Ed Gaydos's Blog, page 15

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Six

Tommy Mulvihill

PART SIX

Unfinished Business

 I was at Ft. Bragg serving out the rest of my commitment when I found out my ex-fiancé was getting married. I told my sergeant, “You got to cover for me for a couple days.” It’s a 12 hour ride from Bragg up to New York. I wanted to be there that night.

I knocked on her door Friday night and she answered. She took one look at me and closed the door. Her father and mother came to the door and said, “Come in, Tom.” I mean, they were like my second parents. She was eighth grade, I was ninth grade. She was in the bathroom and I could hear her crying.

She finally came out and I just said, “Sue, I had to see you. Couldn’t you wait?” She had no answer. I only stayed a few minutes. I just had to get it off my chest. I finally asked her father because he was in the Marine Corps. I said to him, “Did you know your daughter was going to send me a Dear John letter?”

He broke down like a baby … like a baby. He shook his head, “No, and if I did know I would have told her not to.”

I said, “Thank you, that’s all I wanted to know.” You know, you never forget your first love. Believe it or not to this day I’ll go over and see the parents. 

Racing Against A Jeep

 When I left Vietnam I got orders making me an E5 buck sergeant. But then I got busted when I went to Bragg. I beat the shit out of a couple MPs down there. I was down town drinking, and later was back on base and trying to get into the wrong car. The MPs stopped me, and I didn’t take any shit. Neither one of them had any stripes. They wanted to take me in, and I said you ain’t fuckin taking me nowhere. I took the night stick from one of them and beat the shit out of both of them. They got up and ran back to the barracks, and the next thing there are two jeeps coming after me. I take off running. A jeep comes up side of me, and one on the other side. A guy yells, “You ain’t gonna outrun us.”

I said, “Well, I’m gonna try.”

When they got me they beat me down and handcuffed me. From that I got busted and when I got out of the Army I was a PFC again.

Alice

  Tommy married Alice 20 years after his return from Vietnam. Alice nurtures him through the aftereffects of that year, and shoos away the hauntings that never go away for good. She has documented Vietnam for him with scrapbooks of unbelievable detail and creativity – each page too wonderful to describe except to say that one holds a tiny Army dress uniform. She made rugs depicting his tour in Vietnam, designed for the floor, but for me too difficult to put on foot upon. On Veterans Day 1996 she gave Tommy another surprise, a written account titled Viet Nam  Experiences of Thomas Robert Mulvihill. Here are excerpts.

In this first excerpt Tommy made corrections on his copy in red ink, which appear in parentheses.

Boot camp wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be (it was worse) and for the most part he enjoyed (hated) it.

Alice goes on, without correction from Tommy.

I was able to feel an anguish from within his soul as he talked of Nam. I listened, I mentally noted the stories, locked them away in my heart and mind and then as a Veteran’s Day tribute, I was able to put it all together as a story of him and for him. I listened intently enough to know that being surrounded with Vietnam mementos made him more calm, it kept away the ghosts.

Tom always faced those ghosts, never once did I see him give into the fear of the past… we even went to the Vietnam Wall in Washington D.C. to chase away anything that might be looming over him. We walked to that wall hand in hand, and in total silence, then the silence became deafening… but once we got to it, I backed off and gave Tom some space to reach out, to touch that wall and to whisper silently to the buddies he lost that he still loves them and misses them. I watched other Vets there, completely breaking down, sobbing, choking back tears. I saw a Veteran that was as big as a tree, stoop down and sob, while rubbing his finger across the name of his dead buddy. One man cried out loud that he was sorry he never got to say goodbye to his friends, he sobbed as he asked for forgiveness. The Vets seemed so fragile to me. I felt that the monument unites Vets with themselves, it is their history.

Tom now was completely choked up and cried, and then reached back for my hand and we cried together. Then the weight was lightened and we were able to look at that black, glistening wall with pride and curiosity. We took a paper “rubbing” of his buddy’s name, Howard McDonald Pyle. This young, handsome soldier was Tom’s closest buddy and he died in Tom’s arms. This is one side of Tom’s Viet Nam experience that I don’t know very much about. Maybe it’s because I was hesitant to ask. He doesn’t speak of Howie much at all, maybe that is the way he likes it.

Alice ends describing something of herself.

Did I always want to hear the war stories… well, no, not always… did I listen to the gore, yes, if I had to… and will I ever dream his hellish dreams, no… but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a pulse on these matters. I always told Tom I know him better that he knows himself, and he has always disagreed with me, but maybe after reading this, he might have a dramatic difference of opinion. Happy Veteran’s Day, Tom. You’ll always be my brave soldier! I Love You.

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Five

Tommy Mulvihill

PART FIVE

Two Cigarettes

They send me, Andy Kach and Jensen to teach the ARVNs in a big village outside the MACV complex near Phan Thiet (a large administrative center).  We’re teaching them how to fire the howitzers, sling them up for air mobile operations, and things like that. We are done by 11 o’clock in the morning and I say, “Come on, let’s go downtown.” Jensen did not like to go downtown to much because he was married. So me and Andy go, but we’re not allowed to carry our M-16s into town because it’s a friendly village. We’re drinking, we’re partying, and for two cigarettes I could have a girl. We’d walk around, drink some more and I would go back and give her another two cigarettes. But now it’s getting dark. We have to be back in the MACV complex before the sun goes down.

This is after Howie died and the Dear John letter, and I say, “Andy, I got to get another piece of ass. You stand outside the hooch and watch out.” He was not happy about it.

After a little while it’s getting dark and the girl goes, “VC, VC.”

My eyes get big and I go out and say, “Andy, we got to get out of here.”

He says, “Good, thank God. And it’s about time.”

Now we get back to the MACV complex and it’s pitch dark. We can’t get in because we don’t know the password. We are hiding down on our hands and knees behind something and I’m yelling, “This is Corporal Mulvihill. We don’t know the password.”

They end up opening the gate for us and as we’re walking through Andy says to me, “You know, we could’ve been shot by our own guys.” 

Home

Coming home was great. The night before I left there were a bunch of guys in my hooch drinking beer, screwing around, laying on top of each other, hugging each other. All that good stuff.

Then getting on the Freedom Bird. A long trip, we stop in Japan for a short layover. We fly over the state of Washington just as the sun is coming up. I look out the window and call the stewardess over. I say, “Whoa, are we back in Nam?” With all the trees it looked like a jungle.

She says, “No, no, calm down. We’re over Washington. You’re the first person who’s said that.”

I get to JFK airport in New York two days early. I did not tell my folks I was coming because I wanted to surprise them. I’m getting off the plane, I’ve got my duffle bag, and it’s raining out. I go up to a cab driver and ask, “How much you want to charge me to take me to where I need to go?” At this time my folks had moved further out on Long Island, about an hour and a half or two hours away. The Long Island Expressway stopped at exit 57 and where they lived was at what is now exit 63, so there was six miles of back roads. He wants to charge me $130. “Are you crazy? I’ll hitch for that.” Now I’m walking through the airport and he’s following me. I go up to a limousine service and ask how much you guys charge. They are like $70. That’s still a lot of money. The long and short of it I should have called and had my dad pick me up. I figure I made it through Nam, I can get home.

The stupid cab driver is still following me. Then this guy walks up, he’s big and wide, in a black trench coat and carrying a suitcase. He comes up to me and sees me arguing with this cabbie and says, “What’s the matter son?” So I told him the story. He pushes me to his side, then goes up the cab driver and says, “Leave him alone.” The cab driver said something to him and BOOM, this guy knocks the cabbie out cold.

I get in the car with him and he says, “Where you got to go?”

I say, “Farmingville.”

He says, “Oh, I’m going to Ronkonkoma.” That’s still another twenty minutes from where I got to go. He says, “I got to meet a guy in a bar there, a friend.”

I say, “OK, you get me to Ronkonkoma I can take a cab from there.” We drive and we drive, and it turns out he lost his son over there. So that’s why he stepped in.

We get to Ronkonkoma, we pull off the expressway, go into the bar. He’s waiting for his friend and he says, “What would you like?”

“I’ll take a scotch,” I say.

He buys me a scotch and soda, his friend shows up and is talking, and he buys me another one. Now I want to go home. I don’t know this guy and he’s trying to talk his friend into coming and taking me right to my doorstep. His friend did not want to do it, but he finally convinces him to come. No GPS, and they don’t know where they’re going any better than I do. I don’t know exactly where my folks live. They moved further out on Long Island about six months before I went into the service.  But I spent most of my time with my fiancé in Hicksville before going in, so I had an address but couldn’t remember how to get t here. Three of us in the car and I’ve already had three or four scotches.

Somehow he gets me home. He pulls into the driveway, he flashes the lights, beeps the horn, it’s like 12 or 1:00 in the morning. BAM, BAM the lights go on. My brother comes to the door. He looks out and I can hear him scream, “Mom, mom, Tommy’s home.”

I can hear my mom to this day yelling at the top of her voice, “Don’t you dare tease me like that. I’ll beat you till there’s nothing left. Don’t you tease me like that.”

I open the door and I go, “I’m home.” Everybody comes in. I’m the oldest of six, so they’re all younger. Everybody comes down and the two guys come in. My father gives them a drink. The guy gave me his business card and says, “If you ever need anything you call me.” That was a nice gesture.

Paul

Paul Dunne was another good friend of mine. He was a big Boston guy and I’m from New York. “Fuck you and your Boston Red Socks,” I’d say to him. I got of picture of me with a headlock on him in the parapet. A letter came that Paul died sweeping for mines two days after I left Sherry. And I’m the one that taught him how to mine sweep.

Paul Dunne and Tommy

I remember Paul for a lot of things, but mostly for what he did during a fire mission. Paul was the loader. The round (weighing 42 pounds) slipped out of his hand, hit the gun trail, and came down point first on my foot. I was barefoot, no boots or flip flops or anything. It hurt like hell. I’m surprised it didn’t go through my foot … or go off.

We continued the fire mission and we’re pumpin’ out the rounds. After the fire mission I went up to the medic. It was probably Doc Townley. He stitched me up. I remember Sgt. Groves coming in and being upset because he had to help clip the stitches as Doc was sewing me up. He said it was the first time in his life that he had to cut the stitches and the first time he had to watch somebody being stitched up. No pain killers, no nothin’, just get up and go. Even when I was hit in the head it was the same thing, they didn’t give me nothin’. I said, “Just give me another beer.”

Medals

 Tommy was awarded two Purple Hearts. They came the two times he was medevac’d to the rear for treatment: wounded in the head during a mortar attack and just two months later hit in the leg at Outpost Nora. The oak leaf cluster on the ribbon denotes a second Purple Heart.

 

Purple Heart With Oak Leaf Cluster

However he could have earned another two Purple Hearts. A third should have come on August 12 when he was sprayed with shrapnel. That was a chaotic day when two died and others were seriously wounded. In the excitement no one paid attention to a guy with a few pepper wounds on his back. And Tommy wasn’t thinking about medals after Howie had died in his arms.

Another Purple Heart could have come from having an artillery round stab into his foot during a fire mission. Any injury sustained during engagement with the enemy qualified. But during those awful months of 1969 having a round drop on his foot was seen as an accident, not a medal-worthy wound.

In addition to a unit Commendation Medal for Valor, Tommy also came home with a Bronze Star. This medal was for meritorious service over his entire time in Vietnam. Despite his occasional disciplinary lapses, like shooting a round at the feet of his crew chief, this medal recognized what Tommy meant to B Battery over the long haul. The Bronze Star was not given lightly, going to a little over 1% of those who served in Vietnam. It is proof there was more to Tommy than the crazy Irish kid who attracted metal and didn’t take shit from nobody.

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Four

Tommy Mulvihill

PART FOUR

The Retirement Plan

I hooched with a guy from California, a big guy we called Jolly Green Giant. He was shipping home heroin in coffee cans, which I did not know. Somebody must have turned him in because the top sergeant searched our hooch and found it. I swore to Top I knew nothing about it. I swore on my parents’ grave.

Jolly Green even said, “Tommy didn’t know anything about this.”

Top said to me, “But you’re involved.”

He put both of us on shit duty. Burning shit. It was better than going to jail. Back then in the field they handled stuff like this in-house.

Jolly Green told me afterwards, “I could’ve made enough money on the streets in California to set me up for life. This was my retirement.”

Jolly Green Giant

August 12 -  Howie Dies

Two deadly mortar attacks occurred on this day. The first was in the early morning hours on Gun 2, killing Theodus Stanley and wounding Rik Groves. The second was late at night on Gun 3, base piece, killing Howie Pyle and wounding the entire crew. Each boy who was there that day has his own special story. This is Tommy’s.

Early in the morning I was on Gun 2 in the ammo bunker cutting fuses when Groves got hit and Stanley got killed. Sgt. Groves was medevac’d out and Stanley was gone so I was now in charge.

Late that same night we’re shooting illumination. I’m sitting on the trail of the howitzer when the mortars start coming in and I got hit again. The only way I can describe it is like someone taking a handful of glass or pebbles and throwing it at you. I had my steel pot on, and I had it on backwards, and I didn’t have my flack jacket on, so I just got peppered. But I just kept on going, and the next thing I know I hear a real BOOM, when base piece got hit. That’s when I stopped, I got off and said to somebody on our gun, “You guys take over. You know what you got to do. I’m going over to base piece.” Because I knew it was Howie’s gun. When I got there I saw bodies all over and Howie was on the ground gasping, gasping, gasping. I got Howie in my arms and I tried to bring him back, but he had a gut wound and he was gone.

That was a rough night. Later when things quieted down I went back to my gun and saw our XO, Lt. Hank Parker, sitting over at my gun in the parapet. He was sitting in a little chair with a case of beer next to him, and he didn’t want nobody to come near him. I was like this with Parker (holds two fingers together), and I went up to him. He said to me, “Mulvihill, you’re the only one with balls enough to come up to me because I didn’t want to be bothered with nobody and I was going to be hitting people.” Then we sat and talked. He had gotten to know Howie and me, Howie a little more for some reason.

The day after Howie got killed they had a ceremony in the mess hall. When the chaplain got done, I raised my hand and asked if I could say something. And of course he said absolutely. I got up there with tears rolling down my face, and basically said remember Howie and how he lived, and not how he died. After I said that I walked out of the mess hall and back to the hooch. Doc Townley followed me out of the mess hall back to my hooch and we just sat and talked. He consoled me.

Howie was always trying to get me to smoke pot and I never did but the day after he died I smoked it – for him. After that I did not smoke anymore in Nam. After that I didn’t want to be bothered with nobody. I really didn’t. I dissociated myself, I didn’t want to get too close to nobody else no more. Maybe I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose nobody else. Enough. I’d lost enough.

Two days after Howie died I got a Dear John letter from my fiancée. She mailed my ring back to my mom and dad. In the letter she said she met someone else. My heart was broken. You know what, it’s your first love, she was my high school sweetheart. And I lost that too. That’s when I went a little nuts. I was going to be Audie Murphy. I took two M-16s and grenades, walked off the parapet and outside the wire and emptied the guns. I think it was 1st Sergeant. Durant followed me, and when I was done I turned around and he just looked at me. That’s when they called the chopper and he sent me back to Phan Rang for and in-country R&R for a couple or three days.

Back in Phan Rang I asked if I could escort Howie’s body back home. I stood with the chaplain in front of this panel of officers sitting behind a table. I said to them, “I promise you I’ll come back. I’ll do extra time. I just want to bring his body home.” That’s when they said, No. He did not sign a paper that said if I die I want Mulvihill to take me home. I kind of really lost it. I was screaming at the top of my lungs at these guys: majors, colonels, whoever the hell they were up there, all officers.

The chaplain pulled me back and said, “Come on, you gotta go, you gotta go. They made up their minds, you’re not going.”

Plus the battery was short of people. I could not see it then, but I can see their point now. They needed every swinging dick that they could have.

They sent me back to Sherry, and that’s when I didn’t want to take any more orders. And I didn’t want to hooch with nobody, and they respected that. I built my own hooch. It was really big, but I was the only one in it.

And see that window in the side? I used the part of the ammo box with the lid still on, so you could lift it up and get some air circulating. I was the first one to do that.

After Howie died I could not get close to people like I would like to. Now I didn’t care and volunteered for more mine sweeping.

It took me a while to write Howie’s parents. After he died they wrote a letter to the battery commander asking how I was doing. I still have the letter. I had never met them but they adopted me as another son. I wrote home about him, and he wrote home about me. I finally wrote to them and it was a hard letter to write.

6 October 1969

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Pyle,

I’m sorry for the delay in this letter but as you know it his very hard for me to write this. As you know I’ve known Howie ever since basic training and I’ve grown very close to him. Howie and I were just like brothers, there wasn’t anything that we didn’t do together.

I should be coming home around November 18 and if it is alright with you I would like to stop and see you. Howie always spoke of all of you and from what he’s told me of you I feel I’ve known you for a long time. I was also asked if I knew anything of Howie wearing a ring or watch. As far as I can remember Howie never wore a ring. Most of us out in the field never wore rings because of our jobs. As for the watch Howie broke that awhile back and was planning on buying a new one.

The letter you wrote to my commanding officer mentioned my welfare. This made me feel real good knowing that Howie wrote you and mentioned me. I am doing fine and will be home in about 44 days. I hope very much to see you all then.

Tommy Mulvihill

After I got home my dad and me went up to Tarrytown. We got there in the afternoon, and we stayed all afternoon and we had supper there.

Brothers

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Three

Tommy Mulvihill

PART THREE

March, 1969 -  1st Time Wounded

What really sticks in my mind is the first time I got wounded. It was during a mortar attack. Shrapnel went underneath my steel pot, knocked my steel pot off and knocked me out but I was semi-conscious so I could hear but I could not talk. I heard “Mulvihill, Mulvihill, he’s dead, he’s dead.” I had a head wound and there was blood all over the place. I could hear them and I’m trying to say no I’m not. I’m still here. Then somebody came over to check on me, and they carried me into my hooch. Then they took me up to the medic and check me out, bandage me up, but they did not medevac me out.

The next day people from the rear had to come out to give shots and pay people. Whoever was in charge looked at me and I still had the bandage around my head. He knew we had a mortar attack the night before and that was when the captain got his ass reamed out. And Top got his ass reamed out for not medevac’ing me out. The officer, whoever he was, took me back on his helicopter to the hospital at Phan Rang. They checked to make sure there was no shrapnel still in my head and they sewed me all up. I was back there may be six or seven days and then I was back out in the field again.

I remember my mom getting a letter from the Red Cross that I was wounded before I could write to my folks. My mom got the letter on her birthday. They were nervous wrecks. 

April -  Young and Stupid

 I did a lot of minesweeping. They promised me an extra $65 a month. That’s what you got for hazardous duty pay when you went to Vietnam, an extra $65 a month. Well they said that minesweeping was extra hazardous, so I got an extra $65. I said, “I’ll take it.” I’m fucking young and stupid, nothing is going to hurt me. Sure I’ll do it. Whenever a convoy went out, I did the mine sweep.

You had headphones and a battery pack on your waist in addition to the sweeper that you held in your hands. You didn’t carry an M-16 because you couldn’t. A guy 10 to 15 feet behind you carried your weapon and walked in your footprints.

The first time I found a mine, I pretty near shit in my pants. You’re taught to freeze, lay the sweeper right there on the ground to mark it, and then backtrack in your own footprints. A sergeant or lieutenant who was way back there in the jeep would come up and figure out how they were going to disarm it. This officer came up and it  was like a WWII movie. He’s on his hands and knees with a bayonet going into the ground trying to find the mine. I thought, OK, better you than me.

Another incident while I was out mine sweeping, I got shot at. The bullets are hitting right in front of me. I turned, ran back to the guy with my weapon, aimed it and shot back. When we got back to the battery, this sergeant or lieutenant, whoever was in charge of the convoy, wanted to give me an Article 15. I did not have permission. You needed permission to shoot in the daylight. I said, “Are you out of your mind? You’re going to give me an Article 15 for defending myself?” When this guy told Top and the captain what he wanted to do, they looked at him and said, “Good-bye. There’s no way he’s getting an Article 15.”

At a certain point, I had been doing it for so long, I said to Top, “I don’t want to go today.” He said, that’s fine, so they got somebody else. And don’t you know it, it wasn’t 15 minutes later and I heard KABOOM. I jumped in a jeep and drove out there. I talked to a guy there who said when the mine went off the guy who was mine sweeping his body was up on top of a pink cloud. Another guy got killed too. I felt guilty about that, because that should have been me. But then again I could have found it. (This was the incident in which Percy Gulley and Stephen Sherlock were killed.)

 Another time I mine swept we went in, swept the whole road, got our ammo and supplies and were coming back. We did not mine sweep on the way back because the VC set their mines at night. Well this time they had re-mined the road and one of our deuce and a half trucks hit a mine. It was the tankers’ truck, and it was the only one that didn’t have anything in it. It blew the tires off and the bed of the truck looked like when you put your hand through a piece of tinfoil. Thank god nobody got hurt. 

May -  Wounded Again

Two guns from B Battery are on a mobile operation at a place called Outpost Nora. One of the guns is Gun 2, BAD NEWS. While shooting a fire mission in support of the infantry, a round with a bad fuse explodes coming out of the barrel of BAD NEWS. It kills Lloyd Handsumaker and James Johnson on the other gun, and wounds three on Gun 2.

I was still on Gun 4 at the time, and went up to Nora to relieve the crew on Gun 2, BAD NEWS. I remember it was almost dark. Bombers had just finished an airstrike, or maybe it was a mortar attack, on the mountain side where we had to land and the tree trunks were still smoldering. The helicopter that took us either wouldn’t or couldn’t land and we had to jump out and then walk up the hillside to the firebase.

We were shooting a fire mission. I think it was a battery of three (both guns shoot a succession of three rounds). And then the next thing you know, BOOM. I got thrown back 30 feet. Me and Tony Bongi and Leroy Leggett – the three of us were hit. Leggett got hit in the stomach and he went down. Bongi got hit in the hip. I got it in the leg. And two guys on the other gun got killed. We all got medevac’d out, except Bongi. He wasn’t bad enough and they needed everybody they could get.

Outpost Nora Before Mishap
(From Left) Tony Bongi, Tommy, Leroy Leggett

That time when I got hit my folks got the letter from the Red Cross on their anniversary, and like the other time I didn’t have a chance to write them yet. 

After I got wounded a second time Howie used to say, “Stay away from Mulvihill because he attracts metal.”

Three or fours years back from Vietnam I was in the shower washing and I felt something like a pimple, but I couldn’t see it. So I had my wife look and she said it’s black. I never gave it any more thought, until years later the VA took x-rays for my legs and that’s when they saw the shrapnel that’s still there. Only it had traveled from my thigh down to my calf and was pinching a nerve. They got the shrapnel out but it had already done its damage. The doc said the inside of my leg had the look of a 90 year old man. 

June -  Don’t Mess With Tommy

 I was a corporal and crew chief on Gun 4, when they brought in a shake ‘n’ bake sergeant over me. He and I did not hit it off and I was not there very long. He came in like gang busters. He did not know what he was doing, but he thought he did. He did not know how we ran the gun. As much as I tried to tell him certain things, he just did not want to hear it.. He ordered me around like I was a piece of shit. Constantly telling me to do this and do that when they had privates there that should have been doing it and not me as a corporal. The guys still came to me, and I’m sure that rubbed him the wrong way, and he was on me even more because he had an extra stripe. It was little shit that just built up.

Then one day he accused me of being asleep on guard duty. There was no way. I told him, “Are you out of your mind? After being hit two times? You’re accusing me up falling asleep  on guard duty.”

I freaked. I went up to my hooch, grabbed my M16, locked and loaded it, and pointed it at his fucking head. I told him, ” You ever, EVER fucking accuse me of falling asleep on guard duty again, you will not see the sunset.” And then I put a bullet in the dirt between his legs. He stood there in total shock. After that they shipped me off to Gun 2.

I could have gone to LBJ (Long Binh Jail) for firing on an NCO. I got along with the brass because they respected me. I did a lot of mine sweeping. I did things that I was told. I was the crazy Irishman and they took care of me.

We are in Tommy’s study sifting through pictures. The sergeant occasionally appears, at which Tommy says, “There’s that fat fuck again.”

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Two

Tommy Mulvihill

Gun 4 Crew Chief

PART TWO  

Tommy was a wild Irish kid, but a hell of a crew chief. He held the rank of corporal in a job that normally went to a sergeant. His Gun 4 was on the western end of the battery near the bunker that housed ammo for the whole battery. What happened one night on guard duty tells the story of Tommy and a frightened newbie. Another shows a leader under pressure doing his job. Both stories explain why nobody ever forgot Tommy Mulvihill.

Guard Duty

I was on guard duty and out toward the ammo bunker I hear somebody crying. So I went over there, and I didn’t know who it was, but he was brand new in country and was scared shitless. I just sat and talked to him.

I said, “First of all you gotta move. If a mortar comes in look where the fuck you are, in an ammo bunker. Come over by me. We’ll keep each other company and we’ll keep each other awake.”

…………………………..

During a mortar attack my Gun 4 took a direct hit. Thank God nobody was on the gun at the time. When you hear somebody yelling INCOMING that’s when you run around and wake everybody up. So the gun got hit before anybody was on  it. The explosion flattened out both tires and we had to manhandle the gun (5,000 pounds) to get it into position to fire while the mortars were still coming down. For that incident our gun crew received the Army Commendation Medal with V Device for Valor. 

Sergeant Farrell

I got two Sgt. Ferrell stories. Every night, cause I was Irish like him, he would hunt me up and sing Danny Boy to me. I swear to God, and we would drink beer. Not every night really, but enough to remember. And he would try to teach me. And I’d say, “I can’t sing. Come on Top.”

Another time we were shooting our weapons on the perimeter. A bird flew by and he took out his .45 and boom, he took the bird right out of the year. He said, “See how good I am?”

I said, “You were lucky.” But sure enough he took that bird out of the air.

It’s those two things that I remember most about him.

The Most Scared

I did a lot of mine sweeping so I went on a lot of convoys back to LZ Betty at Phan Thiet for ammo and supplies. On one trip I see an M60 machine gun sitting there with nobody around it. It calls out to me, so I load it into the truck with the supplies and off we go back to Sherry. Now we got an extra machine gun and need a guard tower to put it in. I had two years of carpentry in high school and built the best hooches, and Top even had me build ammo bunkers and the beer hall, I liked doing it. So I can build a guard tower, no problem

We put it on top of another hooch to get it up in the air. The roof of the hooch was this metal runway material and we built it right on top of that. We are nearly done and this thing is maybe eight feet above the roof of the hooch, made of heavy lumber, sandbags, ammo boxes and more runway material – I’m up on top and the whole thing collapses, right through the roof of the hooch below. I am trapped under the pile with ammo boxes pinning my legs. I can look up through this small hole to see the sky and get some air, but I am down there and more scared than anything that ever happened to me in Vietnam, including the four times I was wounded. I am down there a long time before they can get me out, plenty of time to be scared.

A guy by the name of  Jimmy Jones, a big strong black guy, saved me. They held him by his feet while he pulled away the sandbags and junk that was on top of me. Then he lifted me right up through the hole. Doc Townley got ahold of me and said I was OK. Then the two of us went to my hooch and had some beers – quite a few beers.

It wasn’t long after that inspectors come out looking for their machine gun. Sergeant Farrell gave it to them right away, instead of making them search the entire battery. I guess he figured they’d find it eventually anyway. He made up some story about finding it along the side of the road.

January 12, 1969

Ground Attack

We were in a fire mission. We did not know that we had a ground attack until after the fire mission was over. My Gun 4 was at the other end of the battery from where they came in. My thought was that base piece behind us was firing because the FO wanted something and it was a single shot. It didn’t sound louder than usual, but then again a howitzer firing a charge seven is loud. And that’s why I didn’t realize we had a ground attack until after the check fire. Then the word spread quick that the tank had fired and taken out the sappers.

I got put on the detail to collect the bodies out of the wire. Body parts were all over the place. I am in country only two months, just a teenager, and this happens. I just got lucky I guess. The bodies had bags of heroin on them. They were all heroin’d up. That’s how they keep on coming. You shoot them and they don’t even feel it.

As it got light we had to wait for almost three hours for people to come out from Phan Rang before we could load the bodies up. There was a whole shitload of brass. They had to come out and do their count, because at that time it was body counts that they were sending back to the states.

By the time the brass left it was 110° out there. Picking up the bodies and the parts, they were like mush. We loaded them up in the back of the deuce and a half truck, drove them off the perimeter, blew a hole in the ground with C4, just dumped them in there, and then covered them over. That was probably my first traumatic experience.

One of the bodies in the wire was our barber. The day before I was in the tent with him getting my haircut. The guy only had one arm and he used to shave your hair with a straight razor. All he had to do was take that straight razor and take it across my throat. From that day on me and Howie cut each others hair. We saw the barber in the wire, and that was it. Done. That’s when you didn’t trust nobody.

A couple of days later the engineers came out with a bulldozer and leveled an old building that was right by our perimeter just off of our wire. The sappers got close because they were able to hide behind that building, that’s where they snuck in through. It was a cement building. That’s why I always thought it was some kind of church. It was not a hut. It was cement and it was blown apart in several spots but it was out there. They called in a crane and the crane dropped the bulldozer down and they leveled it all out. While they were at it they cleared more brush and took our perimeter further out.

There was another incident, whether it was that same day or not. This guy Beenie, I don’t know his real name, he was a Mexican, and he was a good guy. He was on my gun. We went out on top of the perimeter and we found a body. A single body out in the wire off of Gun 4, off my gun. I don’t know if it was that same day, it could’ve been another time, but it was a single sapper in the wire trying to get in. And the guy that we found in the wire also had bags of heroin on him.

Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part One

Tommy Mulvihill

Gun Crew Chief  

PART ONE  

Tommy still lives in Hicksville, Long Island where he grew up. It is just a four hour drive from Boston, so on a crisp spring morning I head south. The last long leg of the trip hugs the industrial coast of New York, thick with semis and potholes. It thankfully skirts Manhattan, then crosses Long Island Sound across a magnificent bridge at Throggs Neck, and finally swings east through the center of the island. I pick my way through a neat Hicksville neighborhood looking for house number 131. Then I see something that makes the house number unnecessary. On the rear window of a black pickup I see University of Vietnam, School of Warfare. Classic Tommy.

  Tommy hasn’t changed much from the Irish kid at LZ Sherry. He still don’t take shit  from nobody.

June 1968

When I graduated from Hicksville high school my cousin got me into General Electric Credit Corporation. I was basically a bill collector. Then I got a job at Castro convertibles, a large New York furniture company, to train to be an assistant credit manager. For a kid right out of high school, that was a big deal. But soon as I passed my physical for the draft, they fired me. They would have to hold my job, and they could not afford to do that. So I walked into the draft board the next town over and said, “I know I’m going so I want to go now.”

I got fired in May, and June I was gone. It was the day after Father’s Day. I’ll never forget that because my father took me down to Whitehall Street in New York to catch the bus. I went to Fort Hamilton and got sworn in there. Then we got on the plane and went down to South Carolina for basic at Fort Jackson. We were all from New York. We get down there 11 or 12 o’clock at night, stand in front of the barracks and they’re yelling, “Alright all you mother fuckers, we want the guns, we want the knives, we want the switchblades. We want everything.” And sure enough, I could hardly believe it, guys started throwing all this stuff out onto the pavement.

Trainee 241

Early in basic they give you all these tests and have you fill out a ton of forms. We all had a number in basic. I was 240 and the guy sitting next to me as we’re doing all this paperwork is number 241. He’s married with two kids, was drafted and wants to get out in the worse way. He tells me he’s going to put on his form that he’s queer, that he’s a homo. I tell him please don’t do that. I begged him, DO NOT DO THAT. Well he does it anyway, and soon the sergeants are making life miserable for him. Every time they shouted out his number I thought they were after me – “two forty …” until they added the “… one.”

I overhear four black guys say they’re going to give him a blanket party that night. Beat the crap out of him without leaving any marks. Before bed I go outside and find a big stick and go to him and say, “We’re switching bunks tonight.” I get good and hidden under the covers and when these guys come around I jump up on the bunk and say, “You guys need to know something.” I tell them about his wife and his kids and why he let out he was queer. From then on I had this guy’s back, and so did these four black guys.

After a week of processing, loosing our hair, getting fatigues and filling out forms, we get assigned to our regular training companies. They call us all into formation; there must be 300 of us. This sergeant then goes down the list alphabetically. This guy’s name starts with a W, and when the sergeant gets that far he says, “Werth – Number 241. Company D.” And then this sergeant says out loud to the whole formation, “He’s a queer.”

After that I don’t know what happened to Werth. One thing for sure, the sergeants made life hell for him.

Howie

When we got assigned to training units, me and Moore and Pyle got sent to the same basic training company because our names are close in the alphabet. We were all in the same barracks and we all kind of hit it off, more so between me and Howie. Then we all went to AIT together at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and the three of us did an extra two weeks of training on self-propelled (howitzers mounted on what looks like a tank).

Howie and I were both New Yorkers and became instant friends from the minute we met. He went to college for a year and was a year older than me roughly. He liked to smoke pot and I did not like to smoke pot, not even in high school, nothing. It was drilled into me by my parents not to. He would always try to get me to smoke with him. I would say, “ I’m doing fine. I’m good with my beer.”

Howie and I did a lot of things together, we were practically joined at the hip. We used to go down to Jackson to the beer joints together, the strip joints, have fun. At Fort sill we’d go down to Lawton and just have fun and get into fights down there with the locals, the hippies that were antiwar people. We both did not take any shit from anybody. And I’m still the same way today.

The Long Wrong Way to Sherry

 Howie, Jimmy Moore and I all went to Vietnam together on the same plane. We landed at Cam Ranh Bay at night. When we got off the plane – the stink, I’ll never forget the stink. To this day I don’t like fish. From there we went to  Phan Rang and that’s when they gave us our M16s and they told us where we were going. Howie and I were going to B battery out at LZ Sherry.

They put all three of us on a helicopter and instead take us out to LZ Sandy, the wrong firebase. That night they put us on perimeter guard duty. Me and Howie and Jimmy alone in a guard bunker our first night in the field. We were cherry boys shitting bricks. Early in the morning I see this guy walking right in front of our bunker and he looked like a gook. He did not have the ARVN uniform on. He was wearing sandals and black pants just like a VC. I was about to shoot him, but Howie stopped me. Thank God I did not shoot him. It’s funny now when you look back at it, but not at the time. Scared, man we were scared. Dark! Oh my God was it dark.

Later that morning they found out that we were in the wrong place and shipped us all off the LZ Sherry. What happened to me and Howie and Jimmy was very rare, going through training together and then ending up at the same little firebase in Vietnam. At Sherry I was assigned to Gun 4. I think it was called BEWITCHED. I started as an ammo humper like everybody else and worked my way up. Howie and Jimmy went to Gun 3, BENEVOLENCE, which was base piece. (the gun in the center of the cluster of six guns. Firing data was computed from its location, making it the most accurate of the guns.)

When you first get to Sherry you put your fingers in your ears when a gun goes off. But once you get assigned to a gun you really can’t. And if you had ear plugs in you couldn’t hear the settings for the fire mission and you couldn’t hear commands to the guns. If you’re the gunner, assistant gunner, or even the guys cutting the fuses and the radio operator, if you had ear plugs in you couldn’t hear what you were supposed to set the deflection at and the quadrant at. 

Newbie Tommy
Courtesy Rik Groves

Brothers

When Howie made corporal, I made corporal, and both of us became crew chiefs on our guns. He was a good leader just like me, and that’s why we were promoted.

We’d bullshit, play cards, talk about what we were going to do when we got home. We were going to try to move close together, maybe start a business together. In what we really did not know. We talked about going cross country when we got home. He loved life. He did. Of course we used to call him Gomer.

Howie and I became so close that his parents would write me and send me care packages. Howie always wanted to fix me up with his sister. He would only talk about his sister, I did not even know that he had two brothers. He showed me pictures of her. She was hot. I think maybe it would have worked.

Whenever we had downtime, when you weren’t shooting a fire mission or working or on guard duty, we were together. We talked to each other like brothers, real brothers. We even looked like brothers. If you look at that picture of us together you could see a similarity.

Tommy and Howie (Gomer) Pyle

St. Barbara – Patron Saint of Field Artillery

Saint Barbara

Patron Saint of Field Artillery

Barbara lived in present day Turkey and died in the year 267, over a thousand years before the first recorded use of a cannon. The legend of her death is a story of blood, thunder and lightening – good credentials for a patron saint of field artillery.

Barbara was the daughter of a rich heathen named Dioscorus. She rejected the offer of marriage he had so carefully arranged. Bitterly angry with her, Dioscorus ordered a tower built in which she was to be confined during his absence on a long journey in order to shield her from unwanted suitors. He directed the tower to have two windows from which his disobedient daughter might at least gaze upon the countryside.

As the tower was being built Barbara arranged for three windows to be put in, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two her father had commanded. When Dioscorus returned and saw the three windows, Barbara confessed to her father that she had become a Christian. Upon hearing this he dragged her before the prefect of the province, Martinianus. For refusing to worship the pagan gods, the prefect had her cruelly tortured and finally condemned her to death by beheading. Her father himself carried out the death-sentence. In punishment for this act Dioscorus was struck by lightning on his journey home and his body consumed in fire.

Death of St. Barbara

St. Barbara soon became the protector against lightning strikes, storms and all forms of sudden destruction. Only a hundred years after St. Barbara’s beheading, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, fueling widespread devotion to her. The first cannons, invented by a German monk named Berthold the Black in 1320, were primitive affairs and routinely exploded on their crews. Cannoneers quickly turned to St. Barbara for protection. Devotion to her spread to armies across the western world: Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and England. On Italian warships it was customary to inscribe santabarbara – one word in lower case – above the entrance to powder magazines. Her feast day is December 4.

St. Barbara is often depicted holding bolts of lightning, as on the emblem of the Army’s Field Artillery School at Ft. Sill. Her arm, dressed in artillery red, holds aloft the lightening bolts that struck down her executioner.

Skill Over Luck  

The Orders of St. Barbara

The Honorable Order of St. Barbara is awarded to artillerymen who have made outstanding contributions to the Field Artillery. A more select award, The Ancient Order, goes to an elite few whose careers  have embodied the sacrifice and commitment epitomized by St. Barbara, although it is seldom a requirement to have one’s head lopped off by a near relative.

The award medal pictures St. Barbara holding the palm of the martyr, in her case a virgin martyr, with her three-windowed tower in the background. The cannon side of the medal is worn toward the heart.

 

Not every boy of Battery B is an official member of the Order of St. Barbara, and not every boy in Vietnam was protected from death or injury. Why then is St. Barbara important? Because like all patron saints her life is meant to inspire. She became a Christian at a time when this strange sect was young, when refusal to honor the ancient gods was a crime against the sovereign and usually punished by death. Professing to be a Christian in the third century was akin in our time to answering the call of INCOMING, to leaving the safety of a sandbag hooch when the mortars were still falling, and to braving land mines on the road to Phan Thiet.

Every boy of Battery B is a son of St. Barbara. In Vietnam he rarely joined his hands in prayer or sank to the sand on his knees, but when the black blanket of night descended he said in his heart – and felt in his gut – this prayer to St. Barbara.

 Do not let lightning hit me, thunder frighten me, or the roar of canons jolt my bravery. Stay always by my side so that I may confront all the storms and battles of my life with my head held high and with a serene countenance. May I do my duty, be grateful to you, my protector, and render thanks to God, the Creator of heaven and earth who has the power to dominate the fury of the storm and to mitigate the cruelty of war.
 Saint Barbara, pray for us.
Amen.

Seven in a Jeep GoodReads Giveaway

Columbus Press is doing a GoodReads giveaway for Seven in a Jeep by Ed Gaydos.

This is a chance to win a free autographed copy of Seven in a Jeep. This book is a memoir of Ed Gaydos’s time in Vietnam. The giveaway started today, Monday April 28th, and will end at midnight on Friday, May 2nd.

 

Ed Gaydos was not a hero. Shipped off to Vietnam in 1970, he did not capture a single enemy soldier. or single-handedly dismantle the Ho Chi Minh trail. He sat on a remote patch of sand behind barbed wire with a bunch of teenagers, dodging incoming mortars, battling insects,  and holding back an avalanche of paperwork.

This hilarious intelligent memoir of the regular soldiers of the Vietnam War will leave readers of all types hungry for the next story. With an unflinching eye for detail that spares no one, even himself, Ed Gaydos reveals his personal struggles to make sense of the war. He somehow manages to exit laughing in Seven in a Jeep.

 

You can enter to win here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/90293-seven-in-a-jeep

Thank you and good luck to everyone!

John Crosby – Battalion Commander – Part Two

John Crosby

Battalion Commander

Part Two

Escape From The Flood

A little bit of humor now. When I took over the battalion a guy by the name of Farrell was the first sergeant. Captain Ridgeway was the battery commander, a darn good one. The executive officer was a sharp kid from Boston and had a New England accent big time. (1st. Lieutenant Chuck Monahan)

A typhoon with heavy rain came through one night and hit right there at Phan Thiet. LZ Sherry had a little bit of elevation to it, not much, but some. The lower surrounding territory got flooded, and a whole bunch of cobras came from the wet area into the battery.

The XO was in his hooch in his bunk and he felt something hitting him on the rear end, a bump-bump-bump kind of thing. He got out his flashlight and looked at the wall, which was made out of ammo boxes, and he saw this snake’s tail between the ammo boxes. So this kid reaches in there, grabs the snake, pulls it out and it was a cobra. Shocked into action he pulls out his 45 pistol and starts shooting. His hooch mate Sgt. Farrell came in and calmed things down, but Farrell was really afraid of snakes. He just had to look at them and he’d get sick on his stomach.

Six or seven cobras were killed in the firing battery area. None of the snakes were real big. It looked like a whole family that was just born to a mother cobra; her nest got flooded and they all came up into the battery area. That was the excitement for the night.

The next day after the typhoon I went out with a supply of anti venom serum.

Problem Solved

It might be a myth, but this is what 1st Sergeant Farrell told me. There were two guys smoking marijuana on guard duty.

Guard duty was always serious business, more so during this period of heavy enemy activity.

The rest of the guys in the battery picked up on it. They got the pot smokers and took them outside the wire and told them they were leaving them there overnight – in VC infected territory. What they did not tell them was the guard tower guys watched them on the starlight scope, so they had protection. Supposedly they never had any more problems with people smoking marijuana on guard.

I do not remember having any big problems with drugs throughout any of the units in the 5/27 or the units that were attached to us. Of course the battalion commander was the last to know.

Never Enough

John Crosby continued an important protocol begun by John Munnelly in the early days of the battalion.

I was very proud that I had a standing order for every one of the batteries that when they went on an operation, air mobile or whatever, they did not go to bed at night unless they had three strands of concertina wire around their perimeter and they had adequate overhead cover for every soldier in the battery, a place to sleep at night with overhead cover. And we had lots of people on the move. During the time I was battalion commander, about seven months, our batteries executed 256 airmobile operations. It took a lot of supervision and a lot of work on the part of battery commanders and officers and NCOs to make sure it was done. We had good discipline in protecting ourselves at night, and I am very proud of that.

I could never get around and spend enough time with the batteries that I wanted to. Where possible I tried to spend the night, but I don’t believe I ever spent the night at B battery. I still think I never did enough for those soldiers. Regardless of how many hours I had in the air, and how many times I visited them, I never thought I did enough. And we had great soldiers. All the great things that our soldiers did over there all went down the drain because of politics.

The Best Officers

My firs job out of Vietnam was in Washington, where I was put in charge of assignments of field artillery colonels. It was called the Colonels Division of the Office of Personnel Operations. I was still a lieutenant colonel, and it was a very educational assignment. I got to see how many really great guys were in the Army. I met and talked to a lot of the upcoming people in the field artillery, one of which was Jack Vessey, who later became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (the top job in the military). He had also been my gunnery instructor at Ft. Sill. He was the best instructor I ever had in the Army or in civilian life, including college. He was a wonderful person with people. He began as an enlisted man in the Minnesota National Guard, and went to war in WWII. He fought at Anzio and coming out of that operation earned a battlefield commission. He went on to fight in Korea and Vietnam.

The officers who started out as enlisted men and then earned a commission were better officers in my view. They knew what being an enlisted soldier was all about, and they just hit the ground running as an officer and knew what was going on.

Ft. Sill Commanding General

The majority of those who served with B Battery – officers, NCOs and enlisted – were trained at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, an enormous field artillery and air defense post. In 1982 Major General John Crosby, one of our own, became its commanding general. I asked him how his experience commanding the 5th Battalion influenced his approach to the job.

First of all I had a greater appreciation for the importance of training in the Army, and especially what Ft. Sill did for both enlisted soldiers and officers. My experience in Vietnam was key to thinking about how to train people. I tried to emphasize the basics of field artillery, which were safety, accuracy and efficiency, and overall being sure that you gave support to the infantry. That was our whole reason for being, to support the infantry and the armor. The important thing was to make sure all the lieutenants and advanced course captains and NCOs knew that our job was to support the infantry and the armor. I commanded the post for almost three years and left in 1985.

That year Ft. Sill was named the best post in the Army, recipient of the first Commander-in-Chief’s Award for Installation Excellence. From there John Crosby received a third star and command over all Army training (TRADOC). Today Training and Doctrine Command oversees 32 Army schools.

Field Artillery School Insignia

Skill Over Luck

The arm clad in red rising from the turret and grasping thunderbolts belongs to Saint Barbara, patron saint of the Field Artillery. Next week is Saint Barbara’s story.

John Crosby – Battalion Commander – Part One

John Crosby

Battalion Commander

Part One

Lt. Col. Crosby In Helmet

  John Crosby was a spanking new lieutenant colonel when he took command of the 5th Battalion in May 1968. However he did not come unprepared. He had graduated at the top of his class from two artillery programs at Fort Sill, and in Germany had served for three years as the fire direction officer for a direct support artillery battalion with the 4th Armored Division. In the course of his many assignments after Vietnam he was commanding general at Fort Sill, where almost all the boys of Battery B were trained, and after 35 years in the Army retired a three-star general.

I was destined to be in the military from the get-go I guess. My grandfather was in the military for 45 years. He fought down in Mexico with Gen. Pershing, and he fought in World War I, World War II, and in Korea. My father was an NCO at the beginning of World War II and then converted to a warrant officer. He was in the Army for a total of 34 years. Both of them are buried at the National Cemetery at Jefferson Barracks.

Like many officers of his generation, getting to Vietnam was not easy.

I went to Vietnam in May 1968, my first and only tour. I wanted to go earlier, but the Army had sent me to the University of Southern California in what the Army called Guided Missiles, it really was mechanical engineering. I was a classmate with Norm Schwarzkopf; as a matter of fact he and I carpooled during that time. My assignment after graduate school was what they called a ”utilization tour,” meaning I had to use the education on my next assignment. I went to West Point and I taught mathematics for three years. During that time I tried to volunteer for Vietnam, but the army said no, you have to stay and finish your tour at West Point. Then I volunteered again for Vietnam and they said no again, you’re going to the Air Command and Staff College. I graduated from there in 1968, and finally got shipped to Vietnam and took command of the 5th Battalion headquartered at Phan Rang.

I was prepared to take over an artillery battalion because I had finished first in my two training courses at Ft. Sill, and had been a fire direction officer for three years for a direct support artillery battalion. That was with the 4th Armored Division in Germany.

The 5th Battalion was the largest battalion in VN, spread over four provinces. It had eight artillery firing batteries, three organic to the battalion and the others attached from other artillery and infantry units. And there were a lot of other attached units, such as radar, search light, and helicopters – in all about 1500 people. Then there were assorted other units like the tanks, the Quad-50s and the Dusters that were not attached but we took care of them anyway. We fed them and supplied them and all that sort of thing.

One of my biggest challenges was trying to see all of my battery commanders to know how things were going. And sometimes I felt like I was not doing enough. I wasn’t getting close enough to them to really find out what their thoughts were, because you had to be there in person. In my mind every unit and every battery no matter what its size was important. So my S4 staff officer went around to all the operations. And my communications officer was also in contact with all of them. At one time I believe we had 48 forward observers. Some of them I never saw, because they were in place when I got there and they stayed in the field with their units.

Today he talks about the soldiers he commanded in Vietnam with a special affection.  

An Enduring Regret

One thing I was really was remiss about as a commander, and this is a confession, OK?

I deeply regret that I did not take my S1 Personnel Officer, send him around to the different batteries, and get those guys that did really good work, and put them in for a Bronze Star or something to recognize the good work that they did, battery commanders and soldiers alike. I just kick myself every time I think about that. I just didn’t think about it over there, for whatever reason. It was back in the states when I got to thinking about it. My first job out of Vietnam was in Washington in charge of assignments for artillery colonels. I saw these guys getting medals for doing nothing. That made me think about the soldiers that I had in the trenches out there every single day, isolated and facing danger every day – and I didn’t take care of them. In my view I did not take care of them.

People like you and soldiers just like you were isolated in those firebases and felt like they were exactly that, isolated. They did not know when they were going to get an attack, or what was going to happen, or if anybody gave a crap about what they thought. That was part of my job, to recognize the people that did the hard work and I really regret that.

January 12 Ground Attack

When I got to Vietnam in July of 1968 B Battery was at LZ Sherry outside Phan Thiet. Of all the batteries, as far as I was concerned, B Battery had about as much activity down there near Phan Thiet as any. Phan Thiet and the surrounding area was very heavily controlled by the Viet Cong. B Battery certainly did a lot of firing, and had a lot of attacks on the battery, to include the road to Phan Thiet that the Viet Cong mined on a regular basis.

One night a VC sapper unit tried to get into the battery area. There was a tank platoon that loggered in with B Battery every night, and they picked up the attack by a starlight scope. The tanks at that time had a 90 mm cannon and they had a beehive round. One of the tanks was in position and fired a beehive round and wiped out the whole sapper unit except one guy, and he was taken prisoner. I think it was 14 KIA.

I got the report the night of the attack and I went down early the next morning. The Task Force South commander also came down that morning. I took pictures of all the dead VC, their rockets, their AK 47’s and other ordnance.  We knew that we wiped out the entire sapper unit because the leader had a roster of all the sappers in his loincloth, and so we were able to count the people in his sapper unit and the KIAs and the one guy that was captured. We got ‘em all. We counted them off and every single one of them was laying out in front of us.

This attack is stamped deeply in the memories everyone who was there, especially those who walked among the bodies and pulled them from the wire. Personal accounts vary in detail – Rik Groves for example noted in his journal that 18 were killed – but all agree on the major facts: the attack began on the southern perimeter, the tank crewmen were heroes for saving the battery from being overrun, and they got all of the sappers.