I was in the Army for a three year tour. I was drafted for two years and extended a year to get surface-to-air missile school, because they did not have missiles in Vietnam and I did not want to go to Vietnam. About half way through the school they said your math is not good enough to stay in surface-to-air missiles. They said your choices are either automatic weapons or cook school. I said, “I ain’t cooking eggs at four o’clock in the morning. Give me this automatic weapons thing. By the way, what is it?”

Then I said, “What about my extra year?”

They said, “We guaranteed you the school, nobody guaranteed you to pass it. You’re committed to the three years.”

There were twenty-six of us in my mechanics class at Ft. Bliss. Twenty-four went to Korea and two of us went to Vietnam. By then I thought, Thank god I don’t have to go to Korea – too cold and a lot of playing Army.

Junk Yard Mechanic

In Vietnam I was the only guy certified to work on the Quad-50 for the whole battalion. From the headquarters at An Khe they would send me to every place that had Quads in order to do maintenance work. I was on a lot of firebases where it was quite hairy: the Quads were down and people were trying to kill you. Then I would fly back to An Khe, report in and see what else is broke, or they would send me on gun trucks (Quad-50 mounted on the bed of a five-ton truck) running convoy support. I was never anywhere very long.

Working on those old pieces of WWII equipment was an experience most 19 or 20-year-old people don’t get. I did constant preventive maintenance: tearing them down, putting in new solenoid switches, cleaning them, putting them back together, and trying to get the “Little Joe” Briggs & Stratton engine that moved the guns to work. The drive belts would wear out and the little motors under them would burn out, so you took them to the electrical shop to be rebuilt. Then you’d have to readjust the entire weapon. It was all quite a chore.

The Quad-50 was not being made anymore, so I always had trouble getting parts. Some I had to fabricate myself. The drive motor under the seat that turned the turret, up and down and 360 were plated with cheap Chinese metal. Due to stress and tension they would break off and the bolts would break off. You could not weld them because they would not take the heat. So I built plates out of scrap medal and welded them on underneath the gun turret.

I had a hard time getting barrels for the Browning machine guns. They glowed red when they were fired for a sustained period, which would warp them and burn the rifling out. With the rifling gone and the rounds coming through a smooth barrel, you never new where they would go (like a knuckleball). You could be shooting straight, but the rounds could be going to the left, or right, or up or down

When I couldn’t order a part or make it, I robbed Peter to pay Paul. I would take an old gun mount, take it off the road, take it off the truck, set it up on three 55-gallon barrels and strip it for parts – meaning we only had nine or ten working Quad-50s for the battalion instead of the twelve we should have had.

Memory Slots

My memory is like a roulette wheel. You spin the wheel and the ball drops into a slot. That is what my brain is like trying to remember 40 years ago. I did not get into all of the blood and guts, the gory stuff that other guys did. Fortunately I was always one step ahead of it. For example, we got rocketed last night but I had already left.

I do remember a close call from a sniper. They put me on a helicopter to LZ English near Pleiku, a little firebase of two mortar tubes, a squad of infantry and two Quad-50s sitting on a low hilltop that looked down over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I had to work on a Quad just north of there at a place I can’t remember the name of. I do remember the Quad would not rotate 360 or traverse up and down because of a broken cotter pin.

I had the front cover off and was leaning over the turret when sniper rounds started pinging off the bat wings (medal shields to protect the gunner). One was an inch and a half to the left of my head. I di-di-mau’d off the truck saying, “I got to go.” (di di mau: Vietnamese for “leave quickly” and borrowed into English by US soldiers)

LZ Sherry

The closest I ever got to getting killed was at LZ Sherry. Naval guns were shooting over the top of us and you could hear the rounds whistle. But one round made a WUMP WUMP WUMP sound. When I heard that funny sound I dove under the Quad-50 truck, just before the round exploded overhead and sent a big chunk of medal the size of a license plate down right beside the truck. They told us afterword a medal band had come off in flight.

I have two other little memory slots of Sherry. 

I was working on Logan’s gun. I remember the stick control cotter pin had come out. I was looking out toward the trash dump which was off the southern perimeter in front of Logan’s Quad. I noticed five or six girls we called Coke Girls. They were local prostitutes who also would come out to sell Coca-Cola. This time they were scavenging at the dump when Viet Cong popped up and shot all of them in broad daylight.

……………….

At a place like Sherry you tended to get a little jumpy. One night I called for an illumination round because I saw something in the wire. They wouldn’t give it to me and I was scared to death. After the sun came up I saw it was a trash can laying out there.

The Back Door To SAM

Clerical errors and oversights plagued almost every Vietnam vet. Sometimes Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars and other medals for valor went un-awarded. Or entire foot lockers of personal effects disappeared. Or parents learned their son was missing in action, when he was safely recuperating at an aid station. In Mitch’s case a clerical error had a happy ending.

When I had to leave the surface-to-air missile school because of my math skills they should have given me a different specialty code for Quad mechanic. But when I left Vietnam my records still had the original 16 Foxtrot (16 F) specialty code, on paper making me a graduate of the SAM training. I told them it was a mistake but they said they didn’t care and sent me to Germany to track Russian MIGs. So I ended up in surface-to-air anyway.