About halfway through my Vietnam vacation the first boat I worked on embarked from Cat Lai on what would become its final mission.
As usual, we were sent out to the Pineapples region to support another firebase. We spent two or three weeks there doing the usual stuff: inserting and picking up ambush patrols (including LRRPs), occasionally spraying Agent Orange, and delivering supplies when possible. On one of our trips around the area, the boat hit a submerged object that bent one of the propeller shafts. When the coxswain put that transmission into gear, the bent shaft made a very loud banging noise, so the coxswain was forced to leave the engines running but leave the transmission in neutral until we could return to Cat Lai for repairs.
One day we were assigned the task of transporting the 199th Infantry located at the firebase to another location closer to Saigon. Another boat from the 1099th Medium Boat Company was scheduled to meet us at the firebase to drop off replacement security soldiers and drop off supplies. The operation was running late, and the two boats left the firebase about two hours later than planned. Two Huey helicopter gunships circled overhead, following us.
The late departure was a problem because the rivers and canals in the region were subject to the tidal fluctuations associated with the South China Sea. Even though the mike boats only drew about two to four feet of water, sometimes the water levels in the canals could get so low that the boats had to wait for the tide to rise again before proceeding. On this particular day, when our boats reached the final canal branch to our destination, the tide was so far out that we could not proceed. It looked like we were going to be stuck there for two to four hours.
So we parked on the beach at the mouth of the canal and waited in the mid-day heat. Local village children came to the boats to sell us pot and to warn us that there were "beaucoup" VC (Vietcong) waiting for us to move down the canal. Shit! There was no reason not to believe them. A two to four-hour wait would be plenty of time for them to set up an ambush for our two boats.
Finally, the tide came up and our two boats moved out down the canal. We were accompanied again by the two Huey helicopter gunships. The first part of the trip was quite spooky. Apparently, a B-52 bomb strike had hit the area recently, and a long line of giant water-filled craters crossed both sides of the canal. The vegetation on all sides of the craters was totally mowed down as far as you could see. If not for the sound of the boats' muffled exhaust, you could have heard a pin drop...The whole crew with the exception of the coxswain was stoned.
Suddenly: WHUMP! WHUMP, followed by two large geysers of water on the starboard side of the boat.
Our boat had been hit by something, and the crew started firing the M2 guns and the M60 gun (me) into the jungle on both sides of the canal like maniacs. The quarterdeck became ankle-deep in machine gun brass in nothing flat. The infantrymen in the cargo deck were also firing their weapons off of the side of the boat into the jungle. The coxswain had jammed the idling engines into drive and the bent propeller shaft was banging away like a sonofabitch. All of this noise was insanely loud and disorientating. I looked behind the boat and saw that our accompanying boat was also firing at both sides of the canal with their weapons.
Somehow, the coxswain got my attention and told me to check out the boat's engine room. I had been shooting the M60 gun from the side of the wheelhouse on the starboard side of the boat. I put the gun down on the deck and walked around to the front of the quarterdeck in front of the wheelhouse where the hatch was for the engine room. There I noticed that the seaman manning the M2 gun on the port side of the boat had been knocked down by the body of a black infantryman that had been hurled up from the cargo deck. This man was still wearing his helmet and flak jacket, but all of the rest of his body from his flak jacket down was gone. I swear that I saw him take one last breath. The seaman was trying to kick this horror show off of him. I also noticed at that time that the quarterdeck and wheelhouse were covered in blood splatter and bits and pieces of gore from this person.
I undogged the engine room hatch and jumped down. I took one step forward and broke my sunglasses in half on the steel post in between the engines. After taking a few seconds to recover, I surveyed the engine room. I climbed out of the engine room to report that there was a large hole in the forward bulkhead of the engine room that I couldn't plug and that the engine room was filling up with water. We were in danger of sinking in the shallow canal.
Now the helicopter gunships joined the party and started firing into the presumed ambush zone with their miniguns and 2.75" rockets. When they were out of ammo a couple of Air Force F-100 fighter bombers strafed the area with their Vulcan cannons. Next up was a barrage of 105mm artillery fire from some local firebase.
Apparently, at that time we were out of the ambush zone and our sister boat came alongside next our boat, tied up to us, and dragged our boat up on to a beach. Now, something really weird happened - The seaman on the port side of the sister boat was manning their M2 gun. The barrel of the gun was smoking from all of the rounds that had been shot through it. It was pointed directly at our boat's wheelhouse. Our coxswain asked him to point the gun elsewhere, which caused the seaman to start screaming that "nobody's going to tell me what to do with this fucking gun and I'll kill all of y'all if I have to!" The two coxswains got him calmed down somehow and we all lived to fight another day.
Next up: On the Beach!
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Pt. 10 - The Old Ultra-Violence, Pt. 2
There were two more memorable incidents that occurred while I was on my first boat in Vietnam. The second one resulted in the boat being sunk. The first one went something like this...
One day we were assigned to transport a platoon of the 199th Light infantry guys out to an area where they were going to do a sweep looking for bad guys. This was an unusual mission for two reasons: (1) we were doing it during daylight, and (2) we were quite a way from the firebase where these guys were responsible for security. Our destination was a bend in a large canal and there was a steep hill directly behind the stern of the boat. As usual, we parked on the shoreline and lowered the ramp so that the troops could exit the boat. They exited and disappeared into the jungle, and we waited for their return.
After a few minutes, someone on the hill behind us started shooting over the boat at the recently departed soldiers with automatic weapons. GAH!
This time the two M2 guns on the quarter deck were manned by the boat's seamen and they started creating carnage on the hillside behind us immediately. The guns worked just fine this time. As usual, we couldn't see the people that were shooting at us, but we could see the general area where their weapons' tracers (usually green) were coming from. My job was to keep the two guns supplied with ammunition, which I hauled up from the boat's well (cargo) deck. The standard M2 ammunition box only holds 200 rounds which don't last long in a situation like this, so I kept pretty busy hauling ammo until the shooting stopped.
Why did the shooting stop? We will never know. Maybe we killed the unseen bad guys or maybe they had had enough and decided to retreat and lick their wounds. After a while we retrieved the 199th guys from the jungle and motored back to their firebase. Thankfully, no one was killed or injured.
Curiously, the Army thought it fitting to give the crew the Army Commendation Medals with a "V" device for this incident which were pinned on us when we returned to Cat Lai. Rumor had it that our 1st Lieutenant platoon leader and 1st Sergeant both received the Bronze Star for this same incident even though we hadn't seen either one of them since we left the base.
Go figure!
One day we were assigned to transport a platoon of the 199th Light infantry guys out to an area where they were going to do a sweep looking for bad guys. This was an unusual mission for two reasons: (1) we were doing it during daylight, and (2) we were quite a way from the firebase where these guys were responsible for security. Our destination was a bend in a large canal and there was a steep hill directly behind the stern of the boat. As usual, we parked on the shoreline and lowered the ramp so that the troops could exit the boat. They exited and disappeared into the jungle, and we waited for their return.
After a few minutes, someone on the hill behind us started shooting over the boat at the recently departed soldiers with automatic weapons. GAH!
This time the two M2 guns on the quarter deck were manned by the boat's seamen and they started creating carnage on the hillside behind us immediately. The guns worked just fine this time. As usual, we couldn't see the people that were shooting at us, but we could see the general area where their weapons' tracers (usually green) were coming from. My job was to keep the two guns supplied with ammunition, which I hauled up from the boat's well (cargo) deck. The standard M2 ammunition box only holds 200 rounds which don't last long in a situation like this, so I kept pretty busy hauling ammo until the shooting stopped.
Why did the shooting stop? We will never know. Maybe we killed the unseen bad guys or maybe they had had enough and decided to retreat and lick their wounds. After a while we retrieved the 199th guys from the jungle and motored back to their firebase. Thankfully, no one was killed or injured.
Curiously, the Army thought it fitting to give the crew the Army Commendation Medals with a "V" device for this incident which were pinned on us when we returned to Cat Lai. Rumor had it that our 1st Lieutenant platoon leader and 1st Sergeant both received the Bronze Star for this same incident even though we hadn't seen either one of them since we left the base.
Go figure!
Monday, July 22, 2019
Pt. 9 - The Old Ultra-Violence - Pt.1
Holy Shit!
We didn't always have helicopter gunships escorting us on the rivers, they usually only appeared when we were working around the firebases. The first time someone shot at the boat when I was on it was when we were traveling on quite a wide river moving some GIs to a new firebase. I was chatting with a couple of GIs in the wooden crew shack on the stern of the boat when a couple of bullet holes mysteriously appeared in the canvas cover that was covering the open "window" of the port side of the shack. That cover was let down when it was raining or as a very ineffective effort to keep the boat's diesel exhaust out of the shack when we were underway.
It quickly dawned on us that a bad guy that was a really good shot was shooting at the boat. We all hit the deck which was right behind the wheelhouse, and I low-crawled out to the M2 machine gun on the port side of the quarter-deck. I had no idea where the people that were shooting us were, but I did know that they were on the riverbank on the port side of the boat.
I grabbed the charging handle on the gun, pulled it back, and let it go, loading the weapon. I then pressed down on the "butterfly" trigger of the gun.
BOOM! That was it, one BOOM! So I tried working the charging handle again and pressed the trigger. BOOM! That was it; who knows where those two bullets went. Someone also saw a B-40 RPG (Pocket Propelled Grenade) fly harmlessly over the boat. By this time we were out of the ambush zone and the rest of the trip was uneventful.
Remember that the boat crew was from the Army Transportation Corp and had never received any training on the M2 or M60 machine guns that we were equipped with. When we returned to the base at Cat Lai, we were informed by the armorer that the M2 gun could be configured for single-shot or full-auto operation. Since we could not think of any reason for the single-shot option, he showed us how to properly set up the gun, set the "timing," and clean the beast.
I See Dead People
One memorable mission that we were tasked with was to pick up a company of ARVN infantry and deliver them to a spot not far from Cat Lai so that they could conduct some sort of a sweep through the area. We had a mechanical problem with the boat that day - we couldn't raise and lower the bow ramp normally because the air/hydraulic system was malfunctioning. This meant the coxswain couldn't perform this function from the wheelhouse as usual. This meant that the several ton ramp had to be manually raised and lowered by the use of come-alongs by the boat's seamen.
We loaded the soldiers up at a pier and headed out to their drop-off point. When we arrived, the coxswain drove the boat up to the beach and the seamen worked the come-alongs furiously to get the ramp lowered. Once the ramp was down, there was one other problem; the soldiers would not get off of the boat! I don't know if they were afraid of getting shot, but I know that the boat crew sure was, since the boat was a sitting duck parked on the shoreline with the ramp down.
After a few minutes of shouting by the Vietnamese commander of the operation, he unholstered his Colt Model 1911 .45 caliber pistol and shoved it into the ear of the nearest reluctant soldier, and that finally got the troops moving off of the boat. After we backed away from the riverbank, we noticed that the ARVNs had left equipment on the boat including an M72 LAW anti-tank weapon, some boxes of M60 machine gun ammunition, and a couple of Claymore mines. I guess they didn't want to hump this stuff into the field.
Once we got the ramp raised again and backed off the beach, we took the boat to get refueled and waited to hear back from the ARVNs who were going to need to be picked up again. That call came sooner than we expected.
We cruised up to the designated riverbank and saw something I will never forget. The ARVN outfit had come out of the bush and there were also two smaller ARVN LCM-6 landing craft already there, parked on the riverside. Laying in the long grass on the riverside were three naked male bodies laying on their backs in grotesque positions. The ARVNs had apparently ambushed these bad guys with Claymore mines, and the bodies were already turning blue and black. All of their clothes had been completely blasted off of them by the mines.
I had never seen a dead person before.
The ARVN boats picked up the bodies and we hauled the celebrating soldiers back to where we picked them up. Mission accomplished.
We didn't always have helicopter gunships escorting us on the rivers, they usually only appeared when we were working around the firebases. The first time someone shot at the boat when I was on it was when we were traveling on quite a wide river moving some GIs to a new firebase. I was chatting with a couple of GIs in the wooden crew shack on the stern of the boat when a couple of bullet holes mysteriously appeared in the canvas cover that was covering the open "window" of the port side of the shack. That cover was let down when it was raining or as a very ineffective effort to keep the boat's diesel exhaust out of the shack when we were underway.
It quickly dawned on us that a bad guy that was a really good shot was shooting at the boat. We all hit the deck which was right behind the wheelhouse, and I low-crawled out to the M2 machine gun on the port side of the quarter-deck. I had no idea where the people that were shooting us were, but I did know that they were on the riverbank on the port side of the boat.
I grabbed the charging handle on the gun, pulled it back, and let it go, loading the weapon. I then pressed down on the "butterfly" trigger of the gun.
BOOM! That was it, one BOOM! So I tried working the charging handle again and pressed the trigger. BOOM! That was it; who knows where those two bullets went. Someone also saw a B-40 RPG (Pocket Propelled Grenade) fly harmlessly over the boat. By this time we were out of the ambush zone and the rest of the trip was uneventful.
Remember that the boat crew was from the Army Transportation Corp and had never received any training on the M2 or M60 machine guns that we were equipped with. When we returned to the base at Cat Lai, we were informed by the armorer that the M2 gun could be configured for single-shot or full-auto operation. Since we could not think of any reason for the single-shot option, he showed us how to properly set up the gun, set the "timing," and clean the beast.
I See Dead People
One memorable mission that we were tasked with was to pick up a company of ARVN infantry and deliver them to a spot not far from Cat Lai so that they could conduct some sort of a sweep through the area. We had a mechanical problem with the boat that day - we couldn't raise and lower the bow ramp normally because the air/hydraulic system was malfunctioning. This meant the coxswain couldn't perform this function from the wheelhouse as usual. This meant that the several ton ramp had to be manually raised and lowered by the use of come-alongs by the boat's seamen.
We loaded the soldiers up at a pier and headed out to their drop-off point. When we arrived, the coxswain drove the boat up to the beach and the seamen worked the come-alongs furiously to get the ramp lowered. Once the ramp was down, there was one other problem; the soldiers would not get off of the boat! I don't know if they were afraid of getting shot, but I know that the boat crew sure was, since the boat was a sitting duck parked on the shoreline with the ramp down.
After a few minutes of shouting by the Vietnamese commander of the operation, he unholstered his Colt Model 1911 .45 caliber pistol and shoved it into the ear of the nearest reluctant soldier, and that finally got the troops moving off of the boat. After we backed away from the riverbank, we noticed that the ARVNs had left equipment on the boat including an M72 LAW anti-tank weapon, some boxes of M60 machine gun ammunition, and a couple of Claymore mines. I guess they didn't want to hump this stuff into the field.
Once we got the ramp raised again and backed off the beach, we took the boat to get refueled and waited to hear back from the ARVNs who were going to need to be picked up again. That call came sooner than we expected.
We cruised up to the designated riverbank and saw something I will never forget. The ARVN outfit had come out of the bush and there were also two smaller ARVN LCM-6 landing craft already there, parked on the riverside. Laying in the long grass on the riverside were three naked male bodies laying on their backs in grotesque positions. The ARVNs had apparently ambushed these bad guys with Claymore mines, and the bodies were already turning blue and black. All of their clothes had been completely blasted off of them by the mines.
I had never seen a dead person before.
The ARVN boats picked up the bodies and we hauled the celebrating soldiers back to where we picked them up. Mission accomplished.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Pt. 8 - The River Rats - Pt. 2
The LCM-8 landing craft (usually called Mike boats) that I worked on and lived was like the semi-trucks of the river and canal systems in Vietnam. With a cargo capacity of 60 tons, the boats hauled everything imaginable around the country including armored vehicles, building supplies (for example, cement, rebar, and lumber), ammunition, food, beer, aviation fuel, drinking water, Agent Orange, etc.
For a more detailed look at what types of missions the Mike boats worked on in Vietnam, look here: http://grambo.us/atav/hartman.htm. By the way, this article was written by the skipper of the second boat I worked on, Buck Hartman.
The first boat I was assigned to worked pretty much exclusively supporting units of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade at artillery fire support bases located around the outskirts of Saigon in what was then called the Pineapples region (because of the abandoned French pineapple plantations in the area). The infantry provided security for these bases. We also hauled cannon and small arms ammunition into these firebases and delivered and picked up ambush patrols that were sent out every night beyond the perimeter of the base. These supplies would also be delivered by helicopter (usually Chinook or Huey aircraft) on a routine basis.
We would also occasionally pick up Army Ranger Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRPs) at night from the river or canal banks and take them back to the relative safety of the firebases. On these missions, we would have a general idea where to pick these guys up, and when we were close they would signal us with their red flashlights, and we would drive up on to the riverside and drop the bow ramp to pick them up. These guys were never very chatty, always wore tiger-striped fatigues, soft hats, and had their faces painted, but were always willing to share their LRP rations with us which were way better than the C-rations we were supplied with.
On one of these LLRP pickup missions, for some reason, a Second Lieutenant from a firebase decided that he was going to direct that night's mission. I don't know if he was from the 199th or the artillery outfit, but he was pretty full of himself and insisted on directing the very simple operation which we had successfully completed several times. After a few minutes, the officer walked up to the bow of the 80-foot long boat and started yelling at the coxswain to "Pull in here!' We weren't close to the pickup point, so the coxswain declined, which resulted in more yelling from the officer. So, the coxswain spun the wheel to starboard which plowed the bow of the boat into the overhanging trees on the bank and knocked the officer into the water, where he started hollering even more until we fished him out. I can tell you that yelling was not considered something to do on night missions.
A few minutes later, when we successfully picked up the LRRPs, their squad leader asked us what all the "fucking noise for the last 15 minutes" was about. The coxswain said, "Ask the LT!"
One of the (BIG) problems we had at the firebases was occasionally getting ambushed from the banks of the river or canal banks. Our boats were very slow and easy targets. The vegetation was always so thick that there was always no way that you could see anyone that might want to kill you. Generally, when we moved down the canal or river away from the firebase, we were supported by Huey helicopter gunships or sometimes helicopter hunter/killer teams that circled over the boat until we returned to the firebase. We would also do something called "recon by fire" that meant we would fire our M-60 machine guns, M-14 rifles, or M-79s at both sides of the canal/riverbank in an effort to keep any bad guys heads down as we passed by. We couldn't fire the M2 machine guns at those times for fear of endangering the helicopter gunships.
The other thing that we did once was spray Agent Orange (yes, THAT Agent Orange) off of the boat's lowered bow ramp on to the foliage on the canal or riverbank. Our boat crew did not do this work, it was done by other GIs without shirts, gloves, or any other protective gear Let's hope that those men are still with us. The chemical did a great job of killing anything that it landed on and a lot of foliage on those riverbanks was totally decimated. The idea was that the bad guys couldn't hide in there anymore, but they found ways around that, believe me.
Next up - The Old Ultra-Violence!
For a more detailed look at what types of missions the Mike boats worked on in Vietnam, look here: http://grambo.us/atav/hartman.htm. By the way, this article was written by the skipper of the second boat I worked on, Buck Hartman.
The first boat I was assigned to worked pretty much exclusively supporting units of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade at artillery fire support bases located around the outskirts of Saigon in what was then called the Pineapples region (because of the abandoned French pineapple plantations in the area). The infantry provided security for these bases. We also hauled cannon and small arms ammunition into these firebases and delivered and picked up ambush patrols that were sent out every night beyond the perimeter of the base. These supplies would also be delivered by helicopter (usually Chinook or Huey aircraft) on a routine basis.
We would also occasionally pick up Army Ranger Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRPs) at night from the river or canal banks and take them back to the relative safety of the firebases. On these missions, we would have a general idea where to pick these guys up, and when we were close they would signal us with their red flashlights, and we would drive up on to the riverside and drop the bow ramp to pick them up. These guys were never very chatty, always wore tiger-striped fatigues, soft hats, and had their faces painted, but were always willing to share their LRP rations with us which were way better than the C-rations we were supplied with.
On one of these LLRP pickup missions, for some reason, a Second Lieutenant from a firebase decided that he was going to direct that night's mission. I don't know if he was from the 199th or the artillery outfit, but he was pretty full of himself and insisted on directing the very simple operation which we had successfully completed several times. After a few minutes, the officer walked up to the bow of the 80-foot long boat and started yelling at the coxswain to "Pull in here!' We weren't close to the pickup point, so the coxswain declined, which resulted in more yelling from the officer. So, the coxswain spun the wheel to starboard which plowed the bow of the boat into the overhanging trees on the bank and knocked the officer into the water, where he started hollering even more until we fished him out. I can tell you that yelling was not considered something to do on night missions.
A few minutes later, when we successfully picked up the LRRPs, their squad leader asked us what all the "fucking noise for the last 15 minutes" was about. The coxswain said, "Ask the LT!"
One of the (BIG) problems we had at the firebases was occasionally getting ambushed from the banks of the river or canal banks. Our boats were very slow and easy targets. The vegetation was always so thick that there was always no way that you could see anyone that might want to kill you. Generally, when we moved down the canal or river away from the firebase, we were supported by Huey helicopter gunships or sometimes helicopter hunter/killer teams that circled over the boat until we returned to the firebase. We would also do something called "recon by fire" that meant we would fire our M-60 machine guns, M-14 rifles, or M-79s at both sides of the canal/riverbank in an effort to keep any bad guys heads down as we passed by. We couldn't fire the M2 machine guns at those times for fear of endangering the helicopter gunships.
Next up - The Old Ultra-Violence!
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