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One day we were rolling to pleiku,with a 100 truck convoy. Went up,an trough Anke pass,uneventful. Dropped off 25 or 30 trucks at Anke, the rest of us kicked out for pleiku. I was 50 gunner,an ncoic of steppingwolf. We rolled on,trough the flats,toward the Mang Yang pass,all that have been up the pass,know your spincter tightens ,crawling up those mountians.we were just about to top the pass,we were running in the middle of the convoy,Vengence is mine,was running the rear,all of a sudden "ka-boom"down the pass,behind us! then again" ka-boom". I jumped on the radio,contact,contact,contact! we were looking down the pass,we could see near the bottom,smoke,an Vengence is mine..I hollarded on the radio to Vengence, do ya'll need us to turn around an help?They said,laughing,the best i could hear,go ahead with the convoy,they just wanted to see what those" logs "would do!! Man ..i was still shakin when we got to check point 88, an feeling like a fool for calling contact! anyway that still stays with me after all these years, an never fail to chuckle to my self. Wolf
Did I tell you about the time I sat on a spider
He bit me on the ass :Big time........legs were going numb
but lets back-up here a minute
I had just got in from a sweep of the area and was tired as hell...It was in sept. I had just gotten into country...wasn't used to humping them heavy ol' rucks
In fact it was my first misson....any way we got back into the parimator right before dark and like I said before I was as tired as anyone could be
Instead of just dropping my ruck I sat down ... ruck and all...well I sat on some kind of spider and he didn't like the idea of what had just happened to him and he bite me.Next thing you know I'm trying my best to stand up but I can't because of the ruck-sack on my back....well after a few moments I get out from under my ruck and I'm scratching my butt
All of a sudden my left leg starts going numb....it's getting dark now and I'm trying to find our medic
When I find him he says "get me the spider"...I just stand there looking at him and say your kidding...It's dark I'll never find him now...hell I don't even know if he lived or not
Doc thinks a minute and says here take this and lay down
so I take the pills he gives me and I go to my hootch
we used to make our hootches out of ponchos back in them days
next thing I know it's morning...the sun is bright and beating down on me with a vengance
I looked up to see my hootch all torn up...great big holes...my ponchos were ruin't
At first I thought it was my squad that had done it utill I asked what had happened
My gunner tells me that there was one hell of a fire-fight last night and that I had slept thru it
A coupe of chi-coms had landed next to my hootch and that was what had torn up my hootch
Still don't know what doc gave me or what kind of spider bite me....
Black Wolf
Funny story time..........yeah, have maybe one left. When I got to C Co 815th Engr Bn in July '69, A Co had an A2 5 ton truck chassis outfitted with a redimix concrete mixer, just like the ready mix trucks we saw back ithe World. They used it for big jobs - slabs, floors, footings etc, Probably had been used quite a bit over at Camp Holloway, or Camp Enari before I got over there. I heard that the Colonel was really pround of that mixer. Gunner, maybe you can verify this story.
If an operator was lax about cleaning the mixer out promptly, the stuff set up which meant that someone had to pull the hatch of the mixer and get inside it to chip away at that concrete to clean it out. Then someone came up with the idea of using small chunks of C4 to speed up the process. And it worked well several times. One day a partial load set up - much more concrete than encountered before. It was reasoned a larger chunk of C4 would be needed to break that stuff loose. The C4 was placed and set off. But what was thought to be an adequate charge turned out to be way too much. The explosion opened up that mixer like an M-80 in a tin can. The Colonel was not pleased. Adios, Dick
I remember a guy with the 88TC , his name was Jim Johnson, he was kinda loaner but egar to do his part to win the war. Jim attached 6 claymors to each side of a 5ton cargo with a master switches on the dash .He could fire one at a time or all on a side at a time. One ambush in the AnK pass, Jim pulled into the KZ, laid down in the seat, and hit the wrong switch.. There was smoke,fire,and dust every where . When we pulled along side him Jim set up in his seat, blood was running out both of his ears. We ask if he was OK. all Jim could say was "what you say"? Paul Gold
Buffalo Burgers It was a typical Viet Nam morning, hot and muggy. My Platoon had been working an area just north of QL19, along the base of the mountains near the An Khe pass. The area was pretty open for the highlands, small hamlets and rice paddies dotted the area. We had only been in country since Sept '65' so we were still learning the lay of the land, without any clear objectives yet. Being in the field for 30-45 days was not uncommon.
On this particular day we were suppose to check go check out an area about 14 clicks north of our position. We had been moving about an hour when the Lt. Got a radio call that a Ch-47 had made an emergency landing a couple of Ks east of us. We changed directions and moved out smartly. It didn't take us long to find the bird, they had landed next to a small ville, we could hear the excitement long before we could see anything.
As we broke into the clearing, we could see the crew standing near the tail ramp, weapons in hand, cautious but not real concerned. We threw a perimeter around the aircraft while the Lt. And the Plt Sgt. went to talk to the pilots. As it turned out, the aircraft had a hydraulic system malfunction and the crew was going to try to fix it, we were going to provide a little security for them while they did the work.
The area wasn't known to be 'hot' and we had not made any contacts so the Lt. decided to go on 50% alert. Some of the guys went over to the ville to see if they had any cokes (and probably any '33'). As the day wore on some of the guys amused themselves by chasing a pig around. The villagers got a real kick out of it and the flight engineer got out his 8mm camera and filmed a bunch of dumb-ass grunts trying to tackle the pig (they got close but never caught it, that pig could run like a UFO flies)
The pilot came over and informed the Lt. that they couldn't fix the aircraft until their maintenance people brought them a part, and that wasn't going to be until morning, so the Lt called the Co. and told him that we needed another plt. so that we could extend the perimeter out around the ville. About an hour later, another platoon was airlifted in and we expanded the perimeter.
Because of the nature of the area, we didn't dig full foxholes, just prone fighting positions. We carried everything that we needed to set up a night position, claymores, trip flares, empty c-rat cans, and commo wire, C4 etc. Rocks for the cans we could get anywhere. We had a guy from Guam and one from American Samoa; they went into the ville and borrowed a huge kettle. We pooled all the C-rats, our appointed cooks mixed everything with the rice they were cooking. They fed both platoons, the A/C crew and invited the village to help themselves to the leftovers, its no damn wonder I gained 35lbs before I DROSed, heaviest I have ever been.
Everything had pretty much settled down. The village was quiet and dark except for a couple of lights, everyone was relaxed but this was soon to change.
At about 0200, something set off a couple of the trip flares forward of the perimeter. The parachute flares followed, then the whole damn perimeter opened up with every weapon we had, small arms, MGs, claymores, frags. More trip flares went off and the firing intensified. Finally the plt sgt call cease firing. No more flares went off but we stayed at 100% until dawn
At dawn the village started to wake up, people moving about, cook fires lit. Suddenly there was a lot of yelling from around the back of the village where part of my platoon was. The Lt. sent out a squad with a radio to investigate. Well, it seems we had made contact, the squad counted 30 KIAs, we had killed the whole damn village water buffalo herd. They weren't just dead either, they were tenderized and ready to eat! Sneaky Rick
I toured Vietnam five times as an entertainer, the last tour in 1969 working for a Pommie bloke named Brian. Brian purchased a beaut hat through Sears & Roebuck on mail order that was a big, white, Stetson. It looked like something that Tom Mix would wear. 10 Gallon, at the least! The first time Brian got to wear his new hat, he came with us to a show in Phu Bai. We lived in Danang so we went to a helli-pad somewhere and were picked up by a Huey to fly to Phu Bai. With four of us, all our band gear and Brian with hat, we filled the chopper with not much room to spare. Brian sat on the end and was a big hit with his beautiful big white cowboy hat and managed to turn heads everywhere. The flight up the coast of course was out over the water and was quite uneventful until Brian's Bloody Hat blew off and out the door, spiralling down to the water below. Brian of course went into convolutions and shook the closest door gunner and pointed to his wayward head piece. The gunner spoke on his radio (we couldn't hear him) to the blokes flying the machine and without hesitation the chopper banked around and headed back towards the hat which by this time was floating on the South China Sea. Was Brian relieved !!!!!!!! When we got close to the hat the door gunner opened fire with his M60 and blasted the hat to smithereens, using it as target practice. The look on Brian's face was priceless. One of the highlights of my time "In Country". strangles (the Beaumarks)
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