NOTES

1

The Trap Is Baited

1 The AN/PPS-5 (colloquially the “Pipsy-5”) antipersonnel radar is a portable detection system about as large as one of today’s living-room plasma televisions. It is operated by a crew of two. Like any radar set, it could scan and detect moving or fixed targets and it was used in Vietnam to “hunt” for small groups of men and vehicles, especially those hidden in the jungle. It operated silently and had a range of about 5,000 meters for groups of men and out to 10,000 meters for vehicles. There was a radar set in place at FSB Illingworth, and, according to former Captain John Ahern, the artillery liaison officer at Illingworth on the night of the battle, the radar picked up the first NVA movements in the tree line just prior to midnight. That detection led to the initial bombardment of the NVA positions, which had some effect on their strength and manpower. The troops who manned the Pipsy-5 that night were instrumental in weakening the enemy and saving some of their comrades, without doubt.

5

“Build It and They Will Come”

1 Artillerists had been called “redlegs” since the 1860s for the red stripe Civil War gunners wore down the seams of their uniform trousers. This stripe was used to distinguish the artillerists from the infantrymen.

7

Fire Support Base Jay: Portent of Terror

1 The latest (paperback) edition is from Public Affairs, New York (2002).

8

Illingworth in the Crosshairs

1 When a soldier was “short;” as in very close to going home, the time remaining was usually expressed as x number of days and a “wake-up,” the wake-up being the morning of the very last day.

9

“It Ain’t No Laughin’ Matter”

1 “Killer junior”: is a term of art for the artillery, referring to the lighter guns (105s and 155s) firing air-burst rounds at predetermined ranges and altitudes. As opposed to direct-fire rounds, aimed dead-on, killer junior rounds are designed to explode above the enemy, raining down shrapnel. “Killer senior” refers to the use of the larger 8-inch howitzers.

2 The “safety issue” in question turned out to be real. The base plate of the big 8-inch rounds, when fired at flat elevations, could come blowing back toward the gun crews and become a deadly missile in its own right.

11

When Death Rained Down

1 Col. Brady had a reputation for being tough, unforgiving, and inflexible.

12

Judgment Day

1 Sadly, three decades later, Nicholson would discover that the blood transfusion he received at Cam Ranh was tainted with hepatitis C, a blood-borne disease that was not understood well at the time. The Hepatitis would silently eat away at his liver until it was, as he himself described it, “a gooey mess.” Fortunately, a donor liver was made available in 2005 and Nicholson had a liver transplant.

2 Thorazine is a powerful antipsychotic drug that was used in Vietnam—though not widely—to treat combat anxiety, among other mental and physical conditions. One of its side effects could be a tendency to lose full motor control, so those given Thorazine were sometimes observed to shuffle along instead of walk normally.

3 In Vietnam terminology a blivet was a heavy rubber bladder in which fuel or POL (petroleum, oil, and lubricants) was transported. Each blivet usually held about 500 gallons. To get “logged” was to get resupplied with food, water, and ammo.

13

Repercussions and Reverberations

1 Although release 92-70 mentioned “an estimated two enemy companies,” which might normally be around two hundred men, the eyewitness accounts and statements from the NVA on-scene commander put the force at four hundred plus.

2 Vietnam Studies, Lt. Gen. John H. Hay Jr., Tactical and Materiel Innovations (Washington: Dept. of the Army, 1974).