I was picked for the 4:00 PM to midnight shift one rainy monsoon night and was given the duty roster with everyone’s name on it. Every Marine knew when he had this duty. I read the names out and every guy was present except Private Hinkle, a six-foot-three-inch, 230-pound black guy from North Philadelphia. He was always in trouble and had been busted and demoted four times.
I called Private Hinkle’s name at least ten times while Gunny Sergeant Blast watched from the ordnance shed. Everyone was soaking wet from the rain, or sweating under their rubber ponchos, and wanted to get the show on the road. I went from hootch to hootch looking for Private Hinkle and finally found him in Hootch #7, sitting in his skivvies listening to his boom box. I told him to get his gear on and fall out for his Reactionary Platoon shift. He replied, “Fuck you, Sergeant Asshole and fuck the Marine Corps. I got no problems with the Viet Cong. I’ll kick your mother-fucking honky ass.”
I was pissed, and realized if I didn’t get him motivated I would lose the faith of the Gunny and the whole platoon. I pulled out the .45-automatic I had been issued as platoon leader, pulled back the slide, and slid a 230 FMJ bullet down the tunnel, and told Private Hinkle to suit up or I would shoot him. I shot a round between his legs into the wooden floor. He jumped up and almost turned white with fear. I told him the next one would be through his coward, worthless heart. He then ran out the door in his underwear to tell Colonel Nellie that I had tried to kill him. Colonel Nellie was writing a letter home and told Private Hinkle to go through the chain of command. Thus, he had to see First Sergeant Rocky to complain, so he then ran around the compound looking for First Sergeant Rocky.
While he was running around, the rest of the platoon was still standing in the pouring rain, pissed off and wanting to get to a dry bunker somewhere. Private Hinkle found Top Rocky playing poker with the other Lifers in the maintenance shed. He reported that I had tried to shoot him. First Sergeant Rocky said, “Sergeant Gebhart is a crack shot. If he had tried to shoot you, you would be dead. Where are you supposed to be, Private Hinkle? I believe you are supposed to be with those other Marines standing in the rain waiting for your sorry ass, so they can go on guard duty. I suggest you get your pants on and gear up and get out there, unless you want me to write you up for disobeying a direct order from Sergeant Gebhart.”
Thus, Private Hinkle went back into his hootch and came out with his rifle and poncho and ammo belt hanging over his neck. Once again we were a happy family. We moved out, and I assigned the men to various posts and made sure I put Private Hinkle out patrolling the tarmac flight deck where he could really get wet.
At 12:00 midnight, Sergeant Gonzales relieved me with his platoon of 50 Marines to guard the base and helicopters. I marched the platoon back and Private Hinkle told me sooner or later he would kill me. I looked him straight in his dope-smoking eyes and told him, “How about trying it right here and now? Make your move.” I pulled out my .45-automatic and told him the next sound he heard would be the end of his miserable wasted life on this planet. He swung his M-14 around but I had the .45 cocked by his left ear. I told him Colonel Monte would love to write his mother that her son Private Hinkle had not died in combat, but by disobeying a direct order and threatening to kill an NCO.
I also told him his funeral would be closed casket because he would no longer have the left side of his head in one piece.
He then said I had a death wish and enjoyed killing human beings. I told him his life was worth nine cents. He lowered his M-14 and walked away mumbling how I was a crazy white honky, but he never gave me a hard time again. He knew I would shoot his worthless ass in a minute and tag and bag him like a pile of dirty laundry.
THE PENINSULA INCIDENT
Every Marine operation had the main landing zone Marines who landed in CH-34s or 46s and went out on search and destroy missions. The Marines always inserted a blocking force where they figured the retreating VC/NVC would travel, who landed and spread out in company strength and just waited to pick off retreating enemy soldiers. Sometimes it worked and sometimes the dinks simply went underground into their massive tunnel complexes and disappeared.
One cloudy day, the master plan seemed to work. The attacking Marines had pushed the VC/NVA out of a village complex into a peninsula area, and Land Shark called Klondike to launch four gunbirds and waste the VC before they swam across a swollen river. We arrived on station in less than 15 minutes, with Major Moose as the TACA. We figured we would waste them with our outboard machine guns and inboard M-60s.
We flew low, and I was getting ready to throw out a red smoke grenade to mark the target, when I looked through my field glasses and was amazed to see 200 or so peasants made up of kids, old ladies and old men. They had no weapons and looked scared shitless. The river was running very swiftly, and they looked like they were about to risk their lives and jump in. I quickly told Major Moose these were not VC/NVA with weapons, just frightened villagers with nowhere to go but a swollen, fast-moving stream. I said we couldn’t waste them. We were soldiers, not Russian Commissars who shot their own men when they retreated in World War II.
Major Moose looked through the field glasses and agreed they were innocent civilians caught up in a bad situation. He called Land Shark to say we were not going to shoot them. Land Shark called Wing S-3 and returned to tell us we were ordered to kill them. Major Moose again refused and Land Shark called III MAF Headquarters and talked to the General running this particular operation. The General stated, “Waste them. We need a high body count.” Major Moose said, “I refuse to obey an order contrary to the laws of God. ‘Thou shall not kill!’”
All four gunbirds refused and the General was furious. He said if we would not waste them, he was prepared to call in an F-4 napalm strike. All four aircraft commanders told Land Shark their information was wrong; that the people were innocent villagers who were scared to death. Major Moose was patched directly through to the General in charge and was told in no uncertain terms: “Kill them or you all face court-martial.”
“Well,” said Major Moose, “here goes my promotion to Colonel down the drain.” I said a prayer that we could spare the villagers. Finally, I saw some of the villagers digging in the sand, and told Major Moose to tell the General they were all out clamming. I had never seen a clam in ’Nam, but the idea was relayed to the General and finally III MAF called off the attack. I felt a shiver go down my spine as we turned for home without firing a shot.
The grunts finally reached the peninsula and confirmed with Land Shark that the villagers were unarmed civilians. Land Shark called us on the way home and said, “Good job!” We were the eyes and ears of the Marines in I-Corps, and the General had no idea what was happening out in the boondocks except for the information that came over all his radios. In short, you can’t always fight a war from an air-conditioned bunker.
The 5th Marines confirmed our observation, and the General was pissed he didn’t get his body count. We were hard-core stone-cold killers, but we never wasted innocent people. Colonel Nellie, our new CO, was happy we hadn’t killed them, and that the 1st Marine Air Wing wouldn’t be disgraced with a massacre on its hands. The press hated the Marines and went out of their way to report anything negative we did. We made the correct choice, and were at peace with God and ourselves.
ONE PACHYDERM BITES THE DUST
Colonel Nellie, our new CO, was no desk jockey. He loved flying and every chance he got he was up in the air. One day he took two gunbirds over to the Laotian border for a top secret mission called “Operation Dirty Brass.” We painted over our gunships where it said United States Marines, because the US government didn’t want the Laotian government to know we were invading their air space. If we were photographed, we thus appeared to be a mercenary UH-IE with no markings, and no one would be positively able to identify us as a US helicopter. We were not allowed to return fire.
The Colonel decided to head west to Kham Duc, and then head north observing the Ho Chi Minh trail that ran down between Vietnam an
d Laos. He flew low and fast and observed trucks and endless NVAs on bicycles. The Air Force bombed the shit out of parts of this trail with their arc light B-52 bomber missions, and the trail thus went around the damaged areas, but the NVA had Chinese laborers repairing them as fast as we bombed them.
On this sunny day, the Colonel saw the most amazing sight—an elephant with an NVA soldier riding it in a box, and a .51-caliber anti-aircraft gun mounted on its back. The elephant heard the helicopter and stampeded into the Vietnam side of the trail. The NVA soldier couldn’t shoot the gun because he was holding onto the box to keep from falling off.
Colonel Nellie decided to make a quick gun run on the elephant since he was about three miles from the main body of the traveling NVA. It took three rocket and machine gun runs to kill the giant elephant and his handler. The NVA soldier never got a shot off. After the attack the elephant looked like a pile of whale shit, and the NVA soldier had been turned into a Swiss cheese sandwich with hundreds of 7.62 machine gun holes. Colonel Nellie had to leave the area quickly because NVA trucks started rolling over to see what all the shooting was about. They were armed with .51-caliber anti-aircraft guns that would have shot the Colonel’s Huey down in one burst of fire.
At Klondike, we had a kill flag that the para loft guys changed every day with the number of VC/NVA kills. Colonel Nellie landed and told the para-loft guys to put on one more NVA and an elephant. Everyone who passed our outfit asked about our kill flag and why it had a big pachyderm sewn on it. Our flag turned us into big game hunters, and no other squadron that I can remember had ever shot an elephant before. The enemy elephant story was told from the top of I-Corps’ Rock Pile to the bottom at Quang Ngai. RIP one fat pachyderm!
THE DAY WE FELL FROM THE SKY
In October 1966, I personally took part in Operation Dirty Brass, flying over the Kontom Province boundary down to Pleiku Province. We spray-painted Lucky #7 again and one other gunbird. Our primary mission was to observe traffic on the trail, but not to engage the enemy—just observe and report back to III MAF Headquarters at Da Nang.
We flew low and very fast along the border between Laos and Vietnam. I had always thought that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a small path with NVA riding bicycles and walking with backpacks and mortar rounds on their backs, but it was a combination of many trails, some with trucks on them. It was no small operation, and some of the trucks had 12.5 or .51-caliber machine guns used as anti-aircraft weapons. We saw an endless line of NVAs that looked like a line of traveling ants. They wore helmets with bushes on them and some also had bushes on their backpacks. Then we saw a convoy of trucks. They immediately opened fire on our choppers, and every zip on the ground starting shooting at us.
We were about 200 feet off the ground and traveling at about 95 miles an hour. I figured we would simply out-run their ground fire, but I was wrong. With so much lead being shot at us, our hydraulic line got hit, and we started losing fluid like an old jalopy with a leaky transmission. Our fearless leader, Major Moose, lost all hydraulic pressure, and bells and sirens started ringing on the control panel. The Major made it up to about 800 feet and tried to fly back over the border into Vietnam. There weren’t any trees marked with white paint, so we really didn’t know if we were in Vietnam or Laos.
Suddenly the Major declared, “This is it!” We did an autorotation, which is like coming down in an elevator from the hundredth floor to the first in three seconds. I figured the crash would kill us all. We crashed into the middle of a rice paddy, and the chopper sank in up to the door level. Suddenly it was hot as shit and I was standing knee deep in rice paddy mud. Amazingly, our outboard fixed machine guns were about six inches over the mud level. They were working, but we could shoot them only in the direction the chopper was facing. Our sister ship flew over head and radioed in our position so a UH-53 helicopter could come with a hook and lift our bird back to base, and a reactionary platoon of grunts was sent out in three CH-34 helicopters to guard the downed bird and save our sorry shot-down asses.
Corporal Cross and I knew the routine; we had rescued other shot-down choppers. We unhooked our inside M-60 machine guns and put them on top of the rice-paddy dike. We put down the bi-pods, unloaded our boxes of M-60 ammo, put the sights up to 450 yards, and got ready for World War II with the local VCs. We even unhooked the outboard machine gun belts for extra firepower and took off the barrels in case we needed them. Major Moose stood on top of the dike wall, observing the local peasants in their black PJs. All of a sudden they weren’t playing rice paddy farmers—they were reaching under the water, pulling out AK-47s and SKS carbines in plastic waterproof covers.
On this particular mission, our usual copilot, Lieutenant Chase, was on sick leave and had been replaced by Captain Hooker. He told us the local people were our friends, and they were coming over to help us! What a moron! They were coming to kill us and get the reward money for helicopter pilots’ and gunners’ helmets. North Vietnam paid $5,000 in gold for crew helmets and $10,000 gold for officers’ helmets. To this day, they have a museum in Hanoi with hundreds of helmets on display.
Major Moose thought he was at Devil’s Den in Gettysburg fighting the Civil War against the Blue Bellies. There were about 50 VCs armed and running our way. Our overhead UH-IE was ready for them, and so were Corporal Cross and I, with a bet on who would kill the most. At 400 yards out, the 7.62 x 39 bullets started cracking over our heads and hitting the dike wall. We had to grab Major Moose and pull him off the dike before he got popped. Captain Hooker was amazed that the local Welcome Wagon was trying to kill us, and we had to push him down to his knees against the dike wall before he bought the farm. Corporal Cross and I opened up and got about five zips each. Major Moose looked at his Browning hi-power 9mm pistol and said, “Fuck it. Let me shoot the M-60.” He literally pushed me aside and took over the gun. He was yelling rebel yells and having a great time and I was reloading his new belt. Thus Corporal Cross won the bet. We used just about three quarters of our M-60 belts.
We killed about half of the zips before they hid behind a dike wall about 300 yards out, and then decided to flank us by crawling around the dikes. Our second UH-IE overhead shot the hell out of the rest of them. I figured we would get Bronze Stars and the Major would receive a Silver Star for this great day of target practice. The Reactionary Platoon finally arrived to guard the downed chopper. The UH-53 lowered the steel cable and Corporal Cross climbed up by the rotor to hook on the tow cable, and a VC sniper shot off the whole heel of his flight boot. He was hit and pissed off, hopping around on one foot. We put a compress bandage and duct tape on his heel and then jumped into the CH-34 rescue helicopter. Major Moose and I unloaded the last of our belts of M-60s on the VC sniper, whom we thought was in a nearby tree line. He didn’t fire at us again, so I guess we kept his head down. We got a tow back to base with our sister gunbird, and three CH-34 troop transports carried the Reactionary Platoon, who all wanted credit for the zips we had wasted before they even arrived!
Our Lucky #7 was lowered to the tarmac and towed into the repair shed. It would be down for some time. One skid was cracked from crash landing in the paddy. We lost no equipment, but all four of us were covered with mud. We got a handshake from Colonel Nellie and everyone was happy we were still alive. Major Moose was overjoyed that he had killed the VCs at ground level like the old days in the Korean War with General Chesty Puller. Corporal Cross was driven to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. He was in pain, but still had a can of cold Miller in each hand as he was driven away, with his foot propped up on the windshield of Colonel Nellie’s jeep. I went with him and wanted to wait for him to get repaired, but was told to leave and got escorted back in the Colonel’s jeep.
Corporal Cross had to get X-rays, stitches and shots. He even got a bath and a bed with real white sheets. Two days went by and I tried to visit him with no luck. Finally, he got his left ankle in a cast and a walking cane. He was pissed off that he had to hop around like a cripple for a simple heel problem.
&
nbsp; On day four after our return, he hitched a ride up to our hootches to visit us. We got drunk and had a great party. He was taking strong antibiotics, and wasn’t supposed to get his cast dirty, but he fell down in the mud and got his bad ankle all wet. We drove him back to the hospital and he got into an argument with the gate guard, who looked on the Marines as barbarians. I threatened to cut his Army draftee, coward MP heart out. To make a long story short, Corporal Cross’ heel got infected and he was sent to the hospital at Subic Bay, Philippines to recover. In fact, he almost lost his foot from his careless behavior. He should not have left his hospital room, but what the hell—we were his family, and he was bored.
Corporal Cross spent a month recovering at Subic Bay and Major Moose had to use Gunbird #16, which was Corporal Morales’ baby. Corporal Morales was from Pineville, Louisiana, and wasn’t Spanish at all, but a Creole. He spoke very slowly, and at first I thought he was an idiot, but he knew his shit and was quickly promoted. Lieutenant Chase came back from sick leave, but we all missed Corporal Cross. With each passing day, we all hoped and prayed he was getting better and doing what the doctor wanted him to do.
We never got any medals for this great shoot-out. It turned out we were in Laos and not Vietnam, so the mission was secret, and on paper it never occurred. Even the whole rescue mission into Laos never happened. In short, the whole matter was classified. I finally realized the VCs and NVA had an army of men and women traveling down day and night with supplies, and they even had trucks with anti-aircraft guns. The mission had shown me a lot of stuff that the normal, gravel-crushing grunt never realized was coming down to try to kill him. In my mind, the enemy went from a few hard core VCs to many uniformed, very well equipped NVA troops hopping down the bunny trail to kill Marines in I-Corps.
LBJ's Hired Gun Page 26