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

by Robert E. Peavey

  Ka-chung! Two seconds after I fired, our loader had another canister round in the chamber. I had already switched over to the machine gun and was laying down a deadly swath of .30-caliber fire. Tracers ripped into the tree line, some ricocheting off the ground and flying wildly into the air. From my gunner's seat, it looked like somebody had strung the trees with twinkling Christmas lights.

  "On the way!" Another 90mm canister round swept over the tree line, catching one of the enemy RPG teams.

  Hearn's voice came over the intercom: "Watch out for the grunts, they're assaulting the tree line. Use the thirty!" He meant the .30-caliber machine gun.

  I followed with one more "On the way!" and let fly another canister round that pruned the trees a little more, instantly eliminating twigs and branches. I heard Hearn open up with the .50, though I couldn't see what he was shooting at. Suddenly his gun stopped and the turret was taken out of my control. The tank commander had grabbed his override handle and was turning the turret to the left. I could only watch as scenery slid by my sights.

  "The gooks are running into a temple!" he yelled as he gave me back control of the turret after I yelled, "Identified!"

  I saw what he was talking about-a small stone structure with kind of a red brick roof. Three NVA with their distinctive pith helmets ran into the structure. I turned to the loader and yelled, "Gimme an HE on delay!"

  It took him a few seconds to set the fuse on the High Explosive round. The breech slammed shut. "Up!" he yelled.

  "On the way!" I replied as I squeezed the electric triggers again. The main gun kicked back and dropped another hot shell casing on the turret floor. I watched the red tracer on the back of the projectile as it punched its way right into the temple.

  Because of the short delay we put on the projectile's fuse, it didn't detonate against the stone wall, as it would normally have. Instead, the ensuing explosion took place inside the temple, making it far more effective. The roof went straight up, and the walls blew out. Stones, mortar, and body parts flew in all directions. Yet, still standing where the temple once stood was a gook, AK-47 in hand. He spun around on wobbly legs like he was drunk until he keeled over. We had just gotten our first sure kills!

  The two tanks overwhelmed the enemy fire, and the grunts were able to advance against the enemy position. The fight was over, just as the other road-sweep team arrived from the opposite direction. The grunts policed the area of weapons, equipment, ammunition, and bodies-theirs and ours. The loader threw out the huge brass shells that had piled up on the turret floor while I kept sweeping the turret back and forth, peering into the tree line, looking for any signs of Charlie. But things had pretty much quieted down.

  The air inside the turret was thick with fumes from the expended shells and the smoke from the machine gun. I felt like I had been down there all morning and thought I would go crazy without a breath of fresh air. I begged Hearn to let me take a breather for just a few minutes, and he said, "Okay."

  I stood up, halfway out of the loader's hatch, grateful for the fresh air. I could have sworn it was afternoon. But when I looked at my watch, only fifteen minutes had elapsed! It was my first firefight, but as I stood there, sucking in deep breaths, I was about to get another first-ever sight.

  Every FNG arrived in-country with some trepidation of how he would react under fire, and a morbid curiosity to see his first enemy dead. I had been trained to kill the enemy, but no one prepared me for the sight of my first dead and wounded Marines.

  Coming toward our tank were four grunts, each holding one corner of a rain poncho, carrying one of their own to the truck at the rear of the column. As they drew closer, I couldn't help but stare. The boy lay face-up, his head hanging over the poncho's edge and bobbing with each stride of his bearers. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open, as if frozen in a yawn. With his bright blond hair, almost like a surfer's and far too long for any Marine I had ever seen, he seemed especially young. The only hint of his demise was a trickle of blood that ran down his cheek. Had it not been for his uniform, I could have imagined him straight off a farm in Kansas, a teenager dressed in Army clothes, playing at war. He looked too young to be here, too young to be dead-and then it suddenly hit me. We were all teenagers, and this was no training exercise. I had just gone through the real thing. For the first time in my life, targets had shot back!

  The all-too-real, short little firefight was the difference between living the war vicariously through news reports and returning veterans stories, and having actually participated in it. Even now, I'm amazed at how naive I was. Of course I knew we would suffer casualties, but the finality of death on display sent a chill down my back. As one of the the poncho bearers walked past, he looked up at me and made eye contact. He had caught me watching. I quickly turned my head; I felt as if I had broken some unwritten law.

  I never recalled that boy's face, only his blond hair waving like wheat in a gentle summer breeze. My eyes welled up for this total stranger, alive only seconds earlier. I never learned his name.

  Trailing behind the four bearers, a corpsman helped a wounded Marine along. They brought him up to sit on the back of our tank. Where his cheek should have been was a hole about the size of a quarter. Blood flowed freely from his mouth, and within the wound. I could make out his teeth and jawbone. I had seen enough. I slid back down into the turret and got back in my seat. I no longer felt the heat; a chill went through me that lasted quite some time.

  I rested my head against the gunner's sight. Its narrow field of vision had shielded me from the reality of the outside world, which was now catching up to me. The hot minutes of the firefight had seemed more like a drill with no consequences-no different than the thirteen months of practice war games back in The World at Camp Pendleton. The twinkling lights in the tree line looked exactly the same as the blanks fired at us in mock ambushes in California. Only these weren't blanks.

  I came up for another breath of air. Our loader was helping some of the grunts-whose truck had been blown up-climb up on our tank. Now we would provide their transportation. Glancing around, I spotted several grunts out by the tree line, dragging dead NVA by their ankles. The sight of these dead bodies was deeply satisfying. We hated the inhuman little bastards. No Marine I ever met turned away from looking at dead North Vietnamese.

  One of the grunts came up on the tank carrying an NVA pith helmet and pack. Going through the pack, he came across the photograph of a young woman. Charlie had a girlfriend? I couldn't believe it. Suddenly Mr. Charles seemed a little more human-but not nearly enough.

  Adrenaline from the ambush was still pumping through our veins when we got back to the bridge. All of us agreed: That morning's firefight had been exhilarating. Even though I would witness more ambushes over the coming year it was satisfying to have that first one behind me. I performed my job and was still among the living! Every new guy, in the back of his mind, harbored doubts about his performance under fire. Now, at least a few of mine were laid to rest.

  Shortly after the engagement, we all suffered from the same malady-the shakes. As we discussed the day's events, sharing our perspective of the firefight, the reality of it all began to sink in. That morning's fight had been strictly the kind of mindless, knee-jerk reaction embedded in us by our training back at Pendleton. Fear showed itself only when we had time to realize what we had just gone through and how close we might have come to being hit.

  Cigarettes shook from our lips as we tried to light them. Shaking hands kept chasing the moving cigarettes. We were now combatveteran Marines.

  The Dirty Two Dozen, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 5th Tanks at 2/27's firebase. (Back left is SSgt. Robert Embesi standing next to Lieutenant Gilliam. Author is on far right with no hat. Gary Gibson middle of front row with hands clasped. Sergeant Hearn kneeling in front of author. Taken a few days before Operation Allen Brook.)

  Mother's Worry at 1st Tank Battalion's Tank Park. Welcome to Vietnam.

  Better Living Thru Canister sinking into what
appeared to be dry ground outside Da Nang during what became known as Johnstone's Folly.

  The author after completing the paint job on the gun tube.

  The crew of Better Living Thru Canister during Allen Brook. (Left to right standing: author, SSgt. Bob Embesi and Sergeant Hearn. Richards, the driver, is sitting on tank.)

  Forty-two and still counting on Better Living Thru Canister. (Author and Richards)

  The author wearing Korean Marine utilities after his fell apart.

  The fire control tower where spotters for the USS New Jersey would call in fire from her huge 16-inch diameter guns.

  Pray for Slack on top of the dune with gun facing due west.

  One of two Army M42 Dusters at Oceanview.

  A grenade clears off the scum of the swimming hole.

  The pool cleaning bomb takes care of all the dud grenades.

  North Vietnamese 152mm artillery round lands near author's tent at tank park in Dong Ha.

  Author's prized fireman boots cut in half by shrapnel; it could have been the author!

  The crew of Pray For Slack (Standing: Bob Steele, Bob Truitt; Driver, and author on the tank.)

  Tank hits mine inside the perimeter at Oceanview.

  Chapter 6

  Time

  here were two types of time in The Nam-"long" and "slow." Long time was what you experienced, day in and day out. The worst kind of long time was standing watch at night. You peered relentlessly into the darkness, alert for any sight or sounds of Charlie. That was the kind of time that never moved, time that made you look at your wristwatch once every hour, to find that only five minutes had passed since you last checked it. A two-hour watch was the longest two hours you'd ever spend in The Nam-and you got to do it every single night, for more than a year.

  SLOW TIME, THE OTI IER KIND, could turn seconds into minutes, and several minutes into half a day-as I'd experienced in my first firefight. It was like throwing the slow-motion switch on a movie projector. Speech became slurred. Volume went down. The world moved at the pace of cold honey pouring out of a bottle. For me, firefights always occurred in slow time. But my strangest experience with slow time wasn't during combat and was mysteriously shared with a fellow crewman.

  We were one of two tanks guarding the Ha Dong Bridge, each on opposite sides of the river. Our tank was positioned just off the side of the road, where the southbound traffic had to bear right and go down the embankment to the pontoon wooden bridge. We rarely visited the other tank crew. It wasn't the distance that kept us from socializing with them, it was the heat. It was too damned hot to walk, so why bother if we didn't have to? Plus I had my own mantra: Never get off the tank. The farther I ventured from its safety, the more uneasy I felt.

  Behind us lay the river and the remains of an old French railroad bridge of box-truss construction, similar to its many counterparts back in The World. Like all the metal bridges in this country, its back had been broken by an explosion in somebody else's war, fifteen years earlier, its steel spans now half-submerged in the middle of the water, its railroad ties and tracks now long gone. But for its trestles, still connected at both ends of the river, we'd have never guessed that this well-traveled, busy road had been a railroad line in a previous life.

  We had been sitting at this bridge for more than a month, so bored that we actually looked forward to the morning road sweeps, just for the chance to do something. A tank crew lived on its tank, ate meals on its tank, slept on its tank, and stood watch on its tank. About the only times we ever got off was to perform routine maintenance on the suspension system, take a bath, or relieve ourselves. During the day we watched the traffic but not, as you might expect, for security reasons-that was the grunts' job. We just watched the hundreds of six-bys (the ubiquitous truck used by all of America's military) hoping to recognize somebody from home. There was also a lot of civilian traffic as well, made up of mopeds, minibuses, and bicycles. And, of course, we always had a radio.

  On this typical just-another-hot-humid day, a new grunt unit was moving in to relieve the infantry platoon that had sat with us for the past two weeks. Our tanks never budged, but the grunts rotated in and out every two weeks like clockwork. Accompanying them was their platoon leader, a Marine lieutenant.

  If this war had a glossary of self-evident axioms, number one would be: The most dangerous thing in the Marine Corps is a lieutenant with a map.

  No matter what anybody says, map reading is an art form. A lot of additional training was wasted on those who couldn't understand that a military topographical map is a two-dimensional, spatial, and mathematical relationship of the three-dimensional world around them. In my experience, either you grasped that, or you didn't.

  When picking up a map, you first oriented it with landmarks around you, so that the map's north was aligned with magnetic north. Only then could you establish your position and record your coordinates. The next step was finding the location and associated coordinates of your target-which could be anything from a true military objective to simply someplace you wanted to wind up.

  When the shit hit the fan, it wasn't unheard of for someone under lots of pressure to get his coordinates mixed up. I don't mean mixed up, as in the wrong order. I mean that the guy on the radio might give his own grid coordinates instead of the target's. You can guess where the first round landed! Well, on this particular day at the Ha Dong Bridge, we saw one of the Corps' finest do exactly that.

  None of us suspected that this incoming unit was any different than all the others that had passed through before. The platoon's leader was a second lieutenant-the lowest kind of officer there is. Worse yet, he was a boot, a rookie, an FNG. Had any of us known that, we would have taken different precautions. Whenever a grunt unit was setting up in a new position, it was SOP-standard operating procedure-to register the supporting artillery unit's guns.

  Supporting artillery was often at a fire base miles away, but it could spell the difference between life and death during an enemy attack. Registering the guns was a way of getting artillery to respond on target during the hectic moments of battle; it was particularly valuable at night. The process involved the firing of a smoke round safely out in front of friendly lines from coordinates provided by the infantry leader.

  The artillery battery recorded the setting on the guns after they fired the smoke round. Both parties-the infantry commander and the artillery battery-now had a reference point from which the infantry commander could direct the guns during an attack.

  Little did we know that Axiom Number One had gone into effect. The lieutenant was standing on top of his CP (command post) about a hundred feet to our rear, at the base of the old steel bridge. Through his handset, he gave a set of coordinates to the gun battery back at 2/27's fire base.

  Everyone around the perimeter was alerted to expect an artillery round to come cruising overhead in a few minutes. Richards, the driver on our tank, and I climbed up and sat cross-legged on top of the turret to watch. It was always fun to see how good someone was when requesting an "arty" mission. (I did mention how bored we were, didn't I?)

  We were looking out into the field in front of us, waiting for the show to start. We heard the distant report of a 105mm howitzer from 2/27's fire base. "Round out!" yelled the lieutenant, alerting everyone that a friendly round of artillery was on its way.

  Richards and I waited for the sound of the shell cruising overhead just before impact. But we never got to hear it. Instead, from directly behind us came a startling explosion-Crack!-followed by what sounded like the largest, low-frequency Chinese gong ever heard: Thwong-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g!

  The noise jerked our heads around. A cloud of white smoke showered over the still vibrating bridge. People were diving for cover including the LT, who had given the guns his own coordinates instead of those far out in the field. Fortunately for him, the shell had landed short-scarcely seventy-five feet behind him, but short nonetheless!

  Richards and I were sitting about three feet apart. As we looked over ou
r shoulders at the cloud above the bridge, we both said, "Holy shit!" We couldn't believe we had just hit our own bridge! At the same instant, from out of the smoke, a large piece of black steel came whirling through the air, turning slowly on its own axis.

  Already my brain had entered slow time; my real-life movie had suddenly switched into slow motion. As I watched the approach of the sixfoot lawnmower blade, I could see that it was a huge piece of angle iron that must have easily weighed 150 pounds. We were directly in its pathabout to be decapitated!

  Yet in slow time, it was rotating ever so leisurely, spinning so tediously slow. Time had slowed so drastically, in fact, that I began to realize that it wasn't going to hit us. Its flat spin appeared perfectly timed to pass harmlessly through the three-foot space between us! Richards and I wouldn't need to budge an inch.

  And so it came to pass. Neither of us ducked or so much as flinched as that enormous piece of angle iron whirled harmlessly between us. We just turned our heads to follow its flight for another hundred feet until it finally hit the ground, skidding along the road and raising a cloud of dust.

  Slowly Richards and I locked eyes with each other. For the second time, we both uttered, "Holy shit!" in unison. Then, it was just like someone threw a switch. The movie projector's speed went back to normal. I couldn't believe that we had come within inches of becoming headless.

  Stranger still was the way we each recollected the event. As Richards and I recounted what had just happened, it suddenly became obvious that we had both seen it happen the same way, in slow time!

  Several grunts ran over to our tank. "Hey, are you guys all right? You coulda been killed! Why didn't you duck?"

  "We didn't have to," was our reply.

  Our shocked audience left, shaking their heads. I turned to Richards. "Why didn't you duck?" I asked.