George Buck – B Battery XO – Part Three
Coelis Imperamus
After Acosta and Donovan died we headed up to Pleiku to the battery headquarters for a few days of rest, maintenance, the PX, a shower and decent hot food. Then it was off to Kontum on Highway 14. We spent a week in Kontum guarding a bridge over a large river. There were compounds housing other units and I think they even had an Officers Club, but we were far too busy to allow any time for recreational activities.
Then we moved down a remote road near Kontum to a Special Forces camp that had a small airstrip and firebase. It was seeing heavy action every night as NVA (North Vietnamese Army) units kept probing and attacking. We were there for perimeter security. I had both Duster crews with me now, and for whatever reason I was given orders separate from my crew to go to Dak To or back to Pleiku, I can’t remember where or why I went, but I know that I did not go with the convoy into the fire base. A day or two later I came in on a chopper.
When I got there I found both Dusters well positioned and able to fire with interlocking fields of fire. Every angle of the firebase was covered by at least one of the Dusters. Another example that Duster crews operated on their own without a lot of instruction, especially when they had good crew chiefs.
At the first briefing with the Special Forces staff the battalion commander wanted to know what our capabilities were. I gave him the details of what the guns could do and recommended a mad minute sometime after midnight when the enemy was most likely to probe the perimeter. I said to him, “We will either catch the enemy and kill dozens of them, or once they see what we have they won’t bother you until we leave. Either way we’ll be a winner.”
The mad minute went off as planned and it was awesome. The two Duster crews aimed to their outside and slowly brought the guns into their interlocking fire zone. All Duster rounds are tracers and when the two Dusters interlocked one shower of tracer rounds hung over the other. All Duster rounds are also timed, so that when the tracer burns out the round explodes in the air and creates flak. The crossing tracers and air explosions made for an impressive display. Remember, these are air defense weapons designed to shoot at planes, point-detonating if they hit the plane, or self-detonating in the air. Dusters were even more effective against ground forces which had no protection against 40 mm shells exploding over their heads.
The next day a constant stream of infantry came over wanting to transfer into Dusters.
Coelis Imperamus –
We Rule the Heavens
Motto of the 60th Duster Regiment
Mysterious Dak To
From Kontum our next stop was Dak To twenty-five miles north, to the site of brutal battles six months earlier when the 173rd Airborne Brigade tried to take a hill occupied by an entrenched and very large unit of NVA regulars. The 173rd took major casualties. The NVA were dug in on high ground and shot from reinforced bunkers, while our infantry crawled up the hill. For me it was a good example of why our “Kill at a Distance” was so important. I would have bombed them, hit them repeatedly all night long with artillery, napalmed them, and kept it up until they died or starved to death. Why risk U.S. soldiers to take a hill that we would abandon a few weeks later just to dig out some NVA?
Our basecamp at Dak To was big, with multiple units, plenty of majors and colonels, and a CIA unit running LRRP teams into who knows where (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols). The same time every afternoon the NVA shot huge 122 mm rockets into the basecamp. The camp was big enough that they only had to point the rockets in our direction and they’d hit something.
After we arrived the first time they launched a rocket at us our gun crews were on the guns, all guns blazing 40 mm cannon fire back at the rocket site. Meanwhile everyone else in the basecamp were hunkered in their bunkers. Later that afternoon at the camp briefing I was asked what we thought we were doing. I said, “When a Duster gets shot at, it shoots back. We are the First to Fire, Last to Leave.” I went a step further. “Sirs, these are FU (Fuck You) Rockets. They shoot from the same spot every day at the same time saying, ‘FU. You can’t do anything about it and until you do the rockets will keep coming.’”
There was artillery at the Dak To camp but they never returned fire. I offered to target for them but nothing came of it. I was there a few more weeks with nothing much to challenge us beyond the rocket activity, which declined over time, maybe because of our return fire. Or maybe they ran out of rockets. That and the senseless casualties of the 173rd made Dak To a mystery to me.
“Home”
After three months I was called back to battery headquarters in Pleiku, promoted to 1st lieutenant, and appointed the battery XO (executive officer). This was a surprise since I was out of my field artillery specialty and now second in command of the entire battery (sixteen Dusters). I wore Field Artillery insignia, not the Air Defense insignia the other battalion officers wore. At some point I think a battalion visitor noticed this and spilled the beans to the battalion commander. I am in this job hardly long enough for a cup of coffee when the battery commander comes to me and says, “We got a problem. You have to go back to Field Artillery.”
I very much enjoyed being a Duster platoon leader and I considered it to be an honor to have served with them. In many respects it was an easy job because all of the crews were self sufficient, fearless in the tub, knew the mission cold, and were truly the first to fire and the last to leave when the action was hot. Every day they put the safety of their fellow soldiers and marines before their own. As a result Duster battalions took the largest number of casualties within the artillery battalions in the Vietnam War. We had a man awarded the Medal of Honor (Sergeant Mitchell Stout held an enemy grenade to his stomach inside a bunker, shielding fellow soldiers).
Still I was an outsider. It was time to go home to Field Artillery and the howitzers for which I was trained.
