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

by Robert E. Peavey

  Embesi and I had the first watch. The grunts loaned us a starlight scope, the first such device I had ever seen. The scope, which was a handheld device, looked like a very large riflescope with a single eyepiece. By amplifying ambient light, it provided the user a ghostly green image of whatever it was pointed at, even on the darkest nights. They were very rare, only a few people had them, but the grunts were happy to lend us theirs because our height above the ground increased its effectiveness.

  Around 10:30 p.m. I was using the scope when I clearly saw movement in front of us at about the two-o'clock position. There were a half dozen well-equipped figures crawling through the grass. I tapped Embesi on the shoulder without taking the scope off what were surely enemy soldiers and whispered, "I've got half a dozen guys snoopin' and poopin' through the grass at two o'clock, maybe a hundred meters out."

  Embesi took the scope and confirmed my observation. He immediately notified Gary Gibson, whose tank was fifty feet away, and they worked out a plan. Anything out in front of us was definitely not friendly, and because we had the starlight scope it was decided that our tank would do the initial firing. We would use the .30-caliber machine gun to fire short bursts as Embesi guided me to the target by watching our tracers. When we were on target, Gary was to open up with the .50 on his tank and follow our tracers to the target.

  I had to fire only three five-round bursts before Embesi had me on target. Once on, I thoroughly saturated the area while Gary opened up with his .50 and followed our tracers to the same spot. It worked perfectly; we totally blanketed the area. Nothing could have survived such a devastating fire. The whole episode lasted less than a minute.

  Just as we ceased fire, two grunts ran up to our tanks screaming, "Ceasefire! Ceasefire! There's friendlies out there!"

  "Bullshit!"we replied. "We just took out a patrol of six or seven dinks in the grass." We were cocky, for we had just caught an enemy patrol in the open and had drilled every one of the little bastards. It had probably been a probe gathering information for the attack that was surely to come. It was a standard NVA tactic.

  "Those are our guys!" The men yelled pleading with us not to fire any more. "You're shooting our own men!"

  "It was a gook patrol," Embesi insisted, hoping to God that the grunts were wrong. "Besides," he added, "no one was going out tonight. Didn't you get the word?"

  At that moment doubt began to fill the air; there were too many voices screaming at us from all directions.

  Dear God, I thought to myself, please tell me they're wrong. It was about the only time I turned to God during my entire tour.

  "No! Cease fire! Some of our guys are out there!"

  Embesi and I couldn't believe what we were hearing. We had done everything by the book. We tried to convince ourselves that we faced a group of uninformed grunts, which wasn't unusual; they were always behind in the news department.

  There was just no way we could have killed our own people. There was a standing order that no one was going outside the perimeter tonight-no LPs, no patrols, and no ambush teams.

  Only a few minutes later it was confirmed that it was indeed a friendly patrol outside the wire. Word quickly went around the perimeter that the tanks had killed six Marines, and a small patrol was sent out to retrieve them. It hit us hard. Our denial turned to intense angerbut we were not alone. For the rest of that night, while surrounded by the North Vietnamese, we now had a new enemy in the form of grunts all around us as well.

  A voice came out of the pitch-black night air after the patrol was brought back in. "We'll get you, tanks!"

  "Watch your back during the next firefight, tanks," came another.

  It was impossible to defend our action; the grunts were in no mood to listen. We tried to keep quiet. After all, the enemy was all around us, but didn't seem to deter the furious grunts. We told the grunts near us what had happened and to pass the word. We could only hope that our story would make it around the perimeter but the catcalls continued, convincing us that our side of the story never made it around the lines. It was their final straw. They had had no sleep for several days and little or no water. They were exasperated, looking for someone to take it out on. They were angry and wanted revenge.

  We had our own anger to contend with. The fact that we were part of such a horrible yet avoidable mistake weighed heavily on us. The thought of killing six fellow Marines was a horrific burden. We were sick about what we had done, but we had to listen to the faceless voices that threatened us. It terrified us to think that the grunts were only waiting for the next firefight to kill us. Embesi raised the TC's hatch to the half-cocked position to protect his back.

  The threats continued for another hour, becoming more and more frequent and strident. We were despised as much by those inside the perimeter as by those outside. We literally feared for our lives, convinced we would end up shot by our own troops during the coming attack. Anyone standing watch on a tank would be a sitting duck, his death written off as a combat error, with no questions asked.

  Gary Gibson was standing watch at the same time we were. He too had raised his hatch to cover his back. Two hours had passes since the incident when his infamous Irish temper finally snapped.

  We had towed Gary's tank into a position only fifty feet away from ours. I could barely make out the shape of the tank in the moonlight. A commotion of voices erupted from the far side of Gary's tank; there was shouting back and forth. The crescendo increased until we could clearly make out Gary's voice.

  "Come on, you motherfuckers! Let's start it right fuckin' now, you gutless fucks! I'll blow your asses away just like the others! Come on, you chickenshit motherfuckers!"

  Gary had swung the .50-caliber machine gun around and depressed its long barrel toward the line of Marine foxholes from which the threats had originated.

  "Oh, fuck!" was all Embesi said. He extricated himself from the cupola and got down off the tank. No one knew Gary's Irish temper better than Embesi, who realized that he had only seconds to act before Gary's hair trigger would fall. Despite his bad feet, Embesi managed to climb down off our tank and hobble as fast as he could over to Gary's tank. He knew he had to intercede before Gary let loose with the .50.

  He got to the far side of Gary's tank and placed himself squarely between the machine gun and the grunts; the .50 -cat's barrel was pointed at the middle of his chest. Embesi stood there with both hands on his hips. "Gibson, you get that fuckin' gun off me right now, or I'll come up there and kill you with my bare hands," he said.

  "These fucks wanna kill us!" Gary yelled as he looked down at Embesi.

  Embesi summoned all of his command presence and said in a voice I had never heard before: "I'll say it one last time: Get that fuckin' gun off my chest!"

  Gary slowly and reluctantly turned the .50 back toward the front of the tank, cursing the grunts as he traversed the TC's cupola. Embesi then turned around and addressed the voices, faceless and unseen in their black foxholes. He had both hands on his hips. "If any of you motherfuckers want a piece of us, you can come up here right now. I'm the one who gave the order to fire!" he shouted into the night. "Come on, you gutless motherfuckers, I'll kick every one of your f ickin' asses right now. It was your battalion CO that gave us permission to fire!"

  No one took him up on his challenge, not a word was said back to him. If anyone could carry out the threat of taking on several grunts, it was Staff Sergeant Embesi. It was the most awesome display of "command presence" I witnessed in the Marine Corps.

  The anger we shared over the terrible shooting accident, for tankers and grunts alike, was looking for a way to vent. We were irate over the tragic mistake, and we all wanted to blame someone.

  CHARLIE HAD TO BE WONDERING what the hell was going on with this Marine outfit what with all the screaming and yelling going on in the dark. He must have thought that the battalion had lost control, which was a very good sign for him.

  Embesi no sooner got back to the tank than a loud drone overhead caught our att
ention. We all recognized it as Puff the Magic Dragon. But tonight there was something different about it. The engine noise was much louder than normal; we assumed he was flying lower than usual.

  "Puff "was an old C-47 from World War IT, twin-engine, propellerdriven sister of the venerable DC-3, he specialized in ruining Charlie's nights. It was equipped with three 7.62mm Gatling guns that were pointed out of the left side of the plane, each of which could spit out 6,000 rounds a minute. It was said that a two-second burst could put one bullet in each square foot of a football field.

  We had seen Puff many times before, always at night, and always a long ways off, its three laserlike fingers of red light massaging the ground, as if the Hand of God had suddenly appeared out of the sky in search of mortals to kill. Each of the red lines appeared solid, as a continuous neon bolt of red lightning. They were actually the trails of every fifth bullet that left Puff's Gatling guns. The fifth round of all automatic weapons had a tracer element in the rear of the bullet to aid the shooter in directing his fire. It was hard to believe we saw only twenty percent of the bullets leaving the guns.

  What happened next was something that none of us had ever seen before or since. The pilot, who used night-vision equipment, reported that there were so many people all over the area that he was unable to differentiate friend from foe. It was just after midnight when we received the strangest order any Marine unit ever got in the field. It passed from hole to hole in a controlled whisper, "Get a cigarette lighter ready or a flashlight out. Cover it and get ready to light it."

  "What?" we gasped, totally flabbergasted at the insanity of the order. The grunts, justifiably scared of exposing their positions to the gathering NVA, muttered among themselves as only enlisted men can, "Who's the dumb shit that thought this one up?"

  They were instructed to wrap a poncho around their light source so it was shielded from the enemy but could still be seen from the air. Tanks were instructed to use flashlights from down inside the turret, pointed up to the sky through one of the open hatches.

  We were convinced that all hell would break loose as soon as we lit up the perimeter. It took only twenty seconds-but they were the longest twenty seconds of our lives. Puff was now able to get an exact fix on our position. The pilot confirmed what he had suspected, that we were surrounded by several large masses of enemy troops.

  Without warning, six laserlike fingers began kneading the earth around us-there were two of them! That explained the loud drone. We listened to the delicious sound of their guns, which was reminiscent of someone tearing paper next to your ear. They circled in tandem, both firing their mini guns all around our perimeter. It was the first time anyone had ever seen two of them flying together, and no one had ever seen Puff used in a tactical ground support role as it was that night.

  We had at least one plane circling overhead all through the night. It was reassuring to know that we weren't alone out here, that someone was aware of our plight. It was the closest any of us had ever been to Puff and its truly majestic display of firepower.

  This was the night we were going to be hit. Puff confirmed that the NVA had been massing for an assault. The arrival of the gunships couldn't have been better timed. Thanks to them we got through the night without getting hit. Charlie was not able to marshal his troops under such lethal fire.

  In the morning the truth about the night's friendly fire incident came out. The grunts found out that it was caused by an overzealous FNG lieutenant who sent out the patrol without telling anyone.

  I wondered what the six families back home would be told? "Your son died bravely in the defense of his country?" Would they ever know that fellow Marines had killed their sons? I hoped not. The parents of those men did not need to know the truth. It would have served no purpose and would only add to their anguish. As tragic as it had been, their families didn't need to know the specifics-dead is dead. Those of us who were involved have had the rest of our lives to live with it.

  THE NEXT MORNING we began heading back to Phu Loc 6 with what was left of 1/7 and 3/7.

  Our heavy reliance upon the .30-caliber machine gun during the operation had burned out both of our spare barrels and also the spare electric solenoid. It was the solenoid that actually fired the machine gun through the electrical impulses from the gunner's trigger switch on his hand controls. Without it, the gun was almost useless. It could only be fired manually by the loader, who had to stand by it and pull the trigger at the gunner's command; it was very ineffective and prevented the loader from servicing the main gun.

  Embesi had a fix for the problem. Was there anything this man couldn't do? He took a six-foot-long piece of comm wire and tied one end around the gun's trigger, routed it up through the chain-hoist eyebolt in the roof of the turret over the main gun and back down to the gunner's position. He tied a short stick to my end of the wire as a handle; I simply had to pull down on the wire to fire the machine gun. We gave it a test, and it worked.

  It was late afternoon, and the heat inside the tank was way above the outside temperature of 120 degrees. Usually by this time of day, with no fresh air coming down into the turret, the heat would start to get to me. I was half-conscious, almost delirious. My sweaty forehead was up against the gunner's periscope, slowly traversing the turret back and forth across the umpteenth tree line. My role was that of a sniper with a fiftytwo-ton rifle. As the tank slowly kept pace with the infantry, its slow side-to-side movement jostled me as we crossed any rough ground at no more than three miles per hour.

  From almost the beginning of the operation, we had learned to depend on a technique called "recon by fire."This was firing the.30 into tree lines before we got close to them, in the hope of actually tripping an ambush early, making the NVA think we had discovered them. It was an effective method that could prevent one from becoming trapped in the kill zone of an ambush.

  While bobbing along inside the moving tank, I had to be conscious enough to keep the gun aimed at a given tree line. Not only did I have to traverse the turret left and right, I had to elevate or depress the gun as the ground changed beneath us.

  The tank must have started going down an incline. I found myself elevating the main gun to keep it on the tree line. The huge breechblock next to my left shoulder began to move down as the gun tube outside went up. Half-delirious from the afternoon heat and half-numb from several days without sleep, I was unaware of what was quietly taking place next to me.

  The wooden handle of Embesi's makeshift contraption had become entangled with the cocking lever on the breechblock. I was preoccupied elevating the main gun in order to keep it pointed at the distant tree line. I was looking through my periscope for potential targets, unaware that the breechblock was dragging Embesi's stick down with it. Without warning, the .30 exploded to life beside me, almost giving me heart failure. Through my periscope I saw a grunt in the middle of the red aiming circle fall as the machine gun bullets impacted all around him!

  Over the intercom, Embesi screamed, "Cease fire!" at least twice. "Hey! It ain't me, goddamn it!" I yelled. I thought it was him doing the firing from the TC override control handle, which-had my brain not been fried and had I thought about it-was impossible, because the solenoid was burned out. I looked over at the runaway machine gun as it chattered away. The adrenaline had entered my bloodstream and the fog had cleared from my brain. I suddenly realized that Embesi's hung-up invention was firing the machine gun. The wire was as taut as a guitar string.

  I immediately tore at the wire and broke it, which stopped the clatter. The entire scenario lasted about five seconds, which in machine gun time was about forty-six bullets. It seemed like it had taken a week to stop the runaway gun.

  I quickly went back to the aiming circle in my periscope, fearful that we had killed the grunt I had seen going down. Immediately I keyed my intercom switch, "Please tell me we didn't kill somebody!"

  Embesi and Hearn, who stood with their heads and shoulders out of the turret, would have seen the consequences of the gun
's moment of insanity. Again I keyed my helmet to ask them if we had hit anybody. Their silence only confirmed my worst fears. The moment I asked the question, I heard the sounds of a huge firefight erupt outside. I heard Embesi yelling to someone off the tank, "They're in the tree line!"

  Then Embesi's voice came over the intercom, "Fire two rounds of HE into the tree line!"

  "Where in the tree line?" I asked frantically, trying to get an idea what and where the enemy was.

  "It don't matter! Just shoot, goddamn it! Shoot now!"

  It was the dumbest order I had ever heard. It wasn't like Embesi to just waste ammunition, but I did as I was told.

  "On the way!" I yelled for all to hear, and the gun fired and I followed up with the same command again when I heard the breech close behind the second round. The firefight quickly died down, so I got on the intercom again, "Please tell me we didn't kill some friendlies?" I pleaded.

  I still didn't get a response from either one of them. I pulled my comm helmet away from one ear and leaned back with my head at the TC's feet, looking straight up at Embesi. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was staring straight up at someone in a hysterical fit of laughter! I could hear Sergeant Hearn laughing as well.

  "Did you see that guy jump?" asked Embesi, barely getting the words out before he and Hearn broke into more uncontrolled laughter. "The whole battalion was shooting," he added, gasping for breath.

  "Would someone tell me what is so fuckin' funny about killing somebody?" I yelled over the intercom. "And what the fuck was that stupid fire mission all about?"