Chuck Heindrichs – Battery Commander – Part Six

Hi-Tech

We got visiting delegations regularly because of the general prominence of LZ Sherry. We were a model firebase and the brass liked to show us off. As a result we also got lots of experimental hi-tech gear for its time.

Early in 1970 the war was winding down. The last armor units were drawing down and other deactivations were proceeding. But LZ Sherry still was quite active, by the number of mortar attacks we received and intelligence that VC units were still active in the area. North of us was an infiltration route that ran north of a railroad line that was part of the national railroad running the length of the country. The railroad was elevated somewhat, allowing foot traffic behind the track without being detected. Our TPS-25 radar (ground surveillance radar) would scan this area all the time because at some point the VC would cross south and set up mortar launch sites.

It was decided at some high level that we would install a motion sensor field in the area north of the base. The installation was done with an 81 mm mortar along with a number of special rounds and firing tables. These rounds consisted of the normal fins and propellant bags. But when dropped into the mortar tube, its nose was only two inches below the top of the tube. When it fired off our Q4 counter mortar radar tracked its trajectory in order to confirm its exact ground location.

As the round impacted its performance was somewhat complicated. The head of the shell would go into the ground and immediately detach from the tail, but remain connected via an umbilical cord that provided battery power to the tail assembly. Then the tail section would deploy a set of large fins called a terra break, which would cause the tail section to stay even with the ground. At the same time a gas driven antenna would rise, looking like another weed or piece of grass.

Back in the Fire Direction Center there were monitoring devices that would receive a signal from a sensor that it had deployed successfully. Each sensor had its own number that appeared on the FDC monitor. I believe in all we had six units spread out in linear fashion for several hundred yards.

When it all worked, the scenario that played out was straightforward. When a sensor detected motion its monitor would light in FDC. If the next sensor lit up, that would indicate something moving in a particular direction. After more sensors lit up, we suspected that a group was moving through the area. And when the series of sensors stayed lit we could make conclusions as to the number of people moving through the field.

We gave each sensor a code: BLACK WIDOW ONE, BLACK WIDOW TWO, and so forth, then figured up firing data for each of the device locations. When one of the devices detected movement FDC had only to send a simple BLACK WIDOW command to the guns for them to fire immediately. The advantage was speed, because the VC were not stupid. When they were out there they could hear settings and firing commands shouted to the gun crew, they could hear the crews loading the breech. With Black Widow there were no drawn out commands – just one quiet instruction to the gun and BOOM the round went out. Of course we never knew what we were shooting at or got confirmation of any enemy kills. And we never knew how many water buffalo we killed.

Sometime following the placement of the Black Widow sensors, we were also given sets of PSIDs or Personal Sensor Intrusion Devices. These devices measured ground vibration and were placed by hand around the fire base at a distance of about three hundred yards, or as far as we cared to venture out. I believe our battery XO, who loved playing infantry and got excited about this kind of stuff, took charge of the job. Like Black Widow these devices also transmitted a signal to monitors in the FDC. We may have had an occasional hit with one of them, but attributed that to mice and other critters out there. Of course during heavy monsoon rains and heavy winds they were going off all the time. Most of the time we did not waste the ammo.

Lo-Tech Is Sometimes Better

We were used to being mortared from the north and used to the road heading east being mined. With all the air traffic between Phan Thiet and Sherry, someone noticed people digging a possible mortar emplacement in a different direction south of us. That area was a free-fire zone at night, which allowed us to blanket the area without any special fire mission approvals.

We later learned that we had destroyed a mortar unit and had killed a number of enemy troops, and that the mortars and ammo had been abandoned on the site. It may have been the first time we got feedback on destroying a mortar site. Between the intel and our howitzer fire, we nailed it.

Life and Death On One Stage

Here’s one of my favorite stories. A couple of helicopter pilots who flew for a general would sometimes stop by our base for lunch. One of them pulls me aside and says, “How would you like it if we brought a show to your firebase, some girls and a band? It’ll cost you six hundred bucks.” I go to the First Sergeant, because I did not handle the slush funds, and he gives the pilots the six hundred bucks. We schedule the show five weeks out on a Sunday afternoon at two o’clock, to be held on a specially built stage next to that half basketball court outside FDC.

Stage under construction – supervised by small dog
Picture Courtesy Kim Martin

After I agreed to have the band come in, a command-wide ban came down forbidding assemblies to watch movies or entertainment of any kind. Apparently there had been an incident, either a mortar attack or a fragging on people waiting to get into a mess hall. So they came out with this directive. I’m kind of nervous but I am still going through with the show despite the directive.

A week before the show an infantry unit has a kid get killed in a firefight up north of us, in an area we got mortared from all the time. So our battalion commander calls me up and says, “They are going to have a memorial service for this kid that was killed, and it’s going to be at your firebase on Sunday at four o’clock.”

I thought, Oh shit.

So that Sunday at one thirty here come two helicopters with the band and two French Vietnamese girls. The band sets up on the stage, and the little back room in the Fire Direction Center becomes a changing room for the girls to get into their costumes. All the troops set up on boxes and chairs by the stage, and a lot are standing. The infantry troops, about forty guys, had already come in and were there too. The show went on with the music and the girls going through the crowd topless and sitting on laps. It was a hilarious afternoon.

But I am not personally enjoying the show. I’m standing out by my hooch with the chief of firing battery looking at the sky hoping nobody of any rank decides to drop in to see I am violating the rules of assembly. And I am looking at the clock. It gets to be three fifteen and I walk out and indicate the show has to stop, and you need to get the band and girls on their two helicopters and get them out of here.

We load them up and get their helicopters off, and from that point everybody is sworn to secrecy. Sure enough ten minutes later here comes the infantry battalion commander and his entourage of three helicopters. The chaplain sets up a memorial ceremony right at the same location we had been watching these girls put on a show. I thought, If this isn’t crazy. At two o’clock you’re watching a rock and roll show and girls doing a strip act and fooling around with the guys, hugging and kissing them and taking their hats to rub on their boobs, and an hour later on the same spot we have this very somber memorial service for a young man who had been killed. That was one of my most nervous days in all of Vietnam.