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.
No comments:
Post a Comment