Chuck Monahan – Executive Officer – Part Two

LZ Sherry

 When I got to Sherry in late October of 1968 it was mostly tents. Maybe there were a few hard structures, but it was mostly tents. Willie J. Ridgeway was the battery commander, a pretty easy going guy and a good battery commander. Very soon Captain Gilliam became battery commander, another competent officer I enjoyed working with.

First Sergeant John Farrell was tough, by the book, which I liked. If you didn’t have discipline out there, managing the battery would be difficult. He was forceful, aggressive, and a good First Sergeant.

Sergeant First Class Cerda was Chief of Smoke. He was a seasoned veteran who knew his stuff and was respected by everyone.

During my time at Sherry we had great NCO’s which made life a lot easier for everyone. The gun chiefs and other section chiefs took their responsibility seriously, looked out for and treated their men fairly.

Monahan at LZ Sherry

  January, 1969 Ground Attack

I was the Fire Direction Officer at the time and was in FDC because we were in a fire mission. The tank on our perimeter called in and asked if there were any patrols out. The guy who was on the radio in FDC looked at me and I said, “No, we don’t have anything out there.” So the tank guy came back and said there’s something in the wire. The radio operator said, “Then fuckin’ fire.” It was over as quickly as it started. Saved a lot of lives. I remember walking around seeing all the bodies, especially the body people called Head-and-Shoulders. I remember two guns went out that morning on an operation, and I don’t remember much about the cleanup.

Lieutenant Colonel John Crosby, Battalion Commander, remembers the aftermath:

“I got the report the night of the attack and I went down early the next morning. The Task Force South commander also came down that morning. I took pictures of all the dead VC, their rockets, their AK-47s and other ordnance. We knew that we wiped out the entire sapper unit because the leader had a roster of all the sappers in his loincloth, and so we were able to count the people in his sapper unit, the KIAs and the one guy that was captured. We got ‘em all. We counted them off and every single one of them was laying out in front of us. I think it was 14 KIA.”

Monahan over mortar site

February Loss

The night that LZ Betty got hit (February 22, 1969), Captain Wrazen was supposed to come out the next day to Sherry. I had invited him out to see and visit the guns because he had never been on a firebase.

I used to stay up a lot at night, so after breakfast I used to crash for an hour or so. The First Sergeant came in and woke me up and said, “Your buddy’s not coming out.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “He was killed last night.”

Lieutenant Hank Parker, who took Monahan’s place as forward observer with Delta Company, fought beside Captain Wrazen that night.

“Wrazen tells me to take up a position at the gullies. I rip an M60 machine gun off a jeep and Wrazen tells me where he wants me to go, just down from a bunker he is occupying. I am close to him, maybe ten feet away. He is in the open on the top of a French bunker, a concrete bunker with ports. You got enemy fire and mortars coming in and tracers both green and red flying in all directions. I look over and see his body jerk and then go down. I run over to him and arrive at the same time as First Sergeant Horn and another lieutenant. Wrazen is already dead I think. They get a jeep and take him to the battalion surgeon. I continue on doing what he told me to do securing that part of the perimeter that was in front of the tower with the steep incline in front of it. 

Snakes Beware

In April, six months after arriving at Sherry, 1st Lieutenant Monahan became the battery executive officer, second in command behind the battery commander. His new title did nothing to warn away the local wildlife.

My hooch was a pretty good size hooch. We had three or four people in there, officers and First Sergeant Farrell. One day there were snakes in my bunk. I hated snakes. I always had my .45 pistol with me and I grabbed it and started shooting. It was stupid to do obviously, it could ricochet. I remember Farrell being in the hooch behind me and he had to stop me.

This incident, told so simply by Monahan, has worked its way into the lore of B Battery.

Tom Townley, battery medic:

“Farrell slept in the same hooch with the XO, 1st Lieutenant Monahan. It was the beginning of the wet season, the rainy season, so it must have been around June or July 1969. I remember because that’s about the time I went to the rear. The rain came at 5 o’clock every day, you could count on it. And it rained so hard you could not see. One night Monahan – a big guy – went in his hooch to crawl in bed. We all had mosquito netting, especially during the wet season. He crawls into bed and pulls the mosquito netting around him and feels this movement. He did not know what it was. He pulls back his sheet and there is a six-foot cobra in bed with him. My hooch was next to his, and all I heard was a .45 pistol going off. Boom. Boom. Boom-boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Farrell was there and had to stop him. I don’t think Monahan ever did kill the snake. I don’t remember seeing it afterward, so I don’t think he ever did kill the snake. But he sure put a lot of holes in his bunk.”

The snake incident even made it back to battalion headquarters in Phan Rang, to Lieutenant Colonel John Crosby, who has his own version of the story:

“When I took over the battalion a guy by the name of Farrell was the First Sergeant. Captain Ridgeway was the battery commander, a darn good one. Later on the executive officer was a sharp kid from Boston and had a New England accent big time.

A typhoon with heavy rain came through one night and hit right there at Phan Thiet. LZ Sherry had a little bit of elevation to it, not much, but some. The lower surrounding territory got flooded, and a whole bunch of cobras came from the wet area into the battery.

The XO was in his hooch in his bunk and he felt something hitting him on the rear end, a bump-bump-bump kind of thing. He got out his flashlight and looked at the wall, which was made out of ammo boxes, and he saw this snake’s tail between the ammo boxes. So this kid reaches in there, grabs the snake, pulls it out and it was a cobra. Shocked into action he pulls out his .45 pistol and starts shooting. His hooch mate Sergeant Farrell came in and calmed things down, but Farrell was really afraid of snakes. He just had to look at them and he’d get sick on his stomach.

Six or seven cobras were killed in the firing battery area. None of the snakes were real big. It looked like a whole family that was just born to a mother cobra; her nest got flooded and they all came up into the battery area. That was the excitement for the night.

The next day after the typhoon I went out with a supply of anti-venom serum.”