As section leader, my job required that I break Axiom Number Two. I couldn't possibly stay permanently fixed to the vehicle, any more than had Staff Sergeant Embesi during Allen Brook. I had to get off the tank for direct face-to-face contact with the infantry CO-who was always a Marine officer-as well as to attend briefings. Those briefings, I found, meant endless questions about tanks' capabilities and limitations from a usually uninformed, uninitiated grunt officer.
Some officers had absolutely no experience with armor and thus brought with them lots of preconceived notions, most of them fallacious. Most common was the idea that to save their troops from the heat and labor of carrying heavy loads, they could let them ride on the tanks during an operation. Likewise, some officers couldn't distance themselves far enough from tanks. The Marine Corps was going through officers so fast they often received limited training, forcing them to learn in the field what they had missed in the States. I had to become a salesman and technical adviser, but I rather enjoyed the role. I liked the respect they had for my knowledge, even if I was only a corporal.
I had to sell them on the mutual advantages of combined tankinfantry support. Also, I had to explain that tanks weren't as impervious as they might think, and warn them not to let their men bunch up behind our tanks-a common but understandable reaction during a firefight. The danger was that if we couldn't maneuver, Charlie could easily overrun us. I had to convince them that we needed to work together as an integrated team, as well as dispel their fear that tanks drew too much fire.
Tanks did, of course, draw fire. But seldom did grunts realize the plus side of misdirected enemy fire: It was no longer directed at them. My obvious, everyday responsibilities also included provisioning food and ammo for two tanks and their crews, plus maintaining each vehicle. But during the few seconds of a firefight, not fulfilling the crucial responsibility of making the right decisions could prove fatal.
THAT FIRST NIGHT AT CON THIEN, our convoy's arrival had swollen the defending force to almost twice its normal size, so our chances of being assaulted were very slim. I was glad we didn't have to go back down that road right away. I needed two weeks to gear up for that return trip.
I was assigned to a night fire mission. I was provided with map coordinates at which the CO wanted us to pump five rounds of harassment and interdiction (H&I) fire at an area the NVA used for troop movement. H&I was our way of keeping Mr. Charles on his toes by not surrendering the night on a platter.
I set the azimuth and elevation settings that represented the intended target on the main gun. The target was a trail intersection that lay to the northwest of our location, within South Vietnam. We were all well aware of the presidential ceasefire; it had been in effect for several weeks. It was really directed at halting aerial bombing of the North by our Air Force and Navy, but it also forbade us to engage enemy units across the DMZ.
The frustration of watching our enemy build up his materiel while being denied the right to protect ourselves prompted some personal action on my part. I had become a short-timer, with only a few months left in this crazy country. Back in The World, the threat of being sent to Vietnam was commonly used to keep servicemen in line. But that intimidation didn't work over here anymore. Anyone caught in trouble simply had to ask, "So what are they gonna do? Send me to Vietnam?"
At this late stage of my tour, I felt I could definitely afford to get a little cocky. That night, I decided to take out my frustrations by defying the lunacy of the entire war.
The fire mission called for a five-round "killing cross" of H&I fire at 2 a.m. Determined not to waste the rounds south of the DMZ, I swiveled the gun 40 degrees more to the right and then elevated it to maximum. Five rounds were about to travel several miles north, into North Vietnam.
Whenever we were about to fire at night, I made it a habit of warning the grunts nearby to cover their eyes. Now, should anyone be watching, they wouldn't be the wiser because the accompanying muzzle flash would ruin their night vision. They would know the gun had fired, but I was betting that no one would notice the gun's new orientation.
When 2 a.m. rolled around, Steele and I discharged all five rounds in less than fifteen seconds. We were feeling pretty satisfied at doing our little part to piss off Charlie. The fact was, I really didn't care about this goddamned war anymore. We had been made expendable by the Johnson administration.
I had grandiose dreams that we might have hit some hidden ammo dump that would light up the North Vietnamese horizon. If caught, I even had ready my standard I Corps retort-"I'm already in Vietnam, what are you going to do, put me on the DMZ?"
A voice called out from the dark: "The guy in charge of the tank report to the CO," meaning Con Thien's ranking officer. Oh shit! I thought. Somebody must have seen what I had done. Nervously I jumped down off the tank, map in hand.
When I approached the speaker, my fears were realized. There stood a Marine captain, both fists on his hips. I was somewhat surprised-I hadn't thought officers stayed up this late.
"Were you the one responsible for that?" he asked.
"Do you mean the fire mission, sir?" I replied. "Five rounds H&I fire in a killing cross, at these coordinates?" I lied as I pointed at the map.
"Don't get smart with me, corporal. That fire mission went due north."
I maintained my innocence. I gave him my best impression of a choirboy. "What do you mean, sir?"
"You know damn well what I mean! You defied the bombing halt."
"Sir, here are the coordinates we set up for and fired on. Could the muzzle flash have distorted your perspective, sir? It's not uncommon to be fooled at night, sir. We see it happen all the time."
"If this were any other place," he said, "I'd run you up on charges and have your ass court-martialed and thrown in the brig! Get out of my face before I decide to."
I saluted, gave him the only answer a Marine can say to a direct order: "Aye-aye, sir!"
As I turned away, I heard him say, under his breath, "I hope you hit something." Obviously, he was just as frustrated as the rest of us with our president. I was off the hook.
It was the only time I ever lied in the Marine Corps.
Chapter 14
The Steel Ghost
he war along the DMZ was unlike anywhere else in Vietnam and rarely covered by the media. Of the few who risked getting the Marines' story on the Z, only two photojournalists come to mind: David Douglas Duncan and Larry Burrows, who lived with the Marines at Cua Viet, Khe Sanh, and Con Thien.
Duncan is best remembered for his photo essays of Pablo Picasso at home and in his studio in France, but he and Burrows admirably captured the living and dying going on in northern I Corps. Years later, after I became a photographer, I wished that I had met them. Their photographs of Marines in combat were some of the best of the war.
The American public was so inundated with footage of Vietnam's lowlands, rivers, and rice paddies that the sight of mountains surrounded by cold, damp fog would have seemed foreign to them. Many parts of the DMZ were rolling hills of low scrub and tree lines, with terrain not too dissimilar to that of upstate New York.
It was good tank country. There were few rice paddies to bog down in, and no villages and civilians to worry about. The DMZ didn't hold to the same rules of engagement that we ran into down south. It was open season all year around, at least until the bombing halt.
Up north, what made Mr. Charles so effective was his direct artillery support. Down south, he simply harassed us with mortars or the occasional 122mm rocket. Up north, however, the NVA just didn't nip at your heels, they grabbed your leg like a pit bull with rabies. They could call in 130mm and 152mm Soviet artillery pieces, hidden in caves just across the DMZ, away from the prying eyes of U.S. aircraft. Once locked in a fight with Mr. Charles, you could expect to receive incoming, for they had artillery spotters with their grunt units, the same as we did, who called on artillery for support, just as ours did. After the first incoming round of N VA artillery, you could watch each subseq
uent explosion move closer, as their spotter corrected their aim. This was conventional warfare, on a scale not seen anywhere else in The Nam.
A year earlier, Mr. Charles had shown just how well equipped he was by attacking Con Thien with flamethrowers and almost overrunning the base. Also, there was the incident while we were refueling at Cua Viet, when two NVA bodies washed up on shore, wearing wet suits, fins, masks, SCUBA equipment, diver's weights, and satchel charges. They had fallen victim to the occasional random hand grenade, thrown in the water at night to deter enemy swimmers.
Later on, we saw a battalion-sized unit out in the open only three klicks away. We couldn't tell if they were "theirs" or "ours," so we called in the sighting to make sure it wasn't a friendly Marines unit, then waited an eternity for division HQ to give us permission to fire. This was a part of the war that America rarely saw over the dinner table.
Dawn and dusk were slow to develop; they were the longest parts of the day, and also, the most common times for the NVA to attack. When on an operation in the field, I always had the entire crew up at the first hint of dawn. Tonight, though, we were inside the confines of Con Thien, whose population had been doubled with our arrival. Mr. Charles wouldn't be dumb enough to attack tonight; he would wait until tomorrow, when the garrison was back to its regular strength.
Once morning broke, the LPs began coming in from beyond the perimeter. I admired the guys who spent their night alone outside the wire, with nothing but a radio and a rifle between them and the garrison. They drifted in through the wire, and slowly the rest of the combat base started to come alive. At least half the Marines anticipated they would be leaving in a few hours.
This was the morning when the usual biweekly rotation routine was deliberately broken. The grunts who thought they were about to be relieved soon found out that something else was in the wind. The CO asked for a bunch of men-all platoon leaders, supporting arms commanders, the forward air controller, the air and naval gunfire people, and me-the tank section leader-to report to the CP immediately.
Instead of the return to the rear they had earned, those who had already served their two weeks in the barrel were being sent on a searchand-destroy mission into the DMZ. My worst fear-an operation with 1/9-was suddenly thrust upon us. Worse still, we would be going into an area that was notoriously hot.
We thought LBJ was pretty damned naive to think his bombing halt would bring the North Vietnamese to the peace table. Now, with complete immunity from air attacks, the NVA enjoyed free access to the river that separated the two Vietnams. Charlie never stopped walking, digging, humping, and planning his ultimate outcome of total victory. If our government had the same resolution to win, the war would have been over by late 1968.
No one in his right mind wanted to go into the DMZ. There was no telling what we would run up against. At Ocenview we could see the NVA trucking their equipment and material south every night. Eventually it would find its way across the DMZ, and we would be its victims. We couldn't let North Vietnam build up its forces on our side of the river, or else Con Thien and all the other little bases strung along the Z might be overrun. So this morning we had orders to move north and find out what our little friends were up to.
Understandably, lots of bitching and moaning was heard from the bunkers surrounding the perimeter, from Marines who thought they were about to ride out of there. The word was given: "Mount up!" With that command, a mass of grumbling Marines in full battle gear began emerging from their burrows in the ground. Con Thien suddenly looked like a giant anthill under attack.
A semblance of two infantry companies formed up, with a single platoon in the lead. The grunt platoons assembled into a wedge formation, with us behind them in a similar configuration. It was the strongest formation to be in, but it still allowed for flexibility if the shit hit the fan. We exited the base and proceeded straight north.
We all hoped this deliberate break from our normal two-week rotation pattern might surprise the NVA and catch them off balance. In The Nam, one thing you never wanted to do was slip into a routine, because routine was what Charlie looked for most of all. For all we knew, that rotation change might have saved the usual returning southbound convoy from getting ambushed, but I'd much rather have gone back down that road and taken my chances.
The tanks stayed about a hundred feet behind the grunts, with a platoon of infantry covering the rear. We'd crossed into the Z, a no man's land of craters, fresh and old, some small and others big enough to lose a tank in. We were approaching the Ben Hai River, which nominally separated the two Vietnams, when the grunts stumbled on several camouflaged gun pits, complete with ammunition for their Soviet-made 130mm artillery pieces. As we knew they would, the NVA had taken advantage of our bombing halt to move their artillery across the river. We found everything but the guns themselves. That meant it was only a matter of time before Mr. Charles crossed the river, too. Thanks, Mr. President.
We set up a perimeter while the engineers destroyed the gun pits and their ammo. We continued the sweep in the early afternoon anticipating that the NVA would make a stand to protect their supplies. We were passing through a tree line when one TC reported seeing tracks that didn't belong to any U.S. tracked vehicle. Northern I Corps had reports that the NVA were operating tanks, but so far no one had seen any. Nevertheless, the threat was taken so very seriously that, just in case, our tank's ammunition ready rack was loaded with three HEAT rounds. Down south, we had only carried a few that were squirreled away in hard-to-reach ammo racks for use against rare hardened enemy bunkers.
Just as we began to enter a tree line-always a precarious timesomething past the trees caught my attention in the field beyond. It looked like another tank. I shot a quick look at my own two tanks, just to make sure one of them hadn't gotten ahead of us, but none had.
The last thing a tanker wanted to run across was an enemy tank, so my adrenaline was pumping. For an instant, I thought that this would be the first tank-to-tank shootout of the war.
"Gunner. HEAT. Tank!" I yelled over the intercom.
John immediately stopped the tank. I grabbed the override control and quickly swung the turret so that the gunner could acquire the target.
"Identified!" Truitt shouted.
My heart rose in my throat as I dropped down to use the rangefinder that would feed the distance into our computer. Steele had already loaded a HEAT round into the main gun, and the breech slammed shut with a resounding ka-chung!
This whole complex ballet took place in about seven seconds, in a space no larger than the smallest of bathrooms with a five-foot ceiling. We were a second away from Truitt warning the rest of the crew that he was about to fire when I realized the target was an M48-one of ours! My God, we were about to pump a 4,400-foot-per-second HEAT round into another Marine tank!
How was that possible? I quickly checked my other tanks. Were they all where they ought to be?
"Up!" the loader yelled.
"Cease fire! Cease fire!" I screamed over the intercom an instant before Truitt would have squeezed the triggers. Getting on the radios, I warned the other tanks not to fire on the friendly. The two other tank commanders were gazing back at me, as confused as I was.
In front of me stood a Marine tank, its gun tube pointed almost right at us. It was the second time I had seen such a tank, the first being on the docks of Da Nang, back when I first arrived in-country. This tank, too, was empty-the victim of an earlier fight, its crew incinerated when an RPG set off its main gun ammo. Tank ammunition doesn't explode, as you might expect; it burns like a giant blowtorch. Twenty-foot jets of flame, like the exhaust from a jet fighter, shoot out of the tank commander's and loader's hatches, and from around the base of the turret. No one could survive such an unlucky hit; the crew would have been vaporized.
We Marines always prided ourselves on coming out with all our equipment. I had never heard of a tank being abandoned and left behind without being destroyed. Totally unprepared for this ominous sign, we rode closer to
the vehicle. The grunts seemed to pay no attention to the dead beast, as if they had seen it many times before. It had never occurred to them to warn us.
But for us, the war and all our frailties suddenly struck home. Realizing our own unavoidable vulnerability had a chilling effect. We desperately wanted to know its history. Who had the crew been? How did they get hit from the side? Were they overrun?
There was one final question in our minds: Were we all going to end up the same way? Suddenly, the other TCs hunkered down in their cupolas, their eyes just above the steel rims. But no one said anything. Wei ust stared at the tank. We left it behind to continue its solitary vigil, a Flying Dutchman on the plains of the DMZ.
Chapter 15
Apricots
he rest of our search-and-destroy mission passed without incident. But as late afternoon came on, it became obvious that we weren't going back to Con Thien. We would spend the night in Indian country, alone.
That night, the infantry COs directed me to set the tanks in position like covered wagons, in a circular or "laager" formation, dispersed equally around the infantry's perimeter. Listening posts went out after sunset. There was no wire between us and the night, no revetments for the tanks to lower their silhouettes. We were as exposed as tanks could be. The only thing standing between us and Mr. Charles were a few Claymore mines and some trip flares.
Back when I first arrived at 3rd Tank Battalion from Da Nang, there were many things I had to learn and adjust to. First was the obvious difference in the kind of war being waged along the DMZ-up north, the terrain was totally different, far more hospitable to tanks. Due to the sparse population of northern I Corps, there were no villages to support local Viet Cong units. Here, mixing it up with the enemy meant encountering only hardcore NVA regulars, who had their own artillery support. But what really surprised me were the strange superstitions shared by the Marines up north.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 24