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Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Six

Andy Kach

PART SIX

PFC Ammo Chief

In Sgt. King’s absence, when he was being treated for a wild cat bite, First Sgt. Durant put me in charge of ammo section and this is when I learned what it took to be a section chief; just think, me, a PFC, hobnobbing with all the NCOs and Shake and Bakes. When Sgt. King returned from Nha Trang we were so short handed he was put on one of the gun crews, and I remained the chief of the ammo section.

One night in a ground attack we killed a few VC in the wire. Turned out one of them was the Vietnamese who would come into our battery to give us haircuts. That’s when Judson became the new battery barber.

And then I got more good news: I was due to go on R&R in September, but we were so short handed my R&R was canceled.

August 12

In June we started to get mortared and by August it was on a regular basis. The amount of wounded due to these attacks was taking a toll on the battery. We had two guns out on operation as well, and the attacks were becoming more frequent.

We were so shorthanded we were working four guys on a gun, and then trying to do all the other stuff like fixing wire that got blown up in mortar attacks. We were all looking at each other and thinking it was process of elimination; so many guys were getting knocked off every day. I remember telling Sandage, “I’m open for a leg wound, because this ain’t good.”

Early in the day on August 12, Gun 2 was mortared, wounding the Section Chief, Rik Groves, and Stanley was mortally wounded. Then later that day base piece also took a direct mortar hit, killing section chief, Corporal Pyle, and wounding the rest of the crew.

In a frantic attempt to get Base Piece operational, Sergeant Lamar grabbed what was left of ammo section. There were only three or four of us left by then, because we all been scattered to short-handed gun crews. We had to go man Base Piece and try to get it to fire. It was on flat tires and we were trying to turn the gun, and that’s when we found Sprout. He was in the ammo bunker holding his stomach. And we’re screaming, “Hey, we got another guy here that’s messed up.” Enge and Pyle and the black fellow were gone already, and the next Medevac took Sprout. All that shit happened at night. It was just havoc all the time.

A few days later, we got news that the hospital that our wounded were being treated in was hit by the VC and they were shooting guys in their beds. Thankfully, our guys got through it OK.

August 28

We were pulling double guard duty in the towers because FDC had gotten word that we were probably going to get hit that night, we just didn’t know when. I was on guard duty with Pedro Rodriguez a few hours after the night shift started. We were a couple of hours into our guard shift when mortars started coming in and two landed inside the parapet of Gun 6 right behind us. Nobody was on the gun at the time. Sergeant Lamar came out and started yelling to get our M60 machine gun into action. The trail on the gun had been hit and he couldn’t swing it around into sector. He was frantic to cover the sector because everybody was still nervous of ground attacks coming from that direction.

We opened up with the M60 and were firing right over the helipad when they started to walk the mortars in on us. Two hit between our tower and Gun 6, and then two hit the tower. The first one hit behind us and the shrapnel got me in the shoulder. The second one was a direct hit on the tower hitting the sandbags that were protecting us, and blew me and Rodriguez out the back of the tower. When I hit the ground my head snapped back and did something to my jaw. We both ended up underneath a pile of sandbags. Rodriguez couldn’t see because the blast had blown sand into his face and it was like a piece of raw meat. I got him over to the medic right away, and that was the last I saw him.

I was messed up, but not bad enough and went back to the tower. Lamar was still yelling for cover fire. I went to climb back up in the tower, the roof was gone along with a whole side and the thing was wobbly. I unburied the M60 from underneath sandbags and kept it going until almost daylight.

The attack came from the southwest just out from the helipad. When you look at a map of the battery you can see it’s in line with Gun 2 and Gun 3, both of which took direct hits just two weeks before. Now they drop a notch and land the mortars on Gun 6, and another notch and they’re right on top of Tower 2. They had us dialed in.

Detail of Map Created by Rik Groves
Arrow and Interpretation Added

The next day Lt. Parker looked at me and said, “We’re not Medevacing you out because we can’t do it. You’re walking wounded until we can do something for you.” I agreed to it because I knew we were short handed. Lt. Parker cared for the guys, and had to make decisions. He was not getting replacements.

The medic had patched my shoulder up and said if I was in pain to come see him. It was after three or four days I went to the medic in the morning for pain medication because my face swelled up to the point where I couldn’t chew, could not eat, and my ear was so bad there was crap coming out of it. The medic looked at me and said he couldn’t do anything for it. He finally told Lt. Parker, “Look, I can do no more for him. You gotta get him out of here.” They sent me to Phan Rang finally.

I got to Phan Rang and they didn’t have an ear specialist, so they had to send me to Nha Trang. So I’m sitting in the airport with a flight ticket to get on a C130 transport for Nha Trang and I fell asleep. I slept for 12 hours in the airport. I go up to the desk and I still have my flight ticket and the guy says, “That left yesterday morning , man. Where the hell have you been?”

I said, “Right over there.” I had my rifle and bandolier.

He said, “What are you doing with that rifle, man?”

I said, “Hey, I come from LZ Sherry. You don’t go anywhere without this baby. This baby stays with me.

He says, “Look, there are no flights to Nha Trang until tomorrow afternoon. Go down the road to the Air Force barracks and they might be able to give you a bunk.”

I went down there, knocked on a door and a colonel answered the door and he said to go down the road to that Quonset hut. There are some guys who are on TDY and there’s a couple of empty bunks and you can sleep there. I walked down there, and these guys looked at me coming in with a steel pot helmet on, a swollen face, I got my rifle and flack jacket on, and they’re like, “What the hell are you?”

I said, “They told me to come down here and maybe you’d have a bunk.”

Those guys treated me good. They had steaks they were cooking on little stoves and air conditioning, and I thought, Lord have mercy.

One guy said, “Can I see your rifle?”

I said, “If you want that, you can have it. Where I’m at we carry these all day long.”

They said, “Ours are locked up.”

“Not where I come from.”

When they got me in Nha Trang, they put some kind of sleeve in my ear and then took a rod and pushed it into my ear and you should have seen the crap that came out. The guy said, “How long have you been this way?”

I said “About five days, maybe six.”

He says, “Man, that must have hurt.”

Then they said my teeth were inflamed and were causing the problem with my ear. So they decided they were going to pull a bunch of teeth out. The dentist said, “We don’t do crowns here, but they’ll take care of you back in the states. “ Then he pulled a handful of teeth out of my lower jaw.

I thought that might be my ticket home, but I ran into Judson sitting with his arm in a sling and he said, “No man, they’re sending us back to Sherry.”

No Nonsense Purple Hearts

I was on a trash detail with a black guy named Cunningham. We were picking up all the powder sacks from the gun parapets to take them out to the trash dump to burn. We had a truck-load of powder and were out at the dump unloading it. We saw three or four choppers come in, and we thought it might be the 101st going out on some kind of mission. Somebody came out in a jeep and said, “You guys got to get your asses back in the battery because you’re getting an award.”

We were like, What? I remember I was a mess. I had to go to my hooch, get a shirt on and grabbed my baseball cap.

We reported to the formation and they pinned Purple Hearts on five of us. Cunningham, Band, Clayton, myself and some other guy, whose name I can’t remember, all got one. Then they got on their choppers and left. Then it was back out to the trash dump.

Pedro Rodrigues

Editor’s Note: Rodrigues received his Purple Heart at Ft. Sill.

Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Five

Andy Kach

PART FIVE

Midway through my tour everything changed. Lt. Parker took over as Battery Commander, and we also got a new First Sergeant, 1st Sgt. Durant. Sgt. Bowman’s tour also had ended, so we got a new ammo section chief, Sgt. King – a “shake and bake” fresh out of NCO school.

There was a marked difference in the way the battery ran under the new command. There was less tension and morale began to improve. Lt Parker and 1st Sgt. Durant didn’t seem to sweat the insignificant details – there was no more spit n’ polish. The important thing to them was that the Battery ran efficiently.

What I appreciated about 1st Sgt. Durant was that he would walk around and talk to all the gun crews to get to know us on a personal level. He would go up in the tower at night to talk to the tower guards to help them stay awake. One night when I was on guard duty he came up to talk to me. There was a rumor that he had been in the Air Force so I questioned him about that. He told me he was in the AF with the Strategic Air Command and his assignment was to babysit one of missile silos out in Nebraska. One day he was on his way to Rapid City for a training course and while in the john at the bus station, someone approached him and asked him what time the bus was leaving? That person thought he was a bus driver because back then the AF uniform looked very similar to the old Greyhound bus driver uniforms. That was too much for him; he got out of the Air Force and joined the Army and quickly made rank of 1st Sgt.

He was in the rear in Na Trang and requested to go out in the field, and lucky him, they sent him to LZ Sherry. I also liked the way 1st Sgt would work with us. When we got a load of ammo, he would line up and help unload just like everyone else. 

The WELCOME TO LZ SHERRY sign got knocked down in a ground attack in January and was thrown behind the mess hall where it sat for months. When 1st Sgt Durant noticed it, he had the sign put back up. He collected all the fins that were piled around from mortar attacks and used them to spell out LZ SHERRY.

I never did get to know Sgt King, the ammo section chief because just a few days after his arrival he was bit by a wild cat and was sent back to Na Trang for rabies shots. We were all looking for that cat hoping to get lucky!

A few week after that, Sandage went home, which left me in charge of the ammo section.

Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Four

Andy Kach

PART FOUR  

The Adventures of Ammo Section

The Ammo section was an interesting group of guys. There was Sergeant Bowman, Corporal Sandage, a guy we called Blondie, and me. A month later Pedro Rodriguez and Shirk joined our group. Shirk had a lazy eye that would close all the time, looking out one eye. I asked how he got into the Army, and he said he told the recruiters he wanted to go to Vietnam and they said OK. Rodriguez spoke very broken English, which made it difficult to understand him most of the time. Bowman was a quiet guy from the back hills of North Carolina and Sandage was a good old boy from Tennessee. Blondie was from Wisconsin and of course I was a smartass from Detroit Michigan. 

At first I didn’t want to be part of the Ammo section, but as time went on I realized it wasn’t a bad gig. The duties consisted of resupplying ammo to all the gun crews, picking up spent shell casings and unused powder sacks. This made it easy to get to know all the guys in the battery and hear all their gossip. Afterwards we would burn the powder sacks with the trash detail guys and then convoy the spent canisters back to Betty to get more ammo.  We would then convoy that ammo back to Sherry to be stored in the ammo bunker before nightfall.

In addition to this, we were in charge of Guard Tower 2. We had to restock the tower with ammo and hand flairs for the night, and make sure the M-60 machine gun and M-79 grenade launcher were in good operating order. We also checked the Claymore mines and trip flares at the base of the tower, and made sure the perimeter wire in front of the tower was in good shape and repaired it if necessary. Then we pulled at least two hours of night guard duty – sometimes more if on alert.  So Ammo section was a real workhorse.

When I was still green to the unit, I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep, so I would hang out with the gun crews and help out if I could. Sometimes I would get them their ammo supply before sunrise, if I were still up. I just wanted to make sure we were always ready.

It was unbelievable the rounds they would shoot. We had Fire missions all the time, and if the 101st was on an operation we were up all night. Chinooks would come in with ammo and drop it on the helipad and we had to get it off the pad as quickly as possible. We would form a chain of men and throw the rounds either to the gun crews or to the ammo bunker. We used to worry about mortar rounds coming in and hitting the ammo before we were able to get it under cover. 

At times like this, wild things would happen. I remember one time the Battery was in a fire mission while a Chinook was coming in with a sling load of ammo. We were on the helipad with the ammo trucks waiting for the Chinook to come down, when the VC launched a few 122 mm rockets at us. The helicopter was not about to wait around with rockets in-coming, so they just dropped the load of ammo from approximately 20 feet in the air and when it landed on the truck it blew two of the tires. 

We realized we had a serious issue, so we crawled on our bellies to get off the helipad because we were thinking they’re going to keep shooting at the Chinook. I shimmied to inside the perimeter and waited. I was thinking, Mama Mia! What more could go on here? When the shooting was over we had to go out and put two tires on the truck. Those 122 mm rockets were the size of a big man’s arm. We were just lucky they didn’t hit anything, especially the ammo on the helipad.

When we took the powder bags out to burn we would put the bags in a pile, break open one of them and make a powder trail. We would then ignite the track and get the hell out of there. When the pile of bags ignited, it was pretty hot.

Not knowing any better, Cunningham, who was on trash detail, threw a white phosphorous grenade in the pile of powder bags, thinking this was a quicker way to get them to ignite. The grenade did not explode right away, so he walked over to it, and then it exploded and sprayed white phosphorous on him. WP burns right through your skin, like a drop of hot grease on butter. They had to medevac him out.

When the gun crews were short handed, we all filled in. On one fire mission (My big chance to be on a gun!) I was the loader and was a little too quick. The assistant gunner had not yet opened the breech when I shoved a point detonating round up against the closed breech. Everybody froze. WHOA! They made me carry the round outside the parapet and change out the fuse. 

Two Nice Kids

 PFC Percy Lee Gulley and PFC Steve Sherlock were the first to be killed while I was there. That was tragic for all of us.

PFC Percy Lee Gulley

PFC Steve Sherlock

At times we would get big loads of ammo delivered by Chinook helicopter, as many as 1600 rounds, which we had to get into the ammo bunker by nightfall. This was more than what the Ammo section could handle so we would need extra help to remove it from the helipad. Gulley was a great kid who would always volunteer to help. He was a devout Baptist and carried a Bible in his pocket and was always quoting scripture. I liked him a lot, which is why I think I saved his picture. He was in country less than a month when he died. As far as I know that’s the only picture of him that any of us have.

 Sherlock was also a nice kid. He hated doing wire detail and would volunteer for mine sweeping instead. One day when he was on a mine sweep, we had all the trucks lined up for a convoy to Betty, just waiting for the road to get cleared. They were out sweeping the road for our convoy. We saw a puff of black smoke go up and we thought, Oh shit, they must have found a mine. A jeep came racing back to the battery with one of  the sweep team who’d been peppered with shrapnel, and he was yelling and screaming, but he didn’t seem to be hurt bad. The jeep picked up Doc Townley and raced him back. In a little while we saw the Medevac helicopter in the air.

One of them had stepped on a mine. I think it had to be Gulley because he was hurt the worst. Sherlock died immediately, but Gulley lived for another 45 minutes or so. Doc Townley told me he held Gulley’s hand and kept telling him everything was going to be OK, even though there was nothing Doc could do for him. Doc held his hand until he died.

After that a heavy cloud fell over the Battery. It was like when Kennedy got shot. Lots of guys had been wounded up to that point but nobody killed, and then two guys died at once. That’s when the morale went a little weird. The joking and teasing pretty much stopped. We realized this isn’t a game, and it was the beginning of a bad time where lots of guys got hurt.

Tom Townley today talks about the help he got from First Sergeant Farrell out at the scene. There was no substitute for the steady hand of a career veteran.

  The only fatal casualty before this was PFC Bobby Joe Marsh in March of 1966, over three years prior. Few if any at LZ Sherry knew this.

Outpost Nora

 About a month later, two more guys died on a mobile operation up at Nora. We had two guns up there. They were on a ten round mission when a round out one of the guns exploded over the other gun. Staff Sgt. Johnson and PFC Handshumaker were on that gun and both died. Tommy Mulvihill was part of the gun crew along with Tony Bongi and Leggett. The blast messed all of them up and they got medevac’d out.  It wasn’t until they came back to Sherry, after being treated for their wounds, that we got the full story of what took place.

There was a big controversy over whether the round detonated prematurely because of a bad fuse, or was it the fault of the gun crew. After the investigation it was determined that we had a bad batch of fuses, and we pulled them all from the ammo bunker and gun crews and shipped them back to Betty.

PFC Handshumaker was a scary kid, because he was constantly saying that he didn’t think he was going home; that spooked a lot of us. And then he died at Nora.

PFC Cunningham, who had already been injured at the ammo dump, was also on the operation at Nora and in the incident had body parts blown into his face. He was never right after that.

Dolores

Dolores was my high school sweet heart. A lot of guys put the name of their girlfriends on the front of their ammo truck, so I did the same. When Sgt. Bowman saw it he warned me that First Sergeant Farrell would make me take it off. When First Sergeant saw it he said, “If her name doesn’t begin with a B you got to take it off.” I wasn’t surprised; I guess I just wanted to jack up the First Sergeant a little.

In June Dolores went to California and like for many of us guys, she quit writing me.  Later when I was home and I ran in to her I asked her what happened?  She said, “I got tired of waiting.”

Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Three

Andy Kach

PART THREE

Farrell’s Monkey

First Sergeant Farrell and I never hit it off from the very beginning, which was mostly my fault, for questioning his judgment of not utilizing my gunnery skills. Once while walking past First Sergeant he immediately noticed one of my shirt buttons was unbuttoned and put me on a detail building the command hooch. They were always looking for a reason to put us on detail – probably in an attempt to keep our minds busy so we wouldn’t do something stupid. The location of the command hooch was in a flood zone and it would flood during monsoon.

When Sandage and I completed our new hooch, First Sergeant came down to inspect it and said, “I really like this hooch. We might just take it over.” I looked at Sandage and said, “If that SOB thinks he’s going to take this hooch, we’re going to have an issue.” It never happened.

First Sergeant Farrell had a pet monkey that he would walk through the battery on a leash, like a dog. Occasionally the monkey would get loose and climb up on the gun aiming stakes and move them around, which meant that the gun crews would have to reset the aiming stakes to be ready for a fire mission. Once when the monkey was loose I jokingly put him in an illumination canister and wanted to send him into orbit, when the chief of smoke commented it wasn’t a smart thing to do. I’m the only one pictured actually having that monkey by the neck.

Within my first few weeks at LZ Sherry I got a virus where my throat swelled up to where you couldn’t see my chin. The weather was extremely hot, I had a high temperature, and Doc Townley was really concerned. He ordered some medicine from the rear for me and said, “If this doesn’t work, you’re out of here. I can’t do anything more for you.”  So while I’m lying in that underground hooch, that monkey came in and got up on the roof and pissed on me. I was so out of it, I couldn’t do anything about it. If anyone had a reason to choke that monkey, I did!

Friendly Choke Hold

I heard somebody hung the monkey.

He actually hung himself. Nobody hung it, but everyone thought I did. The First Sergeant was walking his monkey when we got a mortar attack. He threw the monkey in its cage up by the Fire Direction center. It must have gotten excited during the mortar attack and when the smoke cleared the monkey was swinging by the leash inside its cage. That was the best news – everyone was celebrating.

Civil Wars

When I first arrived at LZ Sherry, there were a few issues; there was kind of a north & south thing going on. There were a few guys from the south that didn’t like the northern guys. But as the normal rotation of gun crews occurred, that group of guys left and that friction dissipated.

Judson and I went out on the perimeter one evening to test fire and aim our weapons. We were green and we wanted to make sure our weapons were in good working order. When we returned from the perimeter a couple of guys from the south asked us, in that southern drawl, what we were doing out there. When we explained it to them, they started giving us a hard time and grabbed at our weapons. I told the one guy, “Look, this weapon is still loaded.” That guy was a little strange and had a reputation for giving new guys a hard time.

While on guard duty in the tower one night, he was drunk and told me he was coming up the tower; I said, “You can come up, but I’ll guarantee you one thing. I got a weapon up here that’s loaded.

He said, “Now Johnny, I wouldn’t hurt you. Come on now. I’m just going to come up there.”

I said, “You just come on up. You make the decision.” 

He never came up, and he left for home shortly after that.

We got a new Lieutenant; he was a Field Observer, Hank Parker. Sergeant Bowman assigned me to a detail to help build Lt. Parker’s hooch. I went up to the motor pool and got a five-ton truck and loaded it with PSP so we could put it on his roof, and we got the job done. Lt. Parker seemed to be a squared away guy.

On the way back to the motor pool from that detail, I hit an engineer stake that was sticking out of the ground, which obviously I didn’t see, and blew the front tire out of the truck. The motor pool sergeant at the time was a heavy-set guy from the south. He walked up and said, “You just bought yo self a tire.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “You just bought yo self a tire, son.”

And on payday, when the paymaster came out to Sherry, he took $80 out of my pay and gave it to the Motor Pool Sergeant and handed me a receipt for the tire. I thought, something’s not right about this. I should have had him ship the tire home for me since it was mine – what a souvenir that would have been. But too green to know better or know what to do.

Recently at a battery reunion, I learned that First Sergeant and the Motor Pool Sergeant played cards together; that’s probably where my money went.

That same motor pool Sergeant was up in one of the towers one night and saw a bunch of lights moving out in the tree line. We fired some rounds out there. The VC had tied flashlights to the legs of their water buffaloes and ran them through the woods, just to get us shooting. We killed a few water buffalo that night.

Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Two

Andy Kach

PART TWO

Deluxe Accommodations

My hooch was a little two-man job dug into the ground. For the first couple weeks I was by myself because my hooch mate, Sandage, was up at LZ Sandy on our illumination gun. The hooch was right on the perimeter, in the line of fire of Gun 5. They would shoot  right over the top of that hooch, which is why it had to be so low. Dave Fitchpatrick was the crew chief on Gun 5 and he said, “Do not stand up when you come out of your hooch. When we’re shooting a fire mission or H&I at night we might be firing over your head, but you can’t take that chance.” So we had to low crawl out of my hooch until we were out of the field of fire.

There was a platoon of ARVNs with their families on the other side of the wire, and at night I could hear them talking, and I didn’t know if it was VC or ARVNs. I was all by myself, didn’t know anything, and scared shitless. I would sleep in my helmet and flak jacket with my M16 across my chest. I told Bowman, “They’re going to come in and cut my throat, and I wouldn’t even know it.”

I can remember Bowman coming in one time, and he put his foot on my rifle, right on my chest, and he says, “You gotta stop doin’ this, man. People are afraid to come in here and wake you up.” We had to pull a couple hours of guard duty every night, or else you worked on an illumination gun. He said, “People are afraid to come in here and wake you up. You’re scaring the Hell out of everybody here.”

I said, “As long as I’m here, this rifle is going to be here.” So they’d throw trash in at me rather than come in and wake me up.

Casualty From Michigan  

I put a Michigan flag up right outside my hooch. It went up on a pole I made from rods out of ammo boxes (used to ship artillery rounds). Fitchpatrick came down and he chewed me out and said, “You take that damn flag down.” It was up on a short pole and I told him to go to hell. The next night he aimed his howitzer at the flag and took out a chunk. But he only got the corner. Lucky the round did not hit more of the fabric or the pole. It would have gone off blowing the hooch apart. He claimed he was aiming for the corner he hit.  We loved Fitz, he was a great guy.

Perimeter Hooch and Wounded Flag

Ground Attack  

My hooch mate Sandage came back, a hillbilly from Kingsport, Tennessee. He was just a good ol’ boy and happy go lucky.  He taught me a lot; how to rig the guns and sling the ammo, everything we did in Ammo section. But I’ll tell you, when he took his boots off in that little hooch the smell was so bad I couldn’t stand it. I made him keep his boots outside.

The Ammo section was issued an M60 machine gun, an M79 grenade launcher and a starlight scope. Of course we also had our M16s. When the battery got attacked we took up a position in a little fighting bunker on the perimeter. Sandage taught me how hand flares are different from illumination rounds. A white flare means there’s movement outside the wire. A red one means they’re in the wire, and a green means they’re inside the perimeter and you shoot anything that moves. He got me acclimated so that eventually I didn’t have an upset stomach and wasn’t scared witless all the time.

Andy, Blondie and  Sandage

Thank God Sandage came back from Sandy when he did, just before the January ground attack. I was at Sherry only two weeks or so and still real green. I’ll never forget it. We got a fire mission to shoot for Sandy. All the guns had turned to shoot, and were maybe ten rounds into that mission when we were hearing the tanks firing. The tanks sounded totally different from the guns, and they were out of battery (firing separately from the simultaneous fire of the howitzers). We were saying, “Who the hell’s out of battery?” There were two BOOMS.

Well one of the tank guys had called FDC and said you got people moving around out here. FDC tells them it could possibly be an ARVN infantry unit on patrol. Well the tank commander radioed back and said, “This asshole is right up on the tank with a B40 rocket.” The tank beat him to the punch. The tank fired one of those canister rounds that they had, like a big shotgun shell. When word got around of a ground attack everybody started firing into the perimeter. I am brand new and scared out of my mind with all the firing. Sandage basically told me what to do getting ammo around to the guns. We went to our perimeter bunker and I remember him saying, “Don’t let this get to you.”

The next morning Sandage and I were part of a detail to pick the bodies out of the wire. We lined up all the bodies that we collected, and there was a mess of them. We’d bring ‘em out, put them on the road and line them up and try to match arms and legs. The only thing that was left of the guy hit with the B40 rocket was his head and shoulders stuck in the wire; that guy got the nick name of Head and Shoulders. Sandage and I did not deal with him. Maybe it was Fitz’s crew that had to pull him out of the wire.

The Mess Sergeant came out with lunch for everybody. Sandage and I were sitting on part of a tree stump eating and we look down and here’s a guy’s leg. It was like, “What the hell are we doing?”

And then they blew a big hole in the ground out by the trash dump and buried them. They were all buried out there. I imagine that half those guys came from the village that was right down the road. And the mama-sans would come out there and cry, and it was nerve wracking to hear them.  That went on for a little while. It was getting to be tragic.

If it were not for the tanks, we would not be here. Fitz and Rik Groves will tell you the same story. The VC had enough explosives on them to take the whole battery out. There were two tanks firing out there. But that initial blast is what saved us; it alerted us that we had issues other than shooting a mission.

The next day the Brass came out and gave the tank crews awards. They got some kind of field ribbon issued to them. The Brass came right out to the field and decorated them.

After the ground attack everything changed. The battery command wanted all the hooches off the perimeter and moved into the battery so the guns could fire directly into the wire. That’s when we built new hooches. It took a month to get them built. We had to do it all before monsoon because the perimeter hooches that were dug into the ground flooded during monsoon. I was so happy to be away from the perimeter wire.

Buddy Holly’s

I had a pair of military issue glasses, but I wore my Buddy Holly’s whenever I could.

Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part One

Andy Kach

PART ONE

Where’s The Movie Theater?

 I turned 19 in October of 1968.  My Mom died a week later, a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  I hardly had a chance to digest that, with the demands of deployment.  A few weeks later, on Christmas Day, I’m sitting at the bar drinking a Hamm’s beer on Bien Hoa Airbase.  I was 19 and able to drink beer; I was thrilled.

Christmas Day – Bien Hoa

I was such a dummy.  I thought, Bien Hoa isn’t so bad.  They said, well this isn’t where you’re staying.  Then we went to Nha Trang, and wow!  They had movie theaters and stuff; a nice airbase.  I thought, OK, I could stay here.   And they said, No, no – you ain’t staying here.  And then we took a jump to Phan Rang, which wasn’t as nice, but still OK.  And I thought this isn’t so bad.  But they said, No, no, this ain’t the last stop for you.  You’re going to B Battery.

In Phan Rang, we got all our gear and weapons and got ready for the field.  There were a bunch of us that came in together.  Judson, Kaufman, and me were all assigned to B Battery.  We’re sitting there when a guy named Conn (?) came in, who was a battery runner, or a carrier (someone who runs between all the batteries with messages to and from the rear).  He said to us, “Man, you guys are going to B battery out there at Sherry.  It’s been quiet out there. You lucked out.”  We looked at each other and said, Wow, we’re getting a break.

We went right from Phan Rang to B Battery, because they needed replacements right away, so we got all our stuff and prepared to leave.  They told us about LZ Betty where our forward command post was, but said you’re not staying at Betty, you’re going right out to the field because they need replacements.  So we thought, OK.  And then we got a look at LZ Sherry, and WHOA.  What happened here?  Ain’t no movie theaters out here!

LZ Sherry – During Dry Season

There was a sign at the helipad that said WELCOM TO LZ SHERRY.  There was another little sign on it that said, WHAT SHADE OF PURPLE DO YOU LIKE?  Implying that everybody that ever went there left with a Purple Heart.

First Day at Sherry

 The Chief of Smoke, Sergeant Certa, met us on the chopper pad. When the chopper took off we’re standing there and he says to Kaufman, “Gun 1”.  He says to Judson, “Gun 4”. And to me he says “Ammo Section”.

I looked at him and said, “Ammo section?  I’m a gunner.”

He said, “We need someone in Ammo and that’s where you’re going.”

I was kind of upset about that because I was tenth in my class at Ft. Sill and I did well enough at sighting the guns that I got sent to Self Propelled School (artillery mounted on a tracked vehicle, similar to a tank).  Right after AIT the top 100 guys in the graduating classes all went to SP school, and I was in that group, so I was miffed about getting assigned to the ammo section.

“Sergeant, you are not using my skills,” I say.

“Son,” he says, “Let me tell you how it works around here.  You go where we need you, not where you want to go.”

The Ammo section chief was a hillbilly sergeant from North Carolina named Bowman and he could not say my name. He called me Johnny Cash all the time I was there.’’

He said, “I don’t know how to pronounce that, but ya’ll gonna be Johnny Cash.”

I said, “it’s Kach. 

He said, “Its Cash”.

I complained to him too about my skills not being used in the Ammo section, and he said he couldn’t do anything for me.  He said, “You’ll have to talk to the First Sergeant. He makes the assignments.”

And then to my surprise he looks at me and said, “Do you know how to drive a truck, Johnny?”

I looked at him and said, “Uuuh……No.  The only thing I’ve every driven is a 1962 Dodge Dart with a push button transmission, where you push the D button and it goes.”

He started cracking up and says, “Well Johnny, Corporal Bagemore over there is going to take you around the battery area for about 20 minutes and teach you what you need to know.”

I said, “I don’t know nothing about trucks, or shifting trucks, or anything like that.”

He said, “Well you got 20 minutes to learn, because you’ll be on that road convoy going to Betty.  You’ll be getting ammunition for them guns you wanna shoot so badly.”

I thought, “Are you kiddin’ me?  Can I take two minutes and write home to tell them you’re killin’ me my first day here?

We drove into Betty and I was so stupid about military vehicles or any vehicles, for that matter.  My truck got loaded with ammunition but we had to refuel before heading back to Sherry.  They told me to go over to the motor pool and fuel the truck.  So I drove over and down into this well where the refueling was done.  I put gas in the tank, then found out it was a diesel truck.  That’s how much I knew about the truck.  So now I have the truck fully loaded with ammunition, stuck in the well, and it wouldn’t start.  Bowman was mad because I did that.  He had a five-ton truck, and he slammed into the back of my truck and pushed me out, cussin the whole time.  But they knew what to do.  They had to put so much oil in the gas, because it was a multi-fuel engine, and we got it going again.  But I’ll never forget that because it was traumatic for me.

Sergeant Bowman

Back at Sherry after all the ammo was unloaded I went to see First Sergeant Farrell.  It was getting dark and he was sitting under that parachute canopy he had over a picnic table outside his hooch.  I walked up to him and said, “I don’t want to be in the Ammo Section.  I want to be on one of the guns where I can do what I know how to do.”

He sat me down and set me straight.  “We put you where we need you.  I got 80 gunners here who can do what you were trained to do, and they do what we tell ‘em to do.  We need you in Ammo and that’s where you’re going to stay.”

That’s when I finally got the drift of how the military works.  They don’t give a damn what your MOS is, or what you’re trained for. 

That night Sergeant Bowman sent me to the beer tent to arm-wrestle with Sergeant Smith, I think was his name.  Every new guy had to do it his first night.  If you lost you had to buy a case of beer for the battery.

I looked at him and then at my pipe stems and I thought, No way.  So I said, “How much is a case of beer?”

Sergeant Smith
Courtesy Dave Fitchpatrick

Andy Kach – Ammo Section Chief

Andy Kach

PART ONE

Where’s The Movie Theater?

I turned 19 in October of 1968. My Mom died a few weeks later just after Thanksgiving, and on Christmas Day I’m sitting at the bar drinking a Hamm’s beer on Bien Hoa Airbase. I was 19 and able to drink a beer. I was thrilled.  

Christmas Day – Bien Hoa

I was such a dummy. I think Bien Hoa isn’t so bad. They say, Well this isn’t where you’re going. Then we went to Nha Trang, and wow they got movie theaters and stuff, a nice airbase. I could stay here, I think. And they’re like, No, no, you aint’t going here. And then you get to jump to Phan Rang. Well it wasn’t as nice, but still OK. And you’re like, this ain’t so bad. They say, No, no, this ain’t the last stop for you. You’re going to B Battery.

In Phan Rang, you got all your gear, your weapons and got you ready for the field,. There were a bunch of us that came in together. Judson, me and Kaufman were all assigned to B battery, and we got our gear and we’re sitting there and this guy named Conn (?) was a battery runner, a carrier. He’d run between all the batteries with messages and back to the rear. He came in and he says, “Man, you guys are going to B battery out there at Sherry.” He says, “It’s been quiet out there. You lucked out.” We looked at each other and said, Wow, we’re getting a break.

We went right from Phan Rang to B battery, because they needed replacements right now when we were sent. So we got all our stuff. They told us about LZ Betty where our forward command post was, but said you’re not going to Betty, you’re going right out to the field because they need replacements. So we thought, OK. And then we got a look at Sherry and WHOA. What happened here? Ain’t no movie theaters out here.

LZ Sherry – During Dry Season

That was a sign at the helipad that said WELCOME TO LZ SHERRY. They had another little sign on it that said, WHAT SHADE OF PURPLE HEART DO YOU WANT? Everybody that ever went there left with a Purple Heart.

First Day at Sherry

 The Chief of Smoke, Sergeant Certa met us on the chopper pad. When the chopper took off we’re standing there and he says to Kaufman, “Gun 1.” He says to Judson, “Gun 4.” And to me he says, “Ammo Section.”

I looked at him and I said, “Ammo section? I’m a gunner.”

He said, “We need someone in Ammo and that’s where you’re going.”

I was kind of upset about that because I was tenth in my class at Ft. Sill and I was so good at sighting the guns that I got sent to Self Propelled school (artillery mounted on a tracked vehicle, similar to a tank). Right after AIT the top 100 guys in the graduating classes all went to SP school. I went to SP school for two weeks after I graduated, so I was miffed about going to Ammo section.

“Sergeant, you are not using my skills,” I say.

“Son,” he says, “Let me tell you how it works around here. You go where we need you, not where you want to go.”

The Ammo section chief was a hillbilly sergeant from North Carolina named Bowman and he could not even say my name. He called me Johnny Cash all the time I was there.

He said, “I don’t know how you pronounce that, but ja’ll gonna be Johnny Cash.”

I said, “It’s Kach.”

He said, “It’s Cash.”

I complained to him too about my skills not being used in Ammo, and he says he can’t do anything for me. He says, “You’ll have to talk to the First Sergeant. He makes the assignments.”

And then to my surprise he looks at me and he says, “Do you know how to drive a truck, Johnny?”

I looked at him and said, “Uuuuuh ……. No. The only thing I’ve ever driven is a 1962 Dodge Dart with push button transmission, where you push the D button and it goes.”

He started cracking up and says, “Well, Johnny, Corporal Bagemore over there is going to take you around the battery area for about 20 minutes and teach you what you need to know.”

I said, “I don’t know nothin’ about trucks, or shifting trucks, or anything like that.”

He says, “Well you got 20 minutes to learn, because you’ll be on that road convoy going to Betty. You’ll be gettin’ ammunition for them guns you wanna shoot.”

And I’m like, “Are you kiddin’ me? Can I take two minutes and write home and tell them you’re killin’ me my first day here?”

I went into Betty and I was so stupid about military vehicles or any vehicles. My truck got loaded with ammunition but we had to refuel before heading back to Sherry. They told me to go over to the motor pool and fuel the truck. So I drove it over and down into this well where the refueling was done. I put gas in the tank, then found out it was a diesel truck. That’s how much I knew about the truck. Here I got a truck fully loaded with ammunition, stuck in the well, and now it wouldn’t start. Bowman was mad because I did that. He had a five-ton truck, and he slams into the back of my truck and pushes me out, and he’s cussin’. But they knew what to do. They had to put so much oil in the gas, because it was a multi-fuel engine, and we got going again. But I’ll never forget that because it was traumatic for me.

Sergeant Bowman

Back at Sherry after all the ammo was unloaded I went to see First Sergeant Farrell. It was getting dark and he was sitting under that parachute canopy he had over a picnic table outside his hooch. I walked up to him and said, “I don’t want to be in Ammo section. I want to be on one of the guns where I can do what I know how to do.”

He set me down and chewed me out. “We put you where we need you. I got 80 gunners here, I got 80 guys who do what you do, and they do what we tell ‘em to do. We need you in Ammo and that’s where you’re going to stay.”

Then I kind of got the drift of how the military works. They don’t give a shit what your MOS is, or what you’re trained for.

That night they had me go over to the beer tent to arm wrestle this sergeant, Smith I think was his name. Every new guy had to do it his first night. You lose you buy a case of beer for everybody there. 

I looked at him and then at my pipe stems and I thought, No way. I said, “How much is a case of beer?”

Sergeant Smith
Courtesy Dave Fitchpatrick

Of course a few months later I could have taken him. Carrying ammo around to the howitzers I humped four rounds at a time, 200 pounds no problem. All day I’d pick up a 50 pound round with one hand. I had some guns after awhile, which is why they picked on new guys.

Dave Fitchpatrick – Gun Crew Chief – Part Three

Dave Fitchpatrick

PART THREE

Blood Stripe

 At only 13 months in the military I made sergeant and took over as chief on Gun 5. Normally the minimum to make E5 was 18 months. It was a blood stripe. They called it that because at one time when a sergeant was killed they needed to have the bodies to run the show. In my case this Commo sergeant got busted for something and lost a stripe, which I got. I had scored third highest on the sergeants board, but lost points for time in the military and time in grade. I was at the right place at the right time when the blood stripe came along.

I took the gun over from a guy named Smitty, a black guy. Tommy and the guys always referred to it as Smitty’s gun, even after I took over. 

A Michigan Casualty

One night I looked into the scope, the pantelle, and saw a flag waving in front of my aiming stake. So I went down to see what it was. It belonged to this young punk from Detroit, a street kid just out of high school and a wise ass – Andy Kach. I told him to take the damn flag down. He told me to go to hell, it’s the state flag of Michigan. He was a private and didn’t know any better. I thought, OK, I’ll fix your ass.

Later that night we’re doing H&I perimeter fire. You take a round and put it in the chamber and shoot it at will anywhere in your firing sector. I turn my scope on the flag and for a little fun I shoot the corner off. It was so close to his bunker that it woke him up and scared the shit out of him. I knew enough to do it and get away with it. I told the first sergeant the flag should not have been there and I just shot too close. I told Kach next time I’d shoot off the corner of his bunker.

Andy still has the flag with its tattered corner. It comes out for reunions with Andy and Dave standing for photos on either side.

 

 The Helmet Cure

 When I was on Gun 3 with Emory Smith we kidded around a lot. We did our jobs an we had fun at the same time. I tried to keep things light when I got to be gun chief. We had this guy who was always falling asleep on guard. He claimed he had narcolepsy. So one night when he was asleep on guard his helmet was beside him and we filled it up with water. We come up to him and yelled INCOMING. He jumped up and the took that helmet and dumped it on his head. It was funnier’n hell. We didn’t know if he was milking the narcolepsy thing, but he never did it again.

Melted Memories

On August 12 the two other guns I was on both got hit. Gun 2 got hit early in morning. Theodus Stanley died and Rik Groves, my old crew chief was medevac’d out. Then that night Gun 3, my first gun when I got in country, took a direct hit and it killed Howie Pyle. My Gun 5 was the closest to Howie’s the way the “lazy W” was laid out. We had so much shit coming in that I don’t remember a lot. I can remember when I found out he was dead. People running around helping people. But you’re shooting, so you can’t stop to see what’s going on. It’s a morbid thing, but that’s what happens. They’re running ammo to you and replenishing the guns. It’s like a race car when you pull in from the track and fill up. The war doesn’t stop when somebody gets killed. It happened and there was not much you could do about it, and then you’re busy.

Not long after this my gun took a mortar hit and I lost two guys, not through death, they were wounded. We were on 50% guard (four on, four off) and the mortar hit the top of my bunker. I was awake but I was not on guard. I was lucky, if I had been out on guard I would have been hit. The mortar blew out the tires on the gun and we had to lift the gun to turn it around to shoot back.

Never forget that night. But afterward I don’t remember much, not even the guy who was my hooch mate. Before that I could remember conversations with guys like I was there with them yesterday. They say that when traumatic events happen around certain times you forget. I can’t remember who bunked with me for three months. At one of our reunions Jim Kustes told me it was him and I didn’t even recognize him. I can tell you Rik’s mother’s name, his sister’s, how many kids he has – but I can’t remember Kustes to save my soul.

Family Man

My daughter was born on June 13, 1969 – with three months left on my tour. When my time came I was anxious to get home, which is why I did not extend in Vietnam to get a drop from my overall military obligation. It would have required that I stay in Vietnam an extra 70 days. And we had a lot of shit going on. I had rank and I had my wife and my three month old daughter. I could take it for the seven months left on my military obligation.

Sergeant Fitchpatrick Celebrating the Birth of His Daughter

I remember when I left for home. I had a Yashika camera, which at the time was a very good camera. Hank Parker, our Executive Officer, also had one and the batteries were hard to get. He asked me how much I would sell my batteries for. I told him I wanted one day out of there early, which he arranged. But I didn’t get out of Vietnam any earlier because I had to stay at LZ Betty an extra day. I became a training sergeant at Ft. Sill. I met up with Sergeant Farrell there and some of the old gang, so it wasn’t so bad.

Dave Fitchpatrick – Gun Crew Chief – Part Two

Dave Fitchpatrick

PART TWO

Ground Attack

 I was still on base piece when the January ground attack happened. I remember LZ Betty also got hit that night. They blew the ammo bunkers up and I have pictures of that. You could feel the heat flashes where we were, it was that hot, maybe five miles away.

Wrechage at LZ Betty 1-12-69

When they attacked us at Sherry someone spotted them coming at us through a starlight scope and we just lit them up. I stayed up all night. I think the whole battery was up all night.

The next morning Rik Groves and I both went out to the wire and took pictures. Then we went and had breakfast and loaded up for an air mobile operation. First Sergeant Farrell said one thing to us, “Just remember, it could have been you laying dead out there.” He put it in perspective. Nobody freaked out because we had some guys that were used to seeing death and they were career soldiers.

How did you react?

Business as usual. 

First Sergeant Farrell

Sergeant Farrel liked me and he liked Tommy Mulvihill. Some guys he didn’t like, and I don’t know why. I was older and I didn’t kiss his ass, but I did not disrespect him either. If Farrell didn’t like you he’d pull all kinds of shit on you.

A guy by the name of Jesse was the battery punk, a punk kid. He wouldn’t cut his hair, and he had his pants pegged tight (tapered at the bottom). So some guys one night cut his hair and broke his nose. The First Sergeant had to come out and ask everybody who did it. And I know he put two guys up to it, one of them my sergeant. That night this sergeant come up to me and says, “I need you to pull guard for me for about an hour. I got to go do something.” I know what he did and I know Farrell put him up to it, and I guess he figured I was old enough and smart enough not to say anything.

Farrell had to investigate the incident and came around with an investigator from the rear, an Inspector General guy with him. Farrell knew how to ask the questions. He asked me, “Did you see who did it?” Well of course not, nobody saw it. If he had asked if I knew who did it, I’d of said I got a good idea, but he didn’t. Farrell had his ways, but he was a great guy and I had nothing against him. He was a character and a good first sergeant, let’s put it that way. I liked the guy.

We had a colonel come out, a full bird colonel, he was from the states and he was going to come and give us an inspection,. We were all set up for this goddamn inspection, it was going to be like a stateside inspection. And all of a sudden we got mortared, and we did a mad minute, with all the howitzers, machine guns going off. That colonel had a chopper come get him soon as it quieted down and he took off and he never come back, because we scared the hell out of him. To this day I swear to god we didn’t get mortared, but Top threw some grenades out in the wire. I swear to god he did that. Top Farrell used to pull shit like that all the time. He knew how the system worked.

I’ll tell you one thing Farrell did for me, a very nice thing. My wife was pregnant. It happened the last night before I left for Vietnam and I found out about it a few weeks later. This wasn’t a surprise, because we planned to have a kid while I was in the service. I wanted to go on R&R to Hawaii to see her, but she had to go before she was six months. They didn’t want her flying after that. Getting an R&R would have been pretty tough, because it was first come first served, and I wasn’t in country long enough. Farrell put in for an R&R for himself, and when it came through he turned it over to me, which you could do. He did that for me, and I was only a PFC at the time.

He liked me and he helped me get rank. It was like anything, I never gave him any problems and I did a good job. I was 24 ½ and all the other guys were 18, 19 years old, they’re still kids, they didn’t have any idea. And the career guys, they were dumber than a hoe handle. Farrell was good to me. I’ll never say anything bad about him. 

Steve Sherlock

Just before I went on R&R to see my wife I got promoted to corporal, and when I got back went over to Gun 2, where Rik Groves was chief. I was at the gunner’s sight and Rik was standing beside me. We were maybe a foot apart, and saw VC running way out there. Could see them running around some bushes. We’re standing there and hear a pfffffft. What the hell was that? We didn’t know what it was. And then we hear another one, and it goes bing, bing, bing, bing – it hit something. Then we realized we were getting shot at, and we no more than turned around and Lieutenant Monahan comes out of his hooch. He was getting ready to go home in a day or two, and like all short timers took a special care not to get killed. Another round hit behind him and you could see it kick the sand up. He leaped I’ll bet 20 feet. I’ll never forget that sound, when a bullet comes that close. If it was any closer one of us wouldn’t be here today, or both of us would be gone – or hurt bad. The 1st sergeant told us to shoot back, even though we didn’t see any weapons. We shot back into the brush pile with the howitzer and killed all of them.

Another day I was standing there and I remember the explosion that killed Sherlock and Gulley. From Gun 2 you could see it. I remember Pee Wee Watson flying back into the battery in a jeep for all it was worth, getting Doc Townley and taking off again. I never saw a jeep go so fast.

Steve Sherlock
On Mobile Operations With The 101st Airborne

_____________________________________________________________________________

I am in contact with Sherlock’s brother. He’s an ex-Marine. He has a motorcycle group, and every time they have a body he escorts the coffin. I never physically talked to him, because he doesn’t want to talk. But we corresponded a lot. I sent him stuff that his brother would have had if he’d of come back, like a 101st Airborne service patch that we wore. You see his parents never got over it. He was young and he had to do all the funeral arrangements, though he was probably under aged to do it.

He never knew much about his brother.  One day he asked me, when his brother died, if the body was intact and if his brother suffered. They had a closed casket because they didn’t want to open it up and see. I was really uncomfortable and was going to lie to him, but I said, “Jeez, I don’t know.” I called Doc Townley and he told me Sherlock’s body was kind of intact and he died instantly, where the other guy was riddled, in parts, and didn’t die right away. I was able to tell Sherlock’s brother that he went quick and didn’t suffer. So he didn’t know this all these years, until five or six months ago – until I told him. It’s a sad thing.

Dave Fitchpatrick – Gun Crew Chief – Part One

Dave Fitchpatrick

PART ONE

Dave On Duty
Courtesy Rik Groves

 I was older when I went to Vietnam, 24 ½  years old with a wife and a kid on the way. Plus I had a degree in finance. They put me on Gun 3, the base piece. The crew chief was Emory Smith a career staff sergeant who fought in Korea. He was the prima donna of the battery and liked to party. He really didn’t want me. He wanted another fellow who could play the guitar. But the guy was a screw up, and they told Smith, “No, you want Dave because he’s older.”

A lot of guys on Gun 3 at the time had less than 90 days left in country, including Smith himself, which was lucky for me. He asked me, “Do you want to be a private your whole tour or a sergeant?”

I said, “A sergeant,” and he put me right away on the gunner’s sight. Normally a new guy had to hump ammo and cut powder charges, and couldn’t so much as touch the gun, much less work the sight. That’s where I did all my learning. I learned how to sling out the guns for helibornes and I trained a lot of new guys that were coming in. When Howie Pyle showed up I trained him how to be a gunner.

Two or three days after I got there we went on an air mobile operation along the coast with the 101st Airborne. There was no firebase that could reach them way up in the jungle. The only thing that could reach them were jets, and they were not in abundance at the time. Usually we took three guns and played hop scotch through the jungle with them. They would go so far and sweep, and we would drop the guns behind them. Then they would go further up and we’d come up behind them again. And we were fast; we could get something to them within 30 seconds. We did a lot of shooting but we didn’t get any incoming. A lot of fire fights, you could hear them in the distance, but we did not get into any direct combat ourselves.

All together I went on about four air mobile operations. I was fortunate, or unfortunate to go on that many, because that’s why I don’t know a lot of guys. When you’re gone a month or two and you have a new guy come in, then you go on R&R and you come back and he goes, so you could be there a year with somebody and not know him.

What You Never Learned in Training

 There were things you didn’t learn until you got to Vietnam. Like the first time you’re mortared. It’s the worst thing ever. Your heart rate goes straight through the ceiling, you get dry mouth, and your adrenalin is going like hell. Then after that you almost get complacent, until one hits close to you. Then it starts all over again.

I’ll tell you something else that’s weird. When we were shooting H&Is rounds at night, you wouldn’t hear them when you were sleeping even when they shot them over your head. But I heard mortar rounds leaving the tube, could hear them before they hit the battery. It would wake me up. You could hear it leave the tube, that puff sound. It’s an eerie thing to wake up in a cold sweat and hear that thing and know it’s coming in. By the time you get up and react to it, it’s already hit.

Nobody ever got enough sleep at LZ Sherry. You were either on duty, on guard at night, under a mortar attack or shooting a mission. At night we used to have 50% guard, four guys on and four guys off. You could be on guard duty four hours, and then be up four hours shooting. So I would go sleep in someone else’s bunker, and when Top came around and said, “Where’s Fitchpatrick?” they’d say I was at the latrine. Top would look in my hooch and see an empty bunk and figure I was at the latrine. They’d quick sneak and get me and say Top was looking for me and I would get up and go find him. We figured there was no harm because you still had three guys up. That was our plan, and we worked it on a rotation system for guys to get a little more sleep.

You learned how to deal with cook offs. When we’d shoot so much on a long fire mission, usually at night, the tube would get so hot that when you loaded a new round it would fire as soon as you closed the breech. So you wanted to make sure you got the quadrant and deflection set before you loaded, and you’d better close it quick.

An Artillery High

You had to keep track of the temperature of the powder charges because it determined how hot the powder would burn, and FDC had to figure that into firing data. Base piece was used for registering all the guns, because it was in the middle of the “lazy W” configuration of six artillery pieces, so that’s where we measured the temperature. We always had a thermometer stuck into one of the canisters in the ready rack. That’s where we kept the rounds after we took them out of their shipping tubes ready to fire when a mission came in. All except the one with the thermometer of course. Knowing this someone decided to hide a stash of marijuana in there thinking it would be safe.

During a fire mission you grabbed rounds off the ready rack, set the fuse and got the round in the air as quick as you could. On this occasion, in the heat of battle, someone grabbed the powder temperature round off the ready rack. When it fired it made a funny sound. Sparks flew out the muzzle of howitzer and a cloud of sweet smelling smoke drifted over the battery. We never found out who it belonged to. Even so there’s not much we could have done about it, due to lack of evidence.