Alex Taubinger – Forward Observer – Part Three
PART THREE
Congratulations
I went out with the 3/506 infantry and bounced around with different units. I was with C Company when the VC and NVA hit that Special Forces camp on February 12. That was the same operation north of Sherry when Hank Parker and Captain Wrazen of D Company ran into all that trouble (three infantry companies of the 3/506 up against a heavy concentration of NVA).
Three months into my tour I was out with the 3/506 infantry setting up an ambush on a trail coming out from The Toilet Bowl.
Lt. Taubinger (right) on ambush operation with radio operator Eddie Sandoval
Just after this picture was taken, Blackhawk (radio handle of the battalion commander) flew over in his helicopter and dropped a box of cigars for me. Inside was a note from the Red Cross saying my son Victor had just been born on March 16.
Just a Simple Little Two-Grid Sweep
We were told we’d just go out to sweep two grid squares (an area approximately one mile long and half a mile wide) at the base of Titty Mountain northeast of LZ Sherry, and then come back in. I go out there with no food, a couple canteens, a basic load of ammo and my radio operator, who was a volunteer from the 320th and who just happened to be hanging around the Operations Center at the time and who was supposed to go home within the week. We hop on these Slicks (The UH-1 Huey helicopter – the workhorse of the infantry. Called a Slick when it carried no armament of its own except a door gun on each side).
Slick transporting troops of the 3/506
It’s my first combat assault. We can see all these Cobra gunships shooting up the area. I say to the commanding officer sitting next to me, “Wow, there’s something happening out there.”
He says, “Yeah, that’s where we’re going.”
All together there are three Slicks with 28 people. I am on the lead Slick with the company commander, the platoon leader, a machine gunner, three radio operators, and maybe a couple other guys. Coming in we encounter heavy ground fire. My radio guy takes three rounds in the radio he is holding between his legs and he starts shaking. I am the first one off the lead Slick; bullets are flying at us. We get on the ground in the middle of this rice paddy and we’re getting hit with everything they got – mortars, rockets, AK-47’s. We land right on top of their regimental headquarters and they must have a battalion with them judging by the fire we are taking. These are the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), the real McCoy, the guys with pith helmets with the red star on them.
Our company commander is talking on the radio to Blackhawk (radio handle of the battalion commander) who is flying around up in the DEROS zone, which is 5,000 feet or higher because the VC and NVA could not shoot down the aircraft at that height. They are having an argument about where we are on the map. Blackhawk thinks we are two miles north of Titty. I get the artillery to fire a smoke round to what we believed are our coordinates, and sure enough we are where we think we are, right next to the west ofTitty Mountain.
DEROS stands for Date of Estimated Return from Overseas, a date emblazoned in every soldier’s mind as the day he would go home. Few could say what the letters stood for, but everybody knew what they meant. Flying in the DEROS zone meant the occupants of the aircraft were more likely to see that date.
When a second set of Slicks tries to come in with the rest of the company the lead helicopter is hit, forcing all of them to turn around. That leaves just the 28 of us on the ground. We are surrounded and outnumbered about ten to one.
On the ground we are pinned down. Every time I move I take automatic fire. The only thing that comes into my head is to try an old John Wayne thing, stick a hat up. My radio guy crawls ten yards away from me while I get my M-16 ready, and using his rifle barrel lifts his helmet up just a little over the rice paddy dyke. I see tracers coming at it from behind a banana tree and I empty my whole magazine into that tree. Well, the shooting stops.
Then we crawl into a rice paddy irrigation ditch with a couple infantry guys. We’re still pinned down by fire. I want to call in artillery fire, but we can’t because there are by now too many helicopters in the air and fighter jets are on their way in.
I’m there with a platoon leader, Magouyrk, who I knew from FSB Zewart up at The Toilet Bowl. We pinpoint the location of one of the machine gun bunkers and Magouyrk says, “I’m going to get my Medal of Honor today.”
All I can think to say is, “Okay.”
I am staying hunkered down in that ditch. I reach for my canteen and see a snake crawling across my leg. I turned to an infantry guy next to me and say, “What should I do? If I stay here I might get bit. If I stand up I might get shot?”
He says, “Fuck you, sir. I’m outta here.” He takes off, and the snake goes on his way too.
I turn to look down the ditch and see Magouyrk. He says, “Come on Alex, let’s go.”
I say, “I’m not getting up.”
He stands up, runs in the direction of the machine gun bunker, and lobs a hand grenade inside, which quiets the machine gun. Magouyrk makes it back to our ditch, but on the way takes a bullet in the arm.
Then another machine gun and a mortar open up on us from a different direction. All afternoon we are under mortar and rocket attack. Three of our guys are killed and quite a few wounded. Just about everyone of us is out of ammo. This was supposed to be just a two-grid sweep, not a major firefight. The Dust-offs (Medevac helicopters) coming in for the dead and wounded also bring fresh ammo.
We decide to call in an air strike. I manage to contact the Air Force FAC (Forward Air Controller in the air in a light aircraft). I have never done this before, and I ask him if he has anything on station. He says yeah, he’s got a couple of F-4s and some 104s (both jet fighters). He tells us to mark our perimeter, which we do with smoke flares.
Soon we see the FAC plane coming in at tree top level and dropping smoke flares to mark targets for the jets. They are DANGER CLOSE, about 50 yards in front of us. The FAC says, “We’re gonna be coming in pretty close to you. Tell that idiot that’s standing up to sit down.” That idiot is me standing up taking pictures. (Alex made it out, but the pictures did not.) All of a sudden I hear this god-awful noise, an F-4 coming in straight down shooting his cannons. This thing screams, scares the heck out of me. The Air Force also comes in with napalm and 250 and 500 pound bombs.
At the same time helicopters are taking care of our flanks and rear. Of course all the enemy did was get back in their holes and smile up at the jets and helicopters. Even Hank’s unit, which was southwest of us, made an attempt to come in and get us.
Then the 69th Armor tried to come in with tanks. Someone told them the only ones alive are the gooks, and the tanks open up on us with beehive rounds. They hit five people. Our medic panics, “What do I do? These guys have got holes in the backs of their heads.” Someone tells him not to say that because the guys are still conscious.
All of a sudden the tanks back out. A recon guy from the 3/506 LRRPs (long range reconnaissance patrols) who was with the tanks told me afterward that they started getting hit from the side with B-40 rockets, so they pulled out. He told me he too got the word there were no more Americans left in that rice paddy.
Dust-offs come in to get the wounded; nobody died in the tank attack. Every time they drop down ammo for us.
We spend the whole night there. No food but plenty of ammo. First thing the next morning a South Vietnamese unit is able to break through. An older gentleman with medals up his chest and over his shoulder is the battalion commander, although he is just a captain in rank. He is a good fighter and the real deal. He jumped at Dien Bien Phu with the French.
A sweep of the contact area at daylight reveals that the enemy had fled under the cover of darkness. Two prisoners-of-war carrying important documents were captured during the sweep—one from the 240th NVA Battalion and the other from one of the Main Force Viet Cong Battalions.
I go looking for the NVA soldier behind the banana tree. He is there all right, laying on his stomach. I use my boot to turn him over and his entire mid-section is like Jello. My boot goes four inches into his body before I pull it out. He has a bag with him that I open and find full of medical supplies, even plasma IV bags. This is first class stuff. Inside the bag is a piece of paper stating, “These medical supplies were donated by the Students of Berkeley and Joan Baez.” Boy. I, my RTO and a couple of other soldiers are really pissed when we see that. We give the bag to the company commander to be turned into battalion intelligence and never hear anything more about it.
The total body count is 94 enemy and three soldiers from the 3/506th Infantry KIA. We are pulled out around 10:00 that morning.
A few months later Magouyrk gets the Distinguished Service Cross, the company commander gets a Silver Star, and there are tons of Purple Hearts given out. The company commander put me in for a Silver Star, but I did not receive it that day. Everybody keeps asking me if I got it yet even four months later. I learn later it was approved all the way up through the 101st Airborne Division level, but got killed somewhere back down at Artillery. I don’t know why.
I go out later with the Vietnamese battalion commander who helped rescue us. He wants me to walk point with him. He tells me one day, “This is the safest place because they usually let the point man through an ambush. I want you up here with me.” He has his little map folded up, and he knows exactly where he is all the time. For about a week I walk with him through the Le Hong Phong mountains northwest of Sherry. (Major stretches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through this heavily forested area.)
Notes:
* Hank Parker says the tank that fired on the U.S. forces was ironically the one that had saved Sherry from the ground attack on January 12.
* The Berkeley campus was a hotbed of anti-war protest, with Joan Baez and other notables fanning the flames. However there is no evidence of direct support of the VC or NVA. Baez did join a peace delegation in 1972, under Amnesty International, to bring mail to US POWs in Hanoi. At the same time she was highly critical of the Hanoi communist regime and later of the Chinese communists. She sponsored a number of organizations dedicated to non-violence, and seems to have spread her criticism around equally. If the supplies did originate from Berkeley and Baez, they were most likely meant for humanitarian relief: civilian clinics, POWs, etc. The Viet Cong secured U.S. weapons of all kinds, including Huey helicopters. Filching civilian medical supplies or buying them on the black market was relatively easy. It was perhaps naive to believe they would not find a way into unfriendly hands, but probably not intentional.
