Ed Gaydos's Blog, page 19

John Munnelly – The Father of the 5th – Part Two

The Boys of Battery B

John Munnelly

Part Two

Gun crew on a fire mission

 

I shake hands with Colonel John Munnelly at his front door in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We figure out that we met at the last regimental reunion but never talked. The colonel and I retreat to his office on the lower level. The walls are filled with awards, citations, diplomas and photos from 33 years of active military service and three command positions in two wars.

He pulls out the field maps he used in Vietnam. Unfolded they cover half his desk. At 84 he can still point out the locations of artillery bases and areas of combat operations. As of old he measures distances on the map with the spread between his thumb and pinkie finger, marking the range of a 105 mm howitzer, which was about 7 miles.

He warms easily to the conversation, his voice taking on a forward-march cadence. He picks up his narrative less than two weeks in Vietnam.

 

October, 1965. My batteries were deployed, and I didn’t take orders from anybody. I knew what needed to be done, and I did it. I dealt with the threat.

First Field Force was already in existence, commanded by General Linton S. Boatwright, but in those days we had no structure. I had a only a vague idea I needed to report to them.

My only experience with them was – I never told this to anybody – we were in a big firefight west of Nha Trang with B battery and an attached battery of the 3/18 artillery. I got a call, “Get you ass back here, we want to talk to you.”

So OK, “I’m busy!” Fortunately my executive officer was a guy I had gone through Command General Staff College with, Major Bill Manning. He was a great XO. He usually took care of the housekeeping. I took care of the mission.

I left Manning in charge and got into a jeep with my sergeant major and my driver, and we went back to Nha Trang, headquarters of First Field Forces. As I drove into the concern I hear my name being broadcast on the loudspeaker throughout the area. I reported to Boatwright’s executive officer. He said to me, “Colonel, you got lousy radio security.”

And I thought, We’re busy. Stuff is going on. Fire missions. We got casualties. Busy, busy, busy, busy. But I said, “Yes, sir.”

He said, ‘Straighten it out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Getting back to B Battery we’re going through hostile territory. It was TET and there was a lot of banging going on. And fireworks. And as I am going through a village this kid pulls out a pistol and points it at me. I almost gunned him down, but I didn’t. Couldn’t kill the kid. It turned out it was a toy. These things are close sometimes.

I get back to my command post, which was wherever I laid my helmet at night, and arranged that Nha Trang could never find us again on the radio. I ordered that every 20 minutes we change to a different frequency. We bounced from one frequency to another – bang, bang, bang.  As far as Nha Trang was concerned we were silent from then on.

But that didn’t change a thing regarding security. Hell, the enemy knew we were there. I did not want to curb the freedom the people had to call for help.

The 5th was a big battalion. I had the three batteries of the 5/27 and lots of attached units.  I had 155 mm, 175 mm and 8 inch howitzer batteries, and I had twin 40 mm cannon units. I had a radar attachment later on. At one time I had a battery from the 101st of 105s. I counted a total of 54 guns under my command. It was really a battalion group, but it was one battalion. Now, there was no battalion fire direction center. They were all in the batteries. It was always done that way.

For one time, once only, I had all three batteries of the 5/27 in one place. We did a fall-of-shot calibration in the South China Sea, where you coordinate each gun so that all the rounds fall on the target. From then on we were never together again. I had people in batteries that never saw a guy from another battery. Battery commanders that didn’t know the other battery commanders.

During my command B battery had six guns, and they stayed together the whole time. It went to The Crossroads area west of Tuy Hoa. It was joined there by the 3/18th with its 8 inch and 175 mm howitzers, side by side with B Battery. That was where Bobby Joe Marsh died before I arrived. I know where that happened. It happened just north of The Crossroads. (Goes to map) This was a contested area. I had a battery right there, can’t remember which one. The Crossroads was highway 6B on this map and route 1. I’ve been to The Wall twice and I’ve seen Bobby Joe Marsh. He’s Bobby Joe. I didn’t know that until I saw it on the wall. We named that base camp at Tuy Hoa Camp Marsh after him.

When I left In August of 1967 B Battery was up near Tuy Phouc northwest of Qui Nhon. I know that because the temporary president of Vietnam was visiting Qui Nhan and we were on standby to provide artillery support in case there was an attack while he was there. He was the president prior to Diem. Qui Nhon was in artillery range.

He verifies this on the map with outstretched thumb and pinkie finger.

I had people up on Chap Chai mountain near there. It commanded the whole area. You could see everything from there. I put that mountain to good use with radio relay equipment. I never lost radio contact with all of my firing batteries, to include the attached batteries, because that’s part of command. You have to be able to talk to your people.

Now most of the guys up there ended up with Purple Hearts because they were attacked almost every night. There was a time when a private first class up there controlled the fire of B battery from that mountain top because he could see the enemy and the battery had nobody out there that could see as well.

  On Chop Chai Mountain

One thing I liked about B battery when they were up near Tuy Phuoc is they had a mad minute every night at sunset. Every weapon in the battery would fire announcing our presence to anyone who wanted to attack us.

Paul Marchessault was commanding B battery at that time. He continued the real fine performance of B battery while he was in command. He was offered a regular army commission was debating whether to accept it or not. I did not talk him into it or out of it. I spent a lot of time talking to him about that. He eventually decided not to accept the RA commission and went back and worked for Ross Perot and did a good job, and did alright.

I wanted to visit B Battery up at Tuy Phouc.  I normally had a helicopter, but none was available, so I said to hell with it, I’m going to drive. From Tuy Hoa it was a long reach to Tuy Phouc (70 miles by road) and a hazardous trip.

People said, “You’re nuts.”

But I had to see the battery, do the job, and the job came first. Peter Antonicelli my driver took me up, just the two of us. I didn’t think anything of it, except it made them give me a helicopter from then on.

I used to brag about this. I had a battalion that was doing a good job and we knew it because we saw the results. I used to say, “We never passed an IG inspection. Good!” We had ragged canvas on the trucks. There were bullet holes in truck windshields. That’s my windshield. Don’t change the windshield. The soldier was proud of that. It didn’t hit him. (laughs) The reflectors were cracked. Little things like that. To pass inspection we’d have to get new canvas, fix all the reflectors, get rid of the bullet holes in the windshields. I ran a battalion that put the mission first, and everything else was second.

My motto was, “You don’t have to practice being uncomfortable.” And the Army a lot of times has the men practicing being uncomfortable. Wasted effort. Why are you doing that? A guy’s got his shirt off and it’s 100 degrees outside and he’s feeding a howitzer, you’re worried about him wearing his shirt? Really? How about rounds on target within two minutes day or night?

We had this colonel who came and wants to see the mess hall. The mess hall? He could not stand the food! “You’re cooks aren’t trained properly,” he said.

You know that’s the last thing I was worried about. We had enough food. We weren’t concerned about the taste. This was his big concern. The variety wasn’t right and we didn’t have fresh fruit, or something. He was from a different planet than we were from. He was in the Army, for god sake. He was a full colonel, I was a lieutenant colonel, and he made me feel bad about the food. What are you doing about the food? Well, I wasn’t doing anything about the food. And people leave the Army thinking that’s the Army, and it’s not.

There is one other dimension I have not yet mentioned. I remained a devout Catholic. The question came up about danger. I made a deal with God. I said, It’s up to you. You decide. I’m not going to worry about it. Your decision. I go where you decide. It took away all the fear. I never worried about anything after that.

Except once. About a week before I left I am taking a survey team that is map making and I take them to a peak with a bunch of ARVN soldiers. There was only one flat place to land and we landed there. I got out of the helicopter and looked up and there are all these guys yelling and waving their arms. The message finally gets to me, this place is mined. And I’m standing there. I tiptoed back to the jeep, got to the helicopter, got up and put down someplace else. I thought, My God, I came close that time, didn’t I?

We went in on another assault after that days before I am supposed to leave. I was touchy and fearful. I saw the landing spot and thought it can’t be as good as it looks. So I had the pilot put the helicopter in another spot.

He said, “What, are you nuts?”

I said, “Put it over there.” I’m counting the days now and I never counted days before. But now I know when I’m leaving.

My best day in Vietnam was the day I got on an airplane to go home, I guess at Cam Rahn, and they passed out these cold towels. I put the towel on my head. How could anything be so nice and pleasant? It was heaven.

For Your Convenience – TheBoysofBatteryB.com

For your convenience, you can now use the domain name theboysofbatteryb.com to go directly to Ed’s content for his next book, The Boys of Battery B.

The Boys of Battery B is a work in progress, and Ed’s been posting experimental content to this blog like a madman.  While Seven in a Jeep was primarily filled with Ed’s personal experience in Vietnam, The Boys of Battery B provides a complete history of Ed’s unit in Vietnam, as colored by dozens of interviews he’s conducted with fellow artilleryman, many who served before and after him at LZ Sherry.

No release date has been set for The Boys of Battery B yet, but in the meantime don’t miss all this free reading that Ed’s giving away.

John Munnelly – The Father of the 5th – Part One

The Boys of Battery B

John Munnelly

Part One

Lt. Colonel John Munnelly

The 5th Battalion, home of B Battery, was in terrible shape when Lt. Colonel John Munnelly arrived in September of 1966 to take command.

He was no stranger to combat, having been one of the first to set foot in Korea in 1950, leading an engineering platoon all the way up to Pyongyang in the north, surviving 40 below temperatures and frozen C rations that had to be strapped to truck radiators to thaw, facing the entry of the Chinese into the war and leading his men south in retreat as part of a demoralized army, blowing up airfields as he went, and finally under General Ridgway turning and beating back the enemy to the 38th parallel. This hardened veteran was just what the 5th Battalion needed.

He lived among his troops. “People used to ask me were my headquarters was. I would tell them it’s where I drop my helmet at night.” He pauses for a moment and says, “I’m proud of that.”

If Ernie Dublisky was the father B Battery, John Munnelly must carry the distinction of the father of the 5th Battalion.

Comment on the photo from Colonel Munnelly:  “The 5/27 existed in rather primitive conditions. One day I saw a photo shop adjacent to the dirt road I was on. I went in and took this photo. I’m surprised at how clean I was that day. When I was a second lieutenant I was labeled ‘that baby faced lieutenant.’ I was 37 years old when the photo was taken. As I look at it now I see a youthful looking lieutenant colonel.”

The big problem when I took command was that most of the troops had transferred from the states to the battalion. They were in rags. I had guys with shoes that were almost falling apart. Boots – leather boots – no jungle boots. They had stateside fatigues that were in rags.

Before taking command I had written to the previous battalion commander and asked, “What’s your biggest problem?” I’m thinking ammo, I’m thinking gunnery, I’m thinking met data, I’m thinking survey. He wrote back his biggest problem was no ice. I was taken aback by that. I realized his problem was he was not running the battalion. He had neglected the battalion. It was so bad, these guys are running around with worn out fatigues, and worn out leather boots in Vietnam.

It got so bad I’m trying to do what I can to get new uniforms for these guys, new clothing. So I took my battalion supply sergeant, a truck and another guy, and sent them down to Cam Rahn Bay and told them, “You don’t come back without our stuff.” After that I kept a detachment at Cam Rahn Bay all the time, and they became very adept at using a clip board and a piece of paper, going into a warehouse and getting what they wanted. And that worked.

So my first task there was getting the guys into decent uniforms – and also getting sandbags. It took 25,000 sandbags to adequately prepare a battery. My motto was that had to be done the first day we occupied a position. We were constantly packing sandbags and building revetments. And I insisted on people being covered at night.

B Battery when I arrived was on a hillside, on top of a ridge, just west of Tuy Hoa. It was a barren place, I remember a lot of dust. There was an engineering company spread out on the lower part of the ridge. They would go out and do 12 hours of work and come back and they were on top of the ground. Our guys were covered. During a mortar attack the engineers took casualties and we didn’t. There was that much difference right away, and I think my people appreciated that. They were very good about doing what I wanted them to do to protect themselves as I felt they should be protected. I made it a point to do that. And I made it a point to ensure they were properly clothed and fed and with jungle boots instead of those old leather boots which didn’t work very well in the environment we were in.

The first visit I made as battalion commander was to B Battery.

Back in Tuy Hoa at battalion headquarters there was a softball game going on. And I’m wondering, Softball? Aren’t we in a war here? There was a lot of cheering and the ball game is proceeding under combat rules, meaning no rules at all. I’m listening to my radio and I hear, Fire mission, fire mission, got ‘em on the run now, add 50, fire for effect. I’m thinking, Wait a minute, this is going on and I’m at a softball tournament here. The fire mission is more important. I couldn’t believe it. B Battery was fighting the war and the rest of the battalion was not. Well without hurting anybody’s feelings, that was the last ball game we had at battalion, because now we started fighting the war and everybody’s involved in fighting the war, not softball. B Battery was doing its job. Everybody else is indifferent, had nothing to do with them. That had to change.

I went out to B Battery and walked in on Dublisky, the battery commander. I was used to seeing young captains, and he was not a young captain. I thought, How come you’re still a captain, captain? I learned later on that he was a mission guy. He wasn’t spit and polish. He was a guy who said, Let’s get the job done. Rounds on target in two minutes anytime day or night was his mantra. And 25,000 sandbags (the number needed to protect an artillery battery), get my guys taken care of.

Your kind of guy.

My kind of guy! Completely. We talked the same language.

Ernie was B Battery commander for three months when I arrived. At that time he was kind of old to be a captain. He’d been badly handled in the past and not allowed to really spread his wings as a leader, which he really was an effective one. Ernie had the capability. I think he had limitless possibility in the service. But he was a reserve officer, he was not regular army, as were every one of my officers except one or two. He had been passed over for major, and I gave him a blisteringly favorable efficiency report which got him promoted to major, and he went on to make lieutenant colonel as well.

Ernie gave B Battery the name of the Bravo Bulls.

Yeah he did. That stuck, did it?

B Battery was so good it did not take a lot of our time. I spent my time where there were problems. I did not have to worry about B battery. They were going to do everything right. I’m glad I thought of that, because it’s true. I had a lot of problems, but B Battery was not one of them.

Dublisky was responsible for setting the pace at B Battery. And it continued on.

Capital Offense Releases Part One (of 3) to Amazon Kindle

If you haven’t been following Capital Offense, now is a great time to jump in.  Capital Offense is a novel which is release online, for free, one chapter at a time at www.CapitalOffenseBook.com.

At this point, the first third of the complete novel has been released to the web.  For those that prefer the comfort of reading on a Kindle or other e-reader, the first third is also now available as an e-book.

Find the E-book on Amazon.com here.

The complete novel will be released as a print book and e-book on January 31, 2014.

You can also check out daily installments of the book at www.CapitalOffenseBook.com.

Capital Offense is published by Columbus Press, the publisher of Seven in a Jeep.

 

Ernie Dublisky – The Father of Battery B – Part Four

The Boys of Battery B  

Ernie Dublisky

Part Four

 Before I leave Ernie’s home he gives me a stack of stories he has written about his Vietnam experiences. They are the products of a course in creative writing he teaches at a local college.

He says, “Whenever I give an assignment to my students I do it myself to give them a model. That’s my training as an officer; I don’t ask them to do anything that I don’t do.”

This story is my favorite, here published with permission.  

Cinderella in the Rain

   I saw a pop-eyed, disbelieving expression on the pilot’s face as he looked out through the canopy of the jet fighter screaming over the rice paddies at what seemed like a shoulder-high altitude. He was on final to drop his bombs a few hundred yards east of our position. We were being attacked by mortar fire almost every night and the Air Force was finally getting around to a strike we had requested a couple of days ago. As the F-104 hurtled towards his target I turned my attention from the movie, “Lord Jim,” playing on the white bed sheet handing from the ammunition truck in the center of the howitzer position. In the blackness of night, the pilot could see the moving images on the illuminated projection area of the makeshift screen.

I imagined him asking himself, “What kind of war is this when I’m bombing and strafing while the troops I’m supporting are watching a movie?”

The answer was, “It’s that kind of war!”

It was June 1966. We were in a Vietnamese graveyard in the middle of a vast area of rice paddies just west of Tuy Hoa in Phu Yen Province on the central coast. “We” were a battery of six 105 mm howitzers from the 5th battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment in direct support of the 320th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. In this relatively flat piedmont, between the shimmering white sand beaches along the South China Sea and the foothills of the heavily vegetated jungles and mountains to the west, almost all the area was cultivated in rice paddies. It was difficult to find suitable terrain to emplace a cannon battery when each weapon weighted almost 5000 pounds and there were many other large and small vehicles and equipment. The graveyards were the only available firm and dry ground. So long as we were respectful to the ancestors, we were allowed to use them.

Occasionally movies were delivered to our tactical field locations in a pathetic and fruitless attempt to improve the morale and welfare of the troops. The movies were a link to normal life back in what soldiers termed “the world.” The “world” being any and every place outside of South Vietnam. Thus, Vietnam was defined as not of this world. In the soldiers’ mind, there was the nightmare place called Vietnam and then, there was the world. Movies were delivered when they became available, regardless of the title, content, weather, or enemy action. The decision to play the movie was left up to the local commander. It would take a cataclysmic event to preclude the showing of a movie, any movie that finally made it down to the combat units in the field.

You might be thinking that this is about watching a movie in the middle of the rice paddies in the middle of a war. That may be true, but it’s not the whole story. There are two key elements that must be understood. The first is the weather. In Vietnam, there are two seasons: hot and rainy. The rainy season is called the monsoon and lasts about two months. During this time it rains nearly every day. The rain is usually heavy and the large pelting drops bounce off the soldiers’ protective steel helmets, echoing in their ears like a waterfall on a tin roof. The ponchos and the rain suits become saturated and leak like sieves. There is no place to escape from the wetness. Everything is always wet. Mildew and rot are everywhere.

Another aspect of the soldiers’ life is soldier language; the vernacular, the argot, the slang, blue language, cussing, whatever you want to call it. There is that certain F-word used by any soldier worth his salt at least once in every uttered sentence and in every grammatical form of the English language. It is used interchangeably as a noun, a verb, an adverb or an adjective, and can be declined, conjugated or modified to meet any grammatical need. With those insights on weather and language, here’s what happened one day in 1966.

The Huey helicopter skittered and yawed across the rice paddies and flared over the landing pad engulfed in billowing red smoke. The red smoke grenade was thrown to mark the site where helicopter should discharge its cargo. The doors slid open and the door gunners heaved out the bright international orange mailbags followed by the olive drab film-shipping container. It had been three weeks since the last movie. During that time the battery had been attacked by Viet Cong mortars twice, resulting in one man killed and several wounded. It was high time for some recreation and the movie was a welcome prospect.

Once darkness fell, the gun trucks would be driven into a semi-circle at the center of the battery to form a small, enclosed area that would contain most of the diffused light and allow the movie to be watched in as secure an environment as possible. As the day wore on the monsoon clouds gathered, and the rain began. There was no question that no matter how hard it rained, nothing would interfere with watching this movie.

I slipped my .380 caliber Beretta pistol into its black leather pocket holster and shoved it into my soaking wet rain jacket. I never went to the movies in Vietnam without it. Donning the rest of my equipment, including my steel pot, I grabbed my M16 and crawled out of the damp, heavily mildewed, but relatively dry protection provided by my badly leaking Yukon hexagonal tent. I made a mental note to dispatch my supply sergeant on an Air Force cargo plane from the Tuy Hoa air base with instructions not to return without replacements for our worn out, nearly useless tents.

Looking forward to the movie, I walked to the area of our makeshift cinema. Most of the battery, about 100 soldiers, was already there. Some were sitting on empty wooden ammunition boxes; some perched on metal fuse cans that doubled as water tanks for our homemade showers; some on folding chairs plucked from various elements of the battery operations or from visits to the villages in our area of operations. Others were sitting or sprawled on the wet ground. All were huddled under their ponchos or bundled up in their cumbersome, rubberized rain suits, and all seemed to disregard the torrents of rain hammering down on them. The excitement of seeing a movie was palpable allayed any discomfort.

When we had a movie, a chair was reserved for me in the best location, and the movie did not start until I was in that chair. It was traditional and respectful homage to the battery commander. The old comic adage, “It’s good to be the king” was never as true or meaningful as when being the commander of a small unit conducting independent field operations in combat. The shorthand expression was RHIP, “rank has its privileges.”

I sat on the wet, cold metal folding chair, and looked at the scene around me. The huddled soldiers seemed like a living tableau from a Bill Mauldin cartoon of Willie and Joe on a misty, rain-soaked, muddy battlefield of WWII. There they were in their camouflage ponchos and olive green rain suits. The rain was pinging off their steel helmets.

I leaned forward and asked a soldier slumped on the ground in front of me, “What’s the movie?”

He slowly turned and looked at me. With the rain splashing in his face, he plucked a dripping wet cigar butt from his mouth and bellowed out the answer, “Cinder-fucking-rella.”

His contempt for whoever had sent this movie was clearly as great as his utter disgust over having to sit in a monsoon storm to watch it. That profane, but magnificently expressive answer to my question has since that time typified the humorous eloquence and indomitable spirit of the soldier, and Cinderella in the rain became an avatar for my Vietnam experience.

“SPOOOKY” Flash Fiction Contest

We are pleased to have donated three autographed, limited-edition Advance Review Copies of Seven in a Jeep to Columbus Creative Cooperative to use as prizes in their “Spooooky” Flash Fiction contest.

Get all of the details about the contest here.

Columbus Creative Cooperative (www.ColumbusCoop.org) is a fantastic group to support.  They provide lots of resources to writers of all skill levels, and frequently run fun contests to stimulate your creativity.

The top winner of this contest wins an Amazon Kindle!  Check it out.

Ernie Dublisky – The Father of Battery B – Part Three

The Boys of Battery B

Ernie Dublisky

In 1972 Ernie went back for a second tour in Vietnam.

I was the G3 (Operations) advisor for the 1st ARVN Division, which was the premier division of the Army of Vietnam. I was a major by then, in a job that usually went to a lieutenant colonel who had graduated from the Leavenworth staff course, which I had not gone to because I was a reserve officer. It was kind of interesting. We had a small advisory team, and an aviation battalion, and that was all. We were advising the ARVN and providing aviation support.

We were up in Hue (near the North Vietnam border). I got there for the Easter Offensive in 1972 when the North Vietnamese came across in force. It was like World War II, not like Vietnam. It was multiple corps versus multiple corps. It was not counter-insurgency. Coming at us were tanks and artillery in-coming all the time. There were days when we took 6,000 rounds of in-coming. It was hellacious. A hell of a war.

North Vietnamese Artillery
Easter Offensive

We were taking in-coming every day. We had to sleep in bunkers. It was fantastic. But it was a really great experience.

Is that where you earned your Purple Heart?

Yes.

You didn’t run into a tent pole did you?

(Laughs) It was from an in-coming artillery attack. And that was really funny. There was in-coming artillery and I dove for a ditch and the round went off and blew me down in the ditch – thank goodness – I didn’t get any fragmentation, but it broke my arm. They evacuate me to the field hospital at Da Nang.

First of all I say, “I guess I’m going home, right?”

The guy says, “No, you’re not goin’ home.”

“What do you mean I’m not going home?”

He says, “Well, if this had happened two weeks ago you’d be going home, but the policy now is if it’s not a life-threatening wound you stay here and finish your tour.”

I say, “OK.”

And he says, “But we can’t cast it. You have to wrap an ace bandage around your body and hold your arm like this with an ace bandage.”

I say, “Wait a minute. We’re under artillery attack every day. What am I going to do when in-coming starts comin’ in?”

He says, “Just stay in the rear area where there’s no artillery.”

I say, “There is no rear area.”

I was on the last plane out March 22, 1973. Two planes left that day, one from Da Nang, one from Saigon. I was on the one out of Da Nang. So I always like to make light of the fact. I’d say, “You know I was in Vietnam when there were only 200 guys.”

Have you read Surplus? Will you leave us a review?

Have you read Surplus: The Long Arm of Vietnam, the companion book to Seven in a Jeep?

If so, would you be so kind as to leave an honest review of the book?  In the changing world of books and publishing, user reviews are evermore important.  Your honest review helps other readers find material they’d like to read (or avoid material that they won’t enjoy).

You can find the book, and leave a review, at any of these links:

Surplus on Amazon.com

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If you’ve already reviewed the book, thank you on behalf of Ed and on behalf of the community of readers.

Don’t worry about what to say.  Keep it short, tell other readers what you liked and what you didn’t, in your own words.

Thanks for supporting Seven in a Jeep, Surplus and independent publishing.

Ernie Dublisky – The Father of Battery B – Part Two

The Boys of Battery B

 Ernie Dublisky

The Central Highlands

When I came to Vietnam I was delivered to Phan Thiet from Saigon. We were assigned to the First Field Forces, but we were further assigned to the 101st Airborne and were authorized to wear the 101st patch on our right shoulder.

Talk about weird, the organization of the 5th battalion was like a composite division artillery. We had three 105 batteries, a 155 battery, an 8 inch/175 battery, a battery of air defense weapons, 50 caliber and 40 mm, we had our own met section, we had our own counter-mortar radar section, and a search light section. We were spread out from Quin Yuan to Nha Trang.

At Nha Trang we had two guns, which by the way were out of B battery permanently at Nha Trang for defense of the airfield. When I got there Lt. Rich Sinnreich, a West Pointer, was in charge of those two guns. He retired a full colonel and is a well known military writer.

Then there was the rest of the battery. At the time I commanded there were no firebases. We went where we had to go and created gun positions where we had to create them. So you moved all over the Central Highlands around Quin Yang and Nha Trang; that was essentially the central part of the country. There were no firebases, which I’ve always been thankful for. We kind of looked at firebases as a boring setup. You didn’t get to see any of the country.

The battalion was spread out over a huge area and we went all over the place. We moved from operation to operation, and area to area. We supported the Korean White Horse division, the Korean Tiger division, the Korean Marine brigade, the 22nd ARVN division, the 1st Cavalry division. It was set up I thought very smart. It was an area thing. Anybody who came into our area we supported. They picked us up as their artillery support.

It was near the Cross Road (west of Tuy Hoa) just before my time that Marsh was killed in a mortar attack. A part of that event that I thought was kind of funny – not funny but we all laughed about it – a Medevac helicopter that was taking guys who had been hurt in that attack down to the hospital in Nha Trang crashed in the sea. Can you imagine? Here you are wounded and all of a sudden you’re in a helicopter crash. I wasn’t there so I was able to laugh about it. I’m sure those that went through it weren’t laughing.

Other batteries lived in tents pitched above the ground. We used to laugh that some guys got Purple Hearts because when they ran out of their tents at night they ran into the tent ropes and tripped on the stakes. Before I got there B battery was so poorly trained they knew they were liable to a mortar attack, but still they had tents pitched up above the ground. From the whole time I was with the battery we dug in and nobody got hurt.

At one time we had a typhoon come through. We were just west of Tuy Hoa up on a ridge, I’ll never forget it. We’d dig in and then put the these Yukon tents, small conical things, over the hole. I was under one of these Yukon tents, and it rained so hard that it just came right through the tent. It was like being in a waterfall. All the canvas was ruined. I had an ammo sergeant who was a scrounger, everybody has a scrounger. I got ahold of him and said, Hey, I want you to go down to Tuy Hoa airfield, and you get yourself on an Air Force aircraft. I don’t care where you have to go, but you go find new tentage for the battery. And he did. He had all new tentage for the battery.

It’s amazing. I’ve always thought afterwards when I think about the things we did, if you had the right talent you’re going to have a great battery. If you have a good scrounger, you’re gonna have a good battery.

There’s a funny story about General Boatwright’s deputy. He had a reputation as a prick. Nobody wanted to see him comin’. By that time I had a new first sergeant, his name was Shepard, and we were waiting at the helipad where this guy’s helicopter would come in on an inspection. I heard this Sergeant Shepard say, “Crash, you son of a bitch, crash.” (laughs) I thought that was hilarious. By the way, I ran into Shepard years later in Germany. This guy probably was a drunk when he was a first sergeant in Vietnam. He was drunk in Germany and got into all kinds of trouble. I was sorry for him because of our Vietnam experience together.

Munnelly told me to ask you some questions.

About the rice! I don’t know how it was brought to my attention, one of my cooks or somebody, he said, “We only got ten pounds of rice to feed the battery.”

I didn’t know anything about the standards. I said, “Ten pounds to feed 110 guys? Come on. You gotta be kiddin’ me.” So I went to Munnelly complaining loudly about the ten pounds. He brought in the S4 warrant officer. They had this table there and it said so many men, and ten pounds was the authorized amount. It was very embarrassing to me because I had been so vociferously complaining about ten pounds of rice.

He tells the story of how you used the starlight scope.

Ah, I had forgotten that. Yea, we got a starlight scope, it was one of the first out in the field. So I set it up in the center of the battery where I could see the perimeter. At night I used it to check the perimeter, the guys on the outposts. One night I’m checking the perimeter and there’s this guy with no shirt on. We were in a malarial area and we had to wear shirts, and at night we had to put our sleeves down. I picked up the telephone, I called his outpost and said, “Put your shirt on.” And I’m watching the guy, and he starts looking around thinking, How could anybody possibly know I’m out here with no shirt on? I watched him and he put his shirt on, but that guy thought there was a ghost.

I heard you could read the name patches off the uniform shirts.

Oh yeah, it was a weird green light but you could actually see.

We had a moustache growing contest. Guys were growing moustaches and they were in various states of disrepair, and they were getting to being pretty crappy looking. I got the battery together and said, “OK guys, we are going to have a moustache growing contest. The winner will be allowed to keep his moustache and everybody else will have to shave theirs.” My driver, a guy named Schacherl, he won and was allowed to keep his moustache. Everyone else had to shave his moustache, including me.

Schacherl later was injured. We were evacuating a position and when we evacuated positions in those days we’d pile up all the trash in one big pile and burned it. Schacherl threw some gasoline and there were embers in there and it flashed up and burned him so badly that he had to be medevac’d all the way to a hospital in Japan. But I saw him at a reunion many years later and he didn’t have any major problems.

I had a Vietnamese man, an old man, who was my batman. That’s from the British Army, a batman is a valet. I had this Vietnamese man that we paid, and he was my batman. He used to clean my weapon, he’d set up my hooch, and stuff like that.

This was when you were back at battalion.

No, he traveled with us.

You were a battery commander out in the field, and you had a valet?

Well, that’s what I called him (laughs). He was an employee, and his job was to take care of me. I didn’t have time to take care of myself. He cleaned my weapon, he set up my hooch whenever we moved, did all those little things that a valet would do.

I lost him for a long time to malaria. He came down with bad case of malaria, and I felt so sorry for him. It’s a terrible disease. I lost him for quite awhile. He finally came back and I was in good shape again.

I’ll tell you what we did that I’d never seen done, that I really liked to do. We had these defensive concentrations, direct fire defensive concentrations. Where we were was kind of mountainous terrain, and we were usually in valley. So there’d be a series of hills around us and there would be some natural approaches to the battery that you would want to have a defensive concentration on. So when it was daylight the gun chief would lay in a concentration point on a trail coming down the mountain, direct fire, mark it on the howitzer, chalk it on the howitzer, the data to that point. Periodically through the night he would fire these defensive concentrations. They were like a few hundred meters away from the battery. What a noise that made, that crack! I used to like that.

I remember a mission where B battery at night … let me get this right … a howitzer on one side of the battery misheard a command and the data they put on the gun was 3200 mils out (180 degrees).  In other words it was exactly the opposite of what it should have been. It was because of procedures we used at that time. We used to precede the firing command with either LEFT or RIGHT … I have forgotten how all this went exactly. But one gun misheard the orientation and pointed in the opposite direction. So what we had was five guns shooting in the right direction and one gun shooting the opposite direction god knows where. It turned out this gun was firing in the direction of an Engineer unit down the road. Each time an adjustment command was placed on the guns, this one gun went closer and closer toward the Engineers. They started to scream that they were receiving in-coming. We eventually figured out it could only have been us, because we were the only unit firing. We were able to stop it and nobody got hurt. It was close. I remember it happened at night, so all you could see was the flash at night and you didn’t really know what direction the tube was pointing.

The 4th Division came in and we were their sponsor unit. We did everything we could to help them get oriented. The B battery commander of the 29th Field, which was the battalion we were sponsoring, the first time he went into the field, he was sitting in his jeep with his vest on and it was open. A sniper shot him right through the heart. You know we didn’t have any kind of casualties like that. We didn’t have anybody killed. Then all of a sudden this guy comes in, his first time in the field, and BAM. That’s fate.

It very ironic for me, because my first tour in Germany I took the 3rd Armor Division to Germany to relieve the 29th Field of the 4th Armored Division. And then in Vietnam at Tuy Hoa when the 4th Division came into Vietnam, the 29th Field Artillery was the unit that came in our area.

In my whole Army career I’ve only been so pissed off at an officer one time that I relieved him on the spot and kicked him out of my unit, and eventually out of the Army. My Fire Direction Officer in B battery … I’ve forgotten the guy’s name … we were conducting a registration and we were in the middle of an operation. In the middle of an operation a registration is a hell of a lot more important that it would be routinely. Well, I didn’t discover, because we were in an operation, I was in the FDC listening and watching, and I discovered that this guy did not know what he was doing. He was completely screwing up the registration. I got so pissed off that I relieved him and had him sent out of the battery. And I think he was eventually sent out of the battalion. That would have been in ’66. Well in 1970 I got back to Ft. Sill after a tour in Europe. I went from Vietnam to Europe and back to Ft. Sill. On the post staff is an ordnance officer. This guy, he was now an ordnance officer. In other words, he couldn’t make it as a field artillery officer, so he branch transferred to Ordnance while he was still in the Army. I relieved one guy in my whole 22 years as a commissioned officer, and it was that guy.

Then John Munnelly, damn him, came up to me one day. You know John is a logistics guy; that’s his thing, logistics. He was desperate for an S4. So he comes to his favorite battery commander and says, “I want you to take over service battery and become my S4.” So I did. First of all, number one, any artillery officer who wants to be an S4 is out of his goddamn mind. But I really loved the guy and he was desperate for an S4 so I did it. And I hated it. I used to go out on the helicopters and make the deliveries just to get out.

Did you get back to B battery much?

The one time I was pleased to get back to B battery, they were up on a mountain somewhere out in the boonies. They had been put in in fair weather, and the weather changed drastically. It must have just slipped into monsoon or something, because they were wet and they were cold. We went out and scrounged up sweaters. It was pretty had to find sweaters in Vietnam.

I don’t think I ever saw one.

We went out and scrounged up sweaters and I flew all day long in a Chinook helicopter delivering stuff out to the battery. I remember this because at the end of the day, since I was the only one who knew where all the positions were, I would stand between the two pilots up under the front transmission and tell them where to go. Well, by the end of the day I was deaf, because of the noise from the transmission. I was literally deaf. I could not hear anything. When I got off the helicopter and I couldn’t hear I panicked, and they took me to the medics and the doctor said, “You’ll be alright, just wait awhile.” Within a couple hours my hearing came back. I remember that so well because it was so scary. So that was when I got back to B battery.

Featured in (614) Magazine

Thank you to (614) Magazine for featuring Ed Gaydos and Seven in a Jeep in their September issue.

If you’re in Central Ohio, be sure to pick up a copy of (614) before the month is out.  The issue features a sample chapter from Seven in a Jeep as well as Ed’s bio.

Find the full article here.

A special thank you goes to the article’s author, David Lewis, for taking the time to check out Ed’s book.  We appreciate it!