Bob Christenson – The Last Battery Commander – Part Four
The Chill Continues
After Captain DeFrancisco left I became the battery commander as a 1st lieutenant for a few months when they ran short of captains they trusted with command. Right away I had another run-in with the First Sergeant when I countermanded his order that the guys had to wear uniform tops in the mess hall. People complained about wearing shirts in the mess hall. I said to forget it, you don’t have to do that anymore, it’s crazy. Top got pissed and thought I was messing with his discipline, which I probably was. But I gained a little credibility with the men by doing that.
In general I let Top run the place and didn’t cross him. I said to him, “Look, it’s your firebase.” It was always his firebase anyway. “I know it. You know it.” That was my whole MO. I didn’t mess with anybody unless they needed messing with.
The Hardest Thing
There was a kid from Detroit whose name I can’t remember. He had been sent home on some kind of emergency leave because something awful had happened, his mother and father had been killed in a car wreck. It was pretty bad, but he came back and had been in the battery for a couple weeks. I was in FDC at the time with Barry Eckert on the radio, when another call came in telling us that this kid’s grandmother, sister and her baby had been killed in a house fire. I had them verify the information because it was so inconceivable that something else could happen like this. That afternoon I had to call the kid into my hooch and tell him what had happened. It was awful. They sent him home for good this time. Hardest thing I have ever had to do.
Not This Time
Just like at LZ Betty the year before, an order came down from Phan Rang to chain and lock up our M16s. They were concerned that there was going to be a rebellion at the firebase, that some officers would be shot. That was just insane. There wasn’t going to be a revolt at the firebase, and locking up our weapons in the middle of a war was the stupidest thing I ever heard, worse than the orders to keep the FADAC computer running. What idiots. We never implemented that order, which was one thing Top and I absolutely agreed upon. I told the rear that they could court martial me or throw me in jail, but I was not locking up our weapons, and they dropped it. They obviously had not learned from Betty.
In early May 1970, with all of its weapons locked away, including those of Delta Company of the 1/50th Infantry that had just returned from the field, LZ Betty had been overrun by a combined force of NVA and Viet Cong.
In firm possession of his M16
Lousy Shots – Thank Goodness
One day some papa-san was out gathering wood west of the battery in the off-limits zone. Maybe he was VC, but who knows? All the locals knew better than to hang out there, and the guy was around the creek wash that the VC used to sneak around in. So maybe he was up to no good. We fired a couple warning shots over his head but he didn’t pay any attention. Everybody wanted to shoot at the guy, and kept after me to let them go. I checked about five times with the ARVN clearance people because I really didn’t want to start blasting away at some farmer, but all they would say was: Go ahead and shoot. So I reluctantly let the Dusters on that side of the battery start shooting at the guy. There were about twenty people gathered around the duster. I think some of them were there to see this guy get blown away, and others because they couldn’t believe what was going to happen.
The Duster popped a few rounds out there that missed the guy pretty badly. Once he realized they were shooting at him he started to run, and the Duster guys opened up in earnest. There were rounds going off all around the guy. After about ten seconds of this, which seemed forever to me, I couldn’t take it anymore and jumped up on the Duster and told them to stop the hell shooting. The guy got away and in the end I think everyone was pretty relieved that they didn’t hit him. I know I was. The whole thing freaked me out. It would have been one thing if he had a gun or was obviously VC. But this wasn’t the case. Thank God the Duster guys were such bad shots.
No Medal For Mike
Mike LeinoSomewhere along the line I put Mike Leino in for a medal for saving a guy’s life. Mike was a laid back guy, and probably could have cared less about a medal, but he deserved one. They were burning trash and whoever it was poured gasoline on the trash to ignite it, and when he lit it, the guy managed to turn himself into a human torch. Leino was the only guy out there and tackled him and put the fire out. The guy had third degree burns and was sent home. Mike saved his life.
I thought Mike’s effort was pretty outstanding, so I filled out the paperwork and went through headquarters back in Phan Rang to get something for him. A few weeks went by without any response, so I started sniffing around. Finally someone told me that the battalion commander had nixed it because burning trash with gas was against regulations, and if he had submitted my recommendation it would have been evidence that someone in his command wasn’t following protocol. So no medal recommendation ever got past headquarters.
I was pretty pissed about that, and after I got home to the states I sent a long letter to the editor of the Detroit Free Press, Mike’s home town newspaper, explaining that they had a real hero in their midst and why, and explaining why he had never been recognized. I never heard anything back, and a few months later found out that the paper was on strike and not publishing. I guess my letter got nowhere. The whole thing left a really bad taste in my mouth about the Army.
On Further Reflection
We all did some dumb things, and I certainly did my share. But my all-time dumbest move took place when a few of us took a LOACH (a light reconnaissance helicopter) out to reconnoiter a coordinate that intelligence told us was being used as an NVA staging area for an assault on Sherry. Huge mistake and I knew better and am very lucky to be alive after that one.
I was a couple weeks from going home at the time. We got word that the NVA was going to have our asses one night, much like the warning we had a few months before. The intelligence gave us a general staging area so the battalion LOACH came down and we took off to have a look. I think there were three or four of us, I don’t think the LOACH could carry more than that. The area was about three miles or so out to the northwest of the firebase.
We got there and didn’t see much of anything, until someone spotted what looked like a shirt hung up on a tree branch and flapping around. Somehow, incredibly, I got talked into allowing the helicopter to land to check it out. I’m still shaking my head over that decision, but we were young and invincible, right? We had a couple M16s and I had my .45 pistol. So we put down in a grassy area with pretty good visibility and had a look around. The pilot stayed in the LOACH and kept the rotors going. I had my .45 out and we walked around a little bit. We didn’t see anything suspicious. About a minute later I walked onto the top of a bunker that had been dug into the ground. It was built with concrete railroad ties and completely covered by grass that had been cut and laid over the top to hide the bunker. The grass was so fresh it was still green and not yet wilted in the heat. One of my boots went between the railroad ties and I started to fall into the bunker, and everything kind of flashed in front of my eyes. I thought how stupid I was seeing the fresh grass and knowing the NVA was in the area, and maybe this was the end for me. It sounds dramatic but I wasn’t really scared. I just thought: I’m going to take as many of the bastards with me as I can. Anyway, no shots from the bunker, and I caught myself on one of the ties before I dropped completely through. I yelled to the others to get the hell out of there.
We hit the chopper on the run and took off. On the way back to Sherry we took a reading on the direction of the bunker, and once back plotted on our grid chart where we had been. Later that night after it got dark and I felt like it was the right time, we shot a THREE ROUND BATTERY ZONE AND SWEEP on the target. At least I think that’s what we used to call it. Each of our six guns shot three rounds at three different but close deflections and three different but close quadrants, for a total of twenty-seven rounds per gun, or a hundred and sixty-two rounds in all. That way we covered a lot of ground quickly around the target. I think we probably shot VT (radar fuses resulting in fifty meter air bursts). We got what sounded like a couple secondary explosions.
A few days later the ARVNs swept the area. They reported back lots of body parts and some ridiculous estimate of twenty-five or more dead. The idea was that we had dropped our rounds on the VC/NVA by surprise while they were all out there exposed. Of course we never got out there to take a look ourselves, so who knows? Body counts were notoriously unreliable. It may be that nothing was there but craters, and the ARVNs just told the higher-ups what they wanted to hear. Or more likely, the ARVNs never went out at all and just reported as if they had. The NVA attack never came, but maybe it was never coming, like the other time we had been warned. But who knew? Clearly something was going on out there.
Anyway, I got religion when I was falling into that bunker. Someone had been there very shortly before we arrived. There were no more adventures or take-chances left in me. On my way home a few weeks later when I saw the pilot of my plane to Cam Rahn smoking dope with his momma-san, I convoyed.
The Last BC
Lt. Christenson left LZ Sherry in June of 1971, just days before the battery and its equipment transferred to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam. On August 31, 1971 B Battery and the rest of the 5th Battalion were deactivated.
When I left Sherry there were rumors that we would be standing down, but that was about it. I had no idea that it would happen so fast. I never thought about being the last battery commander. I would rather that legacy be left to Captain DeFrancisco, who deserved a spot in the history books.
Joe DeFrancisco was a great officer. There’s no question about that. He was a good guy. I felt very at home with him, even though he had gone to West Point, which was pretty alien as far as I was concerned. He was Regular Army, and all that stuff. He was a guy who was very directed but didn’t act gung-ho. I thought he was terrific. He was bright, a good guy to talk to. He never overreacted. He was a great commander. He was a natural. We both took our roles at the firebase seriously, but for him it was his career. I can tell you John Varat, who came after me in FDC, and I had many, many conversations with him about: What the hell are you wasting your talents for in the Army? Joe embraced people who were worthy of expressing their opinion and having conversations with him on an intelligent level. Rank didn’t make any difference when you got in his hooch. The rank just fell off. Now, I am super glad Joe didn’t leave the military, because he was an outstanding officer. I have no doubt that Joe played a significant role in bringing the Army back from the disastrous shape it was in after Vietnam.
