Mike Lindquist – Duster Section Chief

Mike and Jim Logan were in Non-Commissioned Officer school together and together deployed to Vietnam, ending up in the same 4/60th battalion, Jim on Quad-50s and Mike on Dusters.

Five of us made staff sergeant out of NCO school. It was amazing. I was only in the Army at that time eleven months. (It typically took five years to become an E6 staff sergeant.)

My first duty assignment in Vietnam was at LZ Sherry. I went there to fill in for the section chief, Staff Sergeant Twyman, who had re-upped for another tour in Vietnam and was going on a month leave to the states. I flew into LZ Sherry on a chopper in the middle of January, 1970 and my first reaction was how dusty the place was. And hot. I couldn’t believe it.

I remember landing at Sherry and seeing the sign made of mortar tail fins. Sergeant Twyman met me at the chopper pad and showed me where a round had landed. It was no more than twenty-five feet away from our ammo bunker, which was right next to the track. I thought, “Oh boy, what am I getting into?”

4/60th Yearbook Photo – 1970

I was at Sherry for six weeks. During my stay we were frequently mortared and we pumped out a lot of firepower many nights. When a mortar round went off, the guy who was on watch would holler INCOMING. Our job was to respond with Duster fire immediately. We’d all race to the Duster, jump into the tub and if we had a sense of where the initial mortar came from, and that was usually from the person who heard the round come out of the tube, we would just start opening up on that point. We would fire ten to twenty rounds, then stop and sit there for another hour. If there was no more activity we would stand down.

You never knew when this was going to happen. My sense was that Charlie was just trying to keep us awake and trying to wear us down. I became a very light sleeper, with one ear awake. Fortunately no one was hurt on our tracks, however several in the gun battery were wounded.

On Reflection …

The craziest and maybe the stupidest thing that I did, one day the XO (executive officer) of the battery came over and said, “We’re getting reports that there’s activity outside the fence, and we want you to go take a look with your Dusters.”

Being new in country and trying to please an officer I said, “We can do that but I got to get permission from my lieutenant,” who was at LZ Betty. I called him on the radio and told him the situation and got the XO from the gun battery on. My lieutenant said to take the recon out and look around, so I followed orders.

I got the two Dusters going and put the XO on the M-60 machine gun mounted on top. Normally I would be on the machine gun, but I said to the XO, “You man the M-60, and I’m going to be on the other side of the tub.” I had fairly quick hands, so I could load the shells fast, and I could direct fire from that position as well.

We went out five or six hundred yards and spent about an hour riding around. Nothing happened, but I thought about it later: Boy, that was really, really dangerous. We were out there all by ourselves. We did not have any support from the standpoint of ground troops or choppers, nothing. If Charlie had been around with a rocket propelled grenade, we would’ve been in trouble.

The identity of the battery XO is unknown, but it fits 1st Lieutenant Rudewiec. He was always looking for a fight, and when there wasn’t action at hand he manufactured something. It would have been very much in character for him to go out to a Duster and say, “Boys, we got activity. Saddle up.” And no place would have suited him better than behind the M-60 machine gun.

Things Could Only Get Better

I was glad when Twyman came back from the states. Beyond the barbecues I don’t remember any fun times at Sherry. I just remember being dirty all the time and dusty. We provided convoy escort to LZ Betty once, and it was hot and dusty all the way there and all the way back. I was very glad to get the hell out of that hot and dusty hellhole!

On the positive side it made me appreciate my next assignments. From Sherry I went up west of Cam Rahn Bay to Firebase Freedom. Once again I took over for the section chief who had re-upped and gone home for a month. Firebase Freedom was much quieter than Sherry. I enjoyed it tremendously, because I’m a hands on guy and we had to build hooches. Us ten or eleven guys were busy filling sandbags and building hooches day in and day out, and we didn’t have to worry about mortars too much. I was there five or six weeks, similar to Sherry, and I certainly enjoyed it there. You could go to the PX for booze or to shop, then jump in the South China Sea. It was almost like a vacation of sorts. But I did wish I could get my own section instead of replacing guys on leave.

From Firebase Freedom I went northwest to Buon Ma Thuot, to a pretty large firebase with two Duster sections. We were on one side of the firebase, and on the other side was another Duster section headed by Duane Skidmore. He was also in NCO school with me and Jim Logan, so we were close and had a lot in common. Duane went to Cambodia for the May 1970 invasion, but I stayed back. Later I went toward Cambodia, but not into it. Again at Buon Ma Thuot things were fairly quiet. I think we received incoming once.

I remember only one piece of excitement. We had to get more fuel and took the Dusters to a fuel dump several miles away guarded by the Vietnamese. We had backed into place and I had gotten off the track and was talking to another fellow when I noticed a fire had started up on the other side of my Duster. The Duster tub was loaded with live ammunition, five hundred rounds of Duster shells along with M-60 machine gun ammo. I hollered to MOVE THE TRACK, but they didn’t hear me. I ran toward the track and somehow or other I landed on top of the back deck. It’s high and I somehow landed flat footed on the deck. The guys on the track looked at me like I was Superman. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and said, “Get this track the hell out of here.” I jumped off toward the fire and was able to get it out. I don’t know how I made the leap but I was able to launch myself. I was a pretty good athlete in high school and I guess being 22 at the time also helped.

Mike still in good shape,
showing where he landed flatfooted 45 years earlier