Since I had already put in a year with the Army's 24th Infantry Division in Germany, and hade pulled border tours with the 10th Special Forces Toelz, the 10th Group had outfitted me in advance with a set of faded jungle fatigues, jungle boots and Green Beret with 10th Group *Flash* insignia on it. The other guys on the C141 I arrived on were mostly from stateside training units and were wearing either khaki class a dress uniforms or their stateside straight-pocket green fatigues and ballcaps. Even better: a set of 3 sergeants stripes, now removed, had left their unfaded mark on my fatigue shirt sleeve, and n*o*b*o*d*y* wanted to bother me- perhaps I had lost my stripes for killing and eating someone who had annoyed me by asking a stupid question.
We ate after getting off the plane and going thru a couple of headcounts, by which time it was after USAF quitting time. We flopped out in a transient barracks, I slept on top of the sheets & blankets with my fatigues still on. Later that night/morning I awoke to the sound of a distant siren, mortar rounds going off, and some guy blowing a whistle, who I wanted to kill and eat. *The base is being overrun, get down to the arms room & draw weapons and ammo.* Great, I get a weapon I've never testfired, never zeroed the sights on. Well, it'll do until daylight....
The Air Force guys are getting an M1 carbine [which most Army guys had never been trained on] three magazines and a 50-round box of ammo. The little arms room clerk takes one look at me, and figured I might kill and eat him if he insults me by giving me a carbine, goes back to his weapons rack, and takes out an AR-15 rifle, an early Air Force M16. With blue-painted shiny stock and handguards, and a white parade sling. It's an honor guard rifle, maybe never even fired before, but it looks okay. I get 3 20-round magazines with it, and 3 20-round boxes of ammo, just enough to fill my mags. *Sorry, Sarge, that's all we got....*
I've got no webbelt, so the mags go in my shirt pockets. I step out side, find a USAF *FOD* trashcan, and pitch the white sling in it. I load my spare magazines. I start looking for a canteen, or anything I can use for one. I see a USAF NCO with a clipboard sending Air Force guys with carbines out in twos and threes. I wander over his way, figuring maybe I can be a third guy for one of the two-man pairs. He's sending out reinforcements to the bunkers. He asks me what he can do for me. I ask him if there were any bunkers manned with just two guys who could use a third hand. He gives me a bunker number, and tells me to come back and tell him if I find it overrun and the guys inside gone or dead. Oh, I like this job more and more already! I get to the right bunker, move up on it reeeeal slow and quiet. There are two USAF mechanics with two M1 carbines and an M60 machinegun on a tripod, which they have no idea how to use, and a 3000-round helicopter ammo can of MG ammo. And a PRC-125 radio with hand microphone and antenna, and a full 5-gallon water can. I quit looking for a canteen after I see the water can. We have a little class on how to run and load an M60 machinegun and how to change spare barrels. They know the locals and I don't, so I let them keep doing what they were doing, and I watch our back door so nobody sneaks up on us quite as easy as I did. The rest of the evening passed without too much excitement except for the USAF Security Police cop who came sneaking up on us trying to find out if we were gone or dead. I asked him for the password, the only one I knew of at the time being one from the East German border two months before. He didn't know it, so I killed him and ate him.
No, not really. But if anyone recalls challenge/password BORAX/SNIPS from Tet '68 and wonders where THAT came from, now you know.
Yeah, those 2 USAF mechanics were real glad I had showed up. They were trying real hard to do a job they'd never been trained to do. I just showed them, a little.
Good afternoon. I hope you are doing well.
I enjoyed that story. Especially the part about killing and eating the Zoomie.
5.56mm
Great story and well told! I would happily buy the case of beer to listen to more of your reminscences.
My life was a bit plainer at least at first: the Corps looked at me, evaluated my capabilities and experience and made me a truck driver. I arrived in Danang in January ‘66 and was assigned to an artillery battery at Phu Bai.
A truck driver on a 105mm gun section ends up being slave labor on the gun, so most of my life in those early days was filling sandbags and moving 120 pound ammo boxes, while getting my ears pounded by muzzle blast.
On an operation further West from the coast, I was sent out to man a machine gun on the perimeter and other than having to deal with abiut 20 kids who pestered me the whole time, it was uneventful.
We heard “CSMO” (Close Station March Order - or as we knew it, Collect Sh_t, Move Out), so I put the M60 on my shoulder and started to walk back towards my gun section. I was walking with my head down until I heard “whuff!” and I looked up and saw a huge water buffalo directly ahead of me and he didn’t look happy.
I pulled the M60 off my shoulder and aimed it at the buffalo’s head and flicked safety off as the beast pawed the ground and got ready to charge. Just then, I felt something whacking my leg.
I looked down and saw a little girl, maybe five years old, with a small switch in her hand and telling me “no, no, no”.
I tried to explain to her that the buffalo was about run over us like a freight train but she just ran over to the buffalo and starting whacking that switch on his rear leg.
The buffalo settled down immediately and turned around and started eating.
A very humble PFC Chainmail continued on to his truck....