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!
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