I got to the Operations room early the next morning to get a trip to Chu Lai, where I ran into another Corporal who had been in my class at Operations School in Memphis. His name was Corporal Schedule. He saw my air wings and knew I was a helicopter gunner, so he did me a favor and got me a ride on a Chinook CH-46 troop helicopter. In the Marines I believe we called them CH-47 Sea Hawks. This one was carrying a load of newbies to Chu Lai where they had trucks to transport them to some base in II-Corps. The gunners on these monsters carried .50-caliber machine guns. As we headed down the coastline to Chu Lai, I asked permission to shoot the Big 50. Since I was a Marine door gunner and the crew was bored to death with this bus-run mission, they agreed to let me waste a belt out in the South China Sea. Even up at 1,000 feet, the .50-caliber made its mark in the calm surface of the water. With its terrifying sound and devastating firepower, the .50 could take out anything the gooks had to throw at us. I had a blast shooting a belt at the ocean.
We arrived at Chu Lai around 10:00 AM. The Army recruits looked scared to death as they watched the filled caskets being loaded onto the C-130 transports for their trip up to Da Nang. This sight really got their attention. They asked me how ’Nam was, and I told them to think of Club Med with a few trouble spots. I thanked the officers and gunner for letting me rip a belt into the sea, and told them if they ever ran into a problem in I-Corps to call Klondike for immediate help. They all laughed when they asked me how many gunbirds we had in our outfit. I told them 25, with about 18 working at any one time. They were members of First Air Cavalry and had over 225 Hueys, so they told me that the next time we were in trouble to call Air Cav. I laughed and said, “We try to stay out of II-Corps’ area as much as possible. It’s too boring!”
At 1:00 PM I got a ride once again on the mail jeep up to Ky Ha, which I shared this time with a young First Lieutenant who was to be the new MAG-36 Supply Officer. I asked him to get me a pair of size 12 flight boots, which made him laugh. Only officers were allowed to order flight boots because they were so expensive, but most enlisted crewmembers talked their officers into ordering them on the Q-T. The First Lieutenant asked me what I did up at Ky Ha, and I said I killed zips from a Huey gunship. He tried to correct me, saying, “Don’t call the VC and NVA zips; it is disrespectful to our ARVN allies.” I laughed and said, “Wait until you are here a while. They’re all no-good wastes—the VC, the NVA and the coward dog ARVN soldiers. At Klondike we waste them all with extreme prejudice!”
MY TRIUMPHANT RETURN
By the grace of God, I made it back to my unit on day 45, reporting back to the to the S-1 Office at noon. Corporal Wiseass had a very grim look, and nobody seemed very happy to see my smiling face, especially Major Misery. Colonel Monte had finally returned Stateside and we now had a Colonel Nellie running the show. I started mentally counting the days. I was going to make sure I didn’t screw up the count. I tried to get scuttlebutt from Corporal Wiseass, but he was afraid to say anything with Mr. Happiness, Major Misery, staring him down. Thus I figured I was going to get court-martialed.
First Sergeant Rocky asked me to step outside the S-1 Office, and then I heard “Atten-shun!” and out came our new Colonel with a paper in his hand. I thought, “Damn! Goodbye Corporal, hello Lance Corporal. Major Misery finally got to demote me.”
I was dead wrong! The paper was my Sergeant promotion warrant! Colonel Nellie read it out and shook my hand. I saluted him and he said, “Keep up the good work.” Then Top Rocky shook my hand and said he wished he had another ten Sergeant Gebharts. Both men welcomed me home! This was an emotional roller-coaster ride, and I must say I was in shock for a few minutes. Corporal Wiseass laughed his ass off and said, “Move your gear out of the hootch.” He was now the senior E-4 Corporal there, and I had to move into the Sergeants’ hootches.
In the Marines we have the tradition of “pinning on” your stripes. Simply put, every other Sergeant in your outfit has the right to hit you on both arms. When I moved into the Sergeants’ hootches, they beat on both my arms so badly I could barely hold up a can of cold Miller. I was also given Staff Sergeant Newburn’s old lucky E-5 black chevron for my collar. I took off my old Corporal chevron and put on my new Sergeant chevron and the whole hootch yelled and screamed, “Welcome to the Beach Club!”
The Sergeants had two hootches facing each other on top of a hill. In the backyard were steps out into the coral cliff wall leading down to a private beach inside a small cove that protected it from the big waves. About 100 yards out a reef formed a wall, making the clear blue water into a still, lake-like pond. There were even floating white lines marking where the reef started and a floating platform where we could sunbathe. The cliff was about 100 feet up from the beach and was covered with heavy brush. Whenever we drank a can of beer, we simply threw it over the cliff into the weeds. There must have been thousands of soda and beer cans on this cliff area.
The Sergeants got a load of 4x8 plywood and took a blowtorch and grained the wood. Our hootch had a green-painted refrigerator with a list duct-taped to it. When you took out a beer or soda, you marked it on the list with an X. Every two weeks on payday, you paid up for what you drank. We had a custom-built picnic table and chairs in this area, hand-taken off the Navy LST that had gotten stuck on the rocks. We had speakers and our own radio and tape player. Thus we had a lot of parties. There were mortar flare parachutes over our roof area and a good selection of Playboy posters on the walls. In short, we had one hell of a good set-up.
The Sergeants lived well. We listened to the Armed Forces radio channel or Hanoi Hannah. It was very entertaining to hear her tell us that the victorious National Liberation Forces had whipped our 200 Marine M-48 tanks, shot down 50 UH-IE gunbirds and killed hundreds of American soldiers who were lackeys for the Imperialist American government. Her speeches were all bullshit—the Marines never had more than 25 M-48 tanks in the whole wasted country. If the gooks had shot down 50 gunbirds, VMO-2 or VMO-6 would have been put completely out of business. That was the total number we had.
Sergeant Rich wrote his father, who owned a communication company, that he needed a tall radio/TV tower to get better reception for the Saigon Armed Forces TV channel. One day a huge shipment of metal parts arrived in wooden boxes. We all got wrenches and put together this 25-foot radio/TV tower. I then went down to the Seabee camp and ordered a load of cement. I talked the chief into building us a cement rear deck and installing the bolts into the fresh cement to hold up our TV tower. In exchange I talked Major Moose into taking up two Seabees as gunners again. It took about two days of bullshitting to arrange it all.
On the day the cement truck came rolling up, I rounded up every Sergeant I could find and we led the driver over to our hootches. The Seabees dumped the cement into custom-made forms, then raked it even and put a smooth finish on it. They also installed our TV tower properly for us. It took about half a day and the work of about ten Seabees. They couldn’t believe how well we lived, and went back to their base with some new ideas on home decoration. We threw in some mortar flare parachutes for them and a dozen custom-made 105mm howitzer shell ashtrays.
The cement dried, we put our lawn chairs out, and a Sergeant who worked in avionics hooked up the TV set to the huge antenna. We now had a black-and-white 24-inch TV to watch 24 hours a day. We enjoyed watching the news about how the war was going. It was usually highly censored and we knew it was bullshit. On our TV station we were winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. Sure. “Here is your new toothbrush”—and twenty minutes later the Marine who handed out the toothbrushes gets his leg blown off. Same village. Same people. The only way we ever won their hearts and minds was to dust them.
CHAPTER 9
WORKING AT THE DUDE RANCH FOR LBJ
HOW MAJOR GOODHEART WENT TO HEAVEN
When I got back from partying in Australia, Corporal Cross caught me up on all the events that had happened in my absence. Colonel Monte had finished his twelve months in ’Nam, packed up his gear, and got on
the shiny silver bird and headed back to the land of the big PX. This left a vacuum in leadership. Klondike was without a Commanding Officer, and by the grace of God, Major Misery didn’t have enough seniority to assume the CO position. Major Goodheart, who had more time in the service, thus assumed command until we got a new CO from the States.
I knew from former experience that Major Goodheart was an exceptional leader and decent human being. He was a leader who went out of his way to learn the name, rank and job of each man under his command. He didn’t just order, “Gebhart, do this!” It was, “Corporal Gebhart, do you have any idea where I could obtain a 105 howitzer shell ashtray for my desk?” In one day I had five 105mm shells cut down and polished by the metal smiths. They etched Major Goodheart’s name and “Klondike” on all of them. I put them on his desk while he was at the chow hall. He returned, hung up his pistol, took off his cap and was overjoyed at the fine workmanship and my quickness in fulfilling his wish.
He had been originally assigned as head of our S-4 supply depot. Getting a new utility shirt, underwear and jungle boots was extremely hard to do. Every request had to be typed in triplicate and signed by an officer, and it was a major production to get something from supply. The Gunny Sergeant who ran it believed he personally owned everything in his warehouse. Major Goodheart finally took inventory of our clothing, and found that there were tons of stuff available to cover all our needs. Gunny Sergeant Hardtime almost had a nervous breakdown when Major Goodheart had our First Sergeant, Top Rocky, announce that small, medium and large utility uniforms were available.
Next, Major Goodheart got everyone a new set of jungle boots. Most people were still wearing their regular issue leather boots, which became hard as rocks when they got wet, and had to dry out. While I was in Australia, Major Goodheart tried to get flight boots for enlisted air crewmen. These were soft leather boots with custom heels that were very comfortable to wear. They were like gold. To get a set, it was not who you knew, but who you blew. I had bugged Captain Adventure before he left to order a set for himself (size 12), and give them to me. As a return favor, I traded a case of assorted colored smoke grenades to the 5th Marine grunts, and they gave me a dead gook’s SKS carbine. Smoke grenades were hard for grunts to get, but they had a lot of enemy weapons, especially the common and very deadly SKS 7.62 x 39 ChiCom ten-shot semi-automatic rifle. Captain Adventure got an okay letter to take it home and was overjoyed.
Major Goodheart was a very experienced pilot who once belonged to the special squadron that flew the President around town and to Camp David. He requested to be sent into combat three times before the brass approved his transfer. He could have just stayed in Washington, DC and avoided the war, flying LBJ’s personal chopper around town. If ever there was a fairer, more down-to-earth Major, I never met him. He was a great pilot who had the responsibility of the whole Marine Corps to fly the President around. Now he finally had time to fill his left breast pocket with more medals and become a legend.
If you asked him a direct question, you got an honest response. He once told me he had attended too many military funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, flown too many boozed-up politicians around, and saluted too many VIPs. Wearing dress blues and dancing at the White House was driving him crazy. He missed war and wanted combat experience in Vietnam. He was about five-feet-four inches tall and he looked overweight with his bulletproof vest on. He needed to lose some weight and he figured ’Nam was the place to do it.
To my great regret, when I returned to Klondike, I learned that Major Goodheart had been killed on a volunteer mission. Klondike had received an urgent call from Land Shark Alpha that a lonely Recon team was about to be overrun on a mountaintop west of Chu Lai, and needed an emergency ammo resupply and a Med-Evac for their seriously wounded. Twelve Marines and a Corpsman were in big trouble. Major Goodheart stepped up to the plate, and of course Corporal Cross, Major Moose and company also volunteered.
As Corporal Cross told it, they immediately got Ordnance to load M-60 ammo boxes and boxes of 7.62 M-14 rounds. These are both the same caliber, but the M-60 ammo was in 100-round belts. They loaded up a slick helicopter, which had only two mounted M-60s inside, because a regular gunship couldn’t handle the weight, and launched two gunbirds to escort the Major into the landing zone. Once the ammo was dumped by the gunner and crew chief, they were going to use the slick to take the wounded Marines back to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital at Chu Lai. Every Marine in Ordnance formed a line and the boxes of ammo were loaded in less than ten minutes. The three UH-IE choppers launched into the pitch-black, moonless night.
When they reached the mountaintop area, all the tracers going back and forth looked like a giant Fourth of July ceremony at your local fire house. Klondike made radio contact with the Recon team, which had a strobe light they flashed on and off. As Major Goodheart made his approach, he took small arms fire from the VCs. Both gunbirds followed him in, firing their outboard fixed machine guns along the side of the mountain, and shot the shit out of the bushy ground below. As Major Goodheart was hovering five or six feet off the ground and trying to land and unload, a smartass VC jumped right in front of the UHIE and unloaded a 20-round BAR magazine through the plastic bubble nose of the Major’s chopper. The Major was hit numerous times in the stomach and groin area, which were not protected by his bulletproof vest. He died instantly, and the chopper crashed directly on top of the VC, injuring him and pinning him under its wheels.
The copilot was in shock. The plastic bubble was all shot-up on the lefthand side and was filling with the Major’s blood. The crew chief unhooked his gunner safety belt, hopped out and blew the head off the VC pinned under the chopper. He dumped all eight .45 ACPs 230-grain full metal jacket slugs into this wasted piece of shit’s head and chest. The rest of the crew jumped out and joined the Recon team unloading the precious cargo of ammo. The Recon team was in a world of shit. Some were fighting the VCs with their entrenching shovels, K-bars, fists and rocks, and others were using the dead VCs’ weapons. It was total chaos. Their Corpsman was dead, but around his body were four dead VCs. He had put needles through their hearts. One Marine killed a VC by choking him with his web belt.
The Captain radioed the gunbirds to unload their rockets around the crest of the hill, and Corporal Cross mowed down dozens of zips who were climbing up. Both gunbirds stayed on station until their ordnance was expended. They wanted to land, but the ground fire was still horrible, so they were forced to abort each approach. There was simply too much ground fire to get their three remaining crewmembers and the Major’s body out, so they called Land Shark to send in Puff the Magic Dragon while they returned to re-arm. This was a huge AC-47 aircraft with mini-guns capable of delivering thousands of machine gun rounds in support of ground troops, and earned its name from the enormous amount of fire it delivered.
Klondike wanted to send every gunbird they had, but Wing had all the others scheduled for different operations, so they could only send four back in, including the two original birds. Corporal Cross said when they returned to this nameless hill, Puff was doing its thing, literally raining bullets on the side of the mountain. He heard the gooks cry out in pain as they got wasted. The local VCs went into this battle with a rope tied around their left leg so that if they got killed, the local villagers could drag their dead bodies off the hill. This denied the Marines a high body count.
Finally dawn approached and the remaining attacking VC went back to hide and lick their wounds in their rat hole tunnel complexes. The few Marines that were still not wounded started checking the dead zips. To their amazement, some had uniforms on and were regular NVA soldiers. Some of them still had life in them, and the Marines who could still walk blew their heads off. The Gunny Sergeant in charge of these 12 magnificent Recon crazies got the Medal of Honor, and his men were awarded Silver Stars. I think out of 13 men, they lost three KIA, three WIA and seven made it out unscathed. The copilot and his gunner and crew chief who had stayed on the ground held one side of
the hill, killing a shit load of VC/NVA soldiers. I believe they received one Silver Star and two Bronze Stars.
In the whole of I-Corps, what happened to 13 men wasn’t a big deal—Vietnam had a million small actions every day. What made this so important was the way 13 men fought like mad dogs to survive.
They returned the bloody body of Major Goodheart to Ky Ha, but this time he didn’t hop out and go to chow. He was taken to Graves Registration for his final journey to Dover, Delaware, and then Arlington National Cemetery. He went to so many other Marines’ funerals, now it was his own. What a tragedy. We ran the events over and over again in our minds, trying to figure out how his death could have been prevented, but it was simply bad luck.
Corporal Cross led the CH-53 chopper back to retrieve our UH-IE gunship, which had a company of Marines guarding it. When he got the UH-IE back, they sprayed water on the cockpit seat and plastic bubble area to wash the Major’s blood out. The plastic was repaired and the ship was checked over from end to end. Finally it was put back on the line. Every time the guys walked by it they felt like they had lost their father. The outfit was in shock and wanted revenge. III MAF Headquarters wasn’t interested in this hill anymore, but they wanted and needed a payback. They talked and planned and figured the village directly below the hill knew and aided the NVA and VC in the attack. They decided to focus their activity on wiping them off the face of the earth.
PAYBACKS ARE A GOOK’S WORST NIGHTMARE
LBJ's Hired Gun Page 24