Mike Lauricella – Gun Crew – Part One
The Boys of Battery B
Mike Lauricella
Part One
The driveway into Mike Lauricella’s property outside Niles, Michigan is easy to find because there is an old motorcycle wheel mounted above his mailbox. Mike closed down his cycle business several years ago but still has the workshop.
Jim Vipond, a Vietnam buddy, had made the long drive down from Kalkaska to meet me at Mike’s place, and they both walk out of the shop as I drive up. The three of us go inside and sit on folding chairs in the middle of the motorcycle workshop, where Mike has set up the slide projector he bought in Vietnam.
Mike is quick to tell me that there are certain things they will not talk about. Jim nods in agreement.
The projector rattles and complains like a typical old veteran. Once it topples over, but returns to duty as if it were built to be kicked around. Mike narrates the pictures of cannon crews, heliborne operations with the infantry, tanks operating around LZ Sherry, and shots of the firebase taken from helicopters showing hooches and gun emplacements. The pictures seem to transport him back to LZ Sherry.
When I got in country, I got there in September of 1969, everybody talked about the death moon, and I did not know what that was. It’s a full moon. That was the night that was most dreaded. And sure enough when the full moon was out we were in trouble. It seemed like we were always getting hit on a full moon. I do not know why the gooks liked full moons, but it just seemed like every full moon we got hit. I’m not sure, but it might have had something to do with the Buddhist religion.
I am at LZ Sherry less than 30 days when this bulldozer gets stuck that the engineers brought out to rebuild our berm. The berm was too low along the road that came into the battery out by the helipad. The guy running it was a young guy just like us. He got through the top layer of dirt, more like sand, and the dozer started to sink. It kept sinking and sinking and sinking. It sunk halfway into the ground.
He finds the slide of a bulldozer, its track sunk four feet below the surface, and guys standing around with their hands on their hips.
We had two tanks on our perimeter, and we hooked both of them to the bulldozer with a chain. The two of them side by side tried to pull the dozer up and it pulled the clevis right off the back of the tank. So they gave up – for that day. It was getting late and the tank was outside the wire, so First Sergeant Durant says we’ve got to pull guard duty on the bulldozer.
Paul Dunne and I got the guard duty on that thing. We sat on it all night taking four hour shifts. The guys on guard duty in the towers watched us to make sure nothing happened. Well we are outside the wire, outside the berm, and I am scared shitless. It’s pitch black and Paul is saying, “Do you see anything?” It was pitch black; you couldn’t see anything. We sat on that stupid thing all night. That was my first experience of not liking what I was doing. That is also how Paul Dunne and I became very good friends – for that short period of time.
Mike puts a slide on the screen showing a demolished jeep.
That’s the jeep Paul got killed in. There’s a bad story about that. What happened was, they picked people for detail to go on a convoy to Phan Thiet. Paul was not supposed to be on the convoy that day, I was.
Paul came over and said, “Mike, you are scheduled to go on the convoy, but I want to go and call my mom at the MARS station” (Military Auxiliary Radio System).
I said, “No, because I’m scheduled to go on the convoy, I will get anything you want from the PX, just let me know, I’ll get it.”
He said, “I want to go on the convoy and call my mom at the MARS station.”
I still said no, so he left and came back with an E-6 sergeant – I don’t remember his name and don’t want to remember it – and the sergeant said, “Paul really wants to call his mom. Let him take your place on the convoy.” And he talked me into it. Three hours later they hit the mine. So he was never even supposed to be on that convoy.
Paul got killed on November 19 and there were no convoys after that until just before Christmas. We were out of beer and someone decided we had to do a convoy.
When the time for the convoy came, First Sergeant Durant, the Chief of Smoke and I went and swept the road. I volunteered to mine sweep the road because Paul got killed.
It was kind of funny because I had never swept for road mines before. We came out with no shirt, nothing metal, and there was a box on your hip, it was a battery box, and the wire came up from it to a set of headphones, and another wire came out from the headphones down to the sweeper handle. But you did not walk regular. You walked stiff legged. You walk like this.
Mike gets up from his chair and demonstrates a kind of Frankenstein lurch.You work that minesweeper back and forth. You better step where you’ve already swept. You sweep it and then you step. You did not carry a firearm, you did not wear your steel pot. The earphones were big and bulky, and they were hot, and you broke out in a sweat, at least I did.
I am sweeping and the Jeep is behind me and there are three guys out on each side of the road. Then I keep seeing dust pop up on the road, and I think it’s these little sand bugs. I pull the earphones off and it’s small arms fire. Our guys were already firing back and yelling at me, but I can’t hear them I’ve got these ear phones on, and I’m going down the road thinking the sand bugs are popping up in front of me.
We call the gunships, and then go on with the convoy. I didn’t do the whole road, I just did a little section. We did find a mine in the road and we blew it. I laugh about it now, but I was scared to death.
I don’t remember if I ever went out on another mine sweep. All I know was somebody had lost their life, and on that day if anybody was going to get blown up was going to be me. It all stemmed from the fact that Paul and I swapped places and Paul never should’ve been on that convoy. I should never have let that sergeant talk me into making the switch. But he was an E-6, and what was I going to do?
Jim says, “We swept the road for mines, and we tried several different things. There was a point in time where we just took the vehicle and drove like hell. Hopefully if it set anything off we would be on past it before it blew up. And that did work! That’s how they mine-swept the road rather than sending somebody out there to lose their life as a minesweeper.
