The last four months, after the First Infantry Division was transferred back to the states, I was the "Labor NCO" in the Admin Company of the 25th Infantry Division. It was a soft job, except for the cockroaches who would chew through a package of Marlboro's overnight, even though I put it on the 2x4" brace that framed the NCO hooch I was staying in there. Three hots and a cot .. man, that's living!
Before that, they tried to put me into the position of Tank Commander in a war-wagon that I never even learned the nomenclature of, let alone how to "command" it.
Before that, they put me into a field job where I was tasked with doing what I knew how to do best: running a very small unit on night ambush. We set up booby traps, we stayed at 50% security all night, and during the day we roamed the boonies looking for ... well, trouble. It was a soft job, like the other two mentioned above. Unfortunately, the 25th INF. didn't really understand the 'small unit tactics' that I had learned in my Real Job, so they just shunted me back to the base camp. And that was fine with me, I had enough of drama by then; I remembered that I liked daily showers, I just didn't remember what they felt like.
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Before that, I was the Platoon Sergeant of Third Platoon, Lima Company 1/16, First Infantry Division. Also known as The Big Red One.
("No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great: Duty First")
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I use to observe Memorial Day by going to the nearest War memorial at 11pm with an unbroken pack of Marlboro cigarettes, and a six-pack of Budweiser beer. I'd drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, then leave the other opened pack and rest of the 6-pack on The Wall.
Now, I'm too fucking old to stay up that late and sneaky-pete around in the dark.
So I just remember the men I served with.
I remember Altheuse (probably aren't spelling that right now, after 45 years), who was the first and only man in my platoon who died in service. He was walking pace behind Chief, the point-man at the time; Chief hooked a ground-vine which was connected to a grenade buried in the ground. Chief (whom I also remember today) took some shrapnel in the back, but his Alice Gear took most of the blast. Altheuse, though, took one single fragment, right in the heart.
I remember Doc .. who lives fifty miles from me, and with whom I've exchanged emails, but I've never had the nerve to actually accept his invitation to visit him and his family ... who RAN all the way from near the rear to the front of the single-file column, through an area which we had just realized was a mine field. Doc did his best to save him, but Altheuse was panicky and Doc couldn't get the plastic airway, and he lost him. The man bled out right there; you could call it a heart attack and not be far wrong. (Doc was drunk an hour after we got back to base. I never knew where he got the booze, and I never asked. It was the only man he ever lost, either, but it wasn't for lack of trying.)
I remember SSGT George Cherkicz, who was Platoon Sgt. at the time .. this was shortly after I came to the platoon, and George had seniority. He took point, after the dust-off took Chief to the hospital and Altheuse to the Division Morgue.
Chief?
He never walked point again. But he kept his M14 even though they were reserved for Point Men, and when we blew an ambush on a bunch of VC coming to attack an ARVN base-camp, he led the way through the kill-zone and was absolutely fearless.
Aelbrecht ("say ALBRIGHT, it's easier to remember") was the Third Squad Leader. He was from Minnesota, and talked funny. Bright and a real leader of men, when Murphy got snake-bit on his hand while picking up his ALICE gear after a rest stop, Albrecht was the one who put a tourniquet on his arm while I called for a dust-off. He always knew what needed to be done, and he did it right now. I relied on his maturity. He was 20 years old.
Murphy, that happy-go-lucky Irish sonovabitch, was always "ready with a joke and to light up your smoke" as the song says. After he recovered from the "Step-And-A-Half" snake bite, he finished his tour back at the Division base camp. He had the golden parachute; a thirty-percent disability. As far as I know, he never would recover full use of his arm, but he wasn't hurt bad enough to be sent home. Every time we came back for an over-night stand-down he would have two cold beers waithing for me and Aelbrecht. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me" he said every time, "and I thank you and John (A) for getting me out of the field. If I had known it wasn't enough to get me home, though, I would have let that fuckin' snake bite me again!"
Micky was another Irishman. Actually, we always thought he was a leprechaun. Flaming red hair, red face with freckles, about five feet nothin' and always smiling. What IS it with full-Irish guys, anyway, that they can be so cheerful while wading through crap? He got into the platoon about the time I was rotating to the 25th, although he was short ... which seems like a comment on his physical stature, but it really meant that he was due to go home soon. A few months after I got back home I got a letter from one of the guys from the old platoon. He said that Micky had got a job in Transportation .. he was now a truck driver! That was the good news. Except that one day he was hitching a ride with another drive back to his new base camp. Micky was standing on the running board bullshitting with the driver, holding onto the exterior rear-view mirror. His 135 pound wait pulled the mirror loose from its mounting, he fell off the truck, and was run over by both left-side wheel-pairs. He was dead before the dust-off chopper got there. Many is the toast I've given to Micky, silently, every time I have a glass of Jamesons. "Luck of the Irish" seems appropriate, and HE knows what I mean.
Ernie was our lead machine gunner. Six feet Three and a wide-margin tall, he was as black as Mickey was pink. Quiet, steady, a man who was big enough to carry the 23-pound M60 machine gun all day long and had the skill to handle it. Except that I twice saw him engage VC that we happened upon during "sweep and clear" operations (changed from "Search and Destroy" ... even then the Politically Correct Bastards were changing the vernacular) .. and get so excited that instead of settling the gun on the bipods and engaging them with aimed fire, he shot from the hip. In the 400 rounds I saw him use to engage open targets, he never came within six feet of a living man. I finally decided that he was useful because even though he couldn't hit shit ... damn! It looked really good on video! (That was WELL before the RAMBO movies came out.)
Mike was our other machine gunner. Also with the strong, muscular build, he was as white and blond as Ernie was black. When we split the platoon, the LT took first and second squads, I took third and fourth squads. But we did get to run a couple of patrols together. One day we were on patrol, taking a break, and we got to throwing knives against each other. Knives were something that not many people spent time with in RVN, but Mike had this semi-sword he called a "Arkansas Toothpick". (He was from Arkansas, I guess it was a Regional Thing.) It looked like a Bowie knife, writ large (we're talking 15" or 16" blade, broad, mostly straight). I had a K-Bar --- or some version of one. We were both pretty well matched with accuracy up to 15 feet, which was impressive because that Toothpick was an awkward damn thing to throw. We were playing for a six-pack of beer, and I lost! Later, when we were back at base-camp and on the firing range burning up corroded ammunition so we could justify a resupply, I borrowed an M16 and challenged Mike to a shooting contest. We were shooting at the empty casing of a 40mm Grenade Round (from an M79). We kept that thing hopping out to sixty or seventy yard, and then we both started missing. So we both pulled our 1911's and started shooting at a 5.56 ammo can at about 50 yards. I'm not sure if either of us actually hit it, but finally Mike conceded that I was missing at a narrow margin than he was, so we packed up our gear and bought each other beers the next time we were back at base camp. Who ever heard of a Southern Gentleman with an Arkansas drawl?
Stehman was from Pennsylvania. He was my Radio-Telephone Operator (RTO) when I took over the Platoon Sergeant job after Cherkicz DEROS'd (Date Estimated Return from Over Seas) .. went home. He was always right there when I needed him. He spent month walking just far enough ahead of me that I was within reach when I got a radio call that I needed to hear. The RTO is probably the most dangerous job in the platoon. When Charly Cong snipes an American patrol, the first target is the RTO: if they can knock out the communications guy, then they have more time to shoot up the rest of the patrol before they can call for artillary, air or other support. (The next target is the Platoon Leader .. the Lieutenant ... and the following is the Platoon Sergeant ... usually the patrol leader if the platoon is broken into two or more segments), and then the Squad Leaders .. E5 sergeants.)
Stehman deserves a special paragraph. He kept me sane for the first three months In Country. He taught me more than my year of official training, than my officers, or than anyone else did about Leadership. He was my friend, my confident, and he always had my back. It was he who suggested that he walk ahead of me ... VC snipers assume that the guy ahead of the radio is the patrol leader. He knew that he was a target, but he didn't want me to be one, too. He was thinking about his friends and team-mates, more than he was himself. Later, he moved onto other jobs, but I never found a replacement RTO who could match him until I met ....
Brendon, who was my replacement RTO. After Stehman was bumped up to Spec4, from the PFC rank he had when I joined the platoon, this quiet college-educated Eastern Brahman took over the job. He liked it; he wanted the job, if only because it allowed him to know what was going on. Brendon wasn't satisfied with just taking whatever happened as it came. He wanted to know, he knew that his best chance at survival was his ability to be on the inside of the information circuit.
We got into a hairy ambush one night, and Brendon was right there for me .. calling for artillery back-up, for artillery illumination; he found a tank platoon that was in the area and called them in for support. He was so unflappable that the Colonel called me in the next day to complain that my RTO failed to convey the sense of 'emergency' that the Battallion Commander thought Brendon was appropriate in his radio procedures in that he never seemed to be frightened, didn't panic, and thus didn't express the sense of emergency appropriate to the circumstances. I told the damn fool that I was in love with Brendon, I wanted to bear his child, and that I thought he had done a better job of providing support for the patrol than 99% of everybody I had ever met, including the Colonel. Of course, I didn't use those exact phrases.
Terrell, on the other hand, was frightened from the moment he stepped onto the soil of the Rupublic of South Viet Nam until the day he left. I don't know about every moment, but every time I was blessed with his company ... that was the impression that I got. If we were on patrol, and he heard a strange noise, he would shoot at it. One day we were on an Operation with another unit and when he heard them moving off to his right, he shot 'em up. Thankfully, he was a terrible shot, so nobody got hurt. Another time, on a night ambush far from support, he heard a noise to our rear and threw a grenade .. which led to a Mad Minute! (Everybody gets up and starts shooting all around them.) Turned out to be critters raiding our slit-trench (poop ditch) behind us, but he didn't know what it was and just started blasting. Could have been worse, but I was pissed at the time because I thought I was dead! On the other hand .. if anyone WAS here, Johnny would have killed their ass before we were all fully awake. The Colonel made him a Sergeant. I objected. But I made him a sergeant anyway, 'cause (a) the Colonel said so, and (b) I didn't want to lose him ... just in case some dark night he might be right!
The LT: When I got there, the LT (Lieutenant: Platoon Leader, highest rank at the platoon level) was a burly and gruff-talking guy who was a "Maverick". That means, he had been an enlisted man who went to Officer Candidate School (OCS) and was trained to be an officer. Just like I had gone directly from Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) to Non-Commissioned Officer School (NCOS) and learned how to be a Staff Sergeant. Except, The LT had already served a couple of years and was on his 2nd tour of RVN, and knew what it was like to be an NCO. Since the platoon was typically slit into two or more units during operations, I didn't have as much time under his tutelage as I needed to learn my trade. But he did take the time to spend with me, talking casually about the command requirements of small unit tactics. I could have learned a lot more about command if circumstances were different, and he could have been a life-long friend. He was dismissed by his peers, but he had his shit together in one brawny package, and he made very few mistakes. That's more than any Sergeant can expect from any shave-tail. He was exceptional.
The Rutger's Ranger: After The LT moved on to another assignment, the Executive Officer (2nd officer in command) was moved out of the division office and out into the field. As the lamest platoon in the company .. I'm guessing that Somebody Didn't Like Us Very Much .. he was assigned to replace The LT. This guy was an ROTC graduate of Rutgers University (New Jersey? Give me a break!) and had never held a field command. He wasinane, inexperienced, and nobody made an effort at the officer level to Clue Him In. Nor had they made any effort to ensure that he had learned the Arcana of Leadership. He had spend months of his tour in the office, and as far as I know he hadn't spent a single day in the field until he was assigned to lead our platoon.
Nobody respected him. One day we were on patrol, and he was looking at his map and his compass, trying to figure out where he was. I knew where we were, so I wasn't much worried. Unfortunately, I allowed my disrespect to over-ride my judgement. When he asked me for advice during a break, I pointed to a nearby hill with a huge tree on it and suggested that he consult his map and look for the tree. (The maps were generated by USAF overflights, and thus showed a reasonable representation of the terrain as it really was .. but not to that detail.) He spent the rest of the afternoon looking for the Big Tree; he never found it.
Another time, we were directed by radio to move East to the "Red Line" (as roads were designated on the maps) for pick-up by trucks and transported back to the base camp. The entire platoon was accumulated from our various patrols, and we began to follow his lead. After a while, checking my compass, I noticed we were moving south by southwest on a trail. I got on the radio and asked him why we were moving away from our rally point. He retired
I shouldn't have been broadcasting over the Company frequency, I know, but I was beginning to have serious concerns about his competency; I truly wanted "upper" to know that this guy wasn't cutting it. So I suggested (again, on the Company frequency) that he allow his Point Man to find the most direct route toward our designated destination. (It's verboten to speak of "East" or "West", because the assumption was always the the VC were monitoring our transmissions, hoping to discern our route .. so they could ambush us; we always tried to speak in circumlocutions.)
We eventually reached a stream-bed within one klick (kilometer) of our destination. I knew where we were .. I had a map ... but I asked the Rutger's Ranger where we were. No, I was not being helpful.
He was absolutely beat. He was so tired after a few hours of beating through the bush that he was physically unable to do more than keep from collapsing in a heap. "I don't know, Sergeant", he said. "My map is inside my right side cargo pocket. Why don't you dig it out and see if you can figure where we are, and where we need to go, and how to get there?"
So I dug out his map and worked the problem. I never gave him a bad time after that. Any Officer who is so painfully aware that he needs to WORK at his job, and is willing to ask his sergeant for advice, is salvageable. We had a decent working relationship after that, and he applied himself to learning the vital task of worrying more about his men than about himself. I left the platoon not long after that, and I have no confidence that he ever learned how to read a fucking map ... but at least he knew when he needed help, and he was not so arrogant that he was reluctant to ask for it.
The Captain: Captain Dietrich was also a Maverick, and as such he was not respected by his peers of ROTC and Academy-trained commanders. I don't expect that he continued his career in the army, but I always respected him. I never got to know him, but he was respected by his men, and by me personally. I was rotated out of the Division to the 25th after too little time to get to know him, and considering the lessening quality of his subordinate officers, I assume that he survived his experience, and went on to a successful career in some more rewarding experience.
Except for one person, I assume that everyone I've talked about survived their Viet Nam experience.
That single exception is Specialist 6 Flomm, whom I met while I was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division.
Flomm, a Spec 6 (specialist rating, not in the Line of Command) was the Mess Sergeant of the Administrative Company of the 25th Inf. Tall, thin, blonde, he had a 'thing' going with one of the Vietnamese Employees in the mess hall. Her name was Phoung, we called her "Honey Girl" or "Baby San", and she was a diminutive girl of about 17 years. Flomm would show up at our NCO-area hooch unexpectedly at night from time to time with an Hibachi, some cutlery, and a handful of fresh, raw beefsteaks. And potatoes. He would cook us stakes and baked potatoes; we would feed him beer and whiskey (we took weekly flights on First Calvary Air Support helicopters to the Class 6 store in Saigon for booze .. hey, what use is it to be a Senior NCO if you can't buy booze?) and he would always bring along a few ounces of grass. I never got use to grass ... makes you dizzy and you got to piss all the time, and you're always thirsty and hungry!)
But he was a great story-teller .. had a million stories, some of which might ever be true.
Years later, Sp6 Flomm showed up at my home in Corvallis. My correspondence with him had been thin and rare, but somehow he found me. We spent an evening listening to his stories about he drank a quart of whiskey every day in VietNam and had dried out by then. Couldn't tell it by what he drank of our whisky that night, but who's counting? He is the one who told me the story of Micky's death by deuce-and-a-half, though that was a different division and I never knew how he know I knew the Irish Lerprecaun
Things go around and around; you never know who knows whom.
So, perhaps someday somebody will read this paean to the men I knew in Viet Nam, and the word will get back to them that somebody remembers them "Back When".
Maybe this is too long. Maybe most of it is bullshit. But this is the men I knew, that I remember, and that I loved as companions in arms.
Where-ever they are, no matter what they turned into .. I remember them. And I honor them for what they were, what they might have been, and for what they did.
This is my memorial.
God Bless us, one and all.
2 comments:
Thanks!
These retrospectives are never too long. Keep writing them!
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