I knew exactly how the jet's crew must have felt, to still be alive after pulling off such a gutsy maneuver. By sheer coincidence, I'd been looking in the right direction, because the entire incident lasted only three or four seconds. Steele and Truitt missed the whole show except for the finale of the SAM exploding in midair.
"What in hell was that?" they yelled up to me.
"There go two of the luckiest bastards in The Nam today," I said. "Headed home to warm showers, hot food, and a cold brew-after they change their underwear." Truitt and Steele didn't understand a word until I explained it all.
OCEANVIEW WAS VERY PRIMITIVE, with no cooking facilities-not uncommon for any base along the Z. C rats became breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The bathing facilities were even more primitive. Even though we were only a stone's throw from the ocean, walking the hundred meters to take a dip in the South China Sea was out of the question. The beach was too far outside the perimeter to be considered safe; mines and unexploded ordnance were all over the area.
Marine ingenuity came up with the easiest of solutions. Inside the base was a medium-sized bomb crater. Our proximity to the ocean meant for a very high water table, so any hole in the ground naturally filled with water. This one was no exception, so it stayed full all the time-always with the same water. You can imagine (but wouldn't want to) how foul that communal washbasin was, because forty men used it day after day, week after week.
The only thing that changed about that small pond was its color. Mornings found it covered with thick scum that called for a prebath ritual. Before entering the Oceanview Public Baths you brought with you four necessities: towel, soap, Ho Chi Minh sandals, and the ubiquitous fragmentation hand grenade. The frag, for short, went into the water first. Its explosion did nothing to sanitize the pond, but did take care of the floating crud that covered the surface. Down below, I'm sure, lurked organisms that would have thrilled the Centers for Disease Control. But, hell, we were young and indestructible. What was a little greenish-black water going to do to us?
A grenade in the bathtub was always the highlight of a boring day at Oceanview. In fact, everyone brought a frag to the hole, just for the fun of throwing one in. We were just a bunch of unsupervised kids with some really cool fireworks-that is, until the day we got a batch of defective hand grenades.
I had just opened a new case of grenades for the morning's pool party and finished handing them around to my eager playmates. We moseyed down to the pond and laid down our stuff in neat little piles. At the edge of the swimming hole, I pulled the pin on my grenade. "Fire in the hole!" I yelled for everyone to hear, and threw it in the drink.
For you to appreciate this story, I must remind you just how a hand grenade works. It has a handle called a spoon, contoured to the shape of the grenade body. When you want to throw it, you grip one hand around the grenade and the spoon as a single unit. Then, with your other hand, you pull the pin. Beneath the spoon is a strong spring that drives a striker that starts the weapon's fuse. The spoon keeps the grenade "safe" until it leaves your hand and flies off. Once it does, the fuse ignites, giving the thrower a three-to-five-second delay before the grenade detonates.
I lobbed my grenade into the pool. Even before it hit the water, I knew something was wrong. "Did anybody see the spoon fly off?" I asked.
But no one had paid any attention. They all had been backing away from the water. After we waited about ten seconds, I said, "I don't think the damned spoon came off!"
What to do next? No one in his right mind wanted to wade into that inky water and grope for a grenade with his feet. That blind touch might just dislodge a hung-up spoon.
We waited another minute.
"I don't think the spoon released," I repeated. "Throw in another grenade. Maybe that'll dislodge it."
Driver John stepped up to the plate and pulled the pin on his grenade. All eyes followed it as it left his hand. But before it broke the surface of the water, all three of us shouted in unison, "The spoon didn't come offl"
We again waited, not sure what to do-then unanimously decided to throw another one. Certainly there couldn't be three duds in a row!
"Fire in the hole," Steele yelled. He pulled the pin and threw his grenade.
The spoon flew off, and the grenade splashed into the middle of the pond. "That'll take care of 'em," he said cockily, looking at us as if we had all done something wrong and he had gotten it right.
There was no explosion. Three feet below the water's dark surface lay three live grenades.
Who had the guts to go in and retrieve them? Well, no thanks, guys!
At moments like this, there were always one or two big-mouth braggarts around who tried to egg on the others to do something.
The name-calling started, followed by taunts of "chicken!" More men from inside Oceanview began to gather around, and soon the betting started.
The amounts of money kept increasing, tempting only the dumb and the poor. The rest of us smart, rich chickens kept betting more money. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to take such a risk.
Finally, the sum rose to the point at which a grunt stepped forward. For $125, a score of onlookers got to watch a fellow Marine risk blowing himself to Kingdom Come. This was a crowd that went to a car race only to see the wrecks. Anything for a bet.
Then the fool said that he would be right back before he took care of the problem and collect his money. So, we waited. Five minutes went by without our pool boy returning.
"Where is he?" several men began asking. Everyone became itchy waiting for this guy to return, wondering what he had up his sleeve.
A few more minutes went by and our pool cleaner returned with a towel and two huge sausagelike sections of line charge. To get rid of mines, a specialized amtrac could fire a missile that dragged a hundred meters of line charge out in front of the vehicle. Each link was equal in size and weight to a five-pound bag of sugar, and consisted of C4, a plastic explosive. The amtrac would set off the charge, which would clear a safe path through the minefield.
We all stepped back to watch this would-be bet winner push a blasting cap into the soft C4. He attached a two-foot length of time fuse to the cap, then wrapped it all up in his towel so that two people could pick it up between them and swing it into the pool.. He asked for a light.
Nobody had one, so I volunteered and ran back to our tank. What I really wanted was my camera. On my return, he and another volunteer held the contraption between them, and I got the honor of lighting the pool-cleaning bomb.
The fuse was long enough for a twenty-second burn, giving us more than enough time to get away. They swung their homemade device back and forth and, at the count of three, let it fly. It splashed into the middle of the pool. The crowd dropped back a hundred feet from the edge and waited.
And waited. And waited some more.
After a minute went by, we started laughing at the totally impossible odds of all these munitions not going off. People began arguing over the $125. The clever inventor pleaded for more time.
"It could be a slow fuse," he offered, after another minute passed.
Another three minutes, and the moneylenders wanted him to pay up. And there was no way anyone was going into that pool, ever again.
"Nice going, asshole," someone said. "Now nobody can take a bath!"
As we turned to go back to our tanks, we were nearly thrown to the ground by an enormous explosion. Recovering quickly, we looked up and saw a geyser reaching its apex. A solid column of water hung suspended in mid-air. It then collapsed in a torrent back into the spa. I had the presence of mind to snap a picture before the last few gallons had returned to the pool.
"Shower's open!" said the pool cleaner. "Pay up!"
MANY A CLAYMORE ANTIPERSONNEL MINE was pried open in Vietnam to get the C4 explosive inside. A marble-sized ball of C4 could be harmlessly ignited to heat C rats in its intense heat, and we used the plastic compound's explosive qualities for a variety of odd jobs when we didn't have the right equipment o
r needed an expedient fix to a problem.
For example, there was the day a couple of tanks came up from C-4 to go on a sweep with a couple of amtracs full of grunts. We would join them the next day to sweep toward Gio Linh, west into the dangerous Leatherneck Square area. Leatherneck Square was the area between Con Thien, Go Lihn, Dong Ha, and Cam Lo, which on a map marked the corners of a square. It was as notorious as Dodge City had been down south. The next morning, as the grunts and tanks began forming up just outside the perimeter of Oceanview, one of the visiting tanks hit a mine.
It was a bad start for a long sweep, and the grunt CO was pissed to be held up almost before we left the perimeter. Another TC and myself took charge of tackling the repair process. They had to remove some damaged track first, so I went out to scrounge all the tanks for spare track blocks.
I climbed up on Pray for Slack to remove a large piece that had been bolted to the sides of the turret months earlier. Somebody, I soon discovered, had put the bolt in backward, making it impossible for me to get a wrench between the head of the bolt and the turret wall. Worse, it had rusted in place, so there was no way to loosen it. This was a job for C4!
I got out a small amount of the white putty and molded it halfway around the bolt's rusted head. Without my packing something around the charge, it would just dissipate and not do the job. The charge had to be partially covered, so it would channel the explosion and cut off the head of the bolt. I found a couple of half-filled sandbags and packed them around the charge, stuffing them in the space between the track block and the turret wall.
I lit the fuse and ran to the other side of the tank with my crew. The charge went off and the track block fell loose from the side of the turret. Damn, I'm good! I thought to myself.
Using that section, we were able to piece together enough spare track to get the tank back in shape so that it could be towed back to Dong Ha. Even though we fixed it in record time, I was acutely aware that we had held up the entire sweep. I was the last one back on Pray for Slack, and we quickly got underway.
Just as I was putting my comm helmet on, gunner Bob Truitt's voice came over the intercom through my earphones. "Hey, TC?"
"What?" 1 asked.
"Er, ah, you might want to come down here and look at this."
After all the time we had just wasted with the injured tank, I couldn't believe he expected me to leave my position. "Not now, damnit!" I told him. "We're holding up the sweep. We gotta get going."
"Okay," he sighed. "I sure hope you don't plan on shootin' anything except canister."
As I watched the other tanks around us preparing to move out, I was about to ignore his remark. "What are you talking about?"
"It's no big deal," he said with a drop of sarcasm, "If you don't mind the ballistic computer hangin' off the wall."
"Driver, stop the tank!" I dropped down to take a quick gander at whatever Truitt was trying to tell me. There, hanging half off the turret's interior wall by one of its drive couplers was the computer. Nobody could have done this much damage accidentally.
"What the hell did you do?" I asked, thinking he must have really whacked it hard with something.
"Don't know," Truitt said. "It was like that when I got inside."
"Look, it didn't just fall off the fuckin'..."Then I realized, Oh, shit! That piece of track I had blown off the outside of the turret was directly opposite the computer. The shock wave from the explosion must have gone through the wall and knocked the computer off its mount. I must have either packed the C4 charge a little too well, or used too much. My ass would be in deep trouble over this. When they found out I had used C4, they would throw the book at me.
Whenever confronted with a problem, I always asked myself what Embesi would do. Face it, if he was clever enough to convince an entire Marine battalion of a nonexistent machine gun in that tree line on Allen Brook, surely he could figure out a way around this.
Then it came to me! I told Truitt that he didn't yet know what I knew-that during this sweep, we were going to be hit by an RPG.
He understood what I was driving at. "Man! If it hadn't been for that track block hangin' outside the turret, it might have gotten all of us!"
"Exactly!" I replied. "You should thank God for that track block. You're lucky to be alive!"
Chapter 12
The Night the
War Was Lost
ur sweep didn't turn up a thing-something unheard of in Leatherneck Square. We went back to Oceanview. We remained there for two months, without being relieved.
It wasn't so bad. Certainly it beat going out in the bush, and up at Oceanview, there were no officers or staff NCOs to bother us. Nobody wanted to come this far north just to check on two tanks.
The highlight of a stay at Oceanview was the fuel run down to Cua Viet to meet up with a tanker truck. It also meant a visit to the Navy perimeter on the south side of the river's mouth. This was a wind-inyour-face, full-out, run-down-the-beach, half in and half out of the surf. Once there, we had a few hours to kill before we had to head back. Sometimes there would be an LST-Landing Ship, Tank-unloading supplies, which also brought the possibility of getting a hot meal.
The squids loved to trade for anything North Vietnamese in origin-AK-47 rifles, SKS rifles, pith helmets, and pistols. But the item most sought-after by real NVA aficionados was an officer's brass belt buckle with an enameled red star in the center. That was your ticket to a first-class hot meal.
Once we topped off our fuel cells and stomachs, we made the twenty-minute run back north-with our turrets facing inland, always anticipating an ambush. Fortunately, we never had a problem on the stretch of no man's land between Cua Viet and C-4, nor on the run between C-4 and Oceanview.
Running a tank through saltwater had a corrosive effect on its moving parts. After each romp in the surf we had to go over the entire suspension system with a hand-pumped grease gun, injecting fresh grease into the myriad small grease fittings that adorned the suspension system. You had to keep pumping in fresh grease until you saw clean fresh grease ooze out of the seals, thereby purging any saltwater that might have seeped inside.
The day I took command of the tank I had noticed that one set of our roadwheels had a broken grease fitting. The crew told me it had broken off months earlier. Without a new fitting, we couldn't possibly grease the wheel bearings for that particular set of roadwheels. I had notified maintenance via radio, but nothing could be done in the field; the broken fitting would have to be "tapped" out before installing a new one. They said to wait until our next PM, when we would have to go to Dong Ha to have the pack pulled. For now, there was nothing we could do, so we simply ignored the problem.
For several months, this fitting-which normally channeled grease into the roadwheels' high-friction environment-went without lubrication. At the same time, saltwater bathed the bearings and wheel spindle during every run we made up and down the beach.. The result, although perhaps predictable, was still quite dramatic when it finally came to pass.
We were finally due for our scheduled PM, at which time we would get the grease fitting fixed and the gunner's ballistic computer repairedthe one the RPG had knocked off. It meant three days off the Z and we all looked forward to that.
We crossed the Cua Viet using the Mike boat and were on the main highway toward Dong Ha. We were traveling alone-unusual, because tanks always traveled in pairs-but this was a major highway and considered relatively safe, even though it ran atop a berm elevated about five feet above the ground. The road was considered paved by Vietnam standards, which meant it was regularly sprayed with diesel fuel. All that fuel didn't go to waste, because the combination of dirt and oil made for a surface almost as hard as asphalt, difficult for Charlie to mine. Any hole he dug would stand out like a sore thumb.
Flying wide open along a smooth, straight road was always a real rush. Fifty-two tons running full out created a strong wind in our faces, particularly on a road as lightly traveled as this one. Our size combined with our noise g
ave us command over indigenous traffic-and a tremendous ego trip. After all, here was a killing machine on a highway full of jeeps, scooters, and microbuses. The noise of our tracks, accompanied by the throaty whine of our V-12 diesel engine's turbo-chargers, provided all the warning necessary. The locals looked over their shoulders at the noise coming up from behind. As if Moses himself was driving our tank, the lanes would magically part.
Never slowing for anyone or anything, we sped on as if on some life-and-death mission. We loved staring down on their upturned, half-terrified faces, seeing them cling desperately to the edge of the road, giving us road hogs all the room they could without plunging five feet down the steep embankment. At moments like these, a tanker wouldn't trade places with anyone. All the attention we drew only added to our self-esteem. We were arrogant and contemptuous, we were King Shits of the highest order-and we played the part for all it was worth.
Sure, the locals despised us. That was fine by us, because we didn't like them, either. We were proud of who we were and what we did. Here we were, fighting their war, and they didn't act the least bit grateful. Well, we really didn't give a damn; they'd just better not get in our way.
We were riding in the middle of that two-lane road, going flat out. I scanned the countryside and, as far as I could see, the road was completely free of traffic-so much so that I began to get concerned. Lack of local traffic might indicate that something was up.
Suddenly my peripheral vision picked up a hint of movement. Off to my right a blur had come out of nowhere and was rapidly gaining alongside of us, trying to pass us. For a split second, it startled the hell out of me until I looked down and did a double take. Right below me, passing us by, was a set of wheels that looked exactly like the roadwheels off a tank.
"Where the hell did they come from?" I asked Steele, who was equally stupefied. We turned quickly to see if another tank had appeared out of nowhere behind us. But no, there wasn't any. I was baffled.
The wheels had just passed my side of the tank, still moving faster than we were.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 22
