LBJ's Hired Gun

by John J. Gebhart

  THE 3.5 ROCKET INCIDENT

  First Sergeant Prick put me back on late-night guard duty—no more S-1 tent. He put Corporal Kruger with me, saying two shitheads could do a better job of guarding than one. Monsoon rains, mud, boredom and endless stories—we were tired of all this guard bullshit. The VCs must have taken the monsoon season off, because there was very little activity in front of our bunkers. Lieutenant Boring moved us around to a different bunker so we would know the whole area. One bunker was almost directly across from a Vietnamese Pagoda Temple. It had probably been built around the time of Moses, and had huge front doors two stories high with carving on them. When we moved, we were told not to damage this ancient temple. The Buddhist monks wore pink outfits, shaved their heads, and prayed a lot, and I didn’t trust any of them. The way I figured it, they lived there twenty-four/seven so they must know who the VC were. They probably even belonged to their church. I had lived in West Philadelphia all my life and I knew who the mob wise guys were, so certainly the monks knew the local VC, and all of them dummied up too.

  Every night around midnight a VC smartass would yell out from the temple area, “Marine, you die! Fuck you, Marines!” Then he would take a shot at our position. We were not allowed to shoot back because we might hit the family heirloom temple. One night I said to Corporal Kruger, “Let’s fuck this zip up!” When our hot spam sandwiches and coffee came by jeep to our bunker, I told the driver to hang out in the bunker for a bit while I went back to the compound to get some dry clothing from my hootch. I drove the jeep over to the ordnance tent, where I discovered everyone was playing Monopoly. There was about $75.00 on Free Parking, and all the ordnance guys were trying to land on it to get the money. “What the fuck do you want?” they asked. I replied that I needed to borrow a 3.5-inch rocket launcher and two rockets. They said, “No way, Jose,” so I told them I had a problem with a wiseass VC sniper and I wanted to scare the shit out of him. I kept bugging them until they threw me an empty duffel bag, a 3.5 rocket launcher and one rocket. They gave me a 30-second rocket lesson, and said if I got caught by First Sergeant Asshole it was on me as if I had stolen it! They then went back to drinking Jack Daniels and playing their board game.

  I got the rocket launcher back to my bunker at 11:45 PM. The driver was still waiting. I said, “We are going to shoot the rocket at 12:01 AM when the zips shoot at us. Then you’ll deliver it back to the ordnance tent in the duffel bag as quickly as possible and forget it ever happened.” He said he would keep his mouth shut about it.

  I got Corporal Kruger all lined up on the Pagoda Temple. At 11:58 PM, I loaded the rocket round, making sure I wasn’t behind it. The back blast will kill you! I tapped Corporal Kruger on his helmet to let him know that he was hot and ready to shoot. Right on time, the wiseass VC yelled, “Marine, you die!” And right on time, Corporal Kruger pulled the trigger. I believe the VC was on the roof when he took his standard shot. Corporal Kruger’s aim was a little low. He missed the roof, but put the 3.5 rocket right through the fancy-detailed, hand-carved two-story doors. We saw the temple get hit but we had no idea what damage it caused, because we couldn’t walk through the minefields and barbed wire to do damage control. There was silence for about one minute, then the whole line opened up and fired on the temple. I packed the rocket launcher and told the driver to get it back as quickly as possible.

  Lieutenant Boring must have been taking a shit because the phone in the bunker didn’t ring. Amazing! After a minute, the shooting stopped and the rest of the rainy night was quiet.

  The next day after chow hall I was sitting in a four-seat outhouse, daydreaming, when I saw a long procession of Buddhist monks walk up from the main gate, praying and playing a drum. They were there to meet the Commanding Officer, who by some stroke of luck was over in the III MAF Headquarters. They met with the MAG-16 S-1 Officer, and demanded to get paid $4,000 US for reparation for their damaged door. The S-1 Officer put in a claim for them, but he said we were constantly taking sniper fire from their Temple. We had used restraint, but if they knew the VCs were over there, it was their duty to contact the Marines.

  The monks walked out single file, praying and playing their drums. Then the brass started trying to find out what happened. It took them about two days to figure out a 3.5 rocket had been fired from the Marines’ side of the road. Luckily for us, the monks took the huge door off its hinges to repair it, so the brass couldn’t get the angle of the fired rocket. Then the brass narrowed it down, by range of 3.5 rockets, to six bunkers. They questioned each Marine on the 12:00 to 8:00 AM guard shift individually. When they got on my case, I asked them who in their right mind would let a PFC like me shoot a rocket launcher? Of course everyone knew that Corporal Kruger and I did it, but pissing off the brass was something the whole guard section loved to do. We were the shitbirds of the base. No one gave a crap about us getting soaking, ringing wet in a sandbag bunker while everyone else slept warmly inside their hootches.

  The US government gave the slimy, deceitful monks their broken door money and First Sergeant Prick never stopped asking questions about who was responsible for the incident. He even went to ordnance and was told that all the 3.5 rocket launchers were locked up in military boxes in the ordnance tent, so it was impossible for the damage to have been caused by one of the MAG-16 rocket launchers. It remained a mystery and made Corporal Kruger and me famous.

  Our rocket shot not only damaged the monks’ door, it showed them that we were onto their “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” games. We scared the shit out of the VC, and he never shot at either of us again.

  PADDY-HOPPING HAWKINS

  One of the soul brothers, Private Hawkins, was a professional wiseass from East St. Louis, Missouri, who would never listen to anyone who had good advice. He told us he didn’t have any quarrel with the VC. Busted and promoted and busted back to Private again and again, he nevertheless was a legend in his own mind. Another Motor Pool killer.

  His latest adventure was sneaking out at night, walking through the secret path in the minefield and going into the village to get laid. Other black Marines who manned one of the bunkers let him sneak in and out—real good security for the rest of us! Sometimes he took his M-14 rifle and sometimes an NCO’s .45-automatic. Only the soul brothers knew what was going on.

  When Hawkins didn’t show up for his job at Motor Pool, or at mail call, chow or any other call, First Sergeant Prick interviewed Private Hawkins’ buddies. They all dummied up. After two days, First Sergeant Prick sent out a heavily armed patrol to our local village—the same friendly village from which we hired people to work at the base. I was one of those volunteered by First Sergeant Prick to go out and look for Hawkins. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” he told me. We marched single file over to the village, and on the way we smelt the smell of death, like a dead doe hit by a Peter Built truck on Interstate 80.

  Finally we found Private Hawkins. He was tied to a tree naked, his dick cut off and put in what was left of his mouth. His head was inside an old French birdcage, with a rat eating his face off. The zips had put molasses or sugar on his face, pulled the cage over his head and dropped in the rat. He bled to death from his prick being cut off, but he must have screamed a lot with the rat eating off his face. What a horrible way to go.

  Four Marines threw up on the spot and I told everyone that they better smarten up, that the zips would do this to every one of us if they could. The Colonel had to write a death letter about how Hawkins “died for his country,” although he really died in the pursuit of poon-tang. Another Marine tagged and bagged. They shipped him to Dover, Delaware, COD, closed casket. I saw his face in my dreams for quite a while.

  GUARD DUTY: THE ATTACK ON MARBLE MOUNTAIN

  First Sergeant Prick decided to make an example of me, and put me on permanent night guard duty. I think he finally realized that I wasn’t stupid and the joke was on him. During the day, I worked in the S-3 Operations Office from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, ate at 4:00 PM, and slept
from 4:30 to 11:30 PM. Then I had all-night guard duty from midnight to 8:00 AM. If you were caught sleeping on guard duty, you were broken in rank. First Sergeant Prick saved the midnight to 8:00 shift for his super shitbirds, and then snuck around to try to catch them sleeping. He had too much time on his hands.

  The monsoons came and we did everything possible to make our bunker watertight, but it still leaked like a soup sandwich. I was assigned to guard the safe in the S-1 tent, which was out on the flight line. They set up a bed in there for me, and I could sleep as long as I didn’t leave the room. I think Major Fine felt sorry for the way First Sergeant Prick treated me. Until this day, I do not know what was in the safe.

  Sleeping in the S-1 tent wasn’t bad. If the VCs hit us, I could get into a bunker made of sandbags next to it to hold them off. Most nights on the line it was quiet. There were 20 or so mechanics and other helicopter repairmen walking around the flight line at night, so you had people to talk to. I could write letters home, read and sleep in a warm bed. I just had to stay there from midnight until 8:00 AM. Major Fine was an okay guy.

  Then, on October 28, 1965, the shit hit the fan. My beauty sleep was interrupted by a loud explosion, and then another and another. I looked out the front of the S-1 tent and saw helicopters blowing up and men running around, so I grabbed my M-14 rifle, helmet and ammo belt, and slipped my boots on. As I was running out the front door, a VC threw a hand grenade in the back door that blew up my bed. Outside, I ran headlong into the VC who had just blown the rear of my tent up. I was so close to him I could smell his body odor. I don’t think he knew what underarm deodorant was all about.

  The nights in ’Nam were blacker than a funeral parlor Cadillac. My heart was pumping and my mouth was dry. The VC had his AK-47 slung over his back and was getting ready to throw another grenade. As he was lighting the fuse, I pulled the trigger of my M-14, and it wouldn’t fire. I quickly chambered a round, put off the safety, and unloaded on him. He yelled out in pain and dropped to the ground.

  I took off and ran over to another tent occupied by four Marines. I dived in and came up with a .45-automatic at my left ear. Morons! “Do I look like a fucking zip?” I asked. The zips sprayed our tent with AK-47 fire as we hid behind a metal desk, chairs and filing cabinets. Their fire cut the tent poles in half. I saw the zip I had wounded, whose buddies grabbed him and dragged him to the rear of another tent. He fired on us, and I unloaded five perfectly aimed shots and blew the top of his head off.

  We then all opened fire on his VC buddies. They went down, some dead, some crawling on the ground. As the helicopters blew up, we could see there were a lot more VCs running around the flight line. We looked out of the front of the tent and saw three VCs standing out in the open. One was handing out explosives from a canvas bag to the other two. They yelled out in broken English, “No shoot us GI, we friends!” I told the other Marines in the tent to waste them. A Corporal threw a hand grenade and blew one of the guys in half. We all shot our rifles and blew the crap out of the other two. Two more zips came out blasting at our tent. A Lance Corporal opened fire on them with his boss’s grease gun, while we shot at the others, who ran in front of the tent. All in all, we killed seven VCs and wounded God knows how many. There were blood trails all over the place.

  The highest-ranking person I ran into was the Corporal with the hand grenade. Whenever the shooting started in ’Nam, you could never find a Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Gunny Sergeant, or even our fearless leader, First Sergeant Prick. We were it. We had to improvise and save ourselves. When the shooting ended about half an hour later, all of a sudden we saw Sergeants, Staff Sergeants and Gunny Sergeants running around with their .45 pistols as if they hadn’t all been hiding, praying for their lives. We were not even a grunt 0311 unit, but every Marine is a rifleman first. Where were our adult supervisors, our non-commissioned officers? They put in a sad showing when a group of newbies had to hold down the fort and save the day for MAG-16 Marble Mountain. We had a saying, “What is the difference between Marines and Boy Scouts?” Answer: “The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.”

  A Captain came by in the early morning, looked at all the dead zips, and told us to write down what happened. We all wrote our stories and handed them in. Later in the day, we were all told we would be getting Naval Commendation Medals with Combat V for our outstanding devotion to duty in killing the attacking insurgent VC guerrillas and saving some of our attack helicopters—all in keeping with the highest tradition of the Naval Services.

  Getting a medal for killing seven zips with four other Marines made me a hero. The zips did a job on our base and blew up 18 gunbirds, four trucks, fuel supplies and a lot of other equipment. They killed and wounded many Marines—I never really got the full count. First Sergeant Prick was pissed that I was a hero, because now he couldn’t mess with me as much as he would have liked.

  On checking the 21 dead VCs the Marines killed that night, we found some familiar faces. Two of them worked in our mess hall and still had their plastic ID cards around their necks. One worked for the Chaplain, and a lot of them had helped build the base. Our kindness in hiring these scumbags came back to haunt us. We threw all the zip help off the base, and had a mad race to build real, better and more fortified bunkers. Every Marine was out reinforcing our defensive lines. I got a brainstorm that I should have patented and copyrighted. It was to chop holes in empty 55-gallon oil drums, fill them with sand, put one in each corner, and then build three layers of sandbags on the roof with marsh matting to hold it up, then put sandbags three deep all around the drums. Total protection!

  We built one of these super bunkers behind the S-3 tent where I worked during the day. I swear to you it was atomic bomb proof. Others copied my design, and soon we had a line of these monster 55-gallon oil drum bunkers, complete with firing spots. We equipped every second bunker with an M-60 machine gun, so the next time the zips got through the land mines, concertina wire and barbed wire, they would have to deal with our monster bunkers. It was like the Atlantic Wall Rommel built in World War II. We worked nonstop for two days, only pausing to eat. On the third day, I simply rolled over and went to sleep—boots, rifle and all—and slept for 12 hours straight. No one dared wake me. After 48 hours, the human body stops and drops for need of sleep.

  Even First Sergeant Prick was happy with my super bunker. This became his new hiding place when the zips opened fire on us. As we built the stronger bunkers, the Medics collected the dead zips, and the Marines collected their weapons and spare magazines. They lined up all the dead zips for pictures, and we made sure to pick out the seven VCs we had killed. We put our bayonets on our M-14s, and posed for death pictures with our trophy VCs, like during deer season when you shoot an eight-point buck.

  Two zips were still alive. A Corpsman was praying for one of them, who was dying. I told him, “Next time, shoot first and pray later.” He felt sorry for the VC, who made a growling noise in his throat and croaked. He must have been a Quaker conscientious objector, afraid to shoot our country’s enemies. He was supposed to carry a .45-automatic, but didn’t have one. This wasn’t the Germantown Cricket Club—we were LBJ’s hired guns. Our job was to kill zips, not save them.

  I took out my K-bar knife to cut the VC’s left ear off as a war trophy, and the Corpsman started crying. I told him we were Vikings and this was our custom. I wasn’t really going to cut his ear off, I just wanted to see the Corpsman’s reaction. He ran to the Navy doctor, who tried to get us into trouble with First Sergeant Prick. “Zips are human beings,” said the doctor. He should have been the one to write your-son-is-dead letters to the mothers of the Marines these scumbags had killed after we had been good enough to hire, trust and help them.

  As a sequel to this story, I add that a long time after the war in Vietnam was over, PFC Goodwood, the seeming Seabee who had scoped out our defenses, came out of a jungle camp and told the American Embassy in Hanoi that he had been a prisoner of war. Sure! He was grabbed from the zips and flown back to the S
tates. Former POWs, mostly officers, recognized Bobby as a former VC enemy, not a prisoner. He even carried an AK-47. He claimed he had been captured in Da Nang driving a jeep, but in ’Nam you never drove a vehicle without another Marine riding shotgun, and he had been taken prisoner driving alone.

  He had quit the Marines, felt sorry for the worthless zips, and volunteered to help them. I believe he was responsible for the Marble Mountain attack and helped plan it. As far as I am concerned, the blood of all the Marines who died and were wounded is on his hands.

  PFC Bobby Goodwood was held for court-martial and tried, and former POWs testified about him being a spy and active VC. Our government found him guilty, busted him in rank to Private, and he forfeited all his lost pay. They let this no-good Marine spy go with a dishonorable discharge and no prison time. Till this day he is hated as much as our girl Jane Fonda. He should have been placed against a white wall at Camp Pendleton, and shot by firing squad. Every Marine in ’Nam worth his salt wanted to kill PFC Goodwood.

  THE BRUISER AK-47

  We had a guy from Bayonne, New Jersey, who was the leader of a tough street gang before he joined the Marines. He was Corporal Bruce, or simply “the Bruiser.” At 5-foot-8-inches and 225 pounds of solid muscle, he could beat anyone at arm wrestling or regular fighting in a matter of seconds. He had no sense of humor and solved most of his problems with his fists. He picked people up in fights and actually threw them in the air. His head was welded into his shoulders, he had no neck, and could pick up the rear end of a VW Beetle all by himself. He was, in short, not a person to piss off or mess with, and we generally stayed out of his way.

  When the VC hit Marble Mountain on October 28, they cut the communication wires. Corporal Bruce went out alone to repair them, armed with a M-14 rifle, a small flashlight and his wire splicing equipment. As he crawled along in the midst of everyone shooting, he ran headlong into the very VC who had cut his wires. The zip jumped up and tried to shoot him. The Corporal grabbed the VC’s rifle by the barrel, pulled him into his arms and beat the crap out of him. He finally broke the VC’s neck so violently that he turned his head completely around, like Linda Blair possessed by the devil in The Exorcist. He then spliced the wire, took the VC’s AK-47 and extra magazines, spent the rest of the night repairing the line, and told no one of his activities. Otherwise, he would have gotten a medal for his unselfish devotion to duty.