Welcome to Rocket City
Living within the rubber trees for the next year (Non-fiction. Photo by Jamie Boss)
The formation of the convoy that will take us to Lai Khe took quite some doing. We had to wait in line for all kinds of vehicles to show up. We had everything. Tanks, armored personnel carriers or APCs, a huge M88 tank retriever, ¾ ton trucks, Deuce and a half’s pulling trailers, 5-ton tractors pulling low boys to haul heavy equipment on (called dragon wagons), and jeeps. Tons of jeeps. Jeeps with MP’s. Jeeps with important-looking officers. Jeeps with machine gun mounts in the back. All of the jeeps had this four-foot bar welded up out of angle iron rising from the front bumper that had a foot-long piece raked towards the direction of travel. The VC liked to stretch piano wire across lonely roads at the height of the driver’s neck. The bar would break the wire before the driver lost his head. This is a practice that had its origins in the Second World War in Europe.
Our deuce and a half was carrying all the guys who would be members of the contact team. We had a specialist in every ordnance field. I was the tank mechanic. We also had a small arms expert, a fellow who worked on howitzers and cannons, a radio technician, an engineer mechanic, a wheeled vehicle mechanic, a welder, and a mechanic who specialized in repairing generators. Our small group of specialists were tasked to assist all the units Charlie Company could not handle, as the number of combat units stationed in Lai Khe had been growing in size. Following us was another group of vehicles bringing our equipment, specialized trucks, and trailers. The radio and small arms guys had it made. Each of them had a deuce and a half with a complete workshop built on the back. Their set up time was to park it and put down the steps. The rest of us would have to build our own shelters and work areas. Since I would be working on tanks, my work area would be sizable.
Lai Khe acquired its nickname “Rocket City” from the frequency of rockets and mortars that were hurled into its boundaries. The thought of attacks in the dark of the night made us apprehensive but the memory of the strict lifestyle in Di An took much of the fear away. We were trading the safety of Di An for the danger in Lai Khe. In the end, the draw of doing something real and palpable made the difference. Everyone who volunteered for the team wanted his share of adventure. Just like the scene in the movie Patton where he says, “When your kids ask you what you did in the big war, you don’t have to say I shoveled shit in Louisiana”. We needed a connection to the war. We were also young and stupid. This is why they draft young men, not old ones. Older men would have lingered safely in Dian for the year.
As the convoy waited in the morning sun, there was a flurry of Vietnamese darting in and out of the trucks. Little kids holding up bottles of warm coke yelling “No 1. 500 pee”. The Vietnamese currency was piasters. A piaster was worth one penny. 500 Pee was 500 piasters or 5 bucks. It seemed everything they sold was 500 piasters. Number one meant it was good. Number ten meant it was bad. (To my knowledge the numbers 2 through 9 were never part of the equation.) Boo Coo meant very big. Boo Coo number 10 was very bad. Our lesson in the Vietnamese language had commenced.
At one point, I saw a small motorcycle, with a woman on the back, driving up to each truck and the Vietnamese would yell something up to the driver. Most often the woman would dismount and climb into the truck’s passenger side door. After 5 minutes she would exit, hop back on the motorcycle and the entire scene would be repeated at the next truck. When he got to our truck the Vietnamese driver looked up, pointed to the woman behind him, held his hand out, and yelled “Number 1 sucky! 500 Pee! You give me money now. She number 1 sucky”. Kansas was getting further and further away and there were no ruby slippers to be seen. Soon we saw an MP jeep riding to the front of the convoy with a red-light flashing. We were about to make our way north to Lai Khe. Engines cranked and roared to life. The Vietnamese scattered and the convoy began to move. As the vehicles moved out, our speed kept increasing.
Soon we were blasting down the dusty dirt road at 45 to 50 miles per hour. Choking dust from the tires and tracks bloomed everywhere. Our top was down and we could watch the dust settling on our clothes in real time. As the truck bounced over ruts in the road, each time we were thrown a couple of inches above the bench seat we were sitting on. Helmets fell forward on our faces, rifle butts banged on the floor and you could watch the fellow next to you say something but could not hear him above the din of engines and turbo-superchargers. If someone happened to take a potshot at us, the sound of it might not be heard.
Highway 13 meandered through villages and past rice paddies. The occasional colonial French building would be seen, looking like a picture from the movie “Indochine”. That was what the French called this place in its entirety… Indochine. From 1887 to 1945 Indochine had three sections. The upper third of the entire country was called Tonkin. The middle section was named Annam. The lower third was named Cochinchina. Going back to 2879 BC, this country has had 23 names. The name “Vietnam” can be traced back to the second century BC, when it meant “People of The South” as it was part of southern China.
So here we were on our way to making a difference in a country that has a history of about 4000 years. The logic of our government eluded me then as it eludes me now. Why we would think our 300-odd years of existence on the North American continent could give us the wisdom to think we could defeat a culture this ancient escapes me. Not to excuse them, but the French at least colonized this country for a reason. They wanted to exploit the natural rubber and Opium and to a lesser extent convert as many to Catholicism as they could. Unfortunately, their instrument of persuasion was the guillotine.
We, on the other hand, were trying to prevent a country with 4000 years of history from reuniting, which was mandated by the July 21, 1954 Geneva Accord. Within two years of 1954, a country-wide vote was supposed to be held to decide the Government of the entirety of Vietnam as a whole. We, in true American bluster, decided that we did not want to take the chance of a communist regime taking over the country, so we backed the southern catholic government and the accord was broken. We say we stand for freedom but when a 4000-year-old culture decides it would like to vote in the government of its choice, we then support the side we like providing its exit from a negotiated accord that was to unify the country. Unfortunately, the rank and file did not know this then. We trusted our government to do the “right” thing. Our government, meaning our politicians, does not always “Do the right thing.” In this case, a large group of white men in Washington tried to decide the future of a culture of which they had no clue.
As villages and relics from long ago passed by, I could not imagine how this culture continued without changes for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. There may have been electricity, TV, and all the amenities in Saigon, but out here in the countryside, there were none. The world of the Vietnamese peasant consisted of simple shelters made with basic tools. Water buffalo did the hard work and pulled two-wheeled carts. The grass was cut with a scythe. Clothing was minimal, traditional, and ancient. There were no telephones, banks, doctors, or ambulances. The effect was like stepping back in time, where even our founding pilgrim colonies appeared to be an advanced culture.
The world of a Vietnamese villager revolved around rice, shelter, and family. The family connection was very strong. You could see it in every Vietnamese family you met. It occurred to me that “we” were the intruders and I couldn’t help wondering why our presence was so important. The villagers just wanted to be left alone. They seemed to fear us as much as they did the Vietcong and North Vietnamese. The main benefit we provided was employment for them in the base camps. They did our laundry, cleaned our barracks, sold us goods from their village stores, and even cut our hair in their village barbershops. Our relationship with the villages close by became symbiotic.
Our destination was Lai Khe. It was once part of the sprawling French Colonial Michelin Rubber Plantation. The nearest town was Ben Cat, which was a corner of the notorious “Iron Triangle” and was no place to get caught walking about, day or night. Lai Khe was the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s First Infantry Division. Some of the First division units on base were the 701st Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Surgical Hospital, 2nd Battalion/5th Calvary, 5th Battalion/7th Calvary, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Aviation Company, 8th of the 6th Artillery, Platoons of the 1/4 Cavalry and First Engineers. Our small group would build its work area and home among the thick groves of rubber trees near the airfield and would be supporting the First Engineers, 1/4 Cav. and the 8th of the 6th Artillery. The Quarter Cav had M48A3 tanks, M113A1 Armored personnel carriers, a few scattered zippo units (Flame thrower tanks), Zippo service units (vehicles that carried the spare NAPALM for the flame thrower tanks), M548 tracked cargo carriers and a couple of M557 command Post personnel carriers. The First Engineers had tanks with bulldozer blades, an M88 tank retriever, a couple of AVLB bridge launcher tanks that could lay down a bridge in minutes and a fair compliment of D9 Caterpillar bulldozers with Rome Plow blades that could cut down a tree in seconds. The 8/6 Artillery had M110 8” self- propelled howitzers, M109 155mm self-propelled howitzers, 155mm field howitzers and 105mm field howitzers.
All of the units we were responsible for had generators, rifles, pistols, radios, machine guns and a multitude of items they would bring to us for repair. Whenever a tank, personnel carrier, self-propelled gun or howitzer broke down in the field, we would have to grab our tool box, hop in a jeep or helicopter and make our way into the field for the repair. The entire work and living area we would be using would have to be hewn out of groves of rubber trees with our own hands. A great task lay ahead of us.
Lai Khe was rectangular in shape, atop a hill, with many rows of barbed wire (called concertina wire), plenty of land mines and a perimeter with cleared vegetation for an unobstructed field of fire. The entrance and exit to the base was right off Highway 13, which made it a convenient stop-over for vehicles traveling further north. It had a large airfield, which could accommodate C-130’s and Caribou aircraft and a great helipad for launching Huey helicopters and Cobra attack helicopters. We also had a fuel dump and an ammunition dump. The base was a world in itself. At a moment’s notice the gates could be closed and the perimeter manned to fight off a ground attack. Unlike Di An, things went bump in the night here all the time. At times it was more like bumpidy, bumpidy, bump.
As we pulled onto the base, we could see the great 8-inch howitzers of 8/6 Artillery blasting away at some distant target. First a great report would be heard and then the carrier frame would be pushed back onto its stabilizing spade sunk into the ground to control the recoil. Men would hold their hands to their ears to lessen the impact on their ear drums. Clouds of brown dust would billow around the gun and cover the men firing it. As the round flew off into the distance, the breach would be opened and the barrel swabbed quickly to douse any burning material. A shell carrier would be lowered and a new round, 8 inches in diameter, would be placed in its basket. The hydraulic lift would bring the round into the breach and be pushed into place. Once in place, bags of gun power would be shoved into the breach behind the shell and the breach would be closed. A lanyard would be pulled and the process continued. This type of “fire mission” might go on for hours, with little rest for the guys manning the gun. After each round was fired, the technician who is aiming the gun would get input from a forward observer many miles away. He would make minute adjustments and fire again. Eventually the rounds landed where they were supposed to land. If they fell short, it was called a “short-round”. Short-rounds sometimes landed on the folks we were trying to protect. Sometimes we referred these short-rounds as “friendly fire”. (I never found anything friendly about them.) I later learned that if you stood right behind the gun when it was fired, you could see the shell arc through the sky as it made its way to the target. The 8-inch howitzers rarely left the base camp. Their reach was so extreme, they could support units in the field many, many miles away. The artillery units’ living quarters, mess hall and work area were right next to the guns. At a moments’ notice they could be awakened at night, run to their guns and be firing devastating support within minutes. As we drove further into the base, we passed First Division Headquarters. At the top of the driveway leading to the Grand French Colonial building where the Commanding General hung out, was a large ten-foot concrete monument in the shape of the First Infantry Divisions shoulder patch. The giant concrete structure was the olive green of our patch with the big red number one in the center. Around the base of the structure were the words “Danger Forward”, which was the motto of the Division.
At this intersection, we could see the airfield, chopper pads, prisoner area, the supply and transportation area where all supplies were delivered and row after row of rubber trees. Lai Khe was unique in that it had a complete Vietnamese village within its borders, surrounded by barbed wire and guards. There was only one way into the village and that was through a gate manned by MP’s day and night. Guard duty would include walking guard duty around the village as well as pulling guard duty in the perimeter bunkers.
As we turned right towards the chopper pads, the leading jeep pulled into a small open area in front of the rubber tree forest. It was perhaps 40 acres of closely growing rubber trees, all in neat rows. On this site, we had to build our four tent platforms, office platform, giant underground bunker with stairs connecting to all four bunk houses, a latrine, shower, parking area for the van trucks, two huge canvas shelters to accommodate repairs on vehicles and engineer equipment, a latrine, shower, a welding shack and a small wooden house we called the “dog house”, which housed such things as chain saws, rakes, shovels, axes, chain falls and other building equipment. Lastly, we erected a bulletin board with a roof and three urinals placed strategically around the compound. All of this would be built around a circular road that would allow heavy equipment to enter and exit from the main road. The crowning glory was a sign I painted by hand that said “701st Maintenance Battalion, Hq and A Company Contact Team” and hung at the entrance to our compound.
Many days of hard work lay ahead of us before we could even begin our work on things that were painted O.D. green. I might point out that even our tee shirts and boxer shorts were O.D. green. We were green from the strain of hard work, living in green tents in a green forest and dressed in green from head to toe. Soon we would be ready to work on green things made out of steel.
We believed we were fortunate that everyone in the Lai Khe area were miles from where they sprayed the defoliant Agent Orange. Of course, we knew nothing about the deadly dioxin poison at the time. The army always did what it wanted and didn’t always let people know what was going on. It would be 50 years later that I found out we were in the middle of Agent Orange city and I was granted a VA disability for Agent Orange exposure. We were, however, very close to the Iron Triangle next to Ben Cat. This triangular shaped area of jungle was always a hot spot for enemy offensives in both the French Conflict and our own. The Viet Minh (forerunners of the Viet Cong) used this area to stage troops, equipment and attacks when they battled the French. As the United States entered the fray, the now Viet Cong used this area much in the same way. At the end of the war, the Iron triangle was said to have 30,000 miles of underground tunnels that supported the communist fighters. It was an enemy stronghold from 1945 to the fall of Saigon in 1975. More to the point, it was only a few miles from our base camp. The ARVN 5th Army was also stationed in this area. (ARVN stood for the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam.) The scuttlebutt was, if you wanted to know where the fighting was, note the direction in which the ARVN’S were traveling and head the other way. Sometimes that was the case.
The leadership of our diminutive unit consisted of one First Lieutenant, a warrant officer and a staff sergeant substituting for a First Sergeant. The first Lieutenant didn’t want to be there, the warrant officer wanted to be in the welding shop all the time welding and the staff sergeant thought he was “Sergeant Rock” of comic book fame. We had a pot-smoking lad from California that was a hippy in olive drab. The fellow in charge of supply was Mexican and we had a pure American Indian that everyone called Chief. One tank mechanic was from Texas and another was from Council Bluffs, Iowa. I was the third and from Milford, Connecticut. The engineer mechanic was from the wilds of West Virginia and everyone called him Hillbilly. The howitzer expert was from Shamokin, Pennsylvania. My best friend was Pop, who was an engineer mechanic and came from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.
Every unit in the Army has an older private that was busted down in rank many times and who often rebelled at authority. His in-depth technical knowledge about his job was usually the only thing that kept him from getting the boot. He was a nightmare for the officer’s but his knowledge was indispensable to the unit. This described my friend Pop to a “T”. Pop would become my inspiration and mentor during my stay in Viet Nam. Pop was an alcoholic but when he had a sober moment, his knowledge was indispensable. When he was drunk, he was the most obstinate, wiseass troublemaker you could imagine. When he wanted to show me something important he would say “Listen and understand”. When he was angry he would say that “he had a case of the ass”. If there was a way he could mess with an officers mind, he wouldn’t hesitate. That was Pop.
One day an artillery officer walked into our camp and asked if anyone could solve his problem. The equilibrator two of his 155 mm field pieces were rusted in place and the barrels could not be changed. It had a very large nut holding them on and the nut could not be budged. The trick was the threads the nut was threaded onto could not be ruined in any way or the entire gun would be junk. Without hesitation, our lieutenant walked up to Pop and asked if he would give it a try. Pop said yes but he would prefer to do the job alone with just me as his helper. Turning to me he said, “Throw the oxy-acetylene set into the truck and we will get over there when they have gone for chow.” We arrived at the artillery camp during dinner and Pop told me to start heating up the large nut but don’t put the flame on the threaded shaft. Soon the huge nut began to glow white hot. Yelling to me over the sound of the torch, he said “As soon as a corner starts to melt, hit the oxygen lever and I will turn off the acetylene at the same moment.” It all sounds strange to me as this was sure to melt everything and ruin the gun. As the nut started to melt, I hit the oxygen lever and he shut to fuel off. Much to my surprise, the nut began to melt and blow away with no flame but the threads on the shaft were untouched. It seemed cutting with a torch is based on rapid oxidation of melted metal. The threads were not melted. We removed the two large nuts without a hitch. Pop would not tell them how he did it.