firing from Brigade at Ban Me Thuit were constantly flying overhead, called in by someone, somewhere in the distant darkness. We could hear and feel the terrible power of the explosions, more than a mile away. They sounded like a freight train smashing through the night.
As I was adjusting fire, talking into the radio, a crash and flash of an 8 inch shell exploded not twenty feet from me. A tree, perhaps 8 inches in diameter, vaporized in front of my line of vision.
I threw myself down, I had been kneeling in a slight depression in the earth, and the berm which it formed between myself and the explosion had kept me from any wounds. My hearing returned, and I dug my fingers into the ground, trying desperately to gain another inch of protection from the hellish blasts which continued to drop. I realized that I was alive. I yelled into the radio, "Cease Fire!", though I knew that this barrage was not from our little mortars, but clear thinking was not an instant response as the flashes and sound of Death continued all around me.
The fire stopped.
It was a "short round" salvo error from Brigade, someone had failed to check the fusing, or the range adjustment, or the powder load on the fire order for that salvo, so it had dropped on us.
My platoon took more casualties by mistake in this than in any action we had seen with the enemy.
As I lay still, listening for more artillery to come in, I could hear the screams of my brothers and their moans of pain.
Then, oddly, I remembered that it was my 22nd birthday, I had not even thought of it all day.
My platoon Leader, the next day, offered me the military comfort that the dead would be given Purple Hearts, as the Army did not want to dismay the families by telling them that they had died from "friendly fire".