Thanks sweetie.
An exciting time, I was stationed at Chu Lai, about 50 miles south of Da Nang on Highway 1. We didn't get much sleep for about a week.
I remember hustling down to our bunker positions and the
sky was filled with flares, there was an oil tank burning
up on what we called Hill 60 which was inside the base and
was the helo pad and the Americal Div area .
We were told there was a NVA Regt to our front, but it
never reached where we were.
Sappers also penetrated the base driving trucks and were
throwing satchel charges trying to hit our fuel bladders.
We were on the receiving end of 80mm mortars and 122mm
Rockets off and on for several days so didn't get much sleep. I didn't have much fear of the mortars but the
rockets were powerful enough to demolish a bunker so to
have them coming down on all four sides was, how shall I
put this...a religious experience....I prayed God to spare
my life all the while digging deeper with my hands. Not
a pleasant experience, I am in awe of those folks who were
on the receiving end of barrages during WW I and II.
We were told, that during the assault of the NVA REgt. that
if any VC etc tried to surrender we should kill them, but
that if firing ceased and they surrendered as a group that
"volunteers" ! would be sent out to disarm them !!
It's so funny, 35 years ago, and so much of it is so clear.
I remember how when the arty would fire flares the shell casing would go sailing off after the flare ignited with a
really wierd whooping sound, WhOooOoooOooOoo!
I think it was during Tet when they got lucky and hit our
bomb storage area. I also thought it was very A-bomb looking
like the article said, we were 2 miles away, and could see
the larger bombs being carried up in the blast column then
going off. The shock wave knocked me into a fox hole.
The poor ordinance guys, well they were lucky in a way, it
was the third or fourth mortar round that hit the dump, so
they were in their holes when it went off, but they lost
EVERYTHING they owned,
and some were in skivveys for a day or two.
Our hangers caught quite a lot of blast damage and two had
to be demolished, our only casualty occured when EOD blew
the remains down as a man was hit in the head by a flying
bolt, killed him. His fault for trying to see it happen.
I was on Perimeter Guard during that time south of the bomb
dump, and was manning my post during the day, I used to cut
across behind the dump to get to my post. Now Chu Lai was
on the beach side of highway 1. and had been cleared of most
vegetation, it looked almost desert like in spots, sand dunes etc. When I walked to my post that day, there were
all these grey and black twigs sticking out of the sand,
they were bomb fragments!!
I got my own bomb fragment later on when a F-4 lost a
500 lb fragmentation on take off, it hit a couple of hundred
yards a way and a chunk about the size of my hand came sailing between me and another guy who was helping me bleed
the brakes on one of our A-4s, it bounced off the strut and
went into a drop tank, we fished it out and split it.
I engraved the date on them but lost mine a few years later.
Thanks for the bump, we must learn the lesson of Vietnam,
which is that we cannot let leftists win the war for those
who are losing it at the front.
I have thought for some time, that the Northern Cadres may
have intended to have the VC slaughtered in Tet, it removed
most of the homegrown leadership of the southern communists,
and left a clear field for the north, once the democrats
managed to pull all support for the ARVN forces, when that
happened it was just a short matter of time till they over
ran the country and could institute a northern communist
government free of any input from too many southern "heros".
PTSD ? Me? The VA says no, but I still carry a gun everyday,
and sleep in four hour stretchs.....
t.
And I love Pho and Cha Gio, mmmmmmmmm.
Tiger 33, Bi Me Ba, Joe, I love you long time!!