Leaning toward him, I pulled one side of my comm helmet away from my ear to hear what he had to say.
But he just stood there, taking it all in. After a minute he said, "Beautiful, ain't it?"
I nodded as I looked down into the lush valley. A sudden blur of motion caught our attention. Something was cutting through the grass at a rapid clip, about two hundred meters out. When the CO and I recognized what it was, we both yelled the same thing-"Tiger!"
The animal was bounding through the grass at amazing speed. Barely visible to us high up the tank, it went unseen by those on the ground. We caught only a glimpse of it as its tail whipped up with each leaping stride.
Immediately I keyed my mike. "I've got a tiger in the grass," I told the other tank commanders. "It's moving from my left to right about two hundred meters out! Can you see it?"
My two other TCs confirmed my sighting. "Roger," they came back over the radio, "Identified! We got the tiger."
I was thinking how cool it would be to have a tiger skin on our tank! "Shoot it!" I yelled to my gunner. "Shoot it before it gets away!"
"Can't get a clear shot," my gunner replied, "I've got grunts in front of me."
"Charlie Two Two," I asked the other tank, "can you get a shot in?"
"Negative, Two-Four. The tiger just went over the far ridgeline."
Meanwhile, of course, someone back in Dong Ha was monitoring this entire conversation. I never gave a thought to what it must have sounded like, until over the radio came a strange voice, asking for my tank by its number: "Charlie Two-Four? This is Charlie Six."
I was surprised, because our company CP seldom interfered with a tank commander in the field. What the hell can they want with me at a time like this?
"This is Two-Four," I replied. "Go ahead, Six."
"How many tigers can you identify?" the voice asked.
I couldn't imagine what his interest was. "Just one, and it disappeared over a ridgeline about a klick away."
"What's your poz?" he asked. (Poz was short for position.)
I glanced at my map and gave him a coded position report: "From Thunderbird, up eight hundred meters, west five hundred meters. Over."
"Wait one!" he replied, short for wait one minute or hold the phone.
Now, more than ever, I was convinced that the guys in the rear didn't have enough to do. Looking back on it, I don't recall ever seeing a tank officer in the field with us during an operation, except on Allen Brook. They always seemed to have to be at the CP for some reason. Now they wanted to bother me out of the blue. Were they looking to grab my trophy tiger skin?
I looked over at my other TCs, who were gazing back at me with SEGs (shit-eating grins), shrugging, and shaking their heads. But I had the distinct impression they knew what was going on.
After a couple of minutes, the same voice came back on the radio. "Charlie Two-Four, this is Six."
"Go ahead, Six," I replied.
"We've got two fast movers inbound to your position to take out the tiger. Over."
Fast movers meant jet aircraft! The fear of running into an NVA tank was on everybody's mind, and someone back in the rear with the gear had overreacted.
"It's just a ... "Then it dawned on me: They thought we had been talking about an enemy tank and were about to engage in the first tankversus-tank confrontation of the war. Two F-4s were now inbound to bag one large feline with stripes.
"Six, negative on the air," I replied. "It's just a tiger."
"There are no friendly tigers in your area," The voice told me sternly. "You'll have air support in five minutes!"
"It's just a tiger!" I yelled. "Like in a zoo! Over!"
"We'll take it out in a few minutes, Two-Four."
"You don't understand, Charlie Six. It's not a machine, it's the animal. You know, the one with stripes, razor sharp teeth, and a tail? Negative on an enemy tiger."
We went back and forth a few more times, until I was able to convince Dong Ha of what we had actually seen. Whoever the voice belonged to, it wasn't the CO, or he would have referred to himself as Charlie Six Actual. He rebuked me mildly for using improper radio procedure. Was there a code word for a live tiger that I wasn't aware of? The other TCs were now in hysterics over the whole situation.
Jeez! I thought. When we wanted air, we couldn't get it-and now that we didn't need it, it was only moments away.
Before it got dark that night, after we had set up a perimeter, I visited with each of my TCs. We all had a good laugh over the whole incident.
Today, older and wiser, I'm grateful the tiger got away.
Chapter 18
Twenty-nine and a
Wake-up
wenty-nine days and a wake-up" was another way of saying you only had thirty days left in The Nam. Your final day was never counted, because all you had to do was wake up. It was an easy way of reducing the number of days left in this damned place. Twenty-nine days and a wake-up was all that remained of my thirteen-month calendar just one more month.
Twenty-nine days and a wake-up placed you in a new category, known to all as being a short-timer. All Marines were convinced that reaching this plateau put your life expectancy in grave jeopardy, because in The Nam, only two kinds of Marines ever seemed to get killed- FNGs and short-timers. Anyone in between seemed to be impervious to enemy action. At least it seemed that way, and therefore, it was that way. When you heard of someone's demise, the first question out of your mouth was, "How short was he?"
Twenty-nine days and a wake-up caused early symptoms of paranoia to appear that, for some, became almost debilitating. All of a sudden, decisions that had been a snap were now loaded with implications and what-ifs. Tiny details took on life-threatening implications. Should I pee off the back of the tank as I've done a thousand times before-or use an empty shell casing as a receptacle, inside the safety of the tank? Should I leave the earthen bunker I've slept in for months, or should I take my poncho and blanket inside the tank and sleep on the turret's cramped floor?
You began to try to see if you could wear two flak jackets at the same time. You weren't worried about their bulk keeping you from exiting the tank, because there was no way you were leaving it for the next thirty days.
My last month in The Nam didn't render me ineffective, but I did experience the paranoia. I began to wear my helmet and flak jacket to the latrine. Hey, we all dealt with being short in our own ways. Also, I paid $100-the winning bid-for a flak jacket attachment some guy auctioned off the day he rotated home. This seldom-seen device, sometimes worn over a standard flak jacket by helicopter crews, attached to the front, went between your legs, and connected to the back of your flak jacket-it was basically, a bulletproof diaper.
But it turned out to be a very wise investment, because thirty days later I was able to sell it and double my money off another paranoid Marine. I actually did rather well on my last day in country, because my M14 was also in demand. I would sell it to a grunt for an additional $200-but that was a whole month away. For right now, I had to concentrate on surviving the next twenty-nine days.
I was still way up north at Oceanview. Each day, the wire surrounding the perimeter seemed to get lower. In fact, it seemed to get proportionally smaller and thinner, the shorter I became.
The tank began to look more vulnerable, and I began to wonder if it sat too high on the sand dune. The wall we had built in front of the tank-was it thick enough? Should we make it higher? Or maybe double the men on watch at night?
My mind started to concoct all sorts of ridiculous scenarios that might keep me from going home alive. Suppose the North Vietnamese tried an air attack using their MiGs? Did the NVA have Marines who could perform a beach landing here at Oceanview? I never asked myself why I hadn't worried about this stuff before. Questions like that would have kept things in perspective, could have kept me in touch with reality when I became convinced that everyone was out to kill me-and not only Charlie, either!
I grew convinced that every sweep or search-and-d
estroy mission was deliberately scheduled just to get as much as possible out of me before my return to civilization. It added to the conviction that someone, somewhere just didn't want me to leave this place. Why else would they send a short-timer out on another sweep? Every time a shorttimer ventured outside the wire, any short-timer, he would repeat his mantra, "I'm too short for this shit!" And keep repeating it for his next twenty-nine days.
In what we later termed the "Miracle of the Immaculate Ejection," Pray for Slack's main gun miraculously began to shed tears of red liquid, as if God was trying to prove his existence to me. At first, I hadn't given it much thought, for it wasn't pouring on the floor. It was a couple of dozen drops every day. But each time we fired the main gun, it got worse.
Actually, the gun's recoil mechanism had begun to leak red hydraulic fluid, but it had just as deep an effect on us as if it had been pure hemoglobin. No one, including the mechanic from battalion maintenance who was sent up to try and fix it, had ever seen such a thing before. Left unchecked, the gun could recoil right through the back of the turret-and I definitely didn't want any windows added to my tank decor.
But the true miracle had yet to fully disclose itself. The mechanic who came up from Dong Ha confirmed that the fluid was, in fact, leakage.
"You figured that out all by yourself?" I asked. I loved sarcasm.
He declared that the tank would have to go back to Dong Ha and be looked at by a turret specialist. Because we were a month away from our scheduled PM, it was decided that we should leave the next day and take the mechanic with us.
But the miracle was still unfolding and had yet to reveal its full implication. Going back to Dong Ha meant hot meals, warm showers, and a cot to sleep on. What more could we want? Via the radio, I made arrangements for one of the tanks at C-4 to take our place the next morning. At the same time, we would leave our respective positions and cross paths midway on the beach between the bases. This wouldn't be a happy reunion of two tank crews, because one crew knew it had just been screwed out of an easy stay at C-4.
Next morning, I received word over the radio that the relief tank had departed C-4. I had Pray for Slack cranked up. We left our sand dune position, exited Oceanview, and hung a right, south down the beach.
Five minutes later, we were racing along the shoreline. Soon I could make out the smoke and spray of our "willing" replacements approaching-half in the surf and half out, just as we were. Neither tank wanted to yield for the other and relinquish the safety of the water. Neither wanted to risk slowing down in this no man's land between the fire bases. We charged headlong directly toward each another for a mile, 104 tons on a collision course at sixty miles per hour. It was a game of chicken played by leviathans, each daring the other to turn inland.
I had one pissed-off tank crew coming toward us, and they might just be crazy enough not to yield. After all, what did they have to lose? I didn't want any part of a board of inquiry as to how two tanks managed to run into one another on an isolated stretch of beach in the middle of nowhere.
I told my driver to turn into the deeper surf at the last possible moment, "They'll never expect us to go into the deeper water!"
We were going to Dong Ha and the good life; who cared if we had to eat a little humble pie? At least we could give them a scare.
The two tanks came within a few lengths of each other, then each made a quick turn to avoid one another by inches. The other tank swerved inland; it was surprised by our seaward move. We had both lost the skirmish of nerves, but I had the satisfaction of yelling over to the wide-eyed tank commander, "We'll bring you back a hot meal!"
Both he and his loader promptly gave me a respectful one-finger salute.
After an uneventful trip down the beach, we got lucky once again: The Mike boat was waiting on our side to take us across the Cua Viet River. After crossing the river, we proceeded for another half an hour and pulled into the tank park at Dong Ha, where several tank crews and mechanics were busy working on a half dozen tanks. They were all in various stages of their PMs. After removing our personal gear from the tank, we moved into one of the nearby tents set up for visiting crews. We had a large tent and its half dozen empty cots all to ourselves.
My first duty was to check in at the maintenance shack and find out when we were scheduled for the PM to begin.
"First thing tomorrow morning" was the answer. I was ordered to have everything prepped before dark. That meant that these guys weren't wasting any time. We had to start unbolting our armor plate and getting everything ready so that maintenance could yank out the engine and transmission as soon as it grew light enough.
After my crew started prepping the vehicle, I went to make a few house calls, going from tank to tank to see who was in and to catch up on the latest scuttlebutt from the other TCs. I was surprised to see Crispy Critters, John Wear's tank, in the park; it had sustained mine damage and was off to the side, away from all the other tanks. The track was off the vehicle and the last set of roadwheels was missing on one side.
I found John half under the hull of his vehicle, struggling with the support arm that holds the roadwheels.
"Well, no shit!" I said to the prostrate figure. "If it ain't my pet boy Sherman!"
"Is that you, Mr. Peabody?"
"Well, who else would be calling you his pet boy?"
We hadn't seen each other since that night we polished off my mother's baby bottles. I immediately wanted to know how his crew was. The mine had taken its toll on John's flame tank. What was strange was that all of his tank's damage was at the rear.
Sherman's would be the only tank in The Nam to back over a mine! John seldom did anything the way the rest of us did, so I couldn't help but kid him.
After razzing him for a few minutes and getting caught up on what each of us had been doing, I had to get back and help my crew with their pre-PM work. John and I agreed to meet that night for the long walk over to the mess hall.
Dong Ha's hot, dusty tank park lay inside a huge perimeter atop a ridgeline; its top graded flat to create the park itself. Situated on top of the next ridge, half a mile away, was the mess hall. Many people found it to be too far away to make the long hot walk for noon chow. So during the noon-hour break, many of us racked out in the temporary tents that were provided for visiting tank crews.
John and I met around 6 p.m., for the long walk over to the mess hall. On our stroll over there, John warned me about the noonday and dinner surprises. In the rear-as we line-Marines considered Dong Ha to be-everyone kept to the same working hours they would if back in The World. Everything came to a halt for lunch, something Mr. Charles was very aware of. Several times a week, he aimed his large artillery pieces, hidden across the DMZ in North Vietnam, at the crowded mess hall. Dong Ha may have been the rear for combat troops, but for support Marines it wasn't far enough back. John explained that you could hear the NVA guns when they fired, giving you exactly ten seconds to find a hole. They would try for the mess hall John explained.
We had a good time and quite a few laughs during dinner and our long walk back to the tents.
That next morning, our armor plate was pulled off and the PM began. At that point, the maintenance people took over. We were no longer needed, so I left the crew and went to check on Crispy Critters. It was getting close to noon when I found John rolling a new roadwheel over to his tank. He asked if I wanted to walk over with him for lunch in the mess hall.
I looked at him in disbelief "Just last night you told me the mess hall's what the NVA aims for!"
"So what are you going to do, starve for the next three days? Besides, they haven't hit the mess hall for a couple of months now."
He was not doing a very good job of persuading me. Actually, without realizing it, he had given me a good reason to stay right there during all my lunches-out of the heat. I spent the next two lunches lying on my cot enjoying a quiet hour in the shade of the tent. I guess it was too hot for Charlie as well, because we experienced none of the shelling that John
had warned me about.
In a normal PM, it takes about two days to pull the power train, steam clean the engine and transmission, and change the lubricants. Our main gun's hydraulic leak kept us a day longer, while a senior turret specialist was flown up from Division Force Service Regiment (FSR) in Da Nang for another diagnosis. He confirmed that the gun was leaking.
Another Einstein, I thought.
I was on my cot, with no plans for going to lunch that day either, when John came by to tell me that this was his last day. Next morning, Crispy Critters was to go back into the field. Right away, I knew the implications. Because John was shorter than I was, there was no telling if we would ever run across each other again. I decided to go to lunch with him.
We made the long trek to the mess hall. By the time we got there, a meandering column of men a hundred strong was standing outside the door.
As we approached the end of the line, we heard some very distant and muffled booms. Typical everyday background noises, I thought and I paid them no notice. Hell, there was always some rumbling or distant explosion going off somewhere far away. Just another day in The Nam.
Suddenly the line of Marines scattered in all different directions. I found myself standing alone. Rookies, I thought. FNGs who panic over nothing! I started to move to the door of the mess hall, not believing my luck at now becoming first in line.
I hadn't taken two steps forward when I heard John call. "Mr. Peabody!" He was standing in a slit trench some fifty feet away. "Get your ass in here! Incoming!"
I finally realized this must be that lunchtime shelling he had warned me about. As I took off toward John, I heard what sounded like somebody tearing paper right next to my ear. Except that the sound came from overhead.
Crack! was followed by several more right behind it: Crack ... crack ... crack! I jumped into the space John had saved for me in a slit trench already packed with Marines from the chow line.
Praying for Slack: A Marine Corps Tank Commander in Viet Nam Page 27