Alex Taubinger – Forward Observer – Part Five
Part Five
Sometimes You Shouldn’t Advertise
We were working a mission with the RFPFs (Regional Forces and Popular Forces, sometimes called Ruff-Puffs) and just doing a grid sweep. We came to this village and somebody says, “Look at all those rockets hanging on top of that house.” Apparently the owner was proud he had a weapons cache in his basement. It looked like he was advertising.
House with rockets on roof
There were only women and children around. One of the Vietnamese, the guy with the baseball hat in the middle of the picture, pulled out a pistol and put it against a little kid’s head and started talking to him. He then fired a round next to the kid’s head that could easily have broke his eardrum. Now you could not shut the kid up.
Under the house we found hundreds and hundreds of rockets, grenades, you name it. It was a Viet Cong weapons cache, all brand new U.S. ammo and other stuff from North Vietnam. On one of the boxes you can see in the picture says 15 ROCKETS ANTITANK.
Stolen U.S. ammo
We started taking sniper fire so I called in artillery from LZ Betty. During the mission I did something I wasn’t supposed to do, I moved around while adjusting fire instead of staying put at a fixed point. In the middle of the firing I got a call from Outpost Nora, where B Battery had two guns on a mobile operation. They said they had been following the mission and wanted in on the action. I said, OK but first I want a smoke round. The smoke round came in 100 yards long and instead of bursting in the air landed between me and a Vietnamese lieutenant standing 20 yards away. It bounced off a rice paddy dyke and then burst. That’s a good example of why you always shot a smoke round first if you could. I instructed Nora to “DROP 100” and called for high explosive with an airburst. The first volley was on target, and before the second volley could come in I got a call saying they’d had a misfire and were canceling the mission. I think that was the day the gun blew up at Nora.
The mishap at Nora that day, killing Sgt. Johnson and PFC Handshumaker, was due to a faulty batch of time fuses used to create airbursts.
How a Helmet Works
Another Captain K incident, one that proved his undoing. We were in a village right at the base of Titty Mountain. We were working with the South Vietnamese again and our joint mission was to pacify and secure the village.
Note: A year earlier General Creighton Abrams succeeded Westmoreland as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Westmoreland ran the war using search-and-destroy tactics with an emphasis on enemy attrition. Abrams pursued a very different clear-and-hold strategy, focused on winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. He separated American forces into small units that lived with and trained civilians to defend their villages. Abrams also devoted vastly more time than his predecessor to expanding, training and equipping the South Vietnamese Army.
We had a MACV major with us and were all invited to lunch with the village chief. The major told me to get drunk first. I asked why and all he would say was, “If you don’t eat it’ll piss them off, and you do not want to piss off a village chief. To eat whatever’s put in front of you you’re gonna want to be drunk.”
I see them preparing ducks and I think we’re getting duck a l’orange or something. They bring out our plates with duck heads and duck feet on them. You were supposed to suck on them. Fortunately we got the rest of the duck a little later.
We spend the night there in one of his orchards. The next day around mid-morning we get a call from Titty Mountain saying there’s a whole group of VC coming toward the mountain. We have a jeep with us, so Captain K says, “Taubinger get your radio man. Let’s go. We’re going to attack.” It is all sand duns in that area. We jump in the jeep with a mounted machine gun and take off. The radio operators up on Titty Mountain are telling us which way to go. I get on the radio and talk to our guys up there, guys I know and usually talk to. I say, “You see me in the back of the jeep?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep an eye on me, because if I get killed I want you to write me up really good.”
They say, “What are you guys doing? There’s at least 30 of them out there.”
When I tell Captain K he says, “If it’s a platoon or less we’re going to dismount and charge them. If it’s more than a platoon we’re gonna drive through them.”
All of a sudden the jeep stops, stuck in the sand, and we have a flat tire. We’re up on top of a hill, and the guy I’m talking to up on Titty tells me the VC are only about 100 yards away in the scrub brush, but they’re not coming at us. My radio guy, Eddie Sandoval, and I start digging a hole. We pull the sand bags out of the jeep, pile them up, straighten the pins on our hand grenades, and dismount the machine gun. Captain K is yelling at his driver to fix the tire. The spare is flat, plus there is no way to jack up the jeep in the sand. Captain K gets on the radio to the rear for a resupply helicopter to bring out a tire. This is June 5, 1969.
Blackhawk hears this, the battalion commander. Apparently the VC don’t think we’re worth it and they go off. About an hour later Blackhawk lands. He calls Captain K over and says, “Here’s your tire.” Then he looks at me and says, “You’re in charge until I get a new company commander. I’ll have one by tomorrow if not tonight.” Our job was to pacify the village, not go out with a handful of guys in a jeep after an unknown number of VC. I suspect the word about Captain K had gotten up through the ranks to Blackhawk, and this incident of poor judgment was the last straw.
We somehow get the tire onto the jeep and go back to the village. Right away I send out a couple of clover leaf patrols (reconnaissance pattern in multiple directions around a central point, thus mimicking a clover leaf). One of the patrols observes the enemy setting up rockets aimed in our direction. They are setting up the big boys, the 120 mm mortars aimed right down in our direction, along with 210 mm rockets (over eight inches in diameter). The coordinates are at a crossroads with four buildings showing on the map, but I know they are not there anymore. I call in for an artillery strike and am told we could not shoot because of the buildings. I call back with a map correction that there are no buildings there anymore, but they won’t buy it. I’m almost in tears because I know what’s going to happen.
I start calling all over the place. The province chief is the only one who can give us permission. A Vietnamese officer tells me he is with some whore and not to be disturbed. So I say, “Fine, OK, but if we get hit I’m gonna kill somebody.” At midnight we get hit … hard … I see tracers going through the poncho which we were using for a makeshift roof over our fox hole. They hit you first with mortars, then rockets, and finally a ground attack. There is a beer sitting on the hood of the jeep. I grab it, guzzle it down, throw on my helmet and run over to a nearby rock wall. The nighttime listening posts I have out call in saying they are being surrounded. We need artillery support but nobody will shoot for us because we are in a village; all I can get is illumination. A mortar company of the 3/506 is right down the street from us. They say they’ll shoot for us, and start lobbing four-deuces (4.2 inch mortars).
While I am directing fire I get hit, I think in the back. It gives me a kind of whiplash and knocks my helmet off. I pick up my helmet and go back to pat my back where it hurts a little bit and my hand comes away all bloody. Doc Williams the company medic is right behind me and I say, “Doc, did I get hit?”
He says, “Get down or else you will.” I guess I am standing a little too high while adjusting the mortar fire.
The whole sky is lit up like daylight. We see only VC running around out there, and we’re starting to cut them down with the mortars. A Vietnamese lieutenant tells me they’ve got artillery right down the road and I say, “Why the hell aren’t you firing it for us?” The Vietnamese can do things we can’t and I know they have no problem firing into a village. He calls in the fire mission and after about half an hour we are able to silence the mortars and small arms.
Around 9:00 that night Hank Parker calls me. “Alex, where are you?” I tell him where I am and he says, “Yeah, you’re right up the road from me. By the way, if you hear some shooting, come down here and get me.” He is not too far away, two villages maybe.
I say, “What do you mean?”
“I’m in a bar with a bunch of Vietnamese, and the VC who kicked our ass today just came in for a victory party.”
The next morning I look at my helmet and see two bullet holes on one side and two more 180 degrees on the other side. The rounds had gone in one side, traveled around the helmet between the steel pot and the helmet liner, and out the other side. The helmet did what it was supposed to do. The blood I saw on my hand the night before must have been from a jagged piece of medal when I reached around to feel my back.
Taubinger helmet with bullet holes
A machine gunner also got hit in the helmet. The bullet hit right in the front of his helmet, went through everything and straight out the back, leaving a nice red streak across the top of his head.
We found out we had been up against over 200 Viet Cong, maybe as many as 300. We found well over 20 blood trails from them dragging off bodies. The nighttime listening posts had been surrounded all night, scared shitless the whole time. There are no U.S. casualties, but one Vietnamese soldier was killed and a couple wounded early in the attack. They were sleeping in hammocks, while the Americans were dug in underground. (South Vietnamese soldiers often slept in hammocks instead of foxholes.)
That morning a first lieutenant comes down with Blackhawk as the new company commander. He gets his captain’s bars a couple days later. The machine gun operator, my radio man and I go back that day to base camp at Betty. While I’m waiting for my extraction helicopter I call Hank. “You never called me for help.”
He says, “I bought a round and we’re all friends now.”
On the helicopter the machine gunner and I have our helmets on our laps. We look at each other and we’ve both got tears in our eyes. We were that close to dying.
I go into Betty, get a new helmet, and that is it. I wish I would have kept the old helmet, but I didn’t want it then.
That afternoon I go out to an armored cavalry troop to be their FO. The troop commander is Captain John Abrams, son of General Creighton Abrams.
