LBJ's Hired Gun

by John J. Gebhart

  I then went to see one of my buddies in the S-1 Office and convinced him to shred the guard roster and make a new one, putting everyone in a different bunker. Wouldn’t you know it, First Sergeant Prick spent an hour the next day making a drawing of the bunkers and who was in them during the drone disaster. Then he questioned the Marines on duty, who got his pea brain mind all mixed up until he finally dropped the inquiry. He told the Navy not to fly drones across our beaches again because he couldn’t be responsible for their safe flight. Amen!

  THE DOG THAT EXPLODED

  The beach we lived on closely resembled Wildwood, New Jersey, so we naturally spent a lot of time swimming (or in my case, wading), sun bathing and drinking beer on our beach. One day as we were walking along, looking for stuff that had washed up overnight, we found a dead dog. My buddy Corporal Laid said, “Let’s bury the poor thing. It’s probably one that got away when he saw the zips were going to have him for dinner.” Upon closer inspection, I saw that the dog had a wire wrapped around his mouth and his stomach was crudely stitched together with string. I told everyone to get back, that the dog was loaded with TNT. Since the zips knew we loved dogs, they believed we would lift him up and bury him, and thus set off an explosive charge.

  I called the Corporal of the Guard, who called First Sergeant Prick, who called for Demolition. Demolition was made up of two crazies who liked to blow stuff up and were smart enough to disarm mines, grenades and the like. They lived at the end of the runway all by their lonesome and most of the time they drank too much. They touched explosive devices that scared the shit out of the rest of us, so I can see why they boozed it up. Stress!

  They took one look at the dog and agreed it was loaded with explosives. They laid a detonation-cord charge and told us to get back 200 yards. When they set off the charge with C-4, the dog blew a hole the size of a VW bus in our nice sandy beach. Once again, I’d saved the day, but received no medals or awards. Instead, First Sergeant Prick wanted to know what I was doing walking on the beach at 8:30 in the morning instead of filling sandbags. I told him we were walking to our assigned sandbag-filling stop, which was near the beach. He shut up and left. No apology, no “Thank you PFC Gebhart for saving my men.” He was a Lifer prick, simple as that. If he had found the dog, he would have gotten the Marine/Navy Achievement Medal.

  ZIPS IN THE WIRE

  After our big attack in October 1965, the other Marines copied my empty 50-gallon oil drum construction idea. Except for occasional mortar attacks and sniper fire, it was just about 100 percent attack-proof. We had about 800 yards of open space sand dunes that we flattened out and mined, then added rolls of barbed wire, concertina wire and razor wire. If the zips got through all that, they then would encounter about 150 yards of open space with a super bunker about every 100 yards, manned 24 hours a day by Marines on guard duty. Every second bunker had an M-60, and we moved a 106mm recoilless rifle around to different bunkers at night, plus we had a few .50-caliber machine guns in case the shit really hit the fan. We scrounged old searchlights from the graveyard of shot-up CH-34 helicopters, and mounted them high up over our bunker so if we turned them on the zips, they would be shooting over our heads and directly over our bunker. We did turn them on occasionally, when we heard our C-ration cans jingle in the minefield or barbed wire.

  Most nights very little happened. We spoke very softly and most times not at all. One boring night as we waited for the local VCs to attack, we heard a jingle from our C-ration cans in the minefield, and I turned on the spotlight for a second. What to my amazement did I see but three VCs dressed in black with blacked faces, crawling through our minefield. They must have seen our foot prints and figured out where to crawl. As my searchlight hit them, they froze like figures in a wax museum. Seven different bunkers shined their searchlights on these three unfortunate VCs. It was like they were on the Ed Sullivan Show. They tried to get their AK-47s off their backs, but they weren’t quite fast enough, and every bunker opened up on them with everything we had. They got hit with .50-caliber machine guns, five M-60s and about 25 M-14 rifles. We wasted probably 4,000 rounds to send these gooks to hell.

  Their bodies were torn apart limb from limb. The .50-calibers hit one of our land mines and blew their body parts through the air. It was quite an impressive show of Marine firepower, something like when you graduated from Camp Geiger and they put on a live night-fire demonstration that made the Fourth of July look tame. We all cheered, and after a good three minutes of wasting Marine Corps ammo, yelled cease-fire. We quickly turned off our searchlights and that was the end of the fun.

  The next day the Chaplain came out and wanted volunteers to pick up what was left of their wasted bodies. We told him to let them rot in the sun. Boy, did it stink! They smelled like a dozen dead cats hit by an auto on the highway. Finally the 7th Marines sent up the engineers who had originally planted the mines, and they went into the minefield and got the AK-47s, which, incidentally, were all ruined by the tremendous firepower we wasted on them. The 7th Marines replaced the blown-up mine and complained about the smell. They worked real fast and got out of there. We had to smell those dead zips for days until the rats ate the flesh off their torn-up bodies. We could have shot the rats but, as Clint Eastwood said in “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” “Critters got to eat too.” Their skeletons remained, and passing zips headed into Da Nang on the main road could see them. It was good advertising for the Marble Mountain Marines, and showed anyone with an inclination to attack that it wasn’t a great idea to come up through the minefield and barbed wire.

  MORTARS

  The VC knew we would shoot to kill, so they usually resorted to mortar attacks. They also didn’t like the way we had loaded the 21 dead zips into a deuce-and-a-half truck back in October, and dumped their mangled, broken up, rotting bodies in the middle of Da Nang like the garbage they were. The mortar attacks usually lasted five to ten minutes until we launched gunbirds and put on our searchlight and pinpointed where they were coming from. We shot our mortars back while we launched our gunbirds. These attacks killed and wounded a few Marines, and damaged barracks and squadron buildings, but didn’t do that much damage in general.

  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—what they did do was scare the shit out of us. When a 61mm or 81mm mortar round is coming down on you, you don’t know where to run. I hoped and prayed my super S-3 bunker could take a mortar hit. I figured a 61mm mortar wouldn’t kill us, but a 81mm mortar hit might get through three layers of sandbags. The concussion would break our eardrums. I didn’t want to test it out with a hit.

  In order to get over my mortar phobia, I decided not to run and hide the next time we were mortared. One clear, warm Vietnam night we were all watching “The Battle of the Bulge,” a great war movie, sitting around in lawn chairs and enjoying beer and snacks. In the middle of the movie, the VC mortared us. Everyone else ran for their lives and jumped in sandbag bunkers, but I just sat in my lawn chair and continued to watch the movie, drinking my beer and eating the pretzels my mother had sent me. A few mortar rounds hit 75 to 100 yards away on the flight line, but they missed the movie area. It was all over in ten minutes.

  We launched two gunbirds, hit the zip mortar crew with 2.75 rockets, and blew them into the next world. I became famous as a brave Marine who sat through the movie instead of hiding in a bunker. First Sergeant Prick asked me if I had a death wish. I said no, but I did like a good war movie.

  OUR FIRST VC PRISONER

  We had three shifts of Marines manning our bunkers 24 hours a day keeping a sharp eye out for VCs. One hot day, a crew chief standing on top of his UH-IE saw a zip in the sand dunes dressed in black with a rifle. He could see further than the guards in the nearest bunker, so he ran over and informed them. They went over and captured the man. He had an American Browning Automatic Rifle with one magazine and a plastic ID tag around his neck. The Marines tied him up, dropped him in a jeep, and took him over to our S-2 Intelligence Office. I worked in the same building in the S-
3 Operations section. We called an interpreter, who questioned the suspected VC. His ID card had been cut with a razor, the original picture had been removed and replaced with his, and the card was glued together again. The heat had ruined the glue, so you could plainly see the ID card had been tampered with.

  The guy was scared and shaking. He had no answer about where he got the BAR or why he was lying in the sun with bipods ready to shoot. The more the interpreter questioned him the dumber he got. This pissed off the Captain from S-2, who wanted to take him out and shoot him. Meanwhile, Major Law, my boss in S-3, said to give the prisoner water and food and untie him. Treat him with respect, even if he intended to kill some of us. Major Law and Captain Knowledge got into a shouting match in front of everyone, and Major Law told him to grow up, and have the prisoner handcuffed and handed over to the proper authorities.

  I was ordered to drive him over to Da Nang and turn him over to an ARVN outpost. We drove over in the hot sun. The VC shit himself he was so scared, but that was his problem. I drove into a large French villa with tall white walls surrounding it. We unhandcuffed the prisoner and turned him over to an English-speaking ARVN officer who said the man would be treated fairly.

  Two ARVN soldiers armed with M-2 carbines escorted the VC around the corner while I got back in the jeep. As I was making a U-turn, I heard a ripple of M-2 carbine shots and laughter. I parked the jeep and walked around the corner of the compound to see the VC we had just dropped off being dragged away dead with blood all over the whitewashed walls. The compound was loaded with ARVN soldiers sitting around listening to Sony radios and goofing off. The English-speaking officer said that is how they dealt with the local VCs.

  We drove back to Marble Mountain very disillusioned. I told Major Law what had happened, and he was pissed and sad at the same time. Captain Knowledge said he had been right. Next time we could shoot them ourselves and save the half-hour drive. “We are not executioners, but soldiers,” Major Law told him, “and it isn’t up to us to decide who lives and who dies.” In this case we did what we thought was correct, only to be disappointed by the behavior of low-life ARVN soldiers. Our hands were clean. We all looked up to Major Law and his view of how things ought to be in the world, but unfortunately Vietnam was a place where no rules applied, or at least were not enforced by our ARVN compatriots.

  THE ONE-MAN TRANSFER

  First Sergeant Prick finally took R&R (Rest and Relaxation) in Hawaii to meet his wife. Major Fine gave me the night off from guard duty so I decided to go to the movies shown on the beach. I drank a lot of cold beer and, believe it or not, watched the movie with a certain Captain Raw. He was an okay guy who had somehow worked his way up from the enlisted ranks to officer. He knew I wasn’t the village idiot, and he had recommended me for a Bronze Star for shooting the seven VC with the other four Marines. He was a stand-up guy, like the mob says in South Philadelphia.

  I got pretty drunk and was walking back to my tent when a black Marine asked me what was at the movies. I made the mistake of answering, “Boy, I don’t know what was at the movies; I was too busy drinking and bullshitting!” The black guy yelled out, “Who you calling ‘boy’?” I was kind of dumbfounded. A whole herd of soul brothers came running out of their nearby tent and surrounded me. One guy took a punch at me and I decked him in the sand. Another two tried to grab my arms and I kicked one in the shin and flipped the other guy. I had about nine of them in this wolfpack style trying to beat me up. I could have yelled for help from my buddies in my tent less than 50 yards away, but I figured I could take them on.

  Next thing I knew, one of them hit me over the head with a metal bar. I dropped to the ground and they took off running back into the soul brother tent. My head was bleeding and, lucky for me, one of my guys grabbed me and rushed me into the Medic tent. They put seventeen stitches in my scalp. The next day I couldn’t get out of my rack. I had a terrible hangover and a real sore head.

  Major Fine came over to my tent and was super pissed. I told him I had been attacked by my fellow Marines, but I got three of them before they dropped me. He got me some pain pills and went to the head of the MPs, the Provost Marshal, and demanded a complete investigation. Major Fine got all the names of the people in the soul brothers’ tent, and wanted them all court-martialed. Most of them were in Motor Pool and nothing but trouble. One guy had already been on two emergency leaves for two of his relatives in Washington, DC, who had been murdered. He lost more relatives in the USA than in a combat area. Major Fine wanted them prosecuted for attempted murder, meaning jail time in Leavenworth, Kansas.

  After a couple of days, I felt better and went back to work. I always carried my K-bar knife and my full-auto M-14, and was ready to shoot these bastard coward dogs on sight. The whole atmosphere at Marble Mountain changed after I was attacked. Every white Marine carried his pistol, rifle or K-bar at all times. The soul brothers knew their days were numbered. One of them, PFC Raul, a half-breed piece of ghetto shit, told me if I testified against the brothers they would cut my throat. He told me this in the chow hall with the brothers all around me, watching. I stood up and pulled out a borrowed MP .38-caliber pistol. “Try to cut my white honky throat now, and I’ll put a bullet through your half-breed forehead,” I said. I cocked the pistol and they all beat feet. The racial tension got worse because the brothers got high and gave all the Sergeants a lot of shit whenever they were ordered to fill sandbags, police the area or dump the trash—simple regular duties performed by every Marine. The MPs were made up of a few black guys who partied with these bad apples and didn’t want to cause them any more problems. We were fighting the VC and NVA, and we were also fighting the soul brothers.

  A few days later, Major Fine took off for an emergency recon extraction and his chopper took a lot of ground fire. He was hit and crash-landed the chopper in a rice paddy. They couldn’t get a Med-Evac chopper in to rescue him because of intense enemy fire. He had saved many people by making unbelievably hot LZ landings, but nobody could get into the LZ that night to save him, and he died of wounds. Our whole squadron was in shock. He was in such a hurry to go on that mission that he left his pistol hanging on his chair. Major Fine was awarded a Navy Cross for his valor in combat.

  The Provost Marshal called me to his office and told me my champion hero was dead. The Provost Marshal was a First Lieutenant who was afraid to stir up more trouble. The black guys had a lot of other charges against them and he wasn’t going to let me start a race riot that he would have to put down by force of arms. He told me that First Sergeant Prick and he had decided to transfer me to Chu Lai Air Base to forestall a war. He knew I wouldn’t back down, and he was afraid I’d shoot them all. His job was to keep the peace, he said, like an old western marshal. The order was already cut, and he told me to pack up. They would fly me down to Chu Lai on New Year’s Day. Happy fucking New Year!

  I partied with my buddies, and they helped me pack my shit. We drank beer and talked about all the shit we got into and how we would all miss each other’s company. It was New Year’s Eve, raining and cold. Everyone loaded my stuff into a jeep then all climbed aboard and escorted me out to the flight line. They loaded my footlocker and duffel bag and we all shook hands. I told them if we didn’t all go to hell, I’d meet them again in Valhalla with Odin the Viking God.

  CHAPTER 4

  LEARNING TO DEAL OUT DEATH FROM ABOVE

  MY WELCOME TO THE LAND OF MUD

  My trip to Chu Lai was cold and lonely. As I watched the lights of Marble Mountain get dimmer and dimmer, I felt like I had lost my very soul. It was a very sad, wet time for me. We landed at Chu Lai, and MAG-36 First Sergeant Doright was waiting to meet me personally. I loaded my stuff in his jeep and he drove me to the headquarters of my new unit, Klondike. He took me into his office in the S-1 section and told me bluntly, “Gebhart, the party is over.” First Sergeant Prick had told him about some of my exploits. I asked, “What exploits? I killed seven VCs, that is my only claim to fame.” He then recited a long l
ist of things like a broken record—phony money, the 3.5-inch rocket incident, the jungle survival school, the garbage trucks, the never-ending wire detail—and don’t forget the near race riot I started. I asked what he would do if nine soul brothers surrounded him. He looked me straight in the eye. “I’d kill them all if they had weapons,” he said. “But don’t quote me on that.”

  He said I was to report to mess duty the next morning and ask to see Corporal Sauté. He then showed me my new house, Hootch #7, and introduced me to its inhabitants. My new bunkies were okay. They helped me move in and shared their beer, booze and shots of Seagram’s Seven with me, the FNG or Fucking New Guy. It didn’t take too long to win over the hearts and their minds of Hootch #7 to my way of seeing things!

  THE GREAT GRAPEFRUIT INVESTIGATION

  I reported to Corporal Sauté at the Mess Hall. He had been in the Marines for 12 years and had been busted a number of times for drinking, fighting and God knows what else. He was a professional Corporal and I was his new flunky. I did everything he asked and we soon became buddies. He had a bottle of gin hidden in one of the coolers and we sat in there drinking gin and orange juice while we peeled potatoes or opened cans of Spam. With both of us drinking, we soon ran out of orange juice. There was a case of grapefruit juice marked with magic markers, “For Colonel Jamison only.” Corporal Sauté looked into the case and decided they would not miss a can or two.

  Every morning Colonel Jamison had to have his precious grapefruit juice for breakfast. He had figured out how long his case of 12 large cans of grapefruit juice would last. Corporal Sauté really didn’t care—he had a bad drinking problem. He took two more cans back to his tent, and before you knew it, the entire case was gone.