CUE: Stuck in the Middle with You, STEALERS WHEEL
The absolute absurdity of war is often lost on all but the participants, and the participants are often too busy staying alive to notice anything but the terror of the moment. Once I was removed from the frontal impact of combat, if only by a few yards distance, the jolting reality of how things actually occurred dawned on me in all its glory. The scratchy voices that came at me through the radio brought new insight into the thought process of higher command. In many cases, I became convinced that there simply was no process at work there. I had seen a bit of this when I was yet a newcomer to the company.
In January 1970, we were blessed with a change of battalion commanders. This was nothing particularly new. The battalion was commanded by an officer holding the rank of lieutenant colonel, and it was a pretty standard practice to shift command every few months or so. I have no idea what the reasoning for that must have been. Just about the time a commander really got the feel for what was going on and how to best serve his men and the mission, he was shipped off and a newcomer took his place. In most wars this was a matter of promoting a combat-hardened man who had proven himself in that particular area of operation. The Vietnam conflict seems to have been an exception to that rule.
Since the war in Vietnam was not a declared war by definition, and since our combat forces were forbidden to cross into North Vietnam and put an end to the hostilities once and for all, the rules for just about everything changed accordingly. Men who had chosen the military for a profession used the assignment to combat command in Vietnam as a stepping-stone to promotion. Vietnam was jokingly referred to as a “light colonel's war.” It was pretty well known that a lieutenant colonel needed to have a tour of duty as a combat commander under his belt if he aspired to the more prestigious rank of full colonel. This being the case, the command of combat battalions seemed to become a revolving-door affair, often bringing in new commanders who had no idea what was going on when they stepped into such a weighty position of leadership.
On the January morning that I first witnessed one of these changes of command, the company had been working along the edge of the Ho Bo Woods, a particularly nasty area. That morning we picked up everything and everybody and ran for the base camp of Cu Chi. Once there, we were assembled and the new battalion commander stood up on a track and addressed us. I can't remember a word he said, but an abridged version would probably be, “Hello, men…. I am the colonel. Now go back to work.” We then loaded up and made our way right back to the place we had been before this nonsense was forced on us. On the way back out, one of the tracks hit a mine. It could have all been so easily and sensibly avoided.
From my position as a rifleman on the Two Zero track, I was not privy to the orders that came to us through battalion command. Generally, such directives never reached my ears, yet the consequences became evident. The change of command in January brought with it a number of new protocols in the way we were to operate as a company. This seems to be par for the course. New commanders evidently believe that if they don't make noticeable differences, they will not be credited with improving the combat effectiveness of their new command. Once again, the specter of promotion to colonel seemed to be looming in the background of such decisions.
In January it was passed down to the platoons that we were to make some drastic changes. The new policy dictated that we would open the top hatch of the tracks and all stand inside, with only the top half of our bodies sticking up. This was supposed to protect us from ambush fire and booby traps hung up in trees. Anyone who had spent much time on an APC knew how really silly and completely uncomfortable such an arrangement was. The tracks were all-terrain vehicles that bounced, bumped, swayed, and made standing up inside completely ludicrous.
The second change was a doozy. We were ordered to fill our tracks with Bangalore torpedoes and forty-pound explosive charges, to be used in destroying bunkers, tunnels, and enemy fortifications. The unfortunate effect of this was to make our tracks moving ammunition dumps. If we ran across even a small land mine, the possibility of setting off such weighty ordnance became very likely.
Rumor had it that all the company commanders in the battalion had presented their objections. Rumor aside, we loaded up with things that go boom, opened the hatches, crawled inside the tracks, and waited for disaster to strike. It would not be long, and it was not without loss, before the dire predictions came true. A track in one of the other companies hit a mine and left a burned-out hulk where the men had been. With a sudden stroke of command genius, orders came down from battalion that we were to return to the older, more reasonable mode of operation. In the emotionless manner of men who have no real choice in much of their fate, we accepted the confusing changes as a testament to the fierce ambition for promotion and moved on. Many months later, sitting in the gunner's hatch of the command track, passing along messages to Captain Meilstrup, I gained a new and depressing realization of just how much of the war was run by similar flights of foolishness.
The list of really stupid directives that came down to us from higher command was long and disheartening. Fortunately, the idiocy trickled in a little at a time, which softened the blow somewhat. While the company was assigned to work in War Zone C, near the Mekong River, we received a directive that instructed combat units operating within one thousand yards of the river not to fire unless they were fired on by the enemy. It then insisted that units contacting the enemy within five hundred yards of the river not fire! I have no idea how other units responded to this ridiculous order, but all of the soldiers of C Company became amazingly bad judges of distance.
Since I was no longer in a line platoon, I no longer went out on ambush patrol. Instead of spending those stressful nights lying in wait for what was to come out there in the darkness, I had become the scratchy, metallic voice that spoke to such men through the handset of the PRC–25 radio.
“Alpha Pappa One, Alpha Pappa One. This is Five Four Whiskey. I need a sit rep, over.”
Many nights I had lain in the all-consuming Asian dark, pressing the handset of the radio close to my ear and responding to just such a request in hoarse whispered tones.
“Alpha Pappa One. I have negative sit rep at this time.”
It seemed an odd twist of fate that I should find myself on the other side of such exchanges, no longer hiding in the dark with a small group of men who seemed terribly alone out there. I had become one of those who stayed within the protective circle of the tracks and kept watch over the ambush patrols by radio. I found that sometimes, I was the voice that sent them some of the absurdity that stung the average soldier with such blatant disregard. It must be remembered that Vietnam was not a declared war. It should also be noted that when the bullets and rockets began to fly in the dark of night, it was impossible for the line troop to tell the difference.
The United States as a whole had jumped in with both feet to support the troops and the mission of World War II. Many of us tend to believe such complete involvement by the American people in the nation's military endeavors is what Americans always do. A quick review of history would suggest otherwise. The full-out efforts of Americans on the home front during World War II was a rare exception rather than the rule.
Life back in the world, as the GI referred to home, seemed to go on as if the war in Vietnam were an afterthought. Oh, there were protests by college kids and splashes of combat footage on the evening news, but the business world seemed to trade on the exchange and jockey for position in the marketplace, as if what was happening on the other side of the globe was not happening to American troops in the field. This mercantile indifference sometimes cast a very long shadow.
The week had been long, and the ambush patrols from C Company had been many. The company was long overdue for a stand-down, inside base-camp wires, with all that such a period of rest means. My night watch at the radio was running as usual when we got a message from brigade, which is a step higher than battalion. The voice on the other end relayed the information with typical radio-operator detachment. We were simply told not to fire any more M-79 rounds than were absolutely necessary during engagement with enemy troops. This meant that our defensive probing fire with the M-79 grenade launcher was forbidden. Our defensive perimeter was generally protected from enemy troops sneaking up on us by intermittent fire from the “doopers,” or grenade launchers. When I passed the message to Captain Meilstrup, he swore softly and grabbed the microphone, demanding to know why such an order had been issued. The answer was short and sweet. The voice on the other end of the radio told us there was a strike on back in the world, and they would not ship any more dooper rounds until somebody got more money, or a longer lunch break, or something important like that. Meilstrup shook his head, handed me the scribbled message, and said, “Tell ‘em.” I swallowed hard and pressed the transmit button on the mike. I am sure that somewhere, today, there is someone who was out there in the dark that night who heard my voice telling him not to shoot at the enemy with the M-79 unless he absolutely had to because somebody in Michigan wanted a better retirement package.
At that moment I felt that the world no longer made any sense at all. In retrospect, I believe it was one of the few moments in my life when I was absolutely right.