"Who's fuckin' roadwheels are those?" asked John the driver.
They couldn't be our wheels; I was sure of that. There hadn't been the slightest shudder or whimper, nor the slightest change in the ride of the vehicle. No smoke, no audible sound or vibration of any kind. The mysterious set of roadwheels rolled down the road ahead of us.
"Driver. Stop the tank," I suddenly ordered. Then I told Truitt to take my position in the TC's seat while I jumped down off the tank. If nothing else, we could always use an extra set of roadwheels. I yelled to John to get out of the driver's seat and help me pick them up.
I was certain that these orphaned wheels weren't ours. But where else could they have come from? The phantom set had come to rest down off the side of the berm. Waiting for John, I looked back toward the tank. And there, like a grinning kid's missing front tooth, was a large gap where our third set of roadwheels should have been. Our grease fitting, broken for some time and ignored long enough, had finally decided to pay us back for our neglect.
It took three of us to pick up the double set of wheels and haul it up on the back of the tank. We would add it to the list of things that needed repairing during our PM. The timing was uncanny.
ON HALLOWEEN-OCTOBER 31, 1968-President Lyndon Johnson ordered a bombing halt in the naive hope that North Vietnam would reconsider and possibly curtail its invasion of the South.
It was pitch-black the night of November 1, and I had the night's first watch. As always, our tank was on the western side of Oceanview, sitting on the second highest sand dune inside the perimeter. It was another ordinary watch, on an ordinary night, except that we had been informed of the presidential order restricting offensive action against North Vietnam. The only way it would affect us, we thought, was that we no longer could fire into North Vietnam. It meant we had to curtail our Shoot the Fisherman competition. We had no reason to expect anything would change, aside from Charlie's enjoying unrestricted access to the DMZ. How could we have guessed he was about to rub it in our face?
I was looking into the night for any movement, scanning the sand dunes directly to our west, with Pray for Slack's gun tube pointed in the same direction. Close to midnight, near the end of my watch, something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned my head to the right, looking almost northeast, toward North Vietnam's darkened coastline.
What I saw, several miles north of the DMZ, was so bizarre and fantastic that at first I couldn't believe my eyes. Since the war started, no one had witnessed anything like this. Coming straight down the coastline toward me was a long line of lights. Once I realized they must be headlights, I muttered "Holy shit!" out loud.
Then came a complete mental disconnect. For, if they really were headlights, all of us were dead men-maybe not tonight, but very soon.
The rest of the crew, unable to sleep, was suddenly standing next to the turret alongside me, wondering what had me so excited.
"You see something, TC?" Steele asked.
Borrowing my binoculars, it took him a while to reach the same conclusion. We were looking at an endless freeway of trucks driving due south, right down the beach.
"Those little bastards!" I said through clenched teeth. "They had the nerve to turn on their lights!"
The NVA knew we couldn't shoot at them, so there they were, driving boldly down the coast. None of us could believe-wanted to believe-they were so bold as to turn on the headlights of a goddamn convoy of trucks. Until now, Charlie wouldn't so much as smoke a cigarette at night. The sheer gall he was exhibiting really fried us.
And so we sat, wide awake, unable to take our eyes off the lights, staring at the potential death sentence driving straight toward us, our hands tied by presidential edict. Our lives hadn't even been considered. With a stroke of his pen, LBJ had prevented us from defending ourselves until that convoy crossed the DMZ. For those of us standing there helplessly, that southern migration became the single most demoralizing sight of the war, and this was only the first of many nights to come. We felt sick to our stomachs with desperation; we knew that our own country had sold us out.
Up until now we all felt the war was winnable if we were allowed to fight it. Tet and Mini-Tet had been huge victories for the U.S. forces. We felt we were seeing the first glimmers of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
As we stood there, our eyes fixed north, we realized that our country had turned its back on us. We were not even a consideration in the minds of the politicians, particularly the president and his idiot secretary of defense. In their eyes, we were expendable. It's hard to describe how it felt to suddenly realize that we were simply pawns in a politician's war, not even permitted to defend ourselves.
That night, we became totally disillusioned with what was being asked of us. As Steele, Truitt, John, and I watched the distant truck lights heading ever nearer, one thing became very clear-in that moment, America lost the war.
We all sat up late, talking and trying to come to grips with finding ourselves in a unilateral truce while the enemy stockpiled munitions with no fear of retribution. Every one of us, from the lowliest buck private on up the ranks, knew how to end the war: unleash American air power to bomb real targets. Reduce Hanoi and Haiphong to rubble.
The next morning, we saw a huge North Vietnamese flag flying on the north side of the DMZ. They were cocksure that we wouldn't fire at them, because they knew that we good guys played by the rules.
After that night, my job became more difficult, because suddenly my crews had different motives entirely for carrying out their mission. In their minds, the question had shifted from willingness to win the war to simply staying alive until their tours of duty ended. For Marines in the field, the unspoken aim became to risk little and do the minimum to get by. Personal goals suddenly superseded those of Corps and country. Even TCs were less willing to expose themselves, which hindered their close cooperation with the grunts.
What was the use? Our country had sold us out.
NINE DAYS LATER WE KNEW the Corps hadn't sold us out. There was only one day in a year when a Marine in the field could expect a hot meal-November 10. No matter where a Marine was in the world, even on the loneliest and most remote Vietnamese mountaintop, he was assured that a hot turkey dinner would find him. November 10 is the Marine Corps' birthday and the single most important day on the Marine Corps calendar.
A chilly November 10 morning found me at Oceanview, miles north of the nearest mess hall. But true to tradition, two amtracs made the run up the beach to bring the tiny outpost contingent our turkey dinners. It would have been unthinkable for our fellow Marines to do less. Semper Fi!
Chapter 13
Life's Certain Flavor
t was a cold, damp, foggy morning on the DMZ, a far cry from the blistering heat and rice paddies that America witnessed on TV. To those watching the TV war back in The World, Vietnam was either rice paddies or tropical jungles, and the enemy wore black pajamas and hid in tunnels. And, of course, there was the weekly body count-Charlie's and ours. But this was northern I Corps, where both the weather and the fighting were different than everywhere else in The Nam.
Late 1968 was the bloodiest period of the Vietnam War, and we were still on the Z, the scene of countless, nameless bloody engagements. The Demilitarized Zone was a strip of land no more than a mile wide, devoid of trees and scarred with bomb craters-some deep enough to swallow the tank I commanded.
That chilly morning found us on a road leading directly north to one of the Z's most infamous Marine positions. Con Thien was two small knolls surrounded by a couple of rows of razor wire and interlaced with mines and trip flares. The perimeter was made up of interconnected bunkers. Stacked on their roofs were layer upon layer of sandbags, and each one was supported by any and every kind of material that could be scrounged up.
The long road up to Con Thien was straight and red in color. Eerily, for two hundred meters on either side, lay complete desolation. Large bulldozers called Rome plows had flattened swathes
parallel to the road. My first reaction was relief-the sanitized area would make it harder for Mr. Charles to mount an ambush. But it was the second impression that was the lasting one: apprehension. If this road could speak, I was certain it could tell only of heartache. We were en route to one of the most notorious Marine positions on the Z.
Up here on the border between North and South Vietnam, northern I Corps was waging a conventional land war, similar to combat seen in World War II.
The year before, Con Thien had been routinely hit by 1,200 artillery shells a day from the other side of the DMZ, and it still took a sporadic pounding. It was as bad a place as you could go in The Nam. In fact, living there was so inimical to its inhabitants' mental health that Marine units were usually rotated out every two weeks. Hence the purpose for our drive up the road that misty morning.
Both tanks in my section were prepared to escort a column of trucks up to Con Thien. Tanks never operated alone. This was to ensure that if one gets mired in soft ground, a large enough tow vehicle was available. But, more importantly, a second tank could scratch your back in case the enemy overran you and brush off enemy infantry from one another, a la Allen Brook.
A tank platoon consisted of five tanks, divided into two sections, a "heavy" section of three tanks, and a "light" section comprised of the remaining two. Normally, the platoon leader was a lieutenant and he controlled the heavy section. A staff sergeant was the platoon sergeant and he commanded the light section. But that was according to the book, and like so many other rules in The Nam, these applied only in an ideal world, which sure wasn't here.
Traveling up the road to Con Thien that morning was a heavy section of tanks with me, a corporal, as tank commander and section leader. On this day I was the heavy section leader when a third tank joined our convoy.
In Vietnamese, Con Thien means "place where angels dwell," an appropriate name for one of the unhealthiest couple of acres in the entire country. My tanks were to provide security for a convoy of trucks loaded with a company of grunts from the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 1/9.
When I first learned I was to escort troops from 1/9, I exclaimed, "Jesus H. Christ!" I had heard way too much about these guys; every Marine in Vietnam knew about 1/9.
Tanks were never permanently assigned to any one grunt unit. We were constantly moved around to provide support for any infantry unit that needed us. Each grunt unit had its own individual peculiarities and personalities, but 1/9 suffered the worst reputation of all. Some would have considered it a death sentence upon receiving orders to work with 1/9. It meant you were going to see a lot of shit.
One-Nine was one of the oldest American units in Vietnam, a topnotch fighting unit with emphasis on fighting. It established a legacy known to every Marine in Vietnam. Theirs was a battalion infamous for its numerous desperate actions and last-ditch stands, a unit that continually found itself outnumbered, outgunned, and always in the thick of things. The near-legendary battalion had earned itself a nickname, something not easy in the Corps: One-Nine was known as the Walking Dead.
THE ROAD CLIMBED SLOWLY IN FRONT OF US. We could barely make out the smudge on the horizon, at the end of the long road to Con Thien, which was about three or four klicks due north. Its nasty reputation had us feeling as if we were traveling up the road to Hell, if such were possible. The tree lines that had been bulldozed back seemed to converge in the distance, making the road appear like a funnel.
This was my first trip to the combat base, and I was quite apprehensive and curious. I placed two of my tanks in the lead of a column of half a dozen deuce-and-a-half trucks, which were trailed by the third tank. Our greatest fear was hitting a random mine and becoming stalled in the open.
Pray for Slack was second in the column, which might sound like an advantage; it's logical to think that we were in the safer position. That would be so in the case of an ordinary mine. But in the event of an ambush, the second vehicle in any column-be it truck or tank-was in the most dangerous position. The North Vietnamese standard operating procedure was to let the first vehicle go by, then immobilize the second. They often initiated ambushes by detonating a mine manually, at a time of their choosing-and Charlie always chose the second vehicle in a convoy. The detonation was the signal for the enemy to open fire, often with an onslaught of RPGs aimed at the last vehicle in the column.
Knocking out the last vehicle trapped the column between two immovable wrecks. This isolated the lead vehicle-which they could deal with later. For all but the worst NVA marksmen, trucks in the middle of the sandwich were easy pickings. Those concerns justified the efforts to roll back the vegetation on either side of the road.
You might make it without incident to the isolated, besieged combat base, but then you had the next two weeks to worry about traveling back down that road. Con Thien had a nickname earned at the height of the siege a year earlier-The Meat Grinder.
My lead tanks had their gun tubes facing in opposite directions, toward the tree lines on the left and right sides of the road. The last tank's gun was pointed to the rear. All the trucks were lined with sandbags and the grunts were hunkered down, with their M16s pointing out over the sides. Each of us was making the same silent prayer: God, please get us through this. To keep your sanity you always had to convince yourself the other guy was going to get it, or else you would become ineffective, even incapacitated. You secretly hoped that it would be another truck or tank that got it, not yours.
We were on what was called a Rough Rider-an all-out, balls-tothe-wall, nonstop race up the driveway to our new home. This was the only part of the journey I looked forward to because we only rarely got the chance to rev up our engines to full speed and go off hell-bent.
The synthetic wind made our faces feel even colder. I scanned the tree lines while I continually glanced at the lead tank as well as the convoy behind me-to make sure no one was straggling. I also had to monitor the radios. Occasionally I touched base with the tank at the very rear of our column, to ask how he was doing and if we needed to slow down. I also monitored the infantry CO, who was hunkered down in one of the trucks behind me.
I also had to continually update my location on the map in my left hand. In a place like this, a map could spell the difference between life and death. If we ran into an ambush with no map I would have a hard time summoning artillery support. In this case, the artillery was several miles away, at a Marine fire base called the Rock Pile. The TC was one very busy man.
We made it to Con Thien without incident. As the lead tank approached, a few of the inhabitants pulled aside a razor-wire barrier to allow us to enter the base.
As we passed through the wire, I saw a hand-painted sign that said, WELCOME TO CON THIEN, PLACE WHERE ANGELS DWELL.
Directly beneath that was a phrase that struck me then and stays with me to this day: For those who must fight for it, life has a certain flavor the protected will never know.
That sign lifted me out of the doldrums. It was so right! It did indeed feel great to be alive. I decided at that moment it was to become part of my life.
THE ENTIRE CONVOY PULLED INTO the infamous combat base. I removed my comm helmet and took a minute to look around, to take it all in, and to locate the command post. Very little, if anything, protruded above ground. With its grim appearance, this didn't look like any base I had ever seen.
According to the map, the base was made up of two "hills"-an overgenerous term for those small connected knolls. Even from the top of them looking north, the advantage to the defender was barely perceptible. But turn around and look southward, and it became immediately obvious why we were here: You could see all the way back to Dong Ha. Allowing the enemy such an advantageous position would have made life in Dong Ha untenable. A single enemy artillery observer could precisely call in artillery fire over the entire area.
I found it a little disconcerting that Con Thien sat in the open on an exposed plain, covered with scrub growth and scarred by shell craters. Comparing it to a moonscape would be a
cliche. But given that there were lots and lots of overlapping shell craters, I can think of no better description. Then I saw that some of the shell craters had craters! This place was even worse than I had expected; it was our "turn in the barrel," as a tour in Con Thien was known.
There wasn't a lot to see, just the tops of sandbagged bunkers peeking about two feet above the ground. Only a few men were visible; the rest opted not to leave their burrows. Residents' heads popped up randomly here and there, then dropped back down. Those I did see all wore genuine smiles. Then it dawned on me: These guys were happy to see us because they would be turning Con Thien over to the guys we had just escorted up into the base. Tomorrow morning, they would return to a safer base.
I divided up our tanks and proceeded to relieve the three tanks that were located up there; they would escort the convoy on its return trip. Con Thien was going to be our home for the next two weeks. Each tank was in what was called hull defilade-positioned in a bulldozed revetment or slot that left only its turret exposed above ground level. I placed my tank on the perimeter's northwest corner. On either side of the tank, the grunts had bunkers with roofs amalgamated from whatever was lying aroundammo crates, runway matting, old stretcher poles, and stray pieces of corrugated roofing material, all covered with at least five layers of sandbags.
If the tanks exchanging positions disturbed the grunts, we never knew it. Nobody even bothered to come out and look. Soon we realized that nothing seemed to faze these guys. There was none of the usual grab-assing and kidding that went on between two Marine units as they mingled together. All these men looked worn. Some had hollow, deep-set eyes that were almost lifeless.
It was my first sight of something I had only heard about, the thousand-yard stare, which was symptomatic in troops who were wound long past tight. It took a lengthy process to produce it; it didn't just happen during a two-week stint at Con Thien. Probably it was the result of being on the Z for too long, with no break from the strains and stresses of constant incoming, patrolling, and firefights. Also contributing to these symptoms could have been who they were-the Walking Dead.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 23