Night Ambush: Part 2 - The Set Up

(See here for Part 1)

PART 2:  The Set Up

For the next few days after pulling Road Security for the mine detectors, Lima generally stayed in the NDP during the day, resting and performing equipment maintenance.  At night either. they pulled guard duty in the bunkers, or went on small roving patrols on the Village side of The Road.  Sometimes they just walked around familiarizing themselves with the terrain, sometimes they set up an ambush and stayed hunkered down until daylight.

One night, Sarge and a small squad ware on a night reconnaissance patrol in a clearing which they had seen earlier to have three dry wells dug in an open area between the NDP and the Village.  There was a treeline between the base camp and the wells, and the ground radar couldn’t always get a good look at that small spot.   Daytime recon didn’t see any sign of movement, but about 9pm they got a radio from the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) informing them that radar had picked up a body of men walking along the treeline.

“No, that’s just us” the Sarge reported.  TOC insisted that they not only saw the patrol, but also “two or three other figures” as well.  

Lima platoon had issues with the electronic surveillance;  more than once they had received frantic warnings that there was a “VC Patrol” moving toward them, once even insisting that the VC were now moving through their night ambush position!   The view from the ground, however, was that there was nobody there but themselves.   And so they were dubious about the 20^th Century advances in Electronic Warfare.

The patrol on the ground having no choice in the matter, TOC announced that they were going to have the 105’s work the area over.   Sarge moved the patrol toward The Road, found a shallow drainage just big enough to put the six man patrol in it.  There was no overhead cover except for their steel helmets, so they did their best to crawl into their helmets.

Then the barrage began.  For five minutes, round after round of 105mm HE shells walked across the five-acre opening,  the shrapnel spattering the patrol like iron rain.  When the TOC announced that the fire had been lifted, Limping Lima crawled out of their dubious shelter and performed a sweep of the impact area.

All they found was the impact craters of a few rounds; most of them had been air bursts for maximum dispersal, so there were only a few craters at that.  There were no bodies, no dropped equipment, no sign that anyone but American troops had been discomforted by the #10,000 worth of artillery shells.

Clearly, Artillery was no match for boots on the ground.

During New Years Eve, the base was on 100% all night.   The fear in the heart of the Battalion Commander was that the VC would attempt an attack similar to the Tet Offensive of January, 1968.   Given the evidence that Charlie was resuming large-scale attacks in the AO,  the Colonel decided to try a recently developed infantry tactic:  Shotgun Ambushes.

Previously, overnight infantry patrols were ‘heavy’.  That is,  each platoon would break into two elements, with two squads in each element.  That gave one of the two machine guns to each patrol element.  The Platoon Leader (the Lieutenant, or “LT”) would lead one element, and the Platoon Sergeant (“Sarge”) would lead the other.  Each squad had a squad leader, each squad leader had a radio carried by his Radio Telephone Operator (RTO); that means each element had three radios, allowing night ambushes to be complex and could cover a large area.   It also allowed for two men to be on watch at all times, and since everyone except for the RTO carried a Claymore Mine, each night  ambush (known by the troops as “hold your ass ‘till daylight”) could provide a full 360 degree ring of command-detonated mines to launch a devastating initiation of an attack coming from any direction.

Under the new “shotgun ambush” protocol, the platoon would be broken down into not four, but six patrols.  Four would be led by squad leaders, but with a couple of men broken out of each squad.  The “excess” troops would man two “short squads”,  lead by the Platoon Sergeant and the Platoon Leader, respectively.

Since the short squads would have fewer men, they go the machine guns.  And … ominously … the medics.

The idea, of course, is that the patrols would find a likely spot in the bush (covering a trail, or preferably a trail junction near the NDP, the village, or the ARVN compound) and merely act as spotters for the artillery.  When they sighted movement, they would call for a fire mission and the artillery battery would fire on the reported movement.

During his operational briefing the LT made it clear what colonel and the captain expected of the patrol leaders:

“Before you leave on your patrol tonight,  you will inspect every man in your patrol to ensure that he is fully equipped and aware of the significance and goal of this mission. You will start out from the NDP an hour before dusk, and be seen by any observers to be searching in the general vicinity of your individual AO but well away from your final objective.   Just before dusk you will appear to go to ground, and then just at dusk you will mask your movements to your final objective. 

“As you approach your final objective, you will leave your men in a staging area 100 yards away from your final objective. .  Ensure that every man  urinate or defecate as necessary.  Eat and drink BEFORE you do your final recon, and then perform a recon of your objective.

“You will take one man with you as a scout.  The remaining men will remain at 100% alert.  At that time you will select your ambush position, taking into consideration terrain, cover and concealment and most importantly, coverage of an important tactical feature.  Look for trails ... and there are a lot of them this close to so many vital locations.  

“Having chosen your ambush position, you will leave your scout in place in ‘overwatch’ position, and go back for the rest of your patrol.  Lead them to the final objective, picking up your scout on the way.  Remain at 100% alert for one hour.  At the end of that time you can allow your men to spread their ponchos for bedding, but remain at 100% for another hour.

“What we are trying to do here is to provide Charlie with as much dis-information as he can handle.  He will know that you are in the general area, whatever you do; they will be watching from the woodline to the East, so you will make them think you are setting up in the West.   You will get inside their thinking, you will lull them into self-confidence, and when they move .. you will be where they know you cannot possibly be.

“There are few of you in each patrol.   Deploy your Claymores wisely.  You will be carrying extra ammunition for your MGs … those of you who have them.  Those units without  MGs will not have to hump thirty caliber ammo cans, but will have more men. 

"Be prepared to defend yourselves if necessary.  With luck, you will only have to place yourself so you can call in infantry in case of an attack.

“But do not rely on luck.  Be smart, be aggressive, but make sure you have your final objective registered with artillery as a ‘do not fire’ zone because you may be calling in artillery very close to yourselves.  We don’t want any ‘blue on blue’ casualties tonight.”

As the Platoon Sergeant, “Sarge” drew the short straw; only seven men on his team, including the RTO (who did not carry a claymore).   But HEY!  He got an M60 Machine Gunner, which would dramatically improve his FirePower!

 The final objective for his team was on the East side of The Road.  He chose his staging area as the immediate east side of the road, behind the berm. There was a terrain feature … a slight roll in the terrain .. which would hide his staging area from the woods a mile to the East.  The final objective was somewhere about 100 -200 meters east of that point, but it had not been scouted before.   He didn’t know exactly where they would be, the objective had been chosen strategically based on maps. 
  It had NOT been chosen "tactically" .. based on an intimate knowledge of the terrain. Which they did not have.  He knew there must be trails there somewhere, and it was his job to find them during his ‘scout’.

They left on schedule, departing the NDP through the Eastern main gate, and veering immediately north toward the Village.  They spent some time schlepping around the ‘deception’ area, and on schedule they started jinking through the occasional clumps of “shrub” (large bushes, often as tall as head-high) until they crossed the road.  Men started urinating, as ordered .. he had to admonish them to kneel down because if they stood up to pee, their heads could be seen from the woods.  When everyone had eaten, it was getting close to full nautical twilight so he started his sneak-and peak with his designated scout, Stehman.  

Stehman had been his RTO when he first joined the Division, and had proved to be a steady, reliable man.  They had got to know each other pretty well, and had full confidence in each other.   He knew that Stehman would be a reliable guide.  Stehman yearned to be a 'grunt', not an RTO.  He wanted to fight, not talk!   Sarge had only a few weeks before allowed Stehman to be transferred from his role as an RTO, and become a fighter. This might prove to be the opportunity to fight.

As they moved silently through the scrub, Sarge was looking for trails.  Stehman’s job was to provide security.  Sarge had already decided that when they found their ambush, he would send Stehman back to pick up the rest of the patrol;  he wanted the extra bit of dusk-light to observe the immediate area and scout for the best position within a few yards.

Luck was with them … at that moment and for the rest of the night. They were exactly in the middle of the assigned ambush area when they spotted a well-trodden trail,  moving from East to West.  Just a few dozen yards East of the trail, they found another crossing trail, which ran from North to South.

A Trail Junction!  

It was the perfect place, with one small exception; there was no cover at all, other than a very slight rise on the south side of a small swale 20 yards east of the N/S and 20 yards south of the E/W trail.  Also, they were in an area of knee-high grass, between two lines of scrub.  To the north, and to the south, their view was entirely unobstructed.  They could observe any movement along the N/S trail for a couple of hundred yards; but if they got into a fire fight, they could only hope that Charlie could not spot them.

As Stehmen made his way back to the staging point, Sarge crawled into the slight swale to fully evaluate the tactical position.

It wasn’t as bad as it had first looked.  They could set up Claymores to cover the trail junction, and both the North and East trails. And .. with careful thought, they still had a couple of Claymores to cover the rear of their position.  (This turned out to be more fortuitous than expected.)

 The East trail led West toward the Village; the North trail led South to the ARVN compound.  Either trail would serve as access to the NDP, eventually.

So, yes, as far as being able to monitor movement in their AO, this was the ideal place to set up.

For Defense .. maybe not so much.  They would have to rely on deception and logic.  It was a crappy place to set up an ambush.  The small swale offered them no more than six inches of depression, and there was no way they could improve their position.  They  couldn’t dig in .. nobody carried their shovels, or their gas masks; they were “light infantry” in the purest sense.  They relied on fire and movement, not cover.  

For now, and for this mission, “concealment” would have to suffice.  After all, they were suppose to be spotters, not fighters.   All they had to do was know the map coordinates and see Charley.  The very very good part was, they could see for a couple of hundred yards to the north and the south.  Anyone who tried to attack the tactical positions had to pass within their sight .. if they were alert.

So he reasoned, and hoped that Luck would be a Lady tonight.

He carefully ignored the LT’s admonition that they should not count on luck tonight.

Ten minutes later, Stehman brought the patrol back to him.   Sarge was accustomed to setting up a night ambush on a line, but tonight he had to have eyes looking in every direction.  Instead of a line, he set the men up in a very very small circle.  No more than 15 feet across, every man was bumping shoulders with his neighbor as they sat down to watch.  

Suppose someone had seen them come in?  Suppose he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought he was?

(See below for more of Part 2)

(Read Part 1 here)
(Read Part 2 here)

(Read Part 3 here)
(Read Part 4 here)

The first man to set up was Ernie, the 6’3” husky machine gunner.  Sarge had him set where he could cover the trail junction.  Besides his 100-round starter belt, he had him hook up with another 200 round belt from an ammo can which one of the other men had carried for him.  He had three full cans of ammo … if 700 rounds of 7.62 ammo wouldn’t serve his M60, Ernie wouldn’t have to worry about it for very long.

Sarge also put himself pointing North toward the junction, along with Brent, his RTO.  Sarge had a M79 Grenade Launcher, which he had chosen for three factors:

1.  He had ‘buckshot rounds’, which were the closest he could get to a shotgun for close in fighting;
2.  He had the 40mm HE round, which was an area weapon.  Not only would it work for servicing massed targets, it worked wonderfully well for designating targets.  He had already trained his troops to respond to an explosion of the HE rounds by pouring massed fire in that direction.  It had worked well in previous encounters, and when the shit hits the fan you want one person always looking for the biggest trouble spots (that would be him) and for his gunners to repond immediately.
3.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly in a Night Ambush .. he had both flare rounds and starshells.  The starshells looked like fourth-of-July fireworks, and their light marked a position for support troops, in case he had to call for help.  It also provided immediate, although short-lived, illumination on an ambush Kill Zone.  The flares were longer lasting, and deployed a small parachute so that they drifted slowly to the ground.  They lasted for a minute or longer, and provide more light.  Yes, they also marked his position (if he shot them straight up) but they tended to drift if there was any wind; a double-edged sword, in the wrong situation.  Still, one of the most important factors he could contribute to a successful night ambush.

Then there was “Chief”.  This man was, indeed, a full-fledged American Indian.  The bravest man Sarge know, Chief was his designated point man.  Racial type-casting aside, Chief knew how to LOOK at everything when he was walking through the bush.  He moved at his own pace, and Sarge never ever tried to hurry him up.  

Chief carried an M14, and that 7.62 (.308) round would punch through anything he could see, and often continue through to kill the man behind him.
  

Point men didn’t like the M16 A2, not only because of the demonstrated “poodle shooter” deficiencies of the 5.56 M16 round which would fragment on hitting a twig, but because the M16 round was designed to wound … not to kill.  Point men generally preferred to kill any enemy they saw, because they knew that they usually saw enemies which were not visible to their mates. 

Sarge had initially trained on the M14 in Basic, and although it was a heavy son of a bitch to carry, when it was your life on the line and there was nobody there to back you up, he wouldn’t have chosen anything else if he were walking point.  Chief was one of the two “power men” on the team.

Ernie, the Machine Gunner, was the other obvious “Power Man”.  Big enough to carry the gun, calm enough to service the targets aggressively, his only fault was that when he was directed to engage the enemy .. he often chose to shoot from the hip instead of extending the bipod, assuming the prone position, and calmly killing everything that stood before him.  That wouldn’t be an issue here, because as soon as everyone got into position, NOBODY would be standing up!  

The deficiencies of their position ... with concealment but without cover .. worked in his favor here.  Ernie was a good shot, as he had proven on “Range Days” during stand-downs when they would go to the division shooting range and shoot up their old (often corroded) ammunition so they could legitimately replace it with new, clean ammunition. 

Sarge knew that the men often tried to “John Wayne” the extra belted MG ammunition which they were required to carry.  It was much easier to carry slung over your shoulder, but the climate corroded the ammo quickly in the open.  So both he and Ernie tried hard to convince the men not to do that.  In his quiet, “Mountain of a Man” way, it wasn’t difficult for Ernie to reinforce the men’s determination to keep the ammo in the cans, even though they were a literal pain in the ass.  They had all found rifle slings, so they could strap the ammo cans and carry them slung over their shoulder.  Better than carrying them in their hands, all day, every day, for miles at a time.

Johnnie was the aid-man.  He was not a fully trained Medic, but he had received advanced training if first aid, so he carried an Aid-Pack.  This was a canvas backpack carrying first aid supplies. Because of his heavier-than-usual load, he was not required to carry M60 ammunition. But he did carry a claymore.  Johnnie was more “excitable” than some others, but he eventually made E5 Sergeant.  The Battalion Commander thought it was a good idea, although he was aware (as well as Sarge) of some of Johnnie’s faults, he recognized that Johnnie was a “Shoot First/Ask Questions Never” kind of guy. 
Never a bad idea when AK47’s are shooting in your general direction!

Teddy was a raconteur, a funny man, the class clown, the story teller.  He had a squat powerful body, a square face, and wire rimmed glasses. With his mustache, he looked so much like President Theodore Roosevelt that strangers would often address him as “Teddy” before they were introduced.  Still, he was took a workmanlike attitude toward battle.  He never said “Kill them all … let God sort them out “ .. but he never flinched during battle.  Sarge had few opportunities to observe him in combat, but once was enough.  He worked and played well with others,  never met a man he couldn’t like, and he was frequently quoted as saying “I don’t kill people, just something holding an AK47”.

SO, we had 7 men:  Sarge, Brent, Chief, Stehman, Johnie, Teddy and Ernie.

And just as we had settled in,  some one whispered:

“Sarge .. I hear voices!  Someone’s coming in!”

(Read Part 1 here)
(Read Part 2 here)

(Read Part 3 here)
(Read Part 4 here)