Tommy Mulvihill – Gun Crew Chief – Part Two

Tommy Mulvihill

Gun 4 Crew Chief

PART TWO  

Tommy was a wild Irish kid, but a hell of a crew chief. He held the rank of corporal in a job that normally went to a sergeant. His Gun 4 was on the western end of the battery near the bunker that housed ammo for the whole battery. What happened one night on guard duty tells the story of Tommy and a frightened newbie. Another shows a leader under pressure doing his job. Both stories explain why nobody ever forgot Tommy Mulvihill.

Guard Duty

I was on guard duty and out toward the ammo bunker I hear somebody crying. So I went over there, and I didn’t know who it was, but he was brand new in country and was scared shitless. I just sat and talked to him.

I said, “First of all you gotta move. If a mortar comes in look where the fuck you are, in an ammo bunker. Come over by me. We’ll keep each other company and we’ll keep each other awake.”

…………………………..

During a mortar attack my Gun 4 took a direct hit. Thank God nobody was on the gun at the time. When you hear somebody yelling INCOMING that’s when you run around and wake everybody up. So the gun got hit before anybody was on  it. The explosion flattened out both tires and we had to manhandle the gun (5,000 pounds) to get it into position to fire while the mortars were still coming down. For that incident our gun crew received the Army Commendation Medal with V Device for Valor. 

Sergeant Farrell

I got two Sgt. Ferrell stories. Every night, cause I was Irish like him, he would hunt me up and sing Danny Boy to me. I swear to God, and we would drink beer. Not every night really, but enough to remember. And he would try to teach me. And I’d say, “I can’t sing. Come on Top.”

Another time we were shooting our weapons on the perimeter. A bird flew by and he took out his .45 and boom, he took the bird right out of the year. He said, “See how good I am?”

I said, “You were lucky.” But sure enough he took that bird out of the air.

It’s those two things that I remember most about him.

The Most Scared

I did a lot of mine sweeping so I went on a lot of convoys back to LZ Betty at Phan Thiet for ammo and supplies. On one trip I see an M60 machine gun sitting there with nobody around it. It calls out to me, so I load it into the truck with the supplies and off we go back to Sherry. Now we got an extra machine gun and need a guard tower to put it in. I had two years of carpentry in high school and built the best hooches, and Top even had me build ammo bunkers and the beer hall, I liked doing it. So I can build a guard tower, no problem

We put it on top of another hooch to get it up in the air. The roof of the hooch was this metal runway material and we built it right on top of that. We are nearly done and this thing is maybe eight feet above the roof of the hooch, made of heavy lumber, sandbags, ammo boxes and more runway material – I’m up on top and the whole thing collapses, right through the roof of the hooch below. I am trapped under the pile with ammo boxes pinning my legs. I can look up through this small hole to see the sky and get some air, but I am down there and more scared than anything that ever happened to me in Vietnam, including the four times I was wounded. I am down there a long time before they can get me out, plenty of time to be scared.

A guy by the name of  Jimmy Jones, a big strong black guy, saved me. They held him by his feet while he pulled away the sandbags and junk that was on top of me. Then he lifted me right up through the hole. Doc Townley got ahold of me and said I was OK. Then the two of us went to my hooch and had some beers – quite a few beers.

It wasn’t long after that inspectors come out looking for their machine gun. Sergeant Farrell gave it to them right away, instead of making them search the entire battery. I guess he figured they’d find it eventually anyway. He made up some story about finding it along the side of the road.

January 12, 1969

Ground Attack

We were in a fire mission. We did not know that we had a ground attack until after the fire mission was over. My Gun 4 was at the other end of the battery from where they came in. My thought was that base piece behind us was firing because the FO wanted something and it was a single shot. It didn’t sound louder than usual, but then again a howitzer firing a charge seven is loud. And that’s why I didn’t realize we had a ground attack until after the check fire. Then the word spread quick that the tank had fired and taken out the sappers.

I got put on the detail to collect the bodies out of the wire. Body parts were all over the place. I am in country only two months, just a teenager, and this happens. I just got lucky I guess. The bodies had bags of heroin on them. They were all heroin’d up. That’s how they keep on coming. You shoot them and they don’t even feel it.

As it got light we had to wait for almost three hours for people to come out from Phan Rang before we could load the bodies up. There was a whole shitload of brass. They had to come out and do their count, because at that time it was body counts that they were sending back to the states.

By the time the brass left it was 110° out there. Picking up the bodies and the parts, they were like mush. We loaded them up in the back of the deuce and a half truck, drove them off the perimeter, blew a hole in the ground with C4, just dumped them in there, and then covered them over. That was probably my first traumatic experience.

One of the bodies in the wire was our barber. The day before I was in the tent with him getting my haircut. The guy only had one arm and he used to shave your hair with a straight razor. All he had to do was take that straight razor and take it across my throat. From that day on me and Howie cut each others hair. We saw the barber in the wire, and that was it. Done. That’s when you didn’t trust nobody.

A couple of days later the engineers came out with a bulldozer and leveled an old building that was right by our perimeter just off of our wire. The sappers got close because they were able to hide behind that building, that’s where they snuck in through. It was a cement building. That’s why I always thought it was some kind of church. It was not a hut. It was cement and it was blown apart in several spots but it was out there. They called in a crane and the crane dropped the bulldozer down and they leveled it all out. While they were at it they cleared more brush and took our perimeter further out.

There was another incident, whether it was that same day or not. This guy Beenie, I don’t know his real name, he was a Mexican, and he was a good guy. He was on my gun. We went out on top of the perimeter and we found a body. A single body out in the wire off of Gun 4, off my gun. I don’t know if it was that same day, it could’ve been another time, but it was a single sapper in the wire trying to get in. And the guy that we found in the wire also had bags of heroin on him.