Superstitions varied from unit to unit. Sometimes they changed with the dictates of the moment. Nonetheless, they were taken very seriously, as I was about to find out.
Once we had circled the wagons, the tank crews got busy going over the guns, checking fluid levels in the engines and transmissions, and grabbing boxes of cold C rats for dinner. I wanted to avoid surprises the next morning, so I walked around our tank, carefully inspecting every component of both tracks. Another crewman checked on the water levels in the batteries and topped them off. Then I visited the other TCs and looked at their positions. The Steel Ghost took up most of our conversation; it had gotten to the others, too.
When I returned from the meeting, I noticed that my gunner was carrying a track block he had borrowed from one of the other tanks. He threw it up onto our tank, then immediately turned back to get another one.
I was alarmed. Had somebody seen something I had missed? I was afraid one of the crew had spotted a damaged piece of track and was about to replace it. This wasn't the time or place to break track with night coming on. The process was like changing a link in a very large chain. With so little light remaining, it was the last thing I wanted to do. Breaking track was a laborious job that would have us working in the dark, making lots of noise with sledgehammers and wrenches. That wouldn't endear us to the grunts.
I yelled up to Bob Steele and John, "What's wrong with the track?" They shrugged their shoulders, but I heard Bob Truitt's voice behind me.
"Just gettin' some spare track, TC." He was carrying another track block, which he threw up beside the first one.
"Why the extra track blocks?" I demanded.
"Nothing's wrong, TC," said Truitt, "I just wanted to borrow some blocks."
I told him to go back and help the crew with the maintenance work before it got dark.
"Can I make one more trip? I'll be right back to help out." I let him go.
Every fighting man had his own philosophy about death, which was referred to by any number of euphemisms. A deceased Marine variously "got greased," "got wasted," "bought it," "got hit with a bullet with his name on it," "went to the big tank park in the sky," or "his time was up." Death was always analyzed or rationalized to fit the philosophy of the living-who generally fell into two categories: fatalists and determinists.
Determinists believed that some giant cosmic clock ticked off every predetermined minute of one's life. To them, it explained why some men in a firefight could be totally reckless, exposing themselves to enemy fire, and never get hit. Somebody else could be totally safe in a foxhole, only to have a mortar round fall in his lap. There might be no logic to it, but determinists accepted it as simply preordained: When your time was up, your time was up. Even though determinists liked to think that death was predetermined, I never saw anyone stand up in the middle of a firefight to prove his theory to the rest of us.
The fatalist held that such occurrences were sheer happenstance, a fall of the dice or a spin of the wheel. The key difference between him and the determinist was that the fatalist thought he could load the dice or cheat the wheel-improve his odds by avoiding unnecessary risks and taking reasonable precautions.
Me, I was solidly in the fatalist's camp and would do anything to minimize risk. I stayed low in the TC's cupola, wouldn't smoke on watch, wouldn't sky-mount a machine gun on top of my cupola.
This later modification was popular with 1st Tank Battalion, down south. But with the large-caliber artillery at Charlie's disposal up on the Z, it was totally out of the question. I hung spare sections of track on my side of the turret, as did most tank crews, thinking they would make it harder for an RPG to penetrate. Even though I had seen an RPG go quite handily through twelve inches of steel, the extra layer of track lent a false sense of protection and made my fellow fatalists and me feel better. Rumor had it that a track block had saved an unknown tanker-once, years ago-but that was all the evidence a fatalist needed.
John, our driver, was a fatalist too. To put more distance between himself and an RPG, we had had brackets welded to the tank's front that allowed sandbags to be stacked tightly on the front slope plate. Bob Steele, my loader and fellow fatalist, hung extra track block all across his side of the turret.
Our gunner was the lone determinist of the crew. His philosophy was that if it was your turn to go, there was nothing you could do about it. But tonight Truitt was on a personal mission, going from tank to tank borrowing spare track blocks. How come? I wondered.
When he returned to the tank to add to his track block collection, all the work had been completed. The rest of us were opening a box of C rats. What we witnessed next was a miraculous conversion, a change in faith that was as significant as Jesus leaving Judaism. Our gunner skipped dinner to bolt track blocks to his side of the turret.
No man enrolls in a new school of thought on a whim. Something had gotten to Truitt, something powerful enough to cause him to rethink his entire philosophy. We had always argued over which philosophy was the right one, each of us providing examples to prove whichever theory we adhered to. The gunner might as well have just enlisted with Mr. Charles, his conversion was that significant. The enormous amount of kidding he would take from us determinists had to weigh in his decision. When asked why he was hanging the track block, he gave no reason except "I just felt like doing it."
"You just felt like it, Mister-when-your-time-is-up-it's-up?"
"Well," he answered, "it can't hurt nothing to try, right?"
As John and I ate our C's, we sat on the warm armor plate that covered the engine on the back of the tank, deliberately keeping the turret between us and would-be snipers. Loader Steele ate while standing in the TC's position keeping an eye out in front of us. We three talked among ourselves, wondering just what had gotten into our gunner that outweighed even hunger. As we replayed the day's events, the answer became obvious: The Steel Ghost must have really spooked him.
When I first met my crew after being assigned as their tank commander, I quickly became aware that they lived by an unfamiliar system of local superstitions. The first time I broke open a case of C rations, I saw that someone had already rifled through all twelve boxes that make up a case, and one of the meals was missing. When I confronted the crew, Bob Steele readily admitted to going through them. I asked why all the boxes had been opened and why we were missing a meal. He just shrugged and looked at his feet, like a kid caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. I thought he had been highly inconsiderate of his fellow crewmen and told him so.
"We always go through a new case of C rats to find the ham and motherf ickers," he replied.
"And do what with them?"
"Throw 'em away," he said.
I reprimanded him again for his lack of concern for his fellow crewmen. Yes, motherfuckers was the worst meal in the case and everyone despised it, but Steele had thrown out the entire meal, together with the can of cheese and crackers, mini-pack of cigarettes, and-the best part of the meal-a can of apricots. Everybody loved their sweet syrup.
Or so I thought.
Truitt came to Steele's defense, "Motherfuckers is the dead man's meal."
"What are you talking about?" I frowned.
"Nobody eats ham and mothers up here on the Z."
"No shit!" I replied. "Nobody eats that meal anywhere in The Nam! But I'll be damned if you're going to throw away a perfectly good can of fruit!"
Then John jumped in. "You don't get it, do you? It's the fruit that's the fuckin' problem!"
Had I inherited a crew of lunatics? "What the fuck're you talking about?" I asked.
The crew suddenly came together on top of the armor plate to confront me, three against one.
"No one on this tank eats apricots," proclaimed my loader. The others nodded in agreement. "I go through the rest of the boxes, just to make sure they ain't got any in them either!"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What the hell is wrong with apricots?" I asked.
"They're bad luck," Steele r
eplied. "Nobody eats them."
"Hell, we don't even touch the can," said Truitt. "That's why we throw away the entire box."
John chimed right in. "Eat a can of apricots, and the guy next to you gets killed-every time!"
The other two crewmen agreed. They were steadfast in their belief and vehement about the power that apricots wielded over the lives of others. This superstition, I later learned, pervaded the entire 3rd Marine Division. Supposedly, the rumor went, it wasn't bad luck for the offender to eat or carry apricots, but it was a death sentence for the guy beside him. The superstition was self-perpetuating, guaranteed to be enforced by the guy next to you.
At the moment, I was convinced my crew was testing me or pulling my leg. "This is bullshit!" I snarled. "You go find that can of fruit you just threw away and return it to the tank! I'll eat them!"
All three crewmen tried to reason with me, over what I thought was about the dumbest thing I ever heard. But they stood their ground, and our argument was about to come to blows. There was no rationalizing with them, so I recalled the old saying, "When in Rome . . . " A cohesive crew was more important than one lousy can of fruit.
I did plead with them to at least drain the juice out of the can before throwing it away. But this very idea was met with a steadfast, "No f ickin' way!"
"Apricots on this tank are totally unacceptable, juice and all!" said John, standing his ground.
"And don't even think about eating them off the tank, either!" Truitt piped in. "Someone eats apricots, the guy next to him gets killed!"
Well, for my crew's overall well-being, I could learn to forego apricots. Their belief was as ingrained as their private religious beliefs-maybe more. So I became a reluctant convert.
THAT HAD ALL TRANSPIRED MONTHS EARLIER, when I first took over the tank. Now we were in the field, north of Con Thien, finishing our apricot-free C rations. Truitt was still bolting on his track blocks while the grunts finished digging their two-man foxholes. To slow down any unwelcome visitors, they had set up trip flares out in front of the perimeter, along with some Claymores. Trip flares were early-warning devicesactually booby traps-that fired off a flare when someone snagged a trip wire stretched across the ground.
When in the field, it was SOP for each tank to have at least two men on watch throughout the night. In case they had to start the tank, the third crewman slept in the driver's seat. Bob Steele and I had the second watch when, off to our right, two voices quickly grew louder and louder. We couldn't see them, nor hear exactly what they were saying, but at midnight, in the middle of the bush, it was totally uncalled for.
Still indistinct, the argument kept increasing in volume. Marines on either side told the boisterous foxhole to shut the fuck up.
"You trying to give away our position?" someone stage-whispered through clenched teeth.
They fell silent after a grunt-their squad leader, I suppose-raced past us, visited the contentious duo for a minute or two, then ran back to his own hole.
I began thinking that this unit's discipline wasn't very good. No wonder they always got hit. Then, after a minute or so, the voices started to argue again. In a loud, clear voice came the first discernible words: "You eat those fuckin' apricots, and I'll kill you!"
"Fuck you and your stupid ..."
The second voice never got the chance to finish. A sudden flash and the sharp report of a .45 pistol interrupted him. Several feet pounded toward the source of the shot.
Another whispered yell went out into the night. "Corpsman! Corpsman up!"
I could barely make out two Marines leading another away, one on each arm. He was mumbling over and over to himself, "I told him not to eat those fuckin' apricots! I told him, goddamn it!"
With eyes probably the size of ping-pong balls, I looked back at Steele.
"Ah told ya they was serious about apricots up here," he said with a little told-you-so smile.
A medevac was called in on a pitch-black night to save a critically wounded kid who had only wanted some fruit. I never learned what became of his assailant, but I became even more convinced that 1/9 was wired way too tight.
Chapter 16
With the Doggies on
the DMZ
ur two-day sweep ended peacefully; we made it back to Con Thien and stayed within the combat base for the next ten days, until another unit arrived to relieve us. We returned uneventfully down the same long road I had so feared two weeks earlier and my two tanks proceeded to return to Oceanview, where we pulled into our old revetment atop of the sand dune.
The South China Sea was our doormat. Sand dunes undulated for miles to the west and north of us and into the DMZ, giving the impres sion we were Foreign Legionnaires rather than Marines. The little fire base's most prominent feature was the squat wooden tower perched upon the area's highest sand dune. The garrison was alarmingly small for a position that close to North Vietnam. Only a single barrier of razor wire surrounded its perimeter.
Oceanview was two miles north of C-4, the northernmost U.S. position in all of South Vietnam-and the only U.S. position literally on the Z. Oceanview was but a pimple on the ass of the Demilitarized Zone, stuck way north, hanging out there by its lonesome. After our stint with 1/9, somehow the weekly rotation of tanks between C-4 and Oceanview ceased, and it became almost our permanent home for my remaining months in Vietnam.
Technically, Oceanview wasn't a fire base at all, because it had no artillery there. But we had the largest guns in the world at our beck and call.
WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED I found this little outpost manned by a single Marine rifle platoon of only forty men. I worried what fate had in store for me. Oceanview's other residents included a Navy officer, two Marine ANGLICO (Air-Naval Gunfire Liaison Company) people, and a very small detachment of Force Recon Marines.
Nobody associated with Recon, nor they with us. They even went as far as to rope off their small area with razor wire, thereby isolating themselves even more. These strange men would sneak into North Vietnam for weeks at a time. Often they wore ten-inch long, oblong wire hoops that hung off their belts, strung with what looked like dried prunes. I had no idea until someone clued me in that they were the ears of dead North Vietnamese soldiers.
Supporting this lightly held outpost were my two tanks and a pair of Army Dusters. These Doggie Dusters, as we called them, consisted of dual 40mm antiaircraft guns in an open mount, set on an M41 Walker Bulldog tank chassis.
The M42 Duster's open mount provided little or no protection for the crew-a very undesirable feature in the minds of the tank crewsbut as defensive weapons, these little vehicles were worth their weight in gold, one of the factors contributing to our little outpost's very survival. Every evening, just after sunset, the Dusters put on an awesome live-fire display, unleashing their exploding 40mm projectiles into the sand dunes to the west of us. That nightly act of defiance served to demotivate any would-be attackers outside the wire and was a morale booster for those within.
Intimidating as the Doggie Dusters and our tanks were, the real reason Oceanview wasn't overrun sat offshore from us during the day, and just over the horizon at night. In fact, she was the reason Oceanview and its rickety wooden tower existed at all. During the bombing halt, she sailed down from North Vietnam to sit offshore from us and lobbed shell after shell into the southern half of the Z, the men in the rickety tower directing her gunfire. Oceanview served as the eyes of the world's largest artillery piece on the world's only active-duty battleship. No, it wasn't the Dusters or our tanks that kept Mr. Charles away-it was the battle-ship USS New Jersey.
The Jersey was one of those things that can't be described. The only word that comes to mind is "immense." You had to see her, and you had to feel the truly awesome concussion from her guns and projectiles. Her giant guns dwarfed everything in Vietnam-or in the world for that matter. Each of her three huge turrets housed three 16-inch guns, each one able to hurl a 1,900-pound projectile 32,500 metersor nineteen miles! At night, when she fired a salvo from
over the horizon, the reddish glow briefly made it look like the sun was about to rise. We could hear the projectiles as they streaked overhead. Anyone looking carefully could trace their flight, like meteors shooting harmlessly across the night sky.
I was in awe of her size and power. On hot, sultry afternoons, when boredom reached its peak, I would aim our tank's gun at the ship and peer through the gunner's telescope, just to look at her magnificent lines. Thirty years later, I can still see the huge number "62" stenciled on her bow.
One day in late 1968, I received a radio message from my platoon leader, who was back in the safety of the hardened bunkers of C-4. Because I was the section leader and a tank commander, he called to warn me that my two tanks at Oceanview were about to take part in an Army operation that would take place in our tactical area of responsibility (TAOR).
I took that as good news. I hadn't known the Army had any units this far north. But, if so, it was high time they did some of the fighting around here. That afternoon I was summoned to Oceanview's little CP. Inside was the Marine infantry CO, a first lieutenant, with an Army major and several of the major's staff. The Doggie officers all wore crossed sabers on their lapels, indicating that they were from an armored unit.
I was introduced as being from the Marine tanks. The major looked at me in disgust and said, "Corporal, go get your section leader."
"Sir," I said, "I am the section leader."
Having worked with the Doggies before, I knew not to be insulted by the major's remark. Army policy was that if you held the job, you deserved the rank. In the Army, a tank section leader would have been a staff sergeant at least; a mere corporal was only a lowly crewman. Holding a job and receiving the rank that went with it was the only thing I liked about the Army, for the Marine Corps didn't recognize that policy at all.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 25