Andy Kach – Ammo Crew Chief – Part Two

Andy Kach

PART TWO

Deluxe Accommodations

My hooch was a little two-man job dug into the ground. For the first couple weeks I was by myself because my hooch mate, Sandage, was up at LZ Sandy on our illumination gun. The hooch was right on the perimeter, in the line of fire of Gun 5. They would shoot  right over the top of that hooch, which is why it had to be so low. Dave Fitchpatrick was the crew chief on Gun 5 and he said, “Do not stand up when you come out of your hooch. When we’re shooting a fire mission or H&I at night we might be firing over your head, but you can’t take that chance.” So we had to low crawl out of my hooch until we were out of the field of fire.

There was a platoon of ARVNs with their families on the other side of the wire, and at night I could hear them talking, and I didn’t know if it was VC or ARVNs. I was all by myself, didn’t know anything, and scared shitless. I would sleep in my helmet and flak jacket with my M16 across my chest. I told Bowman, “They’re going to come in and cut my throat, and I wouldn’t even know it.”

I can remember Bowman coming in one time, and he put his foot on my rifle, right on my chest, and he says, “You gotta stop doin’ this, man. People are afraid to come in here and wake you up.” We had to pull a couple hours of guard duty every night, or else you worked on an illumination gun. He said, “People are afraid to come in here and wake you up. You’re scaring the Hell out of everybody here.”

I said, “As long as I’m here, this rifle is going to be here.” So they’d throw trash in at me rather than come in and wake me up.

Casualty From Michigan  

I put a Michigan flag up right outside my hooch. It went up on a pole I made from rods out of ammo boxes (used to ship artillery rounds). Fitchpatrick came down and he chewed me out and said, “You take that damn flag down.” It was up on a short pole and I told him to go to hell. The next night he aimed his howitzer at the flag and took out a chunk. But he only got the corner. Lucky the round did not hit more of the fabric or the pole. It would have gone off blowing the hooch apart. He claimed he was aiming for the corner he hit.  We loved Fitz, he was a great guy.

Perimeter Hooch and Wounded Flag

Ground Attack  

My hooch mate Sandage came back, a hillbilly from Kingsport, Tennessee. He was just a good ol’ boy and happy go lucky.  He taught me a lot; how to rig the guns and sling the ammo, everything we did in Ammo section. But I’ll tell you, when he took his boots off in that little hooch the smell was so bad I couldn’t stand it. I made him keep his boots outside.

The Ammo section was issued an M60 machine gun, an M79 grenade launcher and a starlight scope. Of course we also had our M16s. When the battery got attacked we took up a position in a little fighting bunker on the perimeter. Sandage taught me how hand flares are different from illumination rounds. A white flare means there’s movement outside the wire. A red one means they’re in the wire, and a green means they’re inside the perimeter and you shoot anything that moves. He got me acclimated so that eventually I didn’t have an upset stomach and wasn’t scared witless all the time.

Andy, Blondie and  Sandage

Thank God Sandage came back from Sandy when he did, just before the January ground attack. I was at Sherry only two weeks or so and still real green. I’ll never forget it. We got a fire mission to shoot for Sandy. All the guns had turned to shoot, and were maybe ten rounds into that mission when we were hearing the tanks firing. The tanks sounded totally different from the guns, and they were out of battery (firing separately from the simultaneous fire of the howitzers). We were saying, “Who the hell’s out of battery?” There were two BOOMS.

Well one of the tank guys had called FDC and said you got people moving around out here. FDC tells them it could possibly be an ARVN infantry unit on patrol. Well the tank commander radioed back and said, “This asshole is right up on the tank with a B40 rocket.” The tank beat him to the punch. The tank fired one of those canister rounds that they had, like a big shotgun shell. When word got around of a ground attack everybody started firing into the perimeter. I am brand new and scared out of my mind with all the firing. Sandage basically told me what to do getting ammo around to the guns. We went to our perimeter bunker and I remember him saying, “Don’t let this get to you.”

The next morning Sandage and I were part of a detail to pick the bodies out of the wire. We lined up all the bodies that we collected, and there was a mess of them. We’d bring ‘em out, put them on the road and line them up and try to match arms and legs. The only thing that was left of the guy hit with the B40 rocket was his head and shoulders stuck in the wire; that guy got the nick name of Head and Shoulders. Sandage and I did not deal with him. Maybe it was Fitz’s crew that had to pull him out of the wire.

The Mess Sergeant came out with lunch for everybody. Sandage and I were sitting on part of a tree stump eating and we look down and here’s a guy’s leg. It was like, “What the hell are we doing?”

And then they blew a big hole in the ground out by the trash dump and buried them. They were all buried out there. I imagine that half those guys came from the village that was right down the road. And the mama-sans would come out there and cry, and it was nerve wracking to hear them.  That went on for a little while. It was getting to be tragic.

If it were not for the tanks, we would not be here. Fitz and Rik Groves will tell you the same story. The VC had enough explosives on them to take the whole battery out. There were two tanks firing out there. But that initial blast is what saved us; it alerted us that we had issues other than shooting a mission.

The next day the Brass came out and gave the tank crews awards. They got some kind of field ribbon issued to them. The Brass came right out to the field and decorated them.

After the ground attack everything changed. The battery command wanted all the hooches off the perimeter and moved into the battery so the guns could fire directly into the wire. That’s when we built new hooches. It took a month to get them built. We had to do it all before monsoon because the perimeter hooches that were dug into the ground flooded during monsoon. I was so happy to be away from the perimeter wire.

Buddy Holly’s

I had a pair of military issue glasses, but I wore my Buddy Holly’s whenever I could.