March
1967, "No Dead Hero's" that's the first thing I heard
,
after we touched down incountry. Our orders were for Que Nhon Air Base,
part way "Up Country". There a C-123 flew us a short hop north
to Phu Cat. The base was under construction with no permanent runway's,
only a couple of hundred yards of PSP.
After some orientation,
and accelerated night training during our first month, orders were cut
for us to head down south. Attached to the orders were a thirty day
TDY diversion to Biên Hòa. More OJT, this time off base patrols, a little
taste of search and destroy. The lucky ones dropped out as we
covered the area, setting up for a Tiger Patrol (night time ambush).
At the end of
May, we arrived PCS at Tan Son Nhut, Air Base. The second thing I
heard when we arrived in-country, was CMH does not stand for "Congressional
Medal of Honor, " it stands for "Coffin Metal Handles. "
Alpha Sector
at TSN Air Base is the most remote sector. It is the locus of the bomb
dump and firing range. It is the largest geographic sector, and has
the longest mined outer-perimeter. Charlie Flight was the coolest duty
literally -- from sundown to sunrise, none of the unbearable heat of
the day. Those of us who were Caucasian could be identified as Charlie
Flight, by the conspicuous absence of a tropical tan.
It's sunrise
January 30th, 1968: Tet.We
are relieved of duty by the Coppertone Commandos, (a nickname
we jokingly used for the day shift). Time for a couple of beers to loosen
up, get some rack-time then do it all over again -- another day down
the tubes.
Sometime between
1030 and 1100 hours
I'm rousted from the sticky day-heat sleep. I'm shaking off the sleep
as everyone in the barracks is woken one after another quietly, and
in hushed tones the words "We are in condition red" are spoken.
Condition Red is exclusive, and specific to combat readiness. It is
understood attack is, or attack is imminent with no other options, and
no questions, only reflexes.
A momentary flash
disbelief and excitement goes through me as I tie the spider-lacing
of my boots. I then recall a few months back in late October:
I'm humping
a bunker east of the C-130 pad, and someone is approaching my position,
walking through the tall grass directly in front of me from the east,
appearing out of the night darkness. I shout a challenge, the individual
answers with the right response. I command him to stop he halts. I
move forward ten yards to check him out. I see he is walking with
his M16 at port arms, and on his back he is carrying a full field
pack.
The stranger
produces a document extends it to me, and commands me to read it.
He is MACV Special Ops, walking through the sector in the dead of
night, on a mission to hand deliver covert orders, eyes only on a
need to know basis. The orders are a stipulation that my primary responsibility
is to the mission, signed by the current commanding officer of MACV.
He, the courier, appeared from nowhere, and vanished into nothingness
to the west.
With my boots
on I grab my web gear, ammo, and piss pot then fallout. A half dozen
or so are first out, and we're told to climb up onto the ton and a half
truck that pulls up. The truck dumps us at the armory, and heads back
for more troops. At the armory they are not arming us with our own weapons,
they are simply emptying the racks in succession, as more troops arrive.
Our lives are truly in each others hands.
It's
somewhere near 1200 hours on the 30th of January 1968. Back again
on another truck, we roll up a rutted seldom used dirt track for deployment
in Alpha Sector. I'm posted at Alpha-21 an M16 bunker. I'm agitated,
pacing back and forth instead of taking cover. Without a radio I'm getting
nervous. An hour and half of forever passes. Then I see a truck approaching
from the west 1/4 mile away.
My mind is going
yes, yes, stop for me, me, me! I'm told to climb up! There's a few
maybe four other troops riding in the back. Alpha QRT is being assembled.
At 1600 hours, 30th of January, Alpha QRT arrives at an isolated remote
Quonset hut, shielded from view, and is covert operational. Once inside
there are double bunk beds situated around an open GI issue aluminum
coffin. We are told nothing except, stay in harness and put all your
weapons into the open casket. It is still and silent except for the
click clatter, of M16's dropping into the casket.
We sit and wait,
silently scarfing some B-2's. We stretch. We wait. Time elapses then
seems to stand still. Communication with the outside is in effect clandestine.
Then the word is: "Okay, Let's Go! Mount up. "
Again its first
come first serve, the weapon I had dropped in the casket was not
mine. Jumping in, the weapon I take out is not the one I dropped in.
I double-time to the flatbed ton and a half and someone is in the cab
already. I jump in anyway and the team leader gets behind the wheel.
The last troops
out carried the weapons-coffin and hauled it up on the flatbed. As we
become mobile the remaining weapons are taken: the M60, the M-40s (over-under
grenade launchers), and beaucoup ammo.
We
begin to roll, lights out to the west, three in the cab and ten on the
deck sitting on a casket. A disembodied hand reaches in the shotgun
window passing M16 mags. I in turn pass mags on to the left, and lastly,
I fill every pocket I have with M16 mags. For a fleeting moment I think
one of these mags might stop a bullet -- voila -- instant body
armour.
Photo by David
M. Dowdell (Charlie Flight)
Normally we carry
ten mags in our upside-down quick release ammo pouches. The empty casket
is shoved off the side of the truck, and I can hear it tumble and crash
but I don't dare turn around. We silently roll onto the firing range.
As we dismount, jumping to the ground feet first in a combat crouch
all in turn we scatter, our heads are floating like bobble-head toys
our eyes adjusting to night vision. Alpha QRT is in it's first covert
deployment.
Suddenly through
the broken chatter on the truck radio I could hear the exited voices
of multiple towers calling in: Bein Hoa under heavy attack! I
look to the east-northeast toward the horizon, and could barely make
out tiny dragonflies with thin laser-like lines dripping from them,
darting in and out of the snake like smoke trails left by drop
flares.
The moments pass.
Tango-4 breaks
in on the radio,
with words twice: "Security Control, Security Control... There's
approximately a dozen VC setting up mortars one hundred yards west of
my tower." Later in hindsite I realize the VC squad is targeting
the minefield immediately west of the grouping of the O-51
Bunker, Tango-4, and the O-51 Gate, which are only twenty
or so yards apart.
The VC are softening
the O-51 Gate for a banzaii style human wave suicide attack. Hundreds
of NVA are preparing to storm the bunker. Obviously, Alpha QRT was deployed
when Biên Hòa came under attack, minutes before the assault on the O-51
complex.
We mount up again,
to our second covert deployment this time to the Bomb Dump, which is
completely blacked out. We are held in reserve for a possible second
assault on the O-55 Gate. It is so dark in the bomb dump you couldn't
tell a Three of Clubs from an Ace of Spades if you held it up to your
face. Absolute darkness: just the scorpions and us.
I could feel
the cold paralyzing waves of fear up and down my spine. My gut told
me I was falling down into a bottomless void. I couldn't remember the
last time I defecated. I could hear, but I could not see. Everyone seemed
to be stepping on each other's radio transmissions.
You could hear
Tango-4 screaming into his radio mic trying to get on the radio to "Control.
" Tango-4 is screaming in abject fear. in his voice, terror: "The
VC are overrunning the O-51 Bunker -- we need help -- send help -- we
need help!"
The
last transmission I hear from Tango-4 was his screaming: "There
are 300 VC directly under my tower!"
[Five
months later we run into each other at Suffolk County Air Force Base,
West Hampton Long Island. In our conversation I asked him how he survived
Tango-4. His reply was the enemy hit his tower with an RPG broadside.
He was knocked unconscious, and fell on top of the trapdoor, an act
of God or just dumb luck. He didn't know. He mumbled something about
his Silver Star, and that he was processing out, getting all the required
signatures on his check list because, he was being given a psychiatric
medical discharge, a section-eight (and no wonder).]
We unassed the
bomb dumb, mobile again, advancing south in a series of zig zaging deployments
down the northwestern OP road, in a combat suppression mode, against
a possible flanking tactic by the enemy.
At Tango-6, Alpha
SAT rolled up to us, with new orders
to fall in behind him, counterassault orders are being directed by face
recognition, and not by radio for obvious reasons, his machine gunner
and grenadier at the ready, to provide us with suppression fire, as
they clear a path for us going into the main division size battle.
All throughout
I maintained my front row seat riding shot gun in the cab of the ton
and a half. Something that always stays with me is Alpha QRT leader
says to Alpha SAT, "I can't do this I have a wife and kids back
home." I realized I wasn't the only one scared lilly-white.
In a space of a couple of breaths my team leader conquered his fear
and we followed Alpha Sat to the northwest tip of the northern most
runway, about seventy yards NNE of the O-51 Bunker, which now was
in the hands of the VC and NVA at a cost of more than 100 dead.
When I hit the
ground and fall to my knees, and then elbows, my mind could not comprehend
what lay before me. I was looking into the seven gates of Hell,
and then some. Gunships in the air were skimming and banking sometimes
no more then thirty feet off the ground, firing multiple discharges
of 2.75 rockets, and the sound of a high-pitch whine of a coffee grinder
that in reality was a computerized black box Gattlingun firing 3, 000
rounds a minute.
The
very night sky seemed to glow red and green with the light of tracers: flares were hardly necessary.
It was now somewhere
near 0500 hours on the 31st of January 1968.
As we formed a skirmish line we were immediately pinned down by heavy
machine-gun fire from the O-51 Bunker, now in enemy hands, sixty yards
to the south. The tracers seemed not to move, they floated like a stationary
red dot in front of me: just don't come any closer than that.
Looking eighty
yards to the west, an armour column
(Armour Infantry) was roaring down Highway One. The lead APC takes a
direct broadside from an enemy rocket and was smoked instantly. M-1
tanks behind it never paused, maneuvering around it, rolling into the
fray.
Alpha QRT remained
pinned down by NVA in the O-51 Bunker almost to the end, depleting the
enemy's irreplaceable ammo. Throughout we did not return fire, and now
I understand why. I later learned our mission was to cut off any attempt
at escape to the north by enemy survivors remaining from the assault
force. Also, later I learned from recordings of our radio transmissions,
that Alpha QRT 2 got into a real hair-ball fight.
At 2100 hours
I was removed from QRT duty and posted on the very recent construct
replacement O-51 Bunker, about twenty yards east of the O-51 Gate, and
ten yards north of Tango-4. The bunker was manned by two Staff Sergeants,
M60 machine-gunners, who through the night to sunrise never spoke to
me nor ever turned around, they were like marble icons and remained
overlooking the barrels of their M60's. I was in back of them sitting
on crates of intermingled, and prepped for use, Mark 3's (pineapples)
and the latest addition M-26 (lemon) spiral frag grenades.
Sergeant Charles
Hebron, one of the KIA's in the O-51 Bunker, was a casual acquaintance
of mine, who a few weeks before was with his newly wed wife on RR in
Hawaii. He was a real straight arrow: me, I was in the gray zone, pushing
the envelope enough to be readily expendable, but not enough to be promoted.
Alpha QRT did
not engage directly in battle, nor did any team member receive any valor
decorations, ours was a mission of practicality. Just hold the cutoff!
Although the experience did leave some unanswered questions: Surprise
attack -- I don't think so! Looking back to when I recieved MACV orders,
leads me to believe, this was a deliberate trap, based on successful
intelligence gathering, an ambush if you will. Further I believe we
are backwards in not having provisions for a decoration for emotional
wounds and scars, that have a parallel to physical wounds. Money can
not dry the tears.
No Dead Heroes!
Bob
Uchman (formerly Sgt Zbigniew Uchman,
377th Security Police Squadron; 3rd Security Police Squadron; 37th Security Police Squadron
Resigned 823rd CSPS, 820th CSPW,
TAC, USAF)
