Every Marine was asking the same question: Where in hell was our air support? We hadn't received any since this operation began, and we were getting our asses torn up by a tenacious enemy. The heat was intolerable, and the grunts had no incentive to move, having already lost one-quarter of their men over the last three days. Our situation was growing increasingly precarious.
The berm's earthen wall was impenetrable. There was no way around it, except for an underpass about five hundred meters to our right. On our left, the berm ended at the river's edge, where it was replaced by a series of eight very large concrete caissons that marched across the river. Some of them still had their bridge sections intact, but most, true to Vietnam form, were down in the water. These physical barriers had us pinned on two sides and the NVA were making it all work to their advantage. Unless something changed fast, we would soon run out of daylight.
About that time, we witnessed what most of us thought was divine intervention. Had the river parted, it wouldn't have been half as aweinspiring as those two little Marine A-4 attack jets, called Skyhawks, that appeared from out of nowhere. Where had they come from? How had they heard about our plight? That evening, the atheists among us suddenly found religion.
To us the little planes looked every bit as large as 747 jumbo jets. Skyhawks were small delta-winged attack aircraft that specialized in tactical air-ground support and were notorious for the large bomb loads they could deliver. As they circled overhead, getting the lay of the land, we saw they were fully loaded with ordnance.
Tanks were fortunate to carry three different radios, affording us the benefit of monitoring several different frequencies at the same time. We listened to the grunts on one or two frequencies, plus we had a third one for tank-to-tank communication. So, unlike the average grunt, a tank crewman was usually pretty well informed and had a fine understanding of the overall picture. Now that those two pilots could see our position, it was the only time I ever heard a pilot acknowledge the desperate situation we were in: "You got NVA on the berm, and they're trying to flank your right," came one of the angel's voices. "You boys look like you're having fun down there!" They were talking to the forward air controller (FAC) who was standing near our tank.
"Why don't you come down here, smart ass," I muttered to myself, "and see what a Far East vacation is really like?"
They came in low, parallel to the berm, one ten seconds behind the other. Each was loaded with two napalm bombs and six Snake Eyes-the nickname for 250-pound bombs with speed brakes on the back of them, which gave the airplane that dropped them a chance to get out of range before they went off. They flew over the berm in a continuous circle. As one dropped its ordnance, the other lined up for its attack run. With each pass, the grunts cheered and yelled, "Get some!"
At that point, suddenly, all enemy fire ceased. We got a short breather that gave us time to move ammo around inside the tank and pull more machine gun ammo out of the gypsy rack. It was the quietest part of the day as the Skyhawks made run after run on the berm. They saw the jam that we were in and were well aware of what they had just done for us. Even after they had expended their napalm and Snake Eyes-Nape and Snake-they made several more runs using their 20mm cannons.
The FAC, himself a Marine pilot, and true to Marine Corps philosophy, was supporting the infantrymen in the field with his expertise. He was humpin' it with the grunts in the boonies in order to direct the air support-when and if we got it. I have no idea how the pilots got assigned as FACs, but it made for unparalleled coordination between ground and air. After the bomb run the unlucky FAC knew he wasn't going back to any air-conditioned hooches, hot showers, or warm meals like his brothers overhead. He had to live in the grass with the mud and the bugs, just like us real Marines.
Marine Air made for the finest, most precise air-ground support in the world. During my thirteen-month tour, I was to experience air support from all three services-Air Force, Navy, and Marine. The vast difference between them calls for three more of Peavey's Axioms:
Axiom Number Three: If you're getting air support and you can't tell what kind of plane it is, you're getting it from the Air Force.
Axiom Number Four: If the plane is low enough that you can read NAVY on the side of the plane, you're getting naval air support.
Axiom Number Five: If you can see the color of the pilot's eyes, you're getting Marine air support.
That afternoon, the grunts knew who was delivering this ordnance, because it arrived low and right on top of the berm. Then, having expended all of their heavy ordnance, the Skyhawk pilots kept working the area over with their 20mm cannons while reporting that we had NVA all around us.
After their last gun run, we witnessed a glorious sight none of us had ever seen before. The two Skyhawks came in behind our backs, this time perpendicular to the berm and only fifty feet off the ground. Each announced his departure by pulling up over the berm at a steep angle and putting his plane in a victory roll! The aerials atop the tanks whipped back and forth with the rush of air. The noise was deafening. Everyone loved it. The grunts stood up and cheered!
Their victory roll was an acknowledgment that they understood they had probably saved us. The two angels who appeared out of nowhere continued their climb and dissolved into the sky.
This time, the grunts assaulted the berm and easily took the commanding position. We consolidated our position and began the job of collecting the dead and all the weapons strewn on the battlefieldCharlie's and ours. The number of our wounded overwhelmed the few helicopters that made it in that afternoon. We left it to the tanks and amtracs to carry out the dead.
The tank commanders got together for a coin toss, flipping to see who would get to be the weapons tank and who would be the body tank. It was the fair way of determining which tank would have to carry the bodies. No one wanted to be the body tank. Blood would drip through the grill doors and onto the hot engine, leaving a profound and lasting smell. The tank would reek until its next quarterly preventive maintenance-an oil change every twelve weeks, when the engine was steam-cleaned.
Embesi won the coin toss, making us the weapons tank. It meant that all weapons and packs the grunts found on the field would get stacked on the back of our tank. "Shit!" said the losing TC, "I just got PM'd last week!" He would have to live with the stench for three long months.
Our luck continued; it was nothing short of phenomenal.
Hearn and I began stacking the weapons as the grunts handed them up to us-orphaned rifles, their master's packs, even loose ammunition. We didn't leave anything behind for Charlie. I was kneeling on the back of the tank taking whatever they passed up to me when suddenly I found myself clutching an M14 rifle.
I had thought these were long gone from The Nam by now. All the 7.62mm M14s had been replaced by the notorious 5.56mm M16, except for a few snipers who preferred the M14's longer reach. How this one got handed to me I'll never know because most grunts didn't trust the M16. Well, if nobody else wanted to keep this M14, I did! Quickly I hid it in the gypsy rack. This lone rifle would stay with me for the rest of my tour and save my life six months later.
While we stacked the weapons on our tank, I couldn't help but glance over at the tank handling the bodies. It was like witnessing some bizarre ritual in "The Twilight Zone." Grunts lifted their dead comrades up over their heads and passed them up to the tank crew, as if offering up sacrifices to the Tank God. The crew gently placed each corpse along with the others, four one way, four another. Marine dead were always treated with respect.
I was snapped back to reality when a grunt shouted up, "Hey, man, you gonna take these or what?"
He was holding a half dozen M16s over his head. He looked over at the grisly scene that had gotten my attention, then looked back up at me, realizing that it had affected me.
"Just be glad it ain't you, man," he said. "Don't pay no'tention to'em. They be just not as smart as me and you."
"They were not as smart as you and me" would live with me for the rest of my to
ur. Some of the living found it easier to blame the dead, as if they had caused their own demise. The thinking was, it was always their fault. They had needlessly exposed themselves to enemy fire. Or hadn't seen the trip wire that set off the booby trap. Or should have hunkered down when they heard the mortars fire. That wasn't always true, of course; sometimes it was just the luck of a bad draw or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But for the living, it was a guilt-absolving way to justify their own continued survival.
I piled the ownerless 782 gear, loose weapons, flak jackets, and empty helmets on the back of the tank. That was the only place we could stack stuff where it wouldn't interfere with the movement of the turret. Right after the air strike, a late helicopter resupply had left us with more tank ammo than we could store inside the tank, so we had four canister rounds already tied down back there. We stacked the battlefield leftovers right on top of them.
A lot of the packs being handed up to me were noticeably light, having been liberated of whatever food and water they had contained. An unwritten law said that except for personal effects, you could take and use anything that the dead or wounded left behind. That liberated food and ammo was often a Marine's last act of generosity toward his comrades.
Embesi was sitting in the TC's cupola on his board, keeping an eye on what was going on among the other tanks. Hearn had gone back down in the turret for some housekeeping, moving the new ammo around inside. I was wrestling with all the gear, glad to be outside for a change-as long as I didn't have to get down off the tank.
I was trying to condense the pile of orphaned equipment when several of us distinctly heard a not-so-loud but very familiar sound. Several heads, including the nearby grunts', immediately jerked in my direction. It was the unmistakable snap! of a hand grenade after the pin is pulled and the safety spoon has released.
"Grenade!" I yelled, along with half a dozen others. Everyone knew that unmistakable snap! when they heard it. For one split second I hesitated, taking one fast glance at the pile of gear where the sound came from, hoping I might find the offending grenade and fling it away before it went off. But in hindsight, I had no place to throw it. We were completely surrounded by infantry.
Embesi, I saw, had already dropped down inside the turret. Only his hand was visible as he pulled the hatch closed. Hearn's head disappeared behind the loader's hatch. I jumped off the side of Better Living Thru Canister and hit the ground running, toward the front of the tank. I wanted to put as much distance and steel between me and that errant grenade, plus the four rounds of main gun ammunition it was sitting on. It was going to be one hell of an explosion!
Five seconds after the snap!, thick scarlet smoke began to billow from the back of the tank. I heard a familiar noise, like the sound of a blowtorch.
"Jesus Christ!" I shouted for everybody to hear. "It's just a fuckin' smoke grenade!"
I climbed back up on the tank. Even though I had reacted properly, I felt like an idiot. Every grunt around the tank was laughing at me, or so I thought, as theygotbackupofftheground andbrushed themselves off. But then I realized they weren't laughing at me at all, simply releasing all their pent-up energy from that afternoon's vicious firelight. It was the first time that day that the grunts had hit the deck needlessly. They had expected deadly shrapnel, and all they got was a harmless cloud of red smoke.
Their giddy laughter died down. The smoke grenade was still emitting its thick, almost liquidlike red smoke as I walked to the back of the tank and confronted the pile of equipment to try to locate the damn thing. I finally found it, tied to some departed Marine's web gear. Like a Roman candle, the grenade was still spitting flame as the red dye within it continued to burn. Only then did I see that the grenade's flame was licking up against one of the canister rounds.
The flame had already burned through the only thing protecting the 90mm round-the thin inner cardboard tube that encapsulated it. In only a few seconds, the heat would set off the round, along with its three neighbors.
Embesi stuck his head out of the cupola and yelled from behind the safety of the hatch. "Get that fuckin' thing off the tank before it blows!"
Did he think my mother raised an idiot? I gave Embesi a dumb look and hit myself in the head as if to say, "No shit, I never thought of that!" Then I kicked and tore into the pile of gear, trying to reach the pack with the grenade attached.
Hearn shouted more instructions from his position of safety behind the loader's hatch. Each was trying to out-scream the other, rendering them both unintelligible. All the while, the two were standing inside the turret, with only one eye peeking around their respective hatches. Neither volunteered to come to my aid.
Chapter 9
Friendly Fire
ne of the terms that came out of the Vietnam War was "friendly fire." One of the most oxymoronic phrases in the military jargon alongside "military intelligence," it was used by U.S. military bureaucrats-who never went into the field-to try and sanitize a heinous, but very real part of twentieth-century warfare.
Except from its point of origin, friendly fire is anything but. It is brother unknowingly killing brother. Today, it's called "fratricide," an even more sanitized term that makes it sound more like some college fraternity hazing that went awry. Killing one of your own is a terrible thing to bear for the rest of your life. We all wanted to believe there was no excuse for it, but nonetheless, it's a reality of the chaos and confusion of combat. During Allen Brook, I witnessed two friendly fire incidents. Regrettably and unwittingly, I took part in one.
After our bloodied attempts to take the railroad berm and the lucky intervention by two Skyhawks, our commanding officer's superiors, back at the division HQ, pressured him to keep the battalion moving farther east. He told them he would try but wasn't going anywhere without his tanks. Now, the only way our tanks could get to the other side of the berm was through an underpass about five hundred meters south of us and to our right. We didn't have to be the sharpest knives in the drawer to realize that Charlie had probably taken steps to make the passage difficult. Embesi suggested to the colonel that along with the next helicopter resupply, they should fly in a team of minesweepers.
The most logical place for Charlie to plant an antitank mine was in the underpass. But the sweepers worked all around the area and came up empty-handed. The engineers proclaimed the area safe. Still, we couldn't believe that Charlie would miss an opportunity like this. Maybe he never imagined that tanks would come this far east on the island. Whatever the reason, seven tanks and two amtracs made it through the underpass in one piece. On the eastern side, the ground was noticeably softer, and it continued to get softer and mushier the farther east we went.
Dusk was beginning to settle when we came to a halt in a large grassy area. There were no tree lines close to our position, and the railroad berm was 750 meters behind us. We all knew that we would be hit tonightwe were long overdue. Consequently, the battalion was pulled into a tight defensive perimeter.
As the sun began to set, Embesi left the tank, limping very badly, to once again attend a sitrep-with the battalion CO. Sergeant Hearn and I stood watch, each trying to keep the other awake while we ate cans of cold dinner. We had on our comm helmets, monitoring the radios, waiting for the NVA ground attack we were sure was coming. The driver was in his seat, eating by himself. No one wanted to be caught out of position.
We were halfway through our meal when a voice over the radio called for a fire mission. The artillery people on the other end of the radio responded, saying that they had five-fives available. The voice proceeded to give them coordinates for a fire mission.
The 155mm howitzers were large artillery pieces with a bore diameter of 155 millimeters, just over six inches. They could throw large projectiles a dozen miles or so, resulting in enormous explosions that threw shrapnel for a hundred meters in all directions. But they weren't mobile enough to be hauled into the field and, consequently, they often served as the centerpieces of some large fire bases.
Hear
n and I, standing vigil and listening, wondered who it was that needed a fire mission. The voice at the artillery end of the conversation said, "Round out!" Then we heard a distant, muffled boom from the direction of Hill 55, several miles directly behind us. A few seconds later, we heard the roar of a projectile streaking right over our heads. It crashed and exploded, only one hundred meters in front of us! We dropped our meals at the explosion.
That same voice came back on the radio. "Down one hundred. Fire for effect."
"Roger that" confirmed the artillery battery. "Down one hundred. Fire for effect!"
We looked at each other and muttered, "What the hell?" We'd just heard a radio request for a fire mission, followed by an adjustment after the first shell's impact. Inasmuchas the guns were several miles directly behind us, and their first round had landed directly in front of us, it didn't take a genius to figure out where that adjustment was going to fall. "Down one hundred" meant the next round would fall right in the middle of our perimeter.
What made things worse was the follow-up command of"Fire for effect." That meant, keep firing until I tell you to stop or give you another adjustment.
Several muffled booms sounded in the distance. An entire battery of six 155mm howitzers was firing a salvo of projectiles, all headed our way. Obviously, several "friendly" shells were about to come into our perimeter-several large friendly shells!
"Incoming!" Hearn screamed for everyone on the ground to hear.
Hearn spoke over our intercom, "Everyone button up! Now!" which meant, close all the hatches. "Who's the dumb shit calling in this mission?" he asked no one in particular.
"It's gotta be an FNG lieutenant!" I chimed in.
But why the follow-up adjustment, to bring it right on top of himself-and ask for it in unrelenting quantities? Not even a Marine second lieutenant was that stupid!
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 14