When I asked which two of those tanks outside would be mine, the surprising answer was "None."
"Well, then where are my two tanks?"
"At Oceanview, about two miles north of here."
I didn't think it was possible to go any farther north! Oceanview, right on the DMZ, was the northernmost outpost in all of Vietnam. Any farther north would require a visa!
In 1967 Marine engineers had plowed a path a thousand meters wide and thirty klicks long about two miles south of the DMZ. This strip of land, known as The Trace, was part of the Strong Point Obstacle System (SPOS). Along and beyond The Trace was a string of fire bases that crossed the neck of South Vietnam beginning with C-4 on the coast, followed by Gio Linh, Con Thien, the Rockpile, and Khe Sanh on the Laotian border. Marines referred to the whole system as the McNamara Line. The job of plowing such a huge swath of land never went any farther west than Con Thien following the loss of many bulldozers and their crews.
The Marines were bitterly opposed to the concept. Marine philosophy was to take the war to the enemy, not sit behind barbed wire. But we had to live with it, even though it tied us down to static defensive positions like C-4.
The tanks at C-4 and Oceanview rotated once a week, and my section's two tanks were due to return the next day. I would have one week to become acquainted with the crews, look the tanks over, and get a feeling for what had been thrust upon me.
The next morning, "my" two tanks from Oceanview rumbled into the C-4 compound and proceeded to the bunker area housing the tank crews. The LT greeted them and introduced me as their new TC and section leader.
Both crews immediately had me under scrutiny. All they knew for sure was that there was a new corporal in town. Confronted by this unknown leader, they were naturally leery. I knew what they were thinking: Does this new guy have any combat experience? I explained my background, assuring them their new TC was no FNG. In fact, I had logged more time in-country then they had, which gave me instant credibility. John's good words helped to ease their concerns.
I immediately wanted to look over both tanks, particularly mine. When the crew pointed to my vehicle, I couldn't believe my luck-it was brand new, a recent replacement for an older tank that had been in-country since 1965.
We stood watch as a crew for the first time that night and I immediately ran afoul of their procedures. As soon as we pulled into our position on C-4's berm, I told my loader. Bob Steele, to load a canister round in the main gun.
I couldn't believe the looks on their faces. "They don't let you do that in Third Tanks" said the loader. "It's against battalion policy to have a loaded main gun."
That was a stupid order, written by some pencil-pushing, noncombatant officer back in the rear who had never stood a night on watch or faced a human-wave attack. If we got hit I wanted a canister round going out first. "The round stays," I told him, "until the battalion CO starts standing watch with us."
Looking over the ammunition mix stored on board, I saw another thing that disturbed me. Of all the places we stored ammo on the vehicle, the ready rack was the first place the loader reached for when shit hit the proverbial fan. Because this rack held only nine rounds, what we chose to carry there was an important decision, to be made only by the TC.
Down south, Embesi's ready rack had a heavy emphasis on canister, five rounds' worth. The other four rounds were two each of HE and beehive. Imagine my shock when I looked down through the loader's hatch to find three rounds of HEAT in the ready rack's prime location, along with four flechette rounds and only two canister rounds.
"Steele!" I shouted. If anyone knew why the ready rack held such a dumb mix of ammo, it would be my loader. Bob Steele, a young, lightskinned black man from Pittsburgh, climbed the tank and joined me near his hatch. "What the fuck is all this HEAT doing in the ready rack?" I asked him. "And why isn't there more canister?" Little did I know that I was about to get my first lesson into the differences that 170 miles made.
Steele seemed surprised that I didn't like the mix I was pointing at. "That's how all the tanks are set up."
"You really think we're going to need HEAT in front of the next tree line we take on?"
"Hell, no! It's for the Russian tanks!"
"The NVAs got tanks up here?" I asked. "You got to be shittin' me!"
"We ain't seen'em yet, but their tracks have been spotted a few times."
Bob Steele turned out to be the fastest, strongest loader I ever knew. Built like nobody's business, he could easily muscle the large rounds around with agility. With him as my loader we would win a bet against two other tank crews on a feat that was almost impossible-getting three main gun rounds in the air at once!
AFTER MY EXPERIENCE WITH how Better Living Thru Canister's name turned out to be prophetic, superstition told me that this new vehicle needed a good name, too. What brought good luck once might work again. I refused to name the tank Michelle after my sweetheart back home, as so many TCs did. I wanted the crewmen to feel they were part of a group effort in this decision. As my first deliberate act of trying to build a team, I shared with the crew Better Living's name and its ironic outcome, then asked them to come up with some ideas for this one.
My gunner was Bob Truitt, a nice guy who always wore a smile. John, the driver, was from Las Vegas. Cool and laid-back, he kept mostly to himself. If "dude" ever fit an individual, it was John. He was in love with an Okinawan woman, and for good luck, he had painted her name in very small letters on the front of the tank, close to where he sat. He always looked like he was on drugs, but it was just his nature, not his habit. John said that until he rotated back to The World, his only request would be, "Hey man, how about cuttin' me a little slack?"
The DMZ had been a little too intense for his liking, and he thought he deserved a break. So did the rest of the crew. They agreed they could all use a little more slack from the war on the Z-and that kicked off the christening process. After spending thirteen months in Southern California before reaching The Nam, I thought the popular surfer's motto, "pray for surf," had some merit as a starting point-particularly if we changed the noun.
I got some masking tape and began to outline "Pray for Slack" on our gun tube. Pray for Slack was as fitting a name as my last tank's, every bit as prophetic, and certainly more original than Judy. We never worked with grunts who didn't comment on that name. It was one they could bond with-and, as I'd learned from Embesi, bonding with the grunts was added life insurance.
Now IT WAS OUR TURN to go up to Oceanview. I listened on the tank radio for word that the tanks up there were leaving. Before long, I got the messages and circled a finger over my head, "Crank'em up!" Looking over at my other tank, I saw they were doing the same. I left behind John Wear; it would be the last time we'd see each other for quite a while.
We pulled out of C-4 and raced up the beach, skirting the ocean's waves to avoid any possible mines planted in the dry sand. Pretty soon we could make out two tanks coming toward us. I told the driver to steer a little deeper into the surf to give them room to pass. We were quite close as we passed one another at thirty-five miles an hour.
The TC and his gunner waved to us from their tank, and we returned the same. My driver knew where to turn left into the tiny little fire base of Oceanview, or I would have gone right by it. There wasn't much to look at. If not for its thirty-foot wooden tower, I'd have missed it entirely.
The small outpost was only a hundred meters in diameter surrounded by a single strand of razor wire. Can't be too many troops here, I figured. Maybe a platoon, at the most. Then I spotted two Army M41 Dusters sitting on the western perimeter. Up until then, I had seen only pictures of these potent vehicles, with twin 40mm antiaircraft guns-also called pom-pom guns-mounted on a small-tracked chassis. I didn't know the Army was operating this far north in I Corps.
What was the purpose of this little cluster of sand dunes? There was no artillery at Oceanview, so technically it wasn't a fire base, just an outpost. I couldn't get over how few grunts w
ere manning the perimeter. What had we gotten ourselves into?
Pray for Slack drove to the top of the second highest sand dune-the tower was sitting on the tallest one. John stopped right on top of the dune, and already I began to see some problems. The dune ran north and south, parallel to the beach, which was one hundred meters behind us. Our tank's position was to cover the western approaches to the outpost. In the soft sand, it wasn't possible to dig a slot for the tank to pull into, and the dune was too steep to allow the tank's bow to face due west. Therefore, the tank could only sit parallel to the perimeter, which wasn't its best defensive orientation. Generally, we tried to keep a tank's thicker bow facing the enemy.
I could see one thing we would have to do immediately-build a wall out of sandbags, the entire length of the tank and as high as our fenders. I was surprised this hadn't been done before. The crew wasn't happy with their new TC's decision, but they knew I was right.
Eventually I grew to like the tank sitting sideways, relative to the perimeter and parallel to the wire. It had advantages over the usual frontin-first position I was used to. For one thing, it increased our mobility two-fold. Now, in an emergency, I had two directions I could move in, whereas a tank parked in a slot could only back out. And the sideways orientation gave the grunts an unexpected benefit by extending the main gun farther out over the perimeter-reducing the effect of the muzzle blast, which could knock a man over.
Oceanview was only one hundred meters inland from the South China Sea. Stand on top of the tank's armor plate-the flat area over the tank's engine-and you could look up the coast into North Vietnam. The farther north you looked, the more the shoreline swung out into the ocean. Using the main gun's telescope, I could see up the beach for ten miles. Occasionally we saw North Vietnamese soldiers swimming or fishing in the surf, but never more than two or three of them at a time. This became the basis for a game that helped ease the boredom of sitting around doing nothing.
The effective range of an M48's main gun was 4,400 meters, or just under three miles. If you could see it and it wasn't more than 4,400 meters away, there was an eighty percent chance of hitting it on the first shot. Anything farther away was beyond the range of the tank's ballistic computer. That called for a crapshoot involving parallax, wind speed, wind direction, the cant of the gun, wear on the barrel, and a liberal employment of Scientific Wild-Ass Guesswork. SWAG was what made a game of it, because everybody had a different opinion as to how much elevation or deflection to add to the gun. In short, it took a lot of luck to land a round even remotely close to a target-like these soldier-fishermen, who were at least six miles away.
Back in The World, one of the many things Embesi had taught me was the dilemma of parallax in tank gunnery. It wasn't mentioned in any training manual, just something he had learned in his years of experience: Why would a projectile sometimes hit to the left or right of a target?
The cause of the problem, Embesi realized, was that a gunner's sights were four feet to the right of the main gun. When we bore-sighted the gun and optics, we aligned the two at a known target 1,200 meters away. Therefore, the farther away from 1,200 meters any target was, the more the main gun began shooting to its right.
To see for yourself what I mean, close one eye and point your finger at some object. Then close that eye and open the other one, and you'll see your finger's no longer pointing at the same spot. When looking at a target as far away as the fishermen, this problem only multiplied.
Our seaside shooting gallery game cost Uncle Sam $200 a pop (in 1960s dollars, when a new Corvette sold for $5,000). We weren't content to waste a thirteen-cent rifle bullet. Expense wasn't an issue; our ammunition was free. Besides, the shots we were attempting were five to eight miles out-ten times the distance made by any sniper with a rifle. For our purposes, 90mm projectiles were ideal because the large tracer element in their tails made their flight easy to monitor. We needed to see where each projectile went in order to adjust for the next shot.
The first time I got to play Shoot the Fishermen was during our first week at Oceanview. My crew introduced me to it; they said that due to the ridiculous distances involved, nobody was very good at it. The day they let me try a hand at it, I got my chance to impress my crew just how good I really was-and I found out just how lucky I was.
Truitt, the gunner, was sitting up on the turret, looking north through the TC's binoculars. "Hey! Bob!" he yelled down, "We got us a fisherman!"
I climbed up on the tank. The rest of the bored crew scurried up for a look. Truitt had already jumped down into his gunner's seat and was traversing the turret to the north, trying to acquire the target through the tank's powerful telescope.
Picking up the binoculars, I discovered Charlie standing at the water's edge, fishing in the surf; I guessed he was about six miles away. Using SWAG, I made my best estimate and laid the main gun. This was always a fun moment, because everyone offered his own opinion and expertise on where to point the gun. However, I had a distinct advantage over my crewmen because I remembered the parallax dilemma and compensated for the additional range.
Using Embesi Windage (a good guess, factoring in the wind), I moved the gun a few degrees to the left. That immediately prompted a string of four-letter words from Truitt, who moved the gun back again so that his crosshairs were back on the fisherman. Once more, I moved the gun off the target and told him to leave it alone.
"You ain't gonna hit shit with that," he warned me.
"From what you've told me, you haven't been able to hit shit anyway. Right?"
"You're way off to the left!" he protested.
"Well, we'll see, won't we?" My shot might land long or short, I thought, but at least be it would be on line with the target.
There was no convincing Truitt. "You're crazy!" he added helplessly.
I asked the loader for an HE round. I rechecked all my guesswork, particularly the lateral offset of the sights and the elevation.
"On the way!" I yelled, signaling to all that I was going to squeeze one off.
Boom! We watched the projectile and its tracer speed away from us. Early in its flight, it appeared to be way too high. But then it started to arc on its trajectory, right on line with the fisherman, as it almost vanished from sight.
"Damn!" Steele said. "We just might hit this guy!"
Just when the tracer looked as if it was going to hit the NVA fisherman in the head, it passed by what must have been only a foot in front of him!
"Holy shit!" said Steele.
"Damn, you're good!" said the doubting Truitt.
I had already experienced the sound a rifle bullet makes as it passes close to your head. Like someone snapping a twig, or the cap in a toy gun, it's actually the sound of the bullet-an object only a third of an inch in diameter-breaking the sound barrier. The tank projectile we were watching was three and a half inches in diameter, so I could only guess at what Charlie must have heard as it passed inches in front of him. From the way he jumped and dropped his fishing pole, it must have made one hell of a crack.
The HE round impacted what looked like fifty feet farther down the beach from him. Already the fisherman was bolting for the sand dunes, leaving behind his fishing pole, a small pile of clothes, and his weapon. It had to be one of the all-time closest misses a tank ever made. Evidently, the crew had attempted these shots before, but judging by their loud and boisterous reaction now they had never gotten even remotely close to hitting anything.
Suddenly I wasn't just an FNG tank commander. My credibility and esteem grew enormously, right when I needed them most. The crew talked about my prowess with the other crews. They never realized I had made only one phenomenally lucky guess that surprised even me-but I sure wasn't about to tell them.
THE BORING DAYS RAN TOGETHER. We never knew what day of the week it was. While sitting on top of the tank on yet another hot afternoon, I turned my head north to peer into the DMZ when movement caught my eye.
By sheer luck, I happened to be looking in the
right direction and saw something most everyone else missed until it was over. It occurred so quickly that, at first, none of us was sure exactly what happened. It was an oddball moment when the war became very real for somebody else, and I was just an innocent bystander.
Half a mile inland, an F-4 Phantom was flying due south out of the DMZ at a terrific speed, about as low to the ground as a jet can without taxiing. Just as the plane got even with our outpost, my attention was drawn to a brown blur trailing behind it. At first, I guessed that the plane was dragging something-until I saw that the "something" was closing on the aircraft, and rapidly. As the blur got closer to our position, still on the Phantom's tail, it began to look more like a flying telephone pole. As we learned later, it was a Soviet heat-seeking surface-to-air missile-fired from North Vietnam, no doubt-that had locked onto the Phantom's exhaust.
Hugging the ground, the jet roared by us about half a mile away. The missile looked to be only two hundred meters behind when suddenly the plane went into a steep, near-vertical climb, issuing a huge plume of exhaust, followed by a thundering ka-boom! An instant later, the very point where the Phantom had turned upward, the SAM exploded in mid-air.
Later, a FAC told us that the jet's radar intercept officer (RIO), sitting behind the pilot, would have been aware of the SAM on their tail. But the Phantom was too low and too slow to try any evasive maneuvers. Its only hope was to draw the missile in and then, at the critical moment, light both afterburners. The idea was to leave a significant hot spot behind in the air to fool the heat-seeker on the SAM, making it think it had entered the plane's exhaust pipe. Monitoring the missile's progress electronically, the Phantom's RIO told the pilot when to make his desperate pull-up maneuver. The ka-boom was the jet's afterburners kicking in.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 21
