George Buck – B Battery XO – Part Seven
All About Defense
From his eight months in the field, in isolated and vulnerable locations, Lieutenant Buck learned that half the battle of staying alive was being smart about his perimeter. Kill-at-a-Distance started with keeping the enemy on the other side of the wire.
Four months as XO at LZ Sherry and Colonel Crosby brought me back to battalion headquarters at Phan Rang as assistant S2, the department that handles intelligence duties for the battalion. Then he also made me the acting S2, which is the top battalion intelligence officer and a captain slot, because he had no one else at the time. In the morning briefing for Colonel Crosby I would go over the situation reports that came in overnight and anything that went on in the batteries or at the Phan Rang Air Base.
One of the first things I noticed was the porous Phan Rang Airbase perimeter. When I say the perimeter was porous I swear that I could sneak through the wire and get inside almost anywhere, especially in the remote areas of the airbase. Why we never got attacked always surprised me. By now I was a perimeter schizo and suggested we provide some guidance to the airbase on beefing up security. This is how I got into flying the Phan Rang perimeters looking for enemy activity. I hooked up with an Army captain who was a fixed wing pilot and every day around lunch time we flew around looking for enemy activity.
First Lieutenant Buck and his pilot
Flying made me a bit nervous, with good reason. Earlier on a helicopter assault against an NVA force the rotor of my chopper caught the top of a pine tree and down we went right on top of the enemy position. I jumped out and ran up the hill, which I realized was the wrong direction when I saw dead NVA on the ground. Down the hill I found friendlies, along with lots of casualties. On another occasion I was on a twin engine C-123 transport plane out of Phan Thiet with a unit of Australian Special Forces and both engines failed within minutes of take off. The plane glided silently in a big U turn over the South China Sea and crash landed back at Phan Thiet. A third time I had a chopper loose its engine high in the air and start to drop like a rock. It went into auto rotate to slow our decent and keep from killing everyone on board.
I felt I was running out of luck with flying and here I was now in a little single engine L19 Bird Dog surrounded by F4 Phantom jets launching out in front of us and landing behind us. When landing you had to immediately turn off the runway onto the grass to avoid being run over by a Phantom or a Super Sabre that was just seconds behind you. It was a bit nerve wracking.
There is a principle in aviation that large jets and small planes do not mix. The back blast of a jet engine can flip a small plane on the ground or blow it out of the air.
Call It A Draw
When we got up in the air we would fly the perimeter, along the coastal plain and up into the foothills. The L19 had two white phosphorus rockets which we could shoot to mark a target, and then the captain would call his Air Force buddies to drop any bombs they might have left over from a mission.
The wing rockets had no targeting system so the pilot had to go into a power dive and aim the nose of the plane at the target and let the rockets fly. On these power dives I had breathing problems and frankly they scared the crap out of me. But the pilot loved them and sometimes he would throw in a reverse barrel roll while he was at it. Usually on these missions we did nothing more than scare some Viet Cong, except when a jet had some bombs left over and needed to drop them. However I liked saving the bombs for bunker complexes in the hills around the air base.
On one flight I saw VC swimming in a salt pond called Womb Lake. When they heard our plane throttle down they went stationary in the lake so that their heads looked like stumps. The captain couldn’t find any Air Force jets with spare bombs so we decided to fire our two white phosphorus rockets at them just to let them know they were spotted. The captain took the L19 up higher and went into a power dive straight at Womb Lake and the VC, who now were out of the water and scattering.
As we launched our rockets the VC shot back at us with their rifles. At the bottom of the dive you are only a few hundred feet off the ground, and as you start back up you are not going that fast and are vulnerable, but we never got hit. Final tally: VC zero, good guys zero.
High over Womb Lake
with empty rocket tubes
A Great Way To End
It never dawned on me at the time but I was the only lieutenant on the battalion staff. The captain who flew the L19 was a really nice guy and the only person at Phan Rang who was close to my rank. We became friends and he was the only one I can say that about for my entire tour. I was always alone – as a Duster platoon leader, or as a forward observer with troops I’d be with for a few days and never see again, or even at Sherry when I was mostly out on airmobile hip shoots. Fortunately I had no problem meeting people and getting acquainted, but it was still a lonely one year period.
My pilot buddy had a fiancé who was a nurse at Cam Rahn Bay. One weekend she came over to see him and brought her best friend with her to be my date. She was a nurse too and a first lieutenant like me. My own fiancé had dumped me back in the summer, so I was free and clear. The four of us went up to the Phan Rang Officers Club for dinner. I was more nervous than being in a firefight, I was so out of touch with how to act around a nice lady. We had a lot of laughs and a really good time. My only regret was I would be leaving in a week and there would be no opportunity for a follow up date. This was a great way to end a harrowing year of many ups and downs. It broke the bondage of isolation and I felt a sense of renewal.
Looking Back
I can’t think of a more unscripted and decentralized job in Vietnam than being a Duster lieutenant. We were platoon leaders, but our crews were spread out and rarely together, so we had to be with the crews we could assist the most. As my two Dusters moved from mission to mission I had to improvise, since I had never been trained in Dusters and the battalion span of control was far too dispersed for anyone to supervise my actions. My crews became totally self sufficient; they operated on their own and coordinated seamlessly with other crews.
I recently spoke to the chaplain who had come out for the memorial service for Acosta and Donovan, the two men blown up in my jeep on Highway 19. He was a young lieutenant too at that time. He traveled all over II Corp visiting Duster crews and conducting services for the troops, but most of these travels were either by himself or with someone from the battery. It was difficult to get any other battalion officer to come out to the field to make visits, “show the flag”, and give the troops some love. At least that was my impression, since the only battalion person I ever met was the chaplain. It seemed to me that they were concerned about getting killed or wounded, since Dusters and Quad-50s were prime targets and routinely took heavy casualties. Maybe this independence was a blessing in disguise, because we had no choice but to survive on our own.
I will say this, those four months in Dusters shaped my thinking and behavior as a junior combat officer. I became a perfect fit for my next assignment to non-U.S. forces as an FO and advisor. I had the combat experience, I was used to being on my own, and I had learned to improvise and execute my own plans the way I saw fit. This also served me well as B Battery XO in the 5/27, especially on hip shoots which were lot like Duster missions and seemed like a natural way to run an air mobile operation. Move, shoot and communicate.
