REDLEG
During the second half of 1968, I was assigned to a 155mm
Towed Howitzer Battalion. They were
assigned to a Field Artillery Brigade on Artillery Hill near Pleiku, RVN. The good news was they didn't have any
assigned Forward Observer positions. The
bad news was that every so often a tasking would come down from the top of the
hill and being the low man on the Totem Pole, I would gather up two people and
go out on short assignments. Most of
the time there would be a death from "Hostile Fire and I would spend a
week or two until a replacement could be obtained. I had been a Forward Observer in the unit I
went to Vietnam with and had lots of experience calling fire. I had a young Corporal and a PFC that had
gone out three or four times and knew as much as I could teach them.
Most of our operations would start with us flying into an
area by helicopter and the usual meet and greet with a new commander. Most of the time I'm sure he looked at the
skinny, tall and very young Lieutenant and just shook his head.
I would spend a lot of time near the headquarters element for the first
few days and most commanders just watched me like a hawk until I proved I could
read a map and call for fire. I don't
know if it was a test or that there were truly that many guy that got lost a
lot, but several times a day I would be asked to spot our location on the
map. There was even once that I had
the firing battery fire a spotting round to prove I knew where we were. I would have them fire a White Phosphorous
round with a time fuse at a location I
would pick on a map. I would tell the
unit that at the direction I would give them, expect to see a puff of white
smoke. I can't ever remember not having
the round where I predicted. Each
evening, I would fire a defensive target on all four sides of the unit. I would brief the unit commander and made
sure that his defensive plan was all integrated. We generally had a mortar unit from the
Battalion available and the heavy weapons platoon in the company. I never misfired and got my rounds anywhere
near the infantrymen in the company.
Close enough to discourage a ground attack but far enough to now wound
us.
I had been back with a battery and providing them ammunition
from a base near the airport in Ban Me Tout for a couple of weeks. In addition to the ammunition, we made sure
they had C-Rations and at food to cook at least one hot meal a day. There was a need for a couple of water
trailers and all the pop the local PX would let us buy. One thing that always was welcome was the
bags of mail we would send out to the battery.
I had a Sergeant with me that would look through the mail for any for
the men in the detachment with me. Most
of the units we were supporting in the area were from the 4th Division. They wore a diamond shaped patch with four
leaf clovers on them. We wore the First
Field Force patches and the 4th Division MP's left my guys alone. That pretty much gave us free reign to go
where we needed to go when we needed to do it.
It would look a lot like a mini convoy for two or three ammunition
trucks and the Mess truck to go back and forth from the supply point to the
airfield daily. I generally sent one of
the Sergeants with them in my jeep to ride heard on them. For the most part they knew if they screwed
up they would find themselves back on a fire base in the middle of
nowhere.
Dang, it took me three paragraphs to get to where the real
story starts. I guess background isn't
the worse thing. I got a call on the
land line from the 175mm unit we were co-located with. I had a call from my Headquarters in
Pleiku. I went over and after what
seemed like an hour of trying to get a call through, I finally got the
Operations Sergeant from the battalion on the line. He said I was to report back to Pleiku on the
earliest flight I could catch. Being
right on the end of the runway, I basically packed my bag and went over the
airfield. Catching a ride back to Pleiku
was fairly easy as the Air Force had a large base their in Pleiku and a lot of
cargo aircraft from the 4th Division flew pretty much daily sorties. Long story short I got to Pleiku and to my
unit headquarters by nightfall. The S-3
told me that the next day I was to be assigned to a unit of the 3rd Bat, 503rd
Airborne (173rd)down near Saigon. He
gave me one of the few written orders for that assignment as I would have to
travel through the big base near Saigon to make connections. I think it took a couple of days to get to
the headquarters and then to find a helicopter ride out to Company A. That unit had a forward observer who went
home on emergency leave because his dad had a heart attack. He was due back in a week or so, and it was
no big deal to me. There was even a
recon team from the unit with an honest to god E-5 Sergeant and a Spec4 radio
operator. They had been with the unit
for months and were darned good at what they had to do. One of the first things I noticed was that
everyone thought it was funny that I wasn't airborne qualified. I got called leg a lot at first and soon
started making sure that they knew it was Redleg for Field Artillery. It didn't take them long to see I knew my job
and to gain the unit commander's trust.
When I first got to that unit, The Company Commander and I
had a talk. He said that because his
unit has a lot of older soldiers, drinking was a problem. He didn't allow booze in the field. I told him that I had a fifth of scotch in my
ruck sack and I would not break the seal.
He could come over at any time and check to make sure but I would abide
by his rules. I damned sure wasn't going
to pour it out to make him happy. I am
not sure who was listening in on that conversation but it was soon known that I
had a bottle and the bidding began. As
many as five pretty senior NCO's started the bidding at $20.00. Now what the hell was I going to do with
money out in the field? When the bid got
to over $200. it was close as to how much higher I could stand to keep the
bottle. My conscience won out and I did
not drink a drop out in the field.
About the end of the first week, I asked the higher
Artillery Headquarters when their guy was going to get back. They reported that he had just been admitted
to the VA hospital in Wichita and they didn't have a clue. I reminded them that I was not assigned to their
unit and wanted to be replaced as soon as possible. For five more weeks, we were out in the field
playing hide and go seek with the enemy.
I won't get into the details but will tell you that only when I staged
an artillery ambush on a position we had just left did we make any contact at
all. The day after we were resupplied,
the unit commander and I discussed that we were being trailed and could not
quite make contact. I planned a Time on
target with three batteries for about noon that day. As soon as the firing stopped, we sent a
platoon sized element back into the old position. My E-5 Sgt wanted to go so I let him go be my
eyes and ears. He reported that there
were several of the trash pits dug up and obviously we caught a squad sized
element digging through the trash homes looking for food and information. There were no bodies but several pretty large
blood trails out of the position.
The Unit Commander and I discussed what would be a good move
to make. When the report got to our
Battalion Hqs, the decision went right out of our hands. We made a company recon in force and followed
the trail as far and as fast as we could.
Late that afternoon, we found signs of fresh digging and it was pretty
obvious that they were graves. We kept
moving for another hour and left one Platoon to dig up the graves. They
found three bodies and they were all killed by artillery. The bodies had a little information with them
and first light the next day we sent that information to the Battalion S-2 (I
hate to use the words Army and Intelligence in the same sentence but the S-2 is
the Battalion Intelligence Officer) It
appears they were a unit that had pretty much been wiped out during TET and
they were stragglers working their way back to a bigger unit.
During that Day, one of the Aerial Observers in a Bird Dog
called us and reported that there was an enemy convoy of elephants headed down
the valley we were in. Mass jump through
your butt by Battalion and we were deployed on a line across the valley. I spent several hours pre-planning fires to
get an elephant kill. We had a nice rest
and for some reason the AO had to leave and the Helicopter they sent to keep an
eye on things couldn't find the elephants.
Do you know how stupid that made me feel? 200 of
us, the best trained and equipped soldiers in the world couldn't find an elephant
convoy. I think we spent the better
part of the next three days sending out patrols looking but Poof! they were
gone. A couple of months later I was
flying in a bird dog that had an elephant painted on the side of the
cockpit. He had evidently stumbled on
the elephants a week later and when he shot it with a rocket under his wing he
damn near crashed from the explosion. That elephant was obviously carrying a lot of
explosives.
Somewhere near the end of the sixth week, we humped (walked
not fly) into a fire base and I was finally given the word to return to my
unit. I caught a helicopter out of there
and flew to Ahn Khe not too far from Pleiku.
For the life of me, I could not find anyone headed to Pleiku. I was told that the next morning there would
be a convoy and I could catch a ride with them.
Time to break out the scotch. I
had a two quart canteen and it became a 50/50 scotch and water bottle. I nursed about half of it that night and
started on the remainder pretty early the next day. I went over to the convoy traffic control
point and found a truck full of sandbags.
I crawled up in the back and was soon fast asleep. I remember the convoy moving and that we
stopped somewhere down the road. Some MP
was mad as hell that we had left the start point early. He took everyone's name and I promptly forgot
about it.
I finally made it back to my unit and went to the Battalion
headquarters. I met the new commander
and told him that I was damned sure I wasn't the junior Lieutenant in the unit
anymore and I wanted an assignment in a firing battery and priority on the
R&R list. I got both and was soon on
my way to Hawaii to meet my wife and then on to Battery B, 1st Bn, 92nd FA near
DakTo.
MUD, Headed to Hawaii to be with the wife.
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