Dick Graham – PLL Clerk – Part Three
Shower and a Shave
In the collection of pictures Dick brought back from Vietnam is this sorry field shower. The best commentary for it comes from Dick’s good friend and crew chief, Rik Groves.
“You are looking at a marvel of GI craftsmanship of the highest order and a product of real genius in the American artillerymen of 1968-69! It offered solar heating of shower water . . . way ahead of its time, I might add, and was constructed of the highest quality material that the United States government could provide. In addition, it was eco-friendly . . . consisting of re-purposed materials in keeping with our concern for the environment which would come later. Finally, no animals were harmed in the making of this shower.
“It stood and served us well near the Gun #2 parapet at LZ Sherry. Upon closer inspection I’m surprised I allowed such a sloppy area around the shower, what with all the jerry cans laying about. This photo must have been taken late in my tour when my attention to detail was flagging.” (Rik Groves in an email)
Of almost equal genius was this shaving stand that Dick built from recycled ammo boxes, complete with shaving mirror.
Hilarious
I had five different battery commanders over the fourteen months I was at Sherry. I don’t remember their names or any specifics about their tenure. However, one of them brought in a Korean band and strippers one Sunday, as we were taking a lot of casualties and the morale was pretty low. They also allowed in prostitutes as a morale booster. Starting the next day guys were going to the latrine and just screaming because they all got gonorrhea. It was hilarious for me, not so much for them.
Not so hilarious was the brush growing outside our perimeter, which was getting pretty bad. It was a hazard because it was too easy for VC to sneak up on us. They tried to get people to come in and spray Agent Orange but it could not be arranged. We ended up burning it. Then of course what happened was all those varmints living out there came to the middle, which was where we were living. We had tons of snakes and rats and mice, you name it we had it. We had to deal with them for a couple weeks as I recall. We shot some of them, we set traps for others. The traps would go off all night and I remember having to reload the traps more than once before morning.
Promotion … To the Motor Pool
Sometime in August about half way through my tour, Top asked me to be a PLL clerk assigned to the motor pool. I think that the reason that I was selected was that I was one of the few college graduates at Sherry who wasn’t an officer. I don’t remember what PLL stood for, just that my job was going to be to order parts for the entire battery.
PLL stood for Prescribed Load List, military jargon for the items that each unit should have in its inventory. A PLL clerk ordered and managed repair parts, dispatched parts and equipment, and maintained all relevant records thereof.
I went back to battalion headquarters in Phan Rang for some training, though it wasn’t much. At Sherry I had an office, sort of, in a hooch and it was a mess. I don’t know if anyone did the job of a PLL clerk before I started. The hooch was a disaster. I tried to clean it up, and I’m pretty good at organizing. I suspect I may have been the first one to hold that job.
I had a hooch mate who was a Mormon and drove me nuts. I nicknamed him the preacher. He didn’t drink beer, he wouldn’t swear. Looking back it was a great testament to who he was and his faith, but he drove me nuts with his holier-than-thou attitude: “I don’t do this, and I don’t do that.” But he was a good mechanic and a good electrician, and he did a good job of maintaining the generators.
The maintenance sergeant was my boss and a great guy. He was a career soldier, I think on his third tour in Vietnam. He had been up and down the ranks. He said he got up to E-7 Sergeant First Class and then got busted down. He was an E-6 Staff Sergeant when I knew him.
He was amazing when it came to making due. We always had trouble getting brake master cylinders for our trucks.
When the brake pedal is pushed, the brake master cylinder located inside the wheel assembly uses hydraulic pressure to push a brake pad up against the rotating brake drum.
I would order master cylinders and they would send us handbrakes, even though we always looked carefully to make sure I was ordering the right number part. We did that continuously, but still had a problem getting master cylinders. And it was just as impossible getting brake fluid. A lot of the time the only brake we had driving our trucks was the handbrake. I remember the maintenance sergeant driving the truck, down shifting, and using the handbrake to stop. Without new master cylinders, he would take a tire inner tube and with pocket knife he’d make a brake pad for the old master cylinder, and then he’s use diesel fuel for brake fluid, which over time would eat through that rubber. Whatever worked!
The rear area didn’t have any problem at all getting parts. Their trucks always looked great, ran great. Out in the field we couldn’t get parts of any kind. A good part of the time our guns probably should not have been used, we called it red lining. They should have been redlined because of cracks in the barrels, but you couldn’t get them. During an inspection someone complained to a visiting general about not being able to get gun barrels and other parts. Shortly after that we were able to get them, and pretty much everything we needed.
One of our jobs in motor pool was to set the trip flares down at the main gate every night. One night I was setting the flares and one of the damn things went off in my hand. White phosphorous! My hand got really charred. I think everyone in Sherry unit could hear me swearing. I ran up to the medic and he put a huge amount of salve on my hand and wrapped it. You know that today I do not even have a scar there.
Dick in middle with bandaged hand
