Chapter 7: Changes
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When Operation
Junction City did start up, my unit still sat it out for a while down
south. We pulled security and ran patrols around Phuoc Vinh and Lai Khe
areas. A trickle of new guys continued to show up. Though still
nineteen, I was now the oldest guy in my squad in terms of combat
experience. More and more, I sensed in my born again spirit how futile
this war was. At the same time, those demonic strongholds of my soul
longed to feel the thrill of the kill. Never mind worrying about whether
the war could be won or not. I was too busy chasing my own delusions in
life to worry about the plight of any other individual much less an
entire nation.
I was a messed up kid, but smart, and I had been grounded in many
of the principles of a Judeo-Christian upbringing. That upbringing kept
those demons sitting on my shoulder from talking me into doing anything
that was too crazy. Though I had turned my back on God, I still had my
new heart which was sensitive to Him. No, my heart did not always rule,
but in times of terrible trouble it did. In this way, I was able to set
the tone for the rest of my squad grunts. Walker really helped do that
too. It did not happen all at once, but it did happen. It was during
this time at the beginning of Junction City that we changed battalion
commanders. We immediately began to experience a better atmosphere. The
older and gregarious Milliron also made a difference. He had a way of
pulling the rest of us out of our shells. When I had first come to the
unit, there was just too much of a gap between the old veterans and us
new guys. They had seen too much combat to identify with us. Sergeant
Rook was the biggest problem. Just the simple respect that one human
being should have for another was completely lacking in him. Bartee was
different in a good way. He was much more approachable and friendly. We
also got a new Platoon leader, after we lost the West Pointer. He was
okay but he still ignored me, so I ignored him right back. The general
mood of our other NCOs in the platoon did not seem to change much. They
were lifers and a lifer had usually become cemented into a pattern of
behavior that worked for him. A lifer was not going to change that which
had been working for him, even if it was only just getting him by in the
grand scheme of things.
I was walking point full time now. Bill Milliron just
automatically stepped up to the plate and started doing more and more to
make that job easier. In return, I began to build trust in him. He did a
good job shooting compass bearings and keeping us on the correct
azimuth. While running point, this completely freed my hands and more
importantly my eyes to focus on scanning the landscape in front of us
for trouble. Glenn Bowman soon began to help too. Both men just had a
certain unspoken way about them when it came to taking care of business.
I could not help but like it. Their actions told me that they wanted to
help everyone get through this alive. Looking back, it was really quite
amazing how the entire unit started changing at this point.
I believe that we were at Phuoc Vinh when we took our last shower
for three months. These showers were rigged with faucets plumbed up to
hastily installed water tanks made from bomb shells. I got an applesauce
cake from my mother. “Operation Junction City” would last from February
22nd until May 14th. Junction City would go down in history as the
largest ground operation of the war. The Communist spies in Saigon
already knew a lot about our intentions before the operation got off the
ground. All things considered; my battalion fared better than most
involved in the operation. That had a lot to do with the change of
commanders.
We were facing off with regiments of the enemy's 9th Division. In
all, there were almost 30,000 allied troops involved in this operation.
We faced a total force of over 73,000 enemy troops. Most were
conscripts. The grand prize for the operation would be the capture of
South Vietnam's Communist Party leadership (COSVN). We never won that
prize. At the beginning of the operation, our intelligence reports said
they were hiding deep within War Zone C, somewhere between us and our
blocking forces inserted some fifty miles north. My battalion stayed on
operations around Phuoc Vinh during the entire first phase of the
operation (Feb. 22 thru Mar. 4).
During the first days of this operation and while Denton was
still with us, we marched out of Phuoc Vinh on foot. The battalion
snaked through the countryside single file. It was a populated area of
tin huts, backyard gardens and dirt streets. There were civilians
surrounding us everywhere we looked. Then the terrain opened up into
vast rice fields and the area became much more sparsely populated.
During one large sized night movement in this area not far north of
Saigon, I was the point man for our entire battalion. Sergeant Bartee
and his RTO just naturally settled in about ten meters behind me. Then
came the rest of the squad with the machine gunner pulling up the rear.
We had walked and walked day after day, sometimes digging in and staying
for the night and sometimes walking all night. I always ran point for
our squad. Sometimes my squad ran point for the entire company. On this
particular night, I was in the lead and walking alongside a roadway. I
ran upon an ARVIN (South Vietnam Government Forces) sand bagged machine
gun position. It was a dark night but there was a partial moon out.
Fortunately, they did not open up on us. Of course, I froze when I heard
voices. Surprisingly, the occupants of the position were talking quite
loudly. I had no idea what they were saying, because it was in
Vietnamese. I just stood there, silent, with my weapon lowered, waiting
to feel the impact of machine gun bullets ripping through my body.
Bartee was behind me, and I could hear his radio as the RTO broke
squelch. Our platoon sergeant was just a few paces behind him. Someone
behind me spoke up and that sound of an American voice in the ears of
that machine gunner probably saved our lives. That machine gunner held
his fire. From out of nowhere, the company commander appeared. He shined
a bright flashlight into his own eyes and repeated over and over,
"Americans, see Americans". While he was grabbing center stage, this was
my chance. I hit the ground and rolled to the left. When I stopped
rolling I assumed the prone shooting position. That prone firing
position gave me a perfect mead on the machine gun and the guy behind
it. I reasoned that the best course of action would be to shoot the very
second the machine gunner opened up on my company commander. My return
fire would no doubt render that machine gun inoperable. I knew that my
company commander would be dead but there was nothing I would be able to
do about that. However, since that gunner had allowed me to draw a bead
on him, I also knew that he would be dead within a half second after he
squeezed the trigger on his machine gun. I would then take things as
they came. Fortunately, the gunner never fired and my captain, Captain
Brown, continued shining the bright lensed flashlight into his own face,
repeating over and over that he was an American. Those few seconds
seemed like an eternity. Finally, the machine gunner was ordered to
stand down when an ARVN officer showed up. We went on about our
business.
On March 10th, our division commander, General DePuy, was
replaced by General Hay. Depuy's support people at Division headquarters
did not like the change one bit. Most of the old grunts in my battalion
also had high regards for General DePuy. Now DePuy was gone, and Hay was
assuming his command. Gone too were those old guys in my squad. It felt
good to be rid of them. Everyone was just naturally unsure of General
Hay. We “new guys” loved General DePuy because the “old guys” loved
General DePuy. Now, General Hay was simply an unknown quantity.
No matter what was happening at division level, fortunately
almost every one of these new guys in my platoon had a good attitude and
as a general rule the guys who had now been there longer, like me, had
not been tainted by enough violence, to ruin that good attitude. I
forgot the names of those old guys as soon as they boarded a chopper to
leave. I am sure they forgot mine too. After they left, however, my
squad was free to shape our own squad dynamics with the focus on making
sure we all had a better chance of returning back from an operation in
one piece. Nobody looked down on anyone and the race card was
non-existent. Actually, as the aggravation of being shot at by sappers
increased in the coming days and the random mortar attacks also
increased on our NDP positions, our entire company and even the entire
battalion became more unified. Today, when I hear someone use the phrase
“male bonding”, I have a very different picture popping into my head
than most folks might imagine.
My job in the squad as point man came about
just before Rook left but I cannot remember the details of how that
happened. Did I volunteer or was I ordered to walk point? I just cannot
remember. Typically, walking point was not a job that a squad member was
ordered to perform. However, I do remember working with a dark-skinned,
tall, lanky southerner, who was ordered to train with me on that job by
good ole Sergeant Rook. His name was Earl Dingle and Earl soon let me
and everyone else know, that he did not feel comfortable in that
position. He was really quite open and honest about expressing his
feelings on this matter. Since he was so honest about it, and was also
such a good soldier, most of us agreed, that he should not be made to
walk point, and he was soon given another job in the squad. There simply
were no hard and fast rules about who was assigned to walk point.
However, in general, people like me with backwoods experience just
naturally gravitated to that position. Others, who did not want to do
it, were generally not made to walk point unless they had a sergeant
like Sergeant Rook.
Walking Point was unforgivingly dangerous. It was also very
tedious. One of the reasons it was so dangerous was obvious. The point
man was usually the first man to come in contact with the enemy because
he was usually first in line. The major reason the job was so tedious
was because a point man had to keep an accurate pace count to know his
location on a map at all times. It was extremely easy to get lost in the
jungle terrain. One clump of bamboo looked just like another and there
were many obstacles which had to be skirted. That could destroy the
accuracy of the all-important pace count. The stress could be
overwhelming for almost anyone trying to navigate through thick jungle.
If I got lost so would everyone else who were following me. Keeping on
course was important for several other reasons too. For one, artillery
gunners needed to know our exact location when providing artillery
support for our patrols. If a patrol got lost, they could not direct
accurate fire onto an enemy if attacked. Noise control was another thing
which needed to be observed on a patrol. A point man needed to know how
to walk quietly through thick jungle. A good point man never blazed a
trail. Instead, he slithered through and around the thick vegetation,
never leaving a trail behind him. While moving through the Virginia
woods back home, my dad had taught me that it was a sin to make noise.
Quietly navigating through thickets and briar patches was something I
learned to do early on. Actually, my father showed me the techniques
needed to become a ghost. A machete was not my friend. I never used one.
They slowed me down, made too much noise, and tired me out. Chopping a
path through the jungle with a machete was insane. It made a huge amount
of noise. It would not only give away one’s location but also the
direction in which one was traveling. Knowing the direction in which we
were traveling, the enemy could then run ahead and pick exactly the
right spot for an ambush.
Simply put, walking point and surviving as long as I did, without
losing a single man, was also the result of a not so small legacy passed
on to me by my father. Quite frankly, the average American kid in the
sixties did not make great point men. Tom Mercer was probably the best
point man to ever serve with the 1/18th Infantry Battalion in Vietnam.
He said this. "Point men were a special breed who were a little crazy
but smart". There was no other squad job that I would have preferred to
have had, as crazy as that may sound. For me, walking point seemed to
clear my mind from so many other negative thoughts, which I had about
myself and others.
At this point Staff Sergeant Bartee was blessed with one of the
best squads in the Division when it came to thinking on our feet. It’s
too bad that Sergeant Rook had not recognized our potential but it’s
great that Bartee did. A leader can have the best people in the world
but if he doesn’t recognize their potential, it’s all for nothing. As
far as I know, Sergeant Rook slipped away without saying goodbye to
anyone. That not only showed how little he valued us, but how little he
valued himself too.
During those first days of our march, we went through some rather
large villages as well as large tracts of jungle. In and around those
villages there was a large number of civilians. That made a big
difference in the way we operated. We couldn't pop off rounds to
test-fire a weapon anytime we felt like it. In these populated areas,
watching our six, at all times, was important too. Young children
followed us, begging, and trying to sell us anything from pot to cold
cokes. It was a real distraction. Just before I arrived in Vietnam a
member of my squad, who had only a few days of his tour left,
volunteered to keep an eye on a young man standing by a rubber tree just
a few yards away. The rest of his squad patrol passed by the man. The
soldier turned his head away for just a second and the man standing by
the tree picked up a carbine and shot him dead. Yes, running patrols in
and around heavily populated villages created a lingering stress all its
own. A point man had to not only watch his men but the civilian
activities going on around him. More importantly, he needed a squad
leader like Bartee to work with him to manage the reduce the stress of
the job instead of adding to it as Sergeant Rook had done.
The Junction City Operation lasted for almost three months and as
I have said, when the operation was over, I was wearing the same clothes
which I was wearing when it began. I had to lace up a large tear in the
right leg of my pants with como wire. The tear went from my groin to my
knee. Seven men in the unit lost their lives during this operation but
that was an unusually low count compared to what we had been
experiencing before our new commander showed up. Actually, two of those
seven men were killed in accidents, and another was murdered while away
from the unit in a province far to the north. One of the most decisive
life-saving changes that happened with General Hay was the issuing of an
S.O.P. which required us to construct a DePuy bunker in our NDPs. It was
a lot of hard work, but it saved lives. Guys who still slept in hammocks
were ordered to get rid of them and sleep on the ground with the rest of
us.
While still in the south, close to Lai Khe, we moved into areas
covered with larger expanses of thick jungle growth. The enemy would
sometimes mortar our night defensive positions with a few rounds. This
happened so often that after a while hardly anyone became rattled by it.
Our defenses protected us. Actually, this enemy action worked to
strengthen our combat resolve. There is some truth in the old comment
which says, "Whatever, doesn't kill a person makes them stronger". While
in our various NDP’s, after marching all day, it was rare for a night to
go by without having one of our ambush patrols make contact with bands
of roving sappers. These sappers would also try sneaking in close to our
listening posts near the NDP. Some would turn our claymore mines around
on us. Others would set up their own claymores and then wait until dawn
for some hapless soul to wander too close while looking for a place to
do his business.
I remember looking into the faces of members of another ambush
patrol after they had wiped out an enemy patrol the night before. I
could see the blood lust glowing bright in their eyes, but did not
recognize it for what it was at the time. Blood lust is an extremely
sick thing. It spreads a shroud of death over our souls. To make things
more confusing, there is a righteous way of dealing with the fact that
other human beings may need to be killed. However, we should never glory
in the taking of any life. Like a surgeon who removes cancerous human
flesh, a soldier should always look at the taking of an enemy life as a
necessary evil. In God’s eyes, killing the enemy in warfare is always
righteous, when it is done for a righteous cause. However, a soldier
must be taught to keep their feelings of blood lust under control.
Unfortunately, I had not had the opportunity to take that class and was
therefore very jealous of these guys. Unlike the other squads in my
company, My squad went on ambush patrols time after time and never made
contact with the enemy. Though we were shot at on a handful of security
patrols, we never felt it necessary to return fire, because the enemy
was firing blindly. They were trying to get us to return fire and reveal
our location in thick jungle. Even on these small security patrols, we
were always under an umbrella of artillery coverage. It was more
advantageous to stay hidden and call in this artillery or mortar fire on
the shooters. In this way, perhaps my actions did result in the taking
of human life, but that way of killing was not the up close and personal
kind which feeds blood lust. A sapper team ranged in size from 3 to 15
people and were made up of local VC. Like our special forces, they
operated more autonomously. However, many were more likely to be true
haters than true believers in the communist ideology. Almost all had hey
had lost loved ones to outsiders in the past and were now assigning the
blame for that loss to us alien Americans whether we were responsible or
not. They had very different mindsets from the very brutally treated
conscripts from up north. Conscripts composed the ranks of the NVA and
usually survived no longer than six months in the harsh conditions
facing them when they arrived in the south. Besides becoming cannon
fodder, they were exposed to some of the most harsh living conditions
imaginable. Those that made it six months were promoted to NCOs. These
NCOs fared a little better because they could lag behind in a human wave
attack after herding fresh conscripts to take their place in the kill
zone. Very few conscripts from up north lived through their experience,
much less became true believers. In the absence of Judeo-Christian
values there was nothing to mitigate the demonic forces aligned against
a beautiful Vietnamese people. Senior communist leaders knew that they
could never go toe to toe with us, but they also knew that they did not
have to do that. They just needed to kill enough of our young men to
make us quit. That was doable and our own media made sure that we let
the enemy know that it was doable. These sappers were the grease which
greased the shadow government. They were amoral types who were not only
willing to do anything to protect their own position in life but had no
problem turning their back on a comrade too, if need be. Submitting to
the demonic indoctrination of the communist ideology assured that every
vesture of any god but the communist god, would be stripped from the
soul of every comrade in arms. The drive to exploit all favors from
anyone, including one's mentors or superiors, is also built into the
dirty mechanics of the communist ideology. Some others were "Stockholm
Syndrome" victims on steroids.
Many North Vietnamese families never saw their teenaged children
again after that day when they were taken away by the government but
here again in the absence of truth, most consoled themselves with
communist lies. They and their children had been consistently fed these
lies since the communist took over the north. No creative personality
like a Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Michael Dell would ever have a prayer
of emerging from this swamp.
Now, returning to a description of the men on my side of the
fight, let me say this. Each man in my squad seemed to be settling into
his job. Most of us lacked the ability to communicate with our superiors
as freely as was necessary. The RTO and Bill Milliron were exceptions.
Our big machine gunner, from weapons squad, and a private from the
Reservations out West was probably the worst at communicating. I don't
remember him saying anything to me. Bowman and I were introverts too but
compared to some of the new guys we were the life of the party. As it so
happened, it worked out well for Bartee to have an older guy like
Milliron to give him feedback from the rest of us. Without Bill, those
communications would have been severely hampered. I felt comfortable
around Milliron because of his outgoing and excepting personality but
also because he was newer than me. In that sense, I would always be the
old guy, and he would be the new guy.
Never mind that he was later promoted around me. I believe that
most of the others felt comfortable around Bill too. Milliron was the
same age as Bartee. They were on the same level of maturity. There is a
lot of difference between the way a nineteen year old thinks than a
twenty six year old. Bill could not be intimidated by Bartee, but also
Bartee felt more comfortable with Bill. What was a bit unusual was the
fact that Bill seemed to instinctively focus his attention more on me
than anyone else, when it came to taking care of business. Perhaps, that
was because I was the guy in the squad who had been there the longest.
He set aside his silliness and listened intently to every word I said
concerning tactics, just as I had listened to every word coming out of
Charlie Bell’s mouth. Bill became a great "go between" for me and
Sergeant Bartee. He also had innate self-confidence. He bridged the
communications gap with Bartee, not only for me, but the entire squad.
Important tactics discussed between him and I in private, were explained
to Bartee in a much more presentable way than I was able to present
them. From me, they would have sounded like sour notes. However, when
reverberated by Bill, these ideas became sweet music to Bartee’s ears.
Milliron was really gifted in that way.
There were over 20 Battalions involved in this operation, but we
were still attached to 2nd Brigade south of War Zone C closer to Saigon.
We were more or less marking time going back and forth in the same
general area around Lai Khe and Phuoc Vinh. I remember my entire
battalion doing a lot of night movements. We would link up with other
units in the middle of the night, but we were not moving further north
as I had originally thought. At one point, intelligence reports had
indicated that COSVN and its 40 or 50 members, who ran the entire
insurgency effort, were hiding in an area around Highway 246 some twenty
miles or so west of An Loc, which was much farther north and nowhere
near my unit.
On this particular day, I remember my battalion finally arriving
at a huge open area composed of at least several hundred acres with no
civilians around. It was midday, and the sun was like a blast furnace in
a steel mill. We were being told to dig in immediately. My squad just
happened to be the last squad in the line of march for my B company.
The forward elements of C company followed behind us. When we
started digging in, the lead squad in C company just naturally linked up
with my squad to form the perimeter for our NDP. Every single person in
my squad, including Bartee, was exhausted. We kept looking for Chinooks
to show up over the horizon to bring us ice and cold soft drinks. We
also needed war supplies. Almost everybody began to get a bad feeling
when the Chinooks never showed. That could only mean one thing. We were
not going to be staying here for the night. It was obvious that we would
soon be filling in the very same fox holes which we were now digging. We
would then move to another location. Never mind how tired and hot we
were. We would soon be digging in all over again and we still had not
finished the ones we were digging now. As these depressing thoughts
settled in on our entire B Company, the lethargic pace of our digging
slowed even more. Bartee soon returned from his brief meeting with the
other leaders in our platoon to confirm that the situation was even
worse than we were imagining. Instead of moving to a new location just a
little distance away we would be moving out at dusk and walking most of
the night to link up with another battalion somewhere in the darkness.
To make that link-up happen we would be working the entire night with no
sleep for anyone. “All this work”, I thought to myself, “For a little
over one hundred bucks a month and a good shot at never growing old.
Wow! What a deal”.
Now, with that workload ahead of us, I remember looking over at
Bartee. He was digging in slow motion. Usually, we talked while we dug,
but today no one was saying a word. With this miserable lull in vocal
distractions on the home front, it was easy to be drawn to the sounds of
normal conversations coming from the direction of the C Company
positions. As I was digging ever so slowly I turned my head in that
direction. Those guys were buzzing. They were talking away. I couldn't
understand individual sentences, but I was able to pick up on their
upbeat tones. Unlike us, these guys were chatting away, in the hot sun,
like hard working factory workers on a Friday afternoon just before
punching out for a long holiday weekend. Had they not gotten the memo?
Our long holiday weekend had just been cancelled. Had they not walked
the same distance we walked that morning in the blazing hot sun? Were
they not getting ready to fill in the same fox holes that they were
digging and walk through the pitch-black jungle for most of the night
with eighty pounds on their backs? To make matters worse, I could see a
shirtless tall lanky guy walking toward his half-dug hole with a big
smile on his face. How could this guy be smiling? He was not only
smiling but he was joking with one of his buddies standing in the hole.
How could their hole be half finished when we had just started on ours?
As I continued to work halfheartedly, I couldn't help observing these
guys out of one corner of my eye all afternoon. Many times, companies in
a battalion went on the same operations and fought in the same battles
but rarely did individual soldiers from these different companies become
acquainted with each other. I didn't know a single guy in C Company and
furthermore I didn't care to know a single guy in C Company. Yet,
throughout the afternoon, I couldn't help but notice that the tall lanky
guy had an engaging way about him. He constantly engaged the other
members of his squad in friendly bantering, as if he was trying to be
friends with the whole world. Though I wasn’t one, I had a real talent
for spotting popular people. This guy was one of those. While I
continued to keep an inquisitive eye on those C Company guys, it wasn't
long before one of the Sergeants from C company stopped to talk to
another sergeant in my Company. Of course I listened in. They brought
the grapevine to life. That other sergeant told my sergeant that the
tall lanky guy was not only popular with the other men in his squad, but
he was also a rising star with the officers in the battalion. Yet, he
was a grunt like me. His fox hole was only about twenty meters from my
fox hole. After hearing that, every time I glanced his way the top of my
head started burning and it wasn’t coming from the sun. I was beginning
to think that this might be a guy whom I could learn to hate. Amazingly,
it would be almost fifty years before I was able to put two and two
together and learn his name. The guy's name was Mac McLaughlin. Years
later, after reading Mac's story and seeing his picture in a book called
"Dogface Charlie" I learned that he made Sergeant, after being in
country less than three months. He also made staff Sergeant before he
finished his one year stretch in Vietnam. Now, I am sure that I would
have hated him.
By the time we filled in our fox holes, and saddled up to move
into the wood line, starting through the thick jungle on our night march
it was almost pitch dark. My company was in the middle of the pack in
the order of march. At one point, we halted for a little longer than
usual. A couple guys in my squad took their entrenching tool and busted
up a bioluminescent rotted log. They then handed out the green glowing
splinters to the rest of the squad. Each man slipped the wood fragments
under their elastic camouflage band at the back of their steel helmets.
The idea caught on quick. My guys had learned this trick sometime back.
Sometimes it was so dark we couldn't see our own hand if we waved it in
front of our face. We kept track of the man in front of us by following
the bouncing green glow on the back of his helmet. It worked great.
It was well past midnight when we stopped for the last time. It
seemed to me that we were meandering aimlessly, but I was in the middle
of the pack, and it was dark, so I really couldn't tell. We had three
companies in the Battalion at this point and we were all there that
night. Sometimes one company would be held in reserve, while guarding
nearby base camps or roads. However, this night we were all together.
Word came back from the front that we were getting ready to deploy into
an NDP for the night, but things were moving awfully slow. While waiting
for my squad to be told where to start digging in, red tracers started
popping by my head. They were coming from about fifty yards to my left
flank. It wasn't just a few incoming rounds. The volume of fire was
tremendous. It was a miracle that no one was hit. The tracers were red,
which indicated that we were being shot at by our own people. The enemy
used green tracers. All we could do was lay low and take it, until
orders were passed down to do otherwise. Within a few minutes,
communication was established with the other battalion doing the
shooting. During that night and the next day word filtered down that the
reason the other unit opened up on us was because our point men had
gotten off course. In other words, we were lost. Whoever was running
point for our battalion that night had gotten the entire battalion lost.
After reviewing after action reports, I believe this incident happened
around the first week of March while Denton was still in command.
Here is more on why that incident was not good. It was caused by
elements of one American battalion shooting at another. What if
artillery strikes had been called in by either or maybe both units? It
happened because those walking point had gotten off course. Denton left
shortly after this incident having only served 2 months of a normal
six-month tour for officers. I believe Denton was considered to be a
very weak commander after he had displayed such incompetence taking that
bunker complex. I also believe that is why my unit was left out of the
main thrust during Junction City. Our Patton-like General DePuy was also
replaced about this same time. He left February 10th, but not before
replacing Lt. Colonel Denton. There are a couple intriguing questions
that beg to be asked here. Question number one: Did this friendly fire
incident become the last straw for Denton, prompting DePuy to relieve
Denton? There is no way to know for sure. Question number two: Did DePuy
fire the hero of Pork Chop Hill making that action become a final straw
for Army Chief of Staff, General Johnson, who then removed DePuy from
command? It’s reported that DePuy had already been warned by Johnson
that he was firing too many battalion commanders. Again, who knows, but
it is interesting to contemplate. Denton never received another
promotion after leaving the 1/18th, but he did go on to do what many are
unable to do in life. Denton completely reshaped his life and by doing
so made considerable contributions to his country in another field which
didn't require one to face the cruel decisions necessitated by war. His
new contributions in a budding field of a new technology were extremely
important.
Whether my speculations are right or not about what precipitated
the changes in leadership, we now had a new battalion commander and a
new First Infantry Division commander. Most of us grunts didn't know
this new guy's name for a while. When we first heard it, we had trouble
pronouncing it. Was it "Casorus"? No, that wasn't it. The name had a "v"
in it. Was it "Cavasus". Yes, that was it. So, it would be "Cavasus" for
most of us.
Around this same time, my squad was running a patrol one day.
Bartee was still relatively new. Milliron and Bowman had just started
working with me up front. It was fortuitous that Milliron had joined the
squad at the same time Bartee showed up and that they seemed to bond so
quickly. Had that not happened I would probably have been court
marshaled after running this particular patrol. Here is what happened.
We had just come under fire from a sapper team looking to draw us out.
Laying low until the shooting stopped, we quietly moved back a few
meters, side-stepping the direction we were traveling about twenty
meters. We were still near enough to our check point to shoot a reverse
azimuth home, which we got permission to do. The new Bartee got so
rattled he couldn't remember whether to subtract or add a 180 degrees to
get the correct azimuth. I believe this was the first time that many in
my squad, including Bartee, had been shot at, but never mind that. I
remember thinking, "How could anyone be that stupid". As Bartee
continued to hesitate allowing me to shoot the correct bearing, I became
irritated. There were obviously enemy sapper teams all around us. My
perfectionist mindset just naturally shifted into overdrive. "If Bartee
couldn't do this one simple thing, what else could he not do?" Actually,
it wasn't his job in the first place to be reading a compass. That was
my job and by this time he should have known he could trust me. All this
was running through my mind at light speed. In those days, if a
situation caused a conflict with an authority figure, I really didn't
possess the interpersonal skills to deal with it. Usually, I would
remove myself from the situation and never mind what happened next. I
really would throw the baby out with the bath water. Naturally, it was
impossible to remove myself from this situation, so, I did what I had
always done in the past when faced with a seemingly impossible
situation. I got mad. I remember saying in an angry tone, “Listen
Bartee, you can go in any direction you please, but I am going to take
the opposite direction and go home". As we stared at each other, thank
God, Milliron was there to intercede for me in the nick of time. Bill
was able to become the calming voice in the situation. He wisely ignored
my over-the-top statement and began addressing Bartee in a very calm
way. However, he too was not able to convince the hardheaded Bartee.
Finally, Milliron picked up a small stick and laid it down on the map to
visually show how shooting bearings worked. Bartee finally relented and
obviously we made it back okay. Nothing more was ever said about the
incident. I never considered that Bartee was under tremendous stress,
having just had his squad shot at for the first time. I also never
considered that he had listened to me many times before and that this
was maybe just a one-time lapse of trust. Perfectionists just don't
think like that. However, perfectionism was also the reason I was such a
good navigator and point man. Milliron probably saved me from getting an
Article 15 or worse, and more importantly maybe saved the squad from
getting shot up.
Another time, while on a security patrol, Bartee decided to call
in a spotter round" because we had done a lot of zigzagging in and out
of our azimuth on this particular route. Accurate pace counting was very
hard to do when something like this happened. However, I didn't get mad
at Bartee this time. To avoid obstacles in our path, one of which was a
giant hornet's nest, we had intentionally gone off course so many times
that I too was second guessing myself. We called in a spotter round from
our mortar platoon to be fired at a particular map coordinate located 50
meters in front of where we thought we were. The round sounded like it
landed exactly where it should have landed. It was the only spotter
round I ever requested. After that, we went on many patrols together,
but Bartee always let me, Milliron and Bowman drive the car, while he
sat in the back seat and kept quiet. What began ugly became a beautiful
thing. That's why I say Bartee was the right squad leader for us at the
right time, but "Thank God for Milliron". I mention these two aside
stories as a small example of how random it was for talented people to
mesh, in the 1967 Army. It was even more rare for them to form a
coherent team. Yet, I think we did it against all odds.
At some point during these back-and-forth operations, and not
long after the friendly fire incident, we were picked up and choppered
into Lai Khe. I will never forget sitting in the shade of a rubber tree
when Sergeant Bartee walked up and squatted down beside me. He had just
come from a big battalion level meeting. There was a rather excited look
on his face. "We are going to be doing some night maneuvers", he said.
"They want our squad to take the lead for the entire battalion.” Then he
asked, “Wade, do you think that you can handle that?" I could tell that
Bartee was much more nervous about the idea than me. I didn’t know
enough to be nervous. “Yeah, I can do that”, I said in a calm voice. I
believe now that Bartee was wondering whether he could trust me or not.
Oh sure, he had come to trust me to take the squad to any location on a
map with just a compass, but could he trust me not to lose my cool. I
had an “edge” and Bartee knew it. Heck, by now, it was becoming more and
more obvious to everyone in the squad that I had a light trigger. If
only I had realized that fact, myself. I did know that I marched to a
different drum beat, but “so what?”, I thought. I wasn’t going to go
along with the crowd, or everyone would be wrong. By now, Bartee,
recognized this not so little flaw in his point man. That was the reason
for the worried look on his face, and not because he thought that I
couldn’t do the job.
As crazy as this may sound, my first thought in response to
Bartee’s question was that finally the Army was asking me to do
something which I was good at doing. Yes, I was very comfortable with
walking point at night. Actually, I was more comfortable doing it at
night than during the daytime. Many times, on smaller patrols, we had
traveled on nights so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my
face. However, I felt that the night gave me concealment which I never
had during the day. On this particular march, it would be the first time
that my squad was taking the lead to guide the entire battalion through
the middle of triple canopy jungle but so what? It really didn’t matter
how many people were following me. I had also long since realized that
there was little chance of running into an ambush out there in the
middle of nowhere. Truth is, that the enemy had more important work to
do at night, terrorizing villagers.
I had no idea that our new commander may have had something to do
with me being picked to do this job. However, I now believe that
screening his command for an odd ball like me to lead the battalion is
just one small example of our new commander’s ability to tweak his chain
of command. Although only one grunt in a million understood how tweaking
worked, with the arrival of Dick, it was now happening. I am sure some
of the older lifer sergeants probably knew that Dick was behind the
tweaking but most of the younger ones didn’t. Everyone would know later
when things really got down and dirty. Dick knew how to let a rook be a
rook and a knight be a knight. We would soon learn that this was just
part of his nature. It seemed almost effortless on his part. I now
believe that he tagged me to lead the battalion without me ever knowing
how that happened. It didn’t bother him that there were things which a
grunt couldn’t do as long as that grunt could do the job assigned him. I
am sure now that many of us grunts had no idea how Dick was using his
command experience to screen us.
I know now what my nineteen-year-old brain did not know then.
Picking a competent navigator would have been extremely important, but
not that hard to do. This is an all but mute problem today because of
G.P.S. However, during the Vietnam War it was a major problem. Yet, the
problem could easily be overcome by a savvy commander putting out the
word for his subordinates to keep track of those point men who hardly
ever got lost, especially at night. Believe me, the veteran platoon
sergeants would have definitely known who they were. If a point man kept
getting lost then a good platoon sergeant would have quickly made
changes at his level, and you can bet your booties on that. Looking
back, I am sure it took only a few brief but clearly stated commands by
our new commander to get the word out for a list of names of the unit's
most capable navigators. I didn't realize how an experienced commander
could work the chain of command back then, but I do now. It would have
taken very little time for a list of names of the very best men for that
job or any other job to be presented to the battalion commander.
Never mind, that I was an odd ball. My name was picked. Shortly
before dark, the entire battalion assembled on Lai Khe’s perimeter. It
was a huge base camp, and I can't remember exactly what spot, on the
perimeter, it was, where we started out, or in what direction it was
that we started our march. I do remember, after being on the march for
several hours, that we were traveling through very thick triple canopy
jungle. All three companies in the battalion were following behind my
squad. It was dusk when we started out, but the night soon became pitch
black. Light rains had begun to come down now in the late afternoons but
lasted no more than 30 minutes. A soaking wet Milliron was shooting the
compass bearing and was a little to my left and in front of me. Bowman
was also to my front a couple paces and a little to my right. We
maintained contact with whispers as we listened for unusual sounds.
Bartee was behind me several paces, with his RTO in his hip pocket. The
rest of the battalion was strung out behind us single file for probably
more than a mile. We had a new platoon leader following at the back of
our platoon somewhere, but then we always had a new platoon leader. They
just didn't last very long. The only way I could see Bowman and Milliron
was to watch the little slivers of glowing wood bouncing up and down in
their hat bands on the back of their steel helmets. On and on we went. I
have no pictures in my mind now of leaving Lai Kai or entering the
jungle to continue our search and destroy mission while linking up with
other units in the dark, nor do I remember how long we walked on this
particular night. However, I will never forget how exhilarating the
entire experience was, being up front and not having to depend on
another unknown person’s judgment to guide us. The area we walked
through was triple canopy jungle. We crossed ox-cart trails, but we
never walked on them. Our new commander strictly forbid us doing that.
In my mind, the darkness was my friend. As long as I had access to a map
and a compass I had no worries about doing my job. The enemy couldn't
see any better in the dark than me. Next Chapter
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