John Crosby – Battalion Commander – Part One

John Crosby

Battalion Commander

Part One

Lt. Col. Crosby In Helmet

  John Crosby was a spanking new lieutenant colonel when he took command of the 5th Battalion in May 1968. However he did not come unprepared. He had graduated at the top of his class from two artillery programs at Fort Sill, and in Germany had served for three years as the fire direction officer for a direct support artillery battalion with the 4th Armored Division. In the course of his many assignments after Vietnam he was commanding general at Fort Sill, where almost all the boys of Battery B were trained, and after 35 years in the Army retired a three-star general.

I was destined to be in the military from the get-go I guess. My grandfather was in the military for 45 years. He fought down in Mexico with Gen. Pershing, and he fought in World War I, World War II, and in Korea. My father was an NCO at the beginning of World War II and then converted to a warrant officer. He was in the Army for a total of 34 years. Both of them are buried at the National Cemetery at Jefferson Barracks.

Like many officers of his generation, getting to Vietnam was not easy.

I went to Vietnam in May 1968, my first and only tour. I wanted to go earlier, but the Army had sent me to the University of Southern California in what the Army called Guided Missiles, it really was mechanical engineering. I was a classmate with Norm Schwarzkopf; as a matter of fact he and I carpooled during that time. My assignment after graduate school was what they called a ”utilization tour,” meaning I had to use the education on my next assignment. I went to West Point and I taught mathematics for three years. During that time I tried to volunteer for Vietnam, but the army said no, you have to stay and finish your tour at West Point. Then I volunteered again for Vietnam and they said no again, you’re going to the Air Command and Staff College. I graduated from there in 1968, and finally got shipped to Vietnam and took command of the 5th Battalion headquartered at Phan Rang.

I was prepared to take over an artillery battalion because I had finished first in my two training courses at Ft. Sill, and had been a fire direction officer for three years for a direct support artillery battalion. That was with the 4th Armored Division in Germany.

The 5th Battalion was the largest battalion in VN, spread over four provinces. It had eight artillery firing batteries, three organic to the battalion and the others attached from other artillery and infantry units. And there were a lot of other attached units, such as radar, search light, and helicopters – in all about 1500 people. Then there were assorted other units like the tanks, the Quad-50s and the Dusters that were not attached but we took care of them anyway. We fed them and supplied them and all that sort of thing.

One of my biggest challenges was trying to see all of my battery commanders to know how things were going. And sometimes I felt like I was not doing enough. I wasn’t getting close enough to them to really find out what their thoughts were, because you had to be there in person. In my mind every unit and every battery no matter what its size was important. So my S4 staff officer went around to all the operations. And my communications officer was also in contact with all of them. At one time I believe we had 48 forward observers. Some of them I never saw, because they were in place when I got there and they stayed in the field with their units.

Today he talks about the soldiers he commanded in Vietnam with a special affection.  

An Enduring Regret

One thing I was really was remiss about as a commander, and this is a confession, OK?

I deeply regret that I did not take my S1 Personnel Officer, send him around to the different batteries, and get those guys that did really good work, and put them in for a Bronze Star or something to recognize the good work that they did, battery commanders and soldiers alike. I just kick myself every time I think about that. I just didn’t think about it over there, for whatever reason. It was back in the states when I got to thinking about it. My first job out of Vietnam was in Washington in charge of assignments for artillery colonels. I saw these guys getting medals for doing nothing. That made me think about the soldiers that I had in the trenches out there every single day, isolated and facing danger every day – and I didn’t take care of them. In my view I did not take care of them.

People like you and soldiers just like you were isolated in those firebases and felt like they were exactly that, isolated. They did not know when they were going to get an attack, or what was going to happen, or if anybody gave a crap about what they thought. That was part of my job, to recognize the people that did the hard work and I really regret that.

January 12 Ground Attack

When I got to Vietnam in July of 1968 B Battery was at LZ Sherry outside Phan Thiet. Of all the batteries, as far as I was concerned, B Battery had about as much activity down there near Phan Thiet as any. Phan Thiet and the surrounding area was very heavily controlled by the Viet Cong. B Battery certainly did a lot of firing, and had a lot of attacks on the battery, to include the road to Phan Thiet that the Viet Cong mined on a regular basis.

One night a VC sapper unit tried to get into the battery area. There was a tank platoon that loggered in with B Battery every night, and they picked up the attack by a starlight scope. The tanks at that time had a 90 mm cannon and they had a beehive round. One of the tanks was in position and fired a beehive round and wiped out the whole sapper unit except one guy, and he was taken prisoner. I think it was 14 KIA.

I got the report the night of the attack and I went down early the next morning. The Task Force South commander also came down that morning. I took pictures of all the dead VC, their rockets, their AK 47’s and other ordnance.  We knew that we wiped out the entire sapper unit because the leader had a roster of all the sappers in his loincloth, and so we were able to count the people in his sapper unit and the KIAs and the one guy that was captured. We got ‘em all. We counted them off and every single one of them was laying out in front of us.

This attack is stamped deeply in the memories everyone who was there, especially those who walked among the bodies and pulled them from the wire. Personal accounts vary in detail – Rik Groves for example noted in his journal that 18 were killed – but all agree on the major facts: the attack began on the southern perimeter, the tank crewmen were heroes for saving the battery from being overrun, and they got all of the sappers.