Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam

by Robert E. Peavey

  Just as Johnny said, Embesi's quick fix would have us moving again in fifteen minutes. He had rigged up Kimbrew's tank so that it could be towed, but he didn't want to take the time to short-track it. Embesi had decided that Kimbrew's tank could be towed on its roadwheels with no track at all. When needed, the driver could apply a little extra power to help it move forward on its one track. We wouldn't be here too long after all.

  Hearn walked back to Better Living Thru Canister, had our driver crank it up, and told him, "Follow my signals." Then he walked backward, giving the driver hand signals to maneuver our tank in front of Kimbrew's tank. Then Hearn signaled our driver to back up-very slowly-until Embesi, who was behind our tank, clasped both hands together, indicating that Better Living was close enough to hook up the tow cables.

  Cash and Gibson hooked up the cables from the lame tank to us and signaled for Hearn to pull ahead. Putting tension on the tow cables was always a delicate task, so those on the ground took several paces back. Hearn guided the driver slowly forward until the cables were taut. Kimbrew's driver slowly applied power at the same time we began to pull. Fortunately, this wasn't the rainy season, or towing a tank in this manner would have been impossible. If we hit some softer ground, Kimbrew's driver could add a little power to his good side to help compensate.

  After we had pulled the tank ahead a short distance, Gary Gibson went over to inspect the crater where the mine had been. He found splinters of wood, the remains of a large box mine whose nonmetallic materials had made it invisible to the mine detectors. We had all known the underpass was mined, but we had made the cardinal mistake of underestimating Mr. Charles.

  Everyone returned to his vehicle. Now it was our turn to go through the underpass, pulling what should have been our tank, had it not been for the mix-up of Kimbrew's taking the lead. As we cleared the underpass, a quick look around showed one tree line on our left, about two hundred meters away. We no sooner made that observation than our tanks came under fire from a second tree line about three hundred meters in front of us. While I took that tree line under fire with the machine gun, we pulled ahead about seventy-five meters to give the tanks behind us room to maneuver as they exited the underpass.

  Our delay, brief as it was, gave Charlie time to marshal his forcesjust as the grunts had feared. As our last two tanks exited the underpass, a sudden firefight erupted and quickly developed into a slugfest along the tree line. Our job was to tow Kimbrew's tank; we were at the lead of the battalion. Two other tanks under Staff Sergeant Siva and Staff Sergeant Pozner were with us. Kimbrew's tank was still able to fight; his guns all worked. His turret faced the tree line to our left as his .30 suddenly opened up.

  In an instant, control was taken out of my hands as our turret snapped around to the left. "Gunner," came Embesi's voice, over of my earphones. "Thirty. Gooks in the tree line." His command told me to target the machine gun on NVAs in the nearer of the two tree lines.

  "Identified!" I yelled loudly enough that I didn't have to waste time keying my microphone.

  The turret came to an abrupt halt and power was handed back to me instantly, so I could lay the gun. Seconds later I had the red aiming circle of my periscope set just ahead of a large group of NVA that was running along the tree line, trying to join the firefight that had begun at the rear of our column. The red circle was the aiming point for the .30. As they ran into my red circle, I squeezed the triggers. I worked the machine gun into the group, watching as red tracers tore into them, killing about twenty. Some just fell, others were knocked off their feet by the impact of the rounds, as still others tumbled head over heels. This was one of the few times that I saw the enemy out in the open, and I really enjoyed it. This was too easy, I thought to myself.

  "Got the motherfuckers!" yelled Embesi over the intercom. "Good shootin'!"

  Our column had stopped as soon as the shooting began. The last two tanks maneuvered to their left to support the infantry by taking on the attackers in the thick tree line. Farthest to the rear was Lieutenant Scott's tank; the other tank was made up of ex-amtrackers we picked up in Pendleton. Except for Johnny Cash, the driver-the entire crew was ex-amtrackers.

  Both tanks were giving it to the NVA as good as they got it. The grunts were hunkered down, hidden in the eighteen-inch grass. We remained in position, saddled with Kimbrew's tank; we could only provide cover against the sporadic firing coming from our front.

  Cash's tank started to advance on the tree line, which was totally uncalled for. More dangerous still was his tank's lack of infantry support; withering fire had all the grunts pinned down. My headset rang as other TCs screamed for Cash's TC to back away from the tree line.

  But the former amtracker put his inexperience on display for all to witness. Maybe he thought he was being aggressive. Instead, he was being plain irresponsible, needlessly risking the tank and its crew. Why he brought his tank right up to the tree line remains a mystery; he would have been just as effective from a hundred meters back. Covering the tree line's wide expanse was more difficult while he was right on top of it. Now, if a target popped up, instead of moving his main gun only a few inches to the left or right, he had to swivel it several feet one way or the other. Even worse, he had removed the safety that distance provided from enemy RPG fire. Those few extra seconds could spell the difference between a living tank and a smoking hulk.

  As the lone tank approached closer to the tree line, the firefight grew more vicious. Embesi sensed that something was about to go wrong; he got on the radio and ordered Kimbrew to unhook us. Gary Gibson jumped down from Kimbrew's tank to remove the tow cables. Embesi ordered our driver to kick it in the ass and get the tank into the fight. We did a one-eighty and raced toward the battalion rear to thwart an impending disaster. The cavalry was coming to the rescue.

  As we sped to the scene, Embesi was on the radio, telling Siva and Posner to get on line with us at the end of the column, assault the tree line, and try to provide the errant tank with some additional cover. The three tanks rapidly advanced toward Lieutenant Scott's tank and Cash's, right near the tree line.

  I had the main gun pointed just to the left of Cash's vehicle. We still had one hundred meters to go. I heard Scott on the radio, ordering Cash's TC to back down and put some distance between the tree line and his precariously positioned vehicle. There was no response.

  Just as we got up to the lieutenant's tank, we watched in horror as the errant tank raised its gun tube until it was aiming at the sky. Every tanker on the field knew what had happened. The .30-caliber machine gun had jammed, so the inexperienced TC was raising the main gun to give the loader room to work on it.

  It was a fatal mistake. Instead of backing down, the inexperienced TC tried to use his .50-caliber machine gun, which was all but useless, because the elevated main gun tube was in the way. Voices yelled over the radio to order the TC to pull back, but in vain.

  We had just started to close on the tree line when the lone tank was enveloped by two blinding flashes in rapid succession. Two RPGs struck the front of the tank. We were all surprised to see the tank commander leap out of the turret and run behind the tank.

  Seconds later, the loader and gunner realized that they had no TC, so they bailed out of the tank and followed their moronic, gutless TC. It filled us with anger to see a Marine tank crew abandon its vehicle in the middle of a firefight and leave their driver behind!

  They had taken no weapons with them, a sure sign of their panic. We saw exhaust from the abandoned tank's engine, indicating that it was still running. The tank's outside appeared to be okay, although a wisp of light blue smoke was coming from out of the turret.

  Staff Sergeant Siva tried to raise the driver by calling his name repeatedly: "Cash, are you all right? Can you back the tank out of there?"

  There was no response. We all wondered if the driver was still in the tank. Was he still alive?

  Siva's, Pozner's, and our tank moved up to the tree line, guns ablaze. Our vehicle halted to the left of
Cash's tank while Siva pulled up behind the stricken tank.

  "Take over," Embesi told me. He started to leave his position when several bullets ricocheted of the turret, forcing him back down. At the same moment, Siva suddenly exited his tank to sprint toward the imperiled tank. His gunner, Tim Matye, immediately took over the TC position.

  As Siva made his twenty-five-meter dash, fire from the tree line doubled in intensity. We tried to give Siva as much covering fire as we could. While Embesi was working his .50, I saturated the tree line with everything I had.

  Directly in front of Siva, Cash's tank provided some shelter. He ran up behind it and climbed up on the back, using its turret for cover as bullets ricocheted all around him. He waited a second, then made the most dangerous part of his run, fully exposing himself as he dove into the TC's cupola. Short, stocky Siva wasn't built to pass easily through a tank's hatchway. That afternoon, however, he vanished through the hatch like a greased eel.

  Ten seconds went by. Then the turret swung around 180 degrees, to the rear of the tank. Every tanker knew that Siva was traversing the turret to the one spot that permitted him access to the driver's compartment. Another twenty seconds went by, then the tank's exhaust blew a few puffs of black diesel smoke as it began to back away from the tree line.

  Over our radio came Siva's voice: "The driver is dead. The tank took two RPGs through the slope plate. There's nothing else wrong that I can see." His last statement pissed off every tanker on the field.

  He backed the tank up about one hundred meters, and we backed up along with it, putting as much fire into the tree line as we could. The lieutenant's tank, about seventy-five meters to our left, was backing up, too, when suddenly it just disappeared. There was no cloud of smoke, no hint; it just vanished. A few seconds went by and there was no sign of the tank!

  Then the LT's voice came over the radio: "I've backed into a hole and I can't get out."

  Embesi finally noticed the very tip of an aerial sticking above the ground. That was some hole. "Only a lieutenant would fall into the only hole around," Embesi said over the intercom.

  As it turned out, that hole could have held three more tanks. The LT had backed into a bomb crater. Sergeant Siva, who was now back on his own tank, pulled up to the hole, jumped out again, and attached his tow cables and pulled Lieutenant Scott's vehicle out.

  As Siva was hauling the LT back on level ground, a Marine infantry captain got up on our tank. "I'm going to flank the tree line," he told Embesi. "I want some tanks for support."

  Embesi told him there weren't enough grunts available to make such an assault. Besides, we had a wounded tank to attend to.

  A few seconds later, the captain was replaced by a lieutenant colonel, the battalion CO. As he looked up at Embesi, his face showed all the emotions of a man with many men's lives at risk. "Sergeant?" he pleaded, "can you help me get my men out of there? They're stranded up near the tree line."

  "Yes, sir. Get some men behind us and my three tanks will advance toward the tree line. We'll lay down fire until we get to where they can retrieve your men. Once they're behind our tanks, we'll back away and give them cover."

  "I'll have you your men in two minutes!" the colonel said.

  Embesi got on the radio to tell the other tanks what we were going to do. Three tanks would advance on line with ours in the middle and provide cover to allow the grunts to retrieve their people. As the colonel promised, small groups of men gathered behind the three tanks, so we started to advance. The grunts walked half-crouched, as if walking into a pelting rain and trying to avoid as many drops as possible.

  The tanks that were still in the column behind us opened up with everything they had.

  We got up to where we thought the remaining grunts were, but we couldn't see them. Suddenly, as if we had come upon a town of prairie dogs, heads began to pop up out of the grass and back down. We were surprised at how many grunts appeared out of nowhere, glad as hell to see us. We were the last lifeboats for the survivors of a sunken ship. They knew we would never leave them behind; it was only a matter of time until they would be rescued.

  We didn't have to tell them what to do; they dragged their dead and wounded behind the tanks. During our advance on the tree line, we had run out of canister and beehive. All we had left was high explosive rounds for the main gun. HE wasn't very effective against nonspecific targets like a tree line, so Embesi had Hearn set the fuses on delay. He then told me to do something I had never heard of.

  "The enemy's dug in, so you fire into the ground, about ten feet short of the tree line. Try and ricochet the HE rounds into the tree line, so they explode in the air over the gooks."

  Tim Mayte saw a tank shoot at the ground and wondered what in hell its crew had been drinking.

  The enemy fire increased substantially as the grunts gathered behind us. Several RPGs streaked wildly out of the tree line. We were up against a wellentrenched NVA force. Several of them were clearly visible, and more were moving along the tree line, trying to meet our rescue attempt. The grunts didn't take long to gather all of their stranded people behind the three tanks.

  We began a slow withdrawal, careful not to run over the infantry. That meant each TC had to spend more time watching the Marines in back of his tank than the NVA to his front. My job remained unchanged: Cover our withdrawal by keeping the tree line hosed down with machine gun fire. Hearn worked at a breakneck pace supplying the 90mm gun and.30- caliber machine gun. He had no idea what was going on outside, he only knew that we were burning up enormous quantities of ammo.

  We finally stopped our withdrawal about two hundred meters back from the tree line to allow the grunts to tend to their wounded. The colonel yelled up to thank Embesi for rescuing his men.

  After things quieted down and the battalion regrouped, it was late afternoon. We moved half a klick north of the ambush site to set up a defensive perimeter for the evening in the same spot near the railroad berm and the river as two nights earlier.

  Embesi left the tank to attend the CO's evening sitrep meeting, still limping on badly bruised legs. That night, the colonel spoke to Embesi about decorations for the tank crews who had rescued his men, but Embesi turned him down.

  "We only did our job," he told the colonel-and he was right. By then, I had known Embesi for almost two years, and his philosophy was that we all had a job to do, and doing your job didn't warrant a medal. He thought decorations were given out too freely, particularly among officers. I agreed with him: That afternoon, the men on the ground deserved medals far more than we did.

  All the tank commanders got together to review the situation and decide what they were going to do with the wounded vehicle. When Embesi came back he brought with him the details about Cash's tank. As we suspected, its .30-caliber machine gun had jammed. With guns no longer firing at him, Mr. Charles was able to get off two well-aimed RPGs. Both of them entered directly through the tank's bow, where its armor was thickest-twelve inches of solid steel. The successive rapid impacts and explosions inside the tank panicked the TC, who abandoned ship without alerting the rest of his crew.

  The two other crewmen left behind in the turret took their TC's lead and followed him out. The driver had been killed instantly by the first blast, but because his position separated him physically from the rest of the crew nobody bothered to check on him.

  Who killed John Cash? Not the NVA, but an incompetent, illtrained TC who drove too close to the tree line and foolishly elevated the main gun instead of backing away to fix the problem. That day's hero was Staff Sergeant Siva, who was later decorated with a Silver Star for saving the tank.

  Embesi also shared with us the latest scoop: Division G-2 (Intelligence) suspected that we were surrounded.

  "Shit, Sergeant Embesi," I grinned sarcastically, "Those clairvoyants figured that out all by themselves? Whoever said Intelligence wasn't intelligent?"

  Embesi went on to tell us that due to the delays earlier in the day caused by the mine and the later ambush, th
e NVA had time to consolidate and move up more men. It would be another sleepless, terrifying night we would never forget.

  WE WAITED UNTIL AFTER SUNDOWN before we took up a position on the battalion's line. There wasn't any need to make it any easier for Mr. Charles to plan an attack. That procedure, which we had initiated early in the operation, kept the N VA from seeing exactly where the tanks were located. As it got pitch dark we cranked up the tanks and guided them to positions around the perimeter.

  Our tank was located on the western side of the position, with the railroad berm behind us and the river off to our right about a hundred meters away. These two geographical boundaries gave our battalion a strong tactical advantage because it allowed us to concentrate our tanks along the two sides of the perimeter most vulnerable to attack. But our very strong position left us no room to maneuver. If the NVA overran us, we had no place to fall back to. It was a last-stand position. If we couldn't hold, it meant a "Go tell the Spartans" ending. We had to stop them at the perimeter or die trying, as the Greeks had done at Thermopylae.

  The last helicopters that passed overhead had made sightings and passed the information on to our infantry CO. They could all see we were surrounded. We were long overdue for an attack, and now Charlie had us right where he wanted us. This was certainly the night we were going to be hit. Embesi explained that, in the face of such an imminent attack, the CO had decided not to send out any listening posts. He wanted every man on the perimeter.

  It was highly unusual not to have any LPs, patrols, or ambush teams outside the perimeter at night. LPs, composed of one or two men, provided an early-warning system for the battalion. Their unenviable job was to sneak out about two hundred feet beyond the perimeter and warn the parent unit, via radio, of anything they saw or heard. Their chance of survival was based solely upon their ability to stay awake and, above all, to keep quiet. They had to hope that an attacking force didn't stumble upon them during the night. They had to position themselves so that they were not in a direct line of fire from the battalion at their rear. Tonight, however, the battalion CO decided not to risk sending anyone out. We were going to get hit hard, and the CO didn't want to risk any more men.