Alex Taubinger – Forward Observer – Part Seven
Born Again The Hard Way
On an operation just south of Song Mao we find a huge abandoned base camp and tunnel area. it’s a big find. Abrams is with us that day and when the word gets out about the complex a bunch of dignitaries come down: the squadron intelligence officer, a full colonel and a one star general. Abrams has me meet them at the chopper and bring them to the complex. Walking down the same trail we had just walked up I am leading the way and all of a sudden I step into a hole and I see a trip wire just touching my ankle. I say, “Oh shit.”
I freeze. We do not know if this things is live or dead. We call in a guy in who knows how to undo booby traps, a guy I know and the only one I trust, but he is nowhere near us. They bring me a five gallon fuel can to sit on while we wait. My leg is in the ground and I’m trying not to move and drinking one beer after another. It takes him an hour and a half for him to show up and now I’m about 20 sheets gone. He looks and roots around a little and says, “This fuse is all rotted. Pull your foot out.”
I say, “Are you sure?”
He laughs and says, “Yeah, pull your foot out unless you want to sit there the rest of your life.”
After my foot is out I dig around and find the explosive beside the fuse, a 105 mm howitzer shell. I put some C4 on it and blow it in place. I tell Abrams I think I’ve used up my three strikes.
Taubinger exposing land mine, fuse trap on right
It takes us about an hour and a half to get back to our base camp at the base of Titty Mountain, which contained an abandoned Buddhist temple. The chaplain is there setting up for a service. I walk up to him, “Chaplain, can I get a couple of those crosses?” He also gives me a rosary even though I am not Catholic. I tell him, “I’ve just become a born again Christian. I’m gonna start sitting in the front row whenever you show up.”
Turkey Shoot
We got intel one night that there was a North Vietnamese unit coming down through the Lee Hong Fong Forest about four miles south of Song Mao. That morning my platoon headed north with three tanks and four APCs. Each tank had a 50-caliber machine gun mounted on it and an M-240 coaxial machine gun at the turret. (comparable to the M-60 machine gun, but more reliable and also more expensive to manufacture) The APC’s had a 50-caliber and two M-60 machine guns. The whole floor of the APCs were covered two deep in ammo boxes. The tanks had beehive rounds and 90 mm high explosive rounds, plus again the floor was covered with ammo. That was a lot of fire power. You can imagine we didn’t run out of ammo.
When we got near where the NVA were spotted we got off the road and went into the woods for a sweep. When you did a sweep like that you had a tank on each flank. Usually the platoon leader’s tank was in the middle and you had an APC between the tanks on each flank. I told the platoon sergeant, Why don’t you take your tank in the middle, because he had more combat experience with armor than I did, and I’ll take my tank down the right flank up the tree line. He told me to stay in the middle.
Next thing I know we’re getting hit with a ground attack, B-40 rockets and everything else. We let loose with everything we’ve got, and right away I see my platoon sergeant’s tank on the right flank blow up. A B-40 rocket hit it perfectly between the turret and the body of the tank. The driver jumpe out, the tank is in flames, and we cover him to where he can make it to one of the other vehicles. He is the only one to make it out. The gunner, the loader and the platoon sergeant didn’t make it.
We backed off a little bit while I called in the 8 inch guns from LZ Sandy. I had them start the rounds 500 yards out from us and then walk the rounds towards us, all airbursts. I was trying to steer the enemy towards us. We were buttoned up in tanks and APCs, so we were safe from airburst shrapnel, unless a fuse malfunctioned and a round hit one of our vehicles. When the enemy came out of the trees it was almost like a turkey shoot. One guy stood up in front of a tank, he thought he could hurt us by shooting his AK-47. He had to be hopped up on something. The tank gunner said, “Should I smack him with the tube, or open the breech and yell at him?” Instead he just ran over him.
Then they all retreated back into the trees dragging bodies with them. And that was it. The whole engagement lasted a good 20 minutes.
The guy the tank ran over was still alive. While the medics were working on his leg he was sitting up and tried to pull a pistol from his pack. A soldier behind told the medic to move, then put two M-16 rounds in the back of the prisoner’s head, which blew the whole front of his face off. Like I say, he had to be hopped up on something.
My platoon sergeant’s tank burned for days. We had to just let it burn, there was no way to retrieve the bodies. They carried those people as missing in action for a long, long time until it was confirmed. We could not confirm them because we couldn’t see the bodies, so we had to call it in as three MIA. We wanted to pronounce them killed in action, but we were not allowed to.
Night Owl
The whole troop got the Combat Infantry Badge even though we were not infantry. Someone gave the troop a temporary infantry designation for 30 days so they could get the badges. All except me. Abrams wanted to do the same for me because I was part of the unit, to the point of acting as a platoon leader. I even went on nighttime ambushes because Abrams wanted a forward observer with them, so much they gave me the nickname Night Owl. But it was not in his jurisdiction.
4th of July
Fourth of July Abrams’ whole troop is parked a little north of Titty Mountain on the sand dunes. He brings up the subject: Be nice if we saw some fireworks. I look for a reason for a fire mission, and maybe I see lights moving on the side of Titty Mountain. I call into Sherry for illumination rounds, white flairs bursting high in the air and drifting down on little parachutes. And now maybe I see Viet Cong running for cover, so I bring LZ Sandy into the mission with airbursts of high explosive, and have Sherry shoot airburst white phosphorous along with continuing illumination. Now we’ve got our fireworks! Abrams says, “This is nice. It’s not like back home, but it’ll do.”
John Abrams retired a four star general, no small feat given his lack of a West Point pedigree. His older brother, Creighton Abrams III, retired a one star brigadier general. The youngest brother, Robert Abrams, is a three-star lieutenant general now serving in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is the only one of the four Abrams generals, including the famous father, to have attended West Point.
