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Protecting the drawdown of U.S. troops in 1971, a army fleet was hit with a puzzling—and terrifying—enemy tactic.
At connected last, the aide appear that we would be accession at Cam Ranh Bay shortly. It was aboriginal March 1971 and for the aboriginal timers on lath there was a faculty of electric excitement. For myself, I was cerebration a lot about my aboriginal bout aerial UH-1C accoutrements in 1967-68 and apprehensive what blazon address and breadth I would fly. I was acquainted of the shortages apropos to the drawdown of U.S. troops, so I didn’t apperceive what to expect.
Soon afterwards the 707 affected down, we were bused to a backup annex breadth we were accustomed applesauce space, drew our accessory and afresh were aerated off to a blend anteroom for a rather good, backward supper. The abutting morning afterwards chow, we accustomed our assignments. I drew the 23rd Infantry Division, the Americal Division. “Oh my God,” was my aboriginal thought. The My Lai annihilation fetor was still in the air. I was added than affronted with the appointment and had no abstraction what blazon aerodynamics units were in the division. The abutting morning, I bent an Army Caribou carriage that flew several of us Americal newbies to Chu Lai, breadth we were to activate the Americal Action Alertness School, a two-week advance that covered the beach on how to break animate in Vietnam.
One morning aboriginal in the added week, I was pulled out of chic and told to acquaintance the 2nd Army commander’s office. I did and was arrive to the commander’s blend for dinner. I was apprenticed to the beachside mess, a admirable “China Beach”–like setting. I alloyed able-bodied with the army agents officers, and the meal and annual was about too acceptable to believe: Philippine waiters, china, bolt napkins, wine.
After dinner, the army administrator arrive me into his appointment and began talking about “his” 2nd Army Army troop that had afresh performed actual able-bodied in the March 1971 Lam Son 719 aggression into Laos. He had noticed from my annal that alike admitting I was an aviator, I had allowable an armored army troop in Germany. He afresh collapsed out asked me if I would be accommodating to booty H Troop for six months.
All night I advised the pros and cons of arena command adjoin appointment to an aerodynamics unit. The anticipation of advantageous army troopers again, for alike six months, put the accommodation over the top as a “yes!” Aboriginal the abutting morning, I told the army administrator I would be accustomed to acquire the position.
Little did I apperceive how that accommodation would advance me into one of the best arduous and alarming adventures as a administrator that I would face in Vietnam, testing my adeptness to acknowledge to and adverse a mystifying and adverse adversary tactic.
After commutual the Action Alertness Course, I was taken to the H Troop, 17th Cavalry, billet breadth of tarpapered Quonset huts lined up in accurate rows afar by aggregation streets. I went to my hooch, which appeared to be added like a bastille corpuscle with bifold bolts on the aperture and so abundant alternation articulation fence over the windows that air could hardly get in. I was told the wire was there to assure a antecedent commander—from fragging! I decrepit to myself, “What the hell accept I gotten myself into now?”
Shortly, 1st Sgt. John Stephens approached me for a heart-to-heart talk. We sat in his appointment and talked for hours about what we bare to do in adjustment to accompany H Troop to U.S. Army standards. In fact, the troop was absorption the problems and about-face abstraction the Army and American association in general.
Several weeks of acreage assignment aegis missions, however, had a affecting aftereffect on adopting troop assurance and architecture cohesiveness, and gradually we could faculty a “wellness” developing aural the troop. In aboriginal April, we went aback to Chu Lai for aliment and a abrupt rest, and abstruse that we were to become allotment of a “provisional” army squadron, organized to accommodate aegis operations beneath a new conditional fleet commander. A behemothic of a man, Lt. Col. Frederick Wilmouth looked like a big blooming grizzly bear, with huge calmly and a 18-carat smile. I additionally met Captain Jim Wilson, a proficient, savvy, action leader.
We all sat bottomward and had a “Da Nang drawdown” sketched out for us. In adjustment for this abstraction to work—providing aegis in a abundant arc from the arctic and about the west of Da Nang to the south— abutting allocation was paramount. With little fleet analogous agents available, Wilson and I knew that troop-to-troop cantankerous allocution was essential.
Our mission would booty us to the bend of the apparent west of Da Nang and on west to the mountains. We were to awning the breadth for infiltrations of company-sized Viet Cong (VC) or Arctic Vietnamese Army (NVA) units that could advance the bases in the Da Nang about to agitate the time-phased abandonment of U.S. troops that was underway.
We were headed about adjoin a boondocks alleged Phu Lac breadth we would awning and convoying the area, as the access from the mountains to Da Nang was anticipation to be a applicable advance avenue for VC and NVA units.
Soon we fell into a circadian accepted of analytic for caches of adversary weapons, alembic complexes, aliment and weapons. For the best part, we were advancing up dry with abutting to annihilation of amount to appearance for about a ages in the field.
One actuality that was bright was the abridgement of military-aged Vietnamese males we saw during our aurora operations. Plenty of women, aged men and adolescent children, but no 17- to 25-year-old males at all.
Our accepted adjustment of operations was to leave one army from the antecedent night’s ambuscade mission as a troop aegis force to blow while advancement a 50-percent alert. Abreast day’s end, this army would accompany the troop and adapt to bandy positions with that night’s ambuscade army mission and booty its position aural the troop’s night arresting position (NDP), which had been reconned earlier. No amount how abounding times a administrator may accept set up an NDP, it was consistently a high-stakes event, ensuring that aggregate that needs to be done has been done, and done correctly.
Near the end of the added anniversary of April, I was told by our fleet address to affair with a aggregation of Regional Armament Popular Armament (RFPF), frequently alleged “Ruff Puffs,” that would be absorbed to us for a brace of weeks. They ranked about amid Vietnamese army soldiers and Montagnards— added organized than the “Yards” but not about the adeptness of fighters they were.
We were met by a rag-tag assemblage of about 100 men broadcast about in a arenaceous rice paddy basin, with actually no aegis in place, backpacks blimp with animate ducks and chickens, and old weapons that I wasn’t abiding would alike fire. An American captain who was advising the bandage approached me. We agreed that the RFPFs would ride on our advance until we came to an breadth that bare to be reconned. They would afresh alight and accommodate the added boots on the arena that we bare to action added efficiently.
Along with the “nicety” of accepting dismounted infantry, however, came a abrupt bill, which their adviser began to detail. The RFPFs weren’t absolutely aboriginal risers and they bare to be anchored abreast a baptize antecedent anniversary black so they could baker their rice and vegetables. They weren’t too acceptable in the aegis game, accepting a acceptability of sleeping while on bouncer posts. The annual the captain was active through seemed to go on forever, so I assuredly disconnected him and said, “Hey Pal, I’ve been accomplishing aloof accomplished with the troop afterwards you association so far, so with the annual of musts you aloof gave me I’m not abiding I can animate with it.” I told him we would advance to accommodated his troops needs, but if we couldn’t, afresh they would aloof accept to blot it up.
The RFPF assemblage requirements placed added burden on our scouts to acquisition NDPs that met our aegis and their authoritative requirements, abrogation us far beneath acceptable NDP candidates. I would anon apprentice the perils of this situation.
As we pulled into the breadth alleged as our NDP on the actual aboriginal night afterwards our articulation up, I went ballistic, blubbering about the position’s anemic defensibility and abridgement of appropriate fields of fire. Meanwhile, the Puffs anchored their rucks, started their fires and began bathing and carriage baptize for cooking—out of the aforementioned abuse river. I absitively I would accept to advance a apparatus to accumulate me from accepting boxed into accepting an NDP like this again. Unfortunately, I bootless to admit the signs that this abode had been acclimated as a night arresting position before. Acclimated blaze pits, three-legged annex affable pot holders and several bank angry positions were already there.
We had confused to a new paradigm, but I was too adolescent and amateur to apprehend it. As a absolute result, what would disentangle in the abutting few canicule and weeks was a aeon of abhorrence adjoining on terror. Aback I anticipate of it four decades later, it still gives me chills.
The afterward day was boring with no adversary acquaintance and little of annihilation found. Afresh about 1700 we went into the accepted night laager routine, position occupation, laying in artillery, emplacing mortars, ambience claymore mines and architecture RPG screens—chain-link fence to defeat the rocket-propelled grenade’s shaped charges.
The NDP ambit was about 100 meters in diameter, with the command accumulation consisting of my M113 ACAV track, three 81mm adhesive tracks, the medic, a accumulation clue and addition brace of authoritative wheeled vehicles. We had chip the dismounted RFPF armament into our perimeter, with their angry positions amid amid every third U.S. track. We had a absolute of 30 tracked vehicles. Our communications were good.
That evening, afterwards touring the ambit for a third time and award all in order, I absitively to try and get some beddy-bye in my ACAV in a anchorage strung from abaft the driver’s bear to the appropriate rear of the track. I laid in the hammock, anxiety on the floor, and captivated a radio duke microphone for the troop command net in one duke and the fleet command in the other.
It was bean quiet at 2400 hours and, aloof as I was giving a “negative SITREP” to fleet headquarters, several baby explosions went off in accelerated assumption central our perimeter. I anon affective my animate pot and carriageable radio. As I exited the vehicle’s aback door, I saw a arena of absolute chaos, eerily aflame by our 81mm adhesive flares. The RFPFs were scurrying all over the abode as our guys manned their weapons on their advance and in their alone angry positions. Advancement action discipline, no one was battlefront his apparatus gun. My actual appraisal was that we were beneath a 60mm adhesive attack, allegedly advised to let us apperceive that the VC were animate and well—and that they abuse abiding knew breadth we were.
Only abnormal afterwards my anxiety hit the ground, a amazing access from beyond the ambit ripped through the air, actually alarming me off my feet, disturbing the radio from my anchor and sending my unbuckled helmet flying. As I got up on my calmly and knees and gazed beyond the perimeter, I saw one of our advance engulfed in flames. The access was bottomward and there appeared to be some movement inside.
I ran to the track, extensive it as one of my advance sergeants was affairs an benumbed trooper from the ablaze vehicle. We abject the afire trooper about 25 meters from the track. Addition aggregation affiliate had been absolute out the accessible aback and had a abandoned cleft on his forehead. Anon the ACAVs on the larboard and appropriate had “buttoned up” and repositioned to advance ambit candor and abbreviate the crisis from armament that would anon baker off.
After advertisement to squadron, I alleged for a aggregation to annual for personnel, afresh alleged for a medevac for the two blood-soaked U.S. troopers and a cardinal of RFPFs. We had one man unaccounted for, and seven RFPFs who had been in angry positions abreast the afire clue were missing and affected to be dead.
When the dustoff came in, there was a agrarian agitation by abashed Ruff Puffs who appeared accessible to storm the copter. I had to abuse the Vietnamese RFPF baton afore he acquired ascendancy of his men. I told the aircraft administrator that this would be one of several lifts, as I was abiding appear aurora we would acquisition added casualties.
All the while I was cutting my academician aggravating to amount what could accept acquired this carnage. It wasn’t an arms shell, for the access absolutely was too big for that.
Shortly afterwards the dustoff departed, one of my M-551 Sheridan Light Tank commanders was activate asleep on the aback accouter of his track, allegedly from a armament anguish to his skull. He was sleeping in his bag on his tank’s aback deck. Aback the antecedent circuit went off, he allegedly sat up and was addled by a allotment of armament aback the big bang went off.
It was a long, abashed night. Everyone was on 100-percent alert, accepting no abstraction what had aloof happened and fearing that article like it would appear again.
The afire clue smoldered, and as the sun’s aboriginal application lit the ambit you could see its .50-cal apparatus gun angled from the acute heat, still bound into its arise aloft a broiled aluminum box. I ordered the men to ample five-gallon cans with adjacent river baptize and carefully cascade it over the unexploded armament on the track’s floor. Once we were assertive that the blob and unexploded armament had cooled sufficiently, we calculating approached. I was abashed to see a atrium on the appropriate ancillary of the track, about 10 anxiety abysmal and attractive like what I’d apparent during my aboriginal bout aback I had done Arc Light arrest bomb accident assessments. The centermost of the atrium was anon in the centermost of several RFPF angry clusters, breadth the seven missing RFPFs had been.
I alleged fleet and requested that they accelerate an atomic ammunition auctioning (EOD) able out to see if we could ascertain aloof what hit us. I believed it could accept been an aberrant bomb that had aback “pickled off” from a alike abiding from an advance mission. I annulled action operations for the day and ample I had to get the soldiers’ minds off what had aloof happened.
Meeting with band leaders and above, I told them that I was as abashed as they were, but that the acceptable part, if there was any acceptable allotment in this situation, was that we had abiding minimum losses and had not been subjected to a added arena attack. I capital the men to get some of the blow that they had absent the night afore and angle by to resume action operations in the morning. They gave me a address and went about their work.
The EOD aggregation choppered in, and in beneath than an hour they brought me a metal bowl that looked like a allotment of stainless steel. They said it was the abject of a 250-pound U.S. bomb and accepted that the atrium could accept been fabricated by a bomb that size, atomic at arena level. They connected to chase in and about the atrium and activate several metal shards that assertive them that it was absolutely a 250-pound bomb that had done this damage.
I had disqualified out a active command-detonated 250-pound bomb, as the EOD aggregation said that whatever fabricated the access had detonated on the surface. Otherwise, the atrium would accept been abundant deeper. Still cerebration the bomb had collapsed off the addition of an aircraft, I requested fleet analysis Air Force and Navy flights during the 2400-hour time period.
Regardless of what had done the angry deed, or how it had been delivered, the troop was addled from the shock. But we had to put it abaft us and get on with our mission. The abutting morning, we resumed our appropriate screening operations as usual, afterwards incident.
After about a week, we were bottomward the bonds of abhorrence that had absorbed us in the deathwatch of the abstruse bomb incident. Afresh one night, as it was accepting aphotic and we were cautiously in our night arresting position, we started demography admission 60mm mortars again. We took about 10 circuit in quick assumption and afresh there was annihilation but an apocalyptic silence. I alleged the platoons and activate that we had had no casualties and no accident consistent from the adhesive attack.
Five account later, I got a alarm from one of my Sheridan commanders, Sergeant Moye, cogent me that he believed he had activate a “torpedo” laying abutting to his track. We were 40 kilometers civil for Christ’s sake! A torpedo? I affective my helmet, radio and flashlight and fabricated my way to the 2nd Platoon’s arc of the NDP. Aback I accomplished Moye’s Sheridan, he was continuing on the aback deck, pointing to the arena on the appropriate ancillary of his track.
Moving about to the ancillary of the track, I angry on the red filtered flashlight and there it was: a finless 250-pound U.S. bomb laying aloof 10 anxiety from the track. The bomb’s adenoids fuze looked as if it had been disgorged from the bomb itself. A brace of affairs trailed from the fuze and were still absorbed to the bomb.
I wasn’t absolutely abiding what I was seeing, but was acute abundant to apperceive that we had a actual alarming bearings on our calmly and that we had to get the hell abroad from this awful atomic bit of ordnance, fast.
I ordered the advance on that arc of the ambit to move and bifold up with larboard and appropriate platoons. I alleged fleet and requested EOD abutment again, and afresh alleged a command ataxia on the far ancillary of the perimeter.
Next I ordered a quartering affair to anon move to one of the alternating NDP sites, afresh acknowledgment and adviser us there as bound as possible. Everyone was to amount up and adapt to move, but leave the RPG screens in place. We would additionally leave a aggregation of two advance advance about 500 meters abroad from the bomb to watch the NDP and the bomb until we could get the EOD aggregation in. The troop afresh bound confused about three kilometers for the blow of the night.
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