Jim Blaydes – Gun Crew – Part One
The Boys of Bardstown, Kentucky
Jim began his military career with an artillery battalion of the Kentucky National Guard. Its individual batteries were made up largely of boys from a single community. They enlisted with school friends and often sibling brothers under the promise they’d stay together as a unit. Jim joined B Battery out of Elizabethtown, while a young man who would become Jim’s best friend signed up with C Battery in Bardstown.
Charlie Battery is a good example of the chunk of young men the National Guard could take from a small community. Of its 117 recruits, 105 were from Bardstown, a community of less than 6,000.
When the battalion activated for Vietnam both Bravo and Charlie Batteries found themselves together on a mountain at Firebase Tomahawk southeast of Hue. Charlie Battery occupied a plateau just below the forested top of the mountain, while 22 infantrymen of the 101st Airborne Division, standing down from fighting in the much contested Ashau Valley and looking forward to the amenities of a firebase, guarded the perimeter facing up toward the forest. Jim’s Bravo Battery encamped further down the hill.
This was North Vietnamese Army country, and the Kentucky boys were giving the NVA fits. From FB Tomahawk the two batteries had a commanding view of the surrounding country, and with their twelve 155 mm howitzers could reach targets eleven miles away.
The NVA prepared its attack on Charlie Battery for several months, even constructing a mock firebase for practice attacks. They struck in the early morning hours on June 20, 1969 during monsoon season. The NVA massed 150 sappers in the woods above Charlie Battery, and at 1:45 AM in the pouring rain 75 of them, clad only in loin cloths and skull caps, and loaded with satchel charges and RPGs (shoulder rockets), began slithering through the concertina wire. When they were well into the wire their comrades opened up a mortar attack. The sappers overran the 101st infantry perimeter guard, killing four and wounding 13 of them on their way into the compound followed by the rest of their force. They dropped satchel charge down the howitzer tubes and into bunkers; they fired RPGs and AK-47 rounds everywhere
Cobra gunships and other air support took an hour getting to Tomahawk due to weather. Jim’s Bravo Battery lobbed illumination rounds over Charlie while the remainder of the 101st fought hand-to-hand and in close quarters. Eventually the Cobra gunships and Spooky’s fearful Gatling guns arrived and forced the enemy to retreat, leaving behind 27 dead and one POW. The attack lasted two hours and almost entirely destroyed the compound: buildings, ammo storage, bunkers, trucks and howitzers.
The morning after at Tomahawk
Charlie Battery lost ten dead and forty-five wounded. Five of the dead and most of the wounded were Bardstown boys; two more died of their wounds within the month. The attack took an eighth Bardstown resident when the mother of two boys injured in the attack killed herself with a shotgun upon hearing the news.
Vietnam took a total of 17 young men from Bardstown, giving it the highest casualty rate of any community in the U.S.
The attack on FB Tomahawk occurred when the original crop of Kentucky boys were near the end of their tour. An Infusion Program was underway to gradually rotate green troops in while sending seasoned troops to other artillery units in order to smooth the transition. Following the losses on June 20 the Army accelerated the process in order to avoid further heavy losses to a single community. A month and a half later just a quarter of the original battalion remained.
* The account of the attack on Firebase Tomahawk relies heavily on KENTUCKY THUNDER IN VIETNAM: History of the 2nd Battalion, 138th Field Artillery in the Vietnam War 1968 – 1969 by John M. Trowbridge, and to a smaller degree on THE SONS OF BARDSTOWN by Jim Wilson.
In His Own Words
Jim Blaydes – on his first day in Vietnam
When the battalion was activated for Vietnam there was a lot of brothers in the unit. They had the option of one brother going and one staying, but they all said, If my brother’s going I’m going too. There was about ten or twelve of them.
We had 155 mm self-propelled howitzers with 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the turret. I was on Gun 6 and we had her named Bullwinkle.
Jim in his 50 caliber machine gun turret
In background another 155 self propelled howitzer
The 155 mm self-propelled howitzer had a crew of six men. They fired the weapon from inside the vehicle.
For the first few months in Vietnam my battery moved around to different firebases around Hue. Then we settle down at a barren bump called Tomahawk Hill supporting the 101st Airborne Infantry and shooting about 200 rounds a night. We didn’t get mortared every night like down at LZ Sherry, I think because we had the 101st Airborne on our perimeter.
The 155 mm howitzer shell weighted almost 100 pounds, so heavy you needed a mechanical ramrod to lift and set them into the breach. Well there was a little guy on my gun about five nine, weighted 190 pounds, he was just a stump and had really big arms. Instead of using the mechanical ramrod this guy would curl a round in his left arm and take the palm of his hand and seat that sucker with his bare hands … I still remember the sound … shuck. We’d stick the powder in there, slam the breech and shoot. We were shooting six rounds a minute, twice the usual rate and so fast the barrel would heat up and start to cook off rounds (fire when the breech closed) and we’d have to quit, let it cool down awhile. Nobody else in my battery could do that. Some of the forward observers, if they were pinned down, were calling for SIX ROUNDS HE (high explosive) GUN 6. They’d call back with body counts and December of 1968 Gun 6 got 35 confirmed kills by itself.
Firebase Tomahawk sat on a mountain top right on the China Sea. C Battery was on a plateau on the side of the mountain because the top of the mountain was wooded. My B Battery was stationed at the base of Tomahawk. Still it was elevated ground and from up there we could shoot maybe ten or twelve miles.
The North Vietnamese came over the top of the mountain through those woods. The 101st when they came in from patrol had put defensive posts up there along with concertina wire. Well they thought they were on R&R at the firebase, drinking beer and not paying attention. The sappers killed or wounded just about everybody before they even got to the firebase. There were three or four gooks sitting above the firebase shooting RPGs into the howitzers, like ducks in a pond.
We shot illumination rounds up above the attack from 1 o’clock in the morning when they came in, to about 3:00. They were in the perimeter for two hours. They blowed up four of the six howitzers, put satchel charges down the barrel. One they pulled the door shut with everyone inside and fired an RPG into it, and everyone inside got fried.
They next morning I got sent up to get the howitzers that would still run, there were just two. The ground was still smoking and the bodies of NVA dead were piled on the ground, close to thirty of them, and that didn’t count the ones they carried off. The NVA had destroyed everything but the FDC bunker (Fire Direction Control): all of the five ton trucks, all of the deuce and a halves, all of the quarter tons, all of the jeeps, all of the equipment on the mountain. No telling how many satchel charges they had (reports estimate the number of satchel charge explosions at 150). It was a mess.
My best friend in basic training was killed that night up there with Charlie Battery. Ronald Simpson was a high school football star, weighted about 210 and not an ounce of fat on him. He jumps up on that 50 caliber machine gun on top of the howitzer track and starts blowing those fuckers out of the wire. He was a big target and got killed by an RPG. They told me Ron held them off for about ten minutes. He was a tough guy.
There were ten guys killed that night, five of them from Bardstown, Kentucky. That was about the time my nightmares started.
Let me tell you something about Charlie Battery. The other batteries were envious of them because they were sitting up there overlooking the beach and the South China Sea. They had housekeepers and maids taking care of their hooches and washing their cloths. They had not been hit in six months, no mortars no nothing and living the life of Riley. They had not been out in the boonies moving around to all them firebases like the rest of us had – A and B Batteries. Their security was not that good and when the attack first hit I don’t think they even knew where their weapons were. Others might have a different story, but that’s just my opinion.
Eyewitness accounts from 101st Infantry participants confirm that the artillerymen of Charlie Battery were ill prepared to defend themselves. Most died and were wounded inside their bunkers or trapped in their tracked vehicles.
After that the brass were worried about having so many guys from a little town in one battery and began infusing us into different units. I was one of the last to get infused, which is how I ended up at LZ Sherry.
