My tour in Vietnam did not get off to an auspicious start. First of all, even though I was a new guy, I was promoted to corporal soon after I arrived in-country in January 1967. I was given command of a three-man 60mm mortar squad in the 3rd Marine Division’s Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. The problem was that two of the squad members, both draftees, were two years older than I and had been in-country for months as riflemen. Needless to say, they were almost in open rebellion.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Vietnam Magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Then my first combat outing began with a near disaster. I had been ordered into a heliborne assault in the Go Cong secret zone, 60 miles south of Saigon in the Mekong Delta. My first step off the rear ramp of a CH-46 Sea Knight twin-rotor helicopter was prompted by a crew chief’s push as I hesitated 4 feet above a deep delta rice paddy with 90 pounds of mortar rounds and gear strapped onto my 120-pound frame. Jumping into the waist-deep mud, I became stuck, giving real meaning to the phrase ‘Vietnam quagmire.’ While the rest of the team raced to the edge of the landing zone (LZ), out of the exposed area, my section leader trudged out into the LZ, laughing, to pull me out of the mud.

That afternoon I witnessed the firing of the 60mm mortar for the first time. There had been no live ammo in training, and I had only fired the 81mm in the States. We were firing registration rounds at likely avenues of approach around our perimeter. The first round landed OK, but the second got barely 30 feet out of the tube, then nose-dived into the center of the perimeter. Two riflemen were hit, badly enough to be medevaced, but not seriously wounded. The rounds were dated 1952. I guessed some supply sergeant was using up the older stuff before he issued the newer rounds. Captain Don Festa, my company commander, did not allow any more firing of the 60mm mortars during the rest of the operation.

Later, I slipped while crossing a bamboo bridge that spanned a chest-deep stream. All I remember was how cool the water felt and my decision to hold onto the mortar and let go of my M-14 rifle. Luckily, I wasn’t carrying the packboard with 90 pounds of ammo and gear–I probably would have been unable to spring the packboard strap in time and would have drowned. A Vietnamese farmer was spotting for us slightly downstream. He saved my rifle and pulled me out. My section leader pulled me up the bank.

My first duty as a squad leader was to attend a briefing for a convoy escort that would travel from Da Nang to Phu Bai. ‘If we’re hit here,’ the staff sergeant said, ‘1st Squad will jump off the truck and face outboard, 2nd Squad will face inboard.’

‘What about mortars?’ I asked.

‘You fire from the truckbed,’ he said.

‘Can’t do that, Sarge, the recoil off the truckbed will be too much,’ I said.

‘We’ll put sandbags in the back of the six-by’ [M-35 truck], he said. I looked at the sergeant’s map and noticed that the contour lines were close together, denoting a cliff. ‘Sarge, we could start an avalanche and kill us all if we fire mortars here,’ I said.

‘You’re right,’ he replied. ‘Your mortar squad should jump out of the truck and face outboard along the road with 1st Squad.’ The convoy escort was uneventful.

Soon after we moved up to the demilitarized zone (DMZ), I slept through a mortar barrage, only waking up as my squad members Pete Hunter and Jimmy ‘Short Round’ Shea ran out under fire and dragged me by each arm across the hillside to our mortar pit. ‘Nobody can sleep through a mortar attack,’ they both said in unison. I explained that I had always been a good sleeper.

Mortarmen do one thing in the infantry better than everybody else–they hump equipment. They carry heavy loads on their backs and go everywhere the riflemen go. The terrain in Vietnam varied from the sand dunes along the coast to foothills inland, to rice paddies in the lush agricultural areas, to the mountains and jungles near the DMZ. I was determined that I would not only hump as much as my men, but more. I carried the sight box on a packboard, as well as several mortar rounds.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to