Jim Vipond – Gun Crew, Forward Observer, Ammo Section

The Boys of Battery B

 Jim Vipond

 

Jim was at LZ Sherry on a gun crew for four months with Mike Lauricella showed up in September of 1969. They have remained friends ever since.

I sit with the two of them at Mike’s place, in his motorcycle shop, now quiet and empty, no longer alive with the clank of wrenches, the walls covered with silent motorcycle memorabilia.  Mike is the talkative one.  Jim is content to listen while Mike talks through his slides. An hour goes by and I begin to worry that I will miss Jim’s stories, so when there is a break in the action I turn in Jim’s direction and say, “Jim, tell me about your time at Sherry.”

The day that I got to Sherry (in May of 1969), it was like 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I was down at the chopper pad and just got off the chopper when this big explosion goes off. I did not jump because I was so new I did not know what was happening. Come to find out it was a big rocket.  I was not even smart enough to be scared at that point. I thought maybe it was a gunshot, one of ours. It hit outside the wire and didn’t do any damage. But it was a hell of a big rocket, the biggest they had ever seen, and we never took in another one the whole time I was there. The big rockets were not very accurate.

We got mortared all the time, and I was on the gun right next to base piece when it got hit. Pyle died and everybody else in the pit got wounded. And a guy on Gun 2 also died. There’s nothing in the day reports about that incident at all. It was August 12. I was on Gun 6 I think, so I know what happened. That night, I won’t get into it, but that is part of my trauma. One of them anyway.

I say, “You told me on the phone that you volunteered to go out on an FO team with the infantry. I have a selfish reason for asking. I did the same thing and wonder what was on your mind.

Right after base piece got hit I volunteered because I was so sick of sitting at LZ Sherry and getting mortared and so many guys wounded. I was in country about three months. I got to be friends with the RTOs who would come down through Sherry. So I would ask them, ‘What do you do?” And I though I would like to get out of there. So I put in for it, but my orders never came down until later and I am not good on dates.

I say, “Same with me. I hung out with the FOs when the infantry set up on our perimeter and figured I’d like to do that.”

My mind is so bad during that time I had to find out from Mike that I went out with the 1/50th and we were out in the Central Highlands somewhere. It was worse than Sherry. I saw a lot of guys hurt. The Medevac chopper would come in but not get anywhere near the ground. So we tied the wounded to slings, under their armpits, and they hung beneath the chopper and got shot at some more as they swung in the air.

My memory of the 1/50th and the guys that were in the group that I went out with, I remember none of them. I know it was a young infantry squad they had put together. After I got to know people, I would ask them how long they had been in country and they would say, “I’ve only been in country about three months.”

They would ask me and I would say, “I been in country about 10 months.”

And they would say, “What in the hell are you doing out here? Are you crazy? You ain’t supposed to be out here.”

So then I got to thinking about it and about that time I come down with malaria. I went into Cam Rahn Bay to the hospital there.

I was getting better and out on a walk when I saw a bulletin board where they would post all of the early outs. By God my name was on it. I was supposed to be going home early, and it was only a day off. This was on a Sunday. I go back in and I told the nurse, “I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out of here today. I got to get down to Phan Rang.”

So they got a doctor and checked me out and I got down to Phan Rang. They said, “You missed it. It’s gone. You gotta wait till your regular date now.”

I’m not even supposed to be out of the hospital and I’m still not fully recuperated, but they say, “You have to go back out to Sherry for the rest of the time you’re here.”

So I went back to Sherry, and they want to put me on a gun again and I refused. I said I wasn’t going to stand out in the open anymore with mortars coming in. So they put me in ammo and that’s where I stayed for the rest of my time there.

That’s why I was at LZ Sherry on May 3 when Betty got overrun and we took all that incoming. I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was supposed to be home. I thought I was going to die that night. I was probably hiding in a corner someplace, being that short, and having been out with the infantry. I was scared shitless.

I say, “That was my second night at Sherry, and I was scared shitless because I was so new.”

I left for home just a little after that.

A picture appears on the screen of a group of young Vietnamese children. They belong to the ARVN force that is stationed at Sherry. Jim gets up from his seat and walks up to the screen. He points to the kids and says,

This one over there I think is Captain Parker’s. This one here belongs to Mike.

Mike says, “Smartass!”

I say, “The ARVNs left right after I got to Sherry. We were glad to see them go.”

All they did was tell the VC where their mortars hit. That’s what we believed. We could tell that they were communicating with people day to day, and out on patrol. 

Mike interrupts. He says, “There is a story behind that that will never get told.”

I say, “Well, can you tell me?”

Mike says, “I’ll put it this way. There was an ARVN that was shot on the compound. He was shot pacing off Gun 1. I don’t know how many people would tell you about that. There was a guy on a Duster squad that we called Hawkeye. He and a couple other Duster guys and some guys from the battery were watching this ARVN pacing off, and somebody from the battery shot him. They found a map of our compound on him. In the end nothing was ever said. That was when I was on Sherry. In fact I have a picture of him laying face down on the ground.”

Jim is paging through a book I had given him, a memoir of my time in the military which had just been published. He says,

I opened the book and went right to a section on Sergeant Davis. I knew him. I says here, “On April 16 at LZ Sherry gun crewman Jeffrey Lynn Davis dies instantly from massive head injuries incurred in a mortar attack.” That was Sgt. Davis. He was a friend of mine. He went to Hawaii for R&R to see his wife, he went back to the states for a while, was a little bit AWOL, got busted and sent back to Sherry, and two days later he got killed. He was a Shake ‘n’ Bake just out of school when he got sent to Vietnam. But he did not have it in his heart to be a sergeant.

I say, “When I got to Sherry two weeks after he died they told me he went home, discovered his girlfriend had dumped him, and then reenlisted to come back to Sherry. And just two weeks back is killed.”

Oh, maybe that’s why he went all the way home because he was supposed to meet her in Hawaii. He was a three year man, and the way I understood it at the time he extended so that this time around he was done with the Army. I don’t think he went home and reenlisted, I think he extended in Vietnam. After he extended he took an R&R. Then for some reason he went all the way back to the states and went AWOL.

Do you know what gun he was on when that happened? It seems to me that it was Gun 2. I was there the night that he got killed.

I say, “I don’t know the gun, but he was in the doorway of the ammo bunker when the mortar found him.”

Yeah, I think that’s right.

We are standing in the driveway saying our good-byes. Jim tells me of his battles with the VA to get treatment for dealing with the emotions still raw from Vietnam. Mike talks about the commitment he made to his recently deceased wife to keep doing the things that put his life on the right path. Jim and Mike do not see each other but a couple of times a year, but the sight of them standing together now tells me they lean on one another. Still buddies.