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Here it was July 1967 and once again two Dusters from A
battery 1st of the 44th artillery were part of a convoy
being put together for a relief rotation. We
all were hoping it was going to be down to Khe Sanh this time with all its
amenities like airstrip and its greater distance from the DMZ. In early 1967
going over to Khe Sanh was like an R&R assignment compared to Gio Linh or
Con Thien. As luck would have it we
were headed to Con Thien for a couple weeks. This time out our sister track
A-142 wasn't going with us another Duster from A battery got the assignment.
Once the convoy formed up we found our two Dusters bringing
up the rear with us (A-141) in the last position and our sister Duster just
ahead of us. We moved out in the morning heading west on Route #9 just before
the village of Cam Lo the convoy stopped for a while so we had our lunch
(C-Rations) and as usual wherever we would stop, the village children would come
up to us mooching cigarettes, candy and anything they could con us out of. It
was always great fun playing with the kids and making them smile.
Hell I was just a kid of 18 myself.
After an hour or so we were on our way again. Just before
Cam Lo the convoy turned right on to a dirt trail, I guess it was a country
road; we crossed a river and kept moving northward at a slow rate of speed.
These cross country convoys traveled at 3 to 5mph on average or so it seemed. It
was well into the afternoon as we were moving through a wooded area, when
suddenly there was a huge explosion just ahead of us, the Duster in front of us
had run over a land mine. Their turret had broken loose and spun around several
times before they were able to get it stopped long enough to get out and away
from the track, which was now on fire. The crew got out without injury so all we
could do was to back away and watch her blow up as the ammo soon caught fire and
started going off so we backed up further and waited for the fire and explosions
to subside enough for us to get around her and continue the convoy. It was well
over an hour before we got moving again.
It was getting late in the day so they decided to stop for
the night. We pulled off the road
into the woods and set up camp. OH
BOY this was going to be fun spending the night out here in no mans land! We dug
our fox holes after setting up a perimeter, had supper (more C-Rations) and
started our watch rotation of 4 hours on 4 hours off two men in the fox holes
and the other two sleeping under the track while our Sergeant stayed in the
driver's compartment safe and sound as usual. It was in the middle of the night and I was on guard with either Joyner
or Parker keeping low in our fox holes when out of the silence came this loud
roar TOOOOOOT! TOOOOOOOT! To me it sounded like some sort of a horn; all I could
think of was how in the war movies back home the Chinese would blow a horn to
signal the start of a human wave attack! TOOOOOOOT!
TOOOOOOOT! Oh shit here we go!
There it went again so I took my M-16 off of safety and was going to
alert the rest of the crew when TOOOOOOOT! There it went again but this time I looked up to where I thought the
sound was coming from, what I saw was a solid red line reaching from the sky
down to the ground and I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it was
"PUFF" a gun ship with G.E. vulcan mini guns eating up the enemy on the
ground below them. They kept
circling the area just to our north, which was the firebase at Con Thien.
The red line I saw were tracer bullets placed at five round
intervals. The gun fired so fast
(2,200 rounds per minute I believe) that the tracers looked to be a solid red
line in the night sky. Along with
the twin 40mm Duster I trained on the Quad .50 caliber Machine Gun mount at Fort
Bliss, Texas. I thought the Quads were saying a lot until I saw a G.E. mini gun
Equipped Gun ship in action WOW! It was quite a sight.
Morning finally came around along with daylight came the
rain. We ate breakfast, the convoy
formed up and we moved out. On the
final approach to the firebase it was an up hill climb on a muddy, slippery
trail with no vegetation so it was real slow going. The N.V.A. artillery and
mortars were taking pot shots at us all the way, and we couldn't return any
fire at the enemy because the incline was too steep and we couldn't control
the turret when it was unlocked. We
were about half the way up the hill when we got called back down to assist a
105mm towed artillery piece who couldn't make it up the hill. So we went back down and hooked up the 2-1/2 ton truck with
the howitzer behind it to the track and headed back up the hill only slower this
time. We were like sitting ducks in
a shooting gallery. The mortars got
close but couldn't hit us.
Somehow
we made it in one piece.
Living at Con Thien was pretty bad with incoming all the
time day and night. It was so bad that we couldn't get any water up there for
over a week. We had to ration our
water to drinking only no shaving or even washing our faces. Then a helicopter finally arrived carrying a water tank on a sling
beneath it. I was more than glad to
take out two 5-gallon water cans down to where the water trailer was set up,
wait in line and hump them two heavy mothers back up the hill to our position.
Incoming and firefights were always going on in the bush up
there. Early one evening our crew
was sitting around heating up our dinner when a firefight broke out about a half
a mile below our position where the grass and trees were starting to thicken up
from the defoliated ground around the firebase. This was "normal" so we
finished our meal and kept low to the ground. When some bullets started buzzing over our heads, I called the guys to
man the guns so that we could return some fire.
We laid down 15 to 20 rounds in a sweeping path where the
bullets were coming from and in less than a minute we ended a firefight that had
been going on for quite some time. We had gotten down off of our track and were
lounging a while when a Marine officer came up to our track all upset and
started screaming at us who gave us permission to fire? Our sergeant was once again nowhere to be found so I replied to him,
"Sir, bullets were flying over our heads up here and we were told we could
return fire when we were being shot at." So he left us and went off to find
our squad leader. I'm not exactly
sure where our officers and NCOs would disappear to when we were at places like
Gio Linh, Khe Sanh or Con Thien, they were rarely at our line positions. They
were probably holed up at the base command/communications bunkers, which were
constructed mostly of a corrugated comex shipping container buried deep in the
ground with earth back filled around it and about 4 to 5 feet of sand bags
stacked on top. One could stand up
and walk around inside them plus they had electric lights and a generator to run
the radio, real safe and cozy.
Finally after two to four weeks up there our relief showed
up and we were on our way back to Dong Ha for some rest. We were lucky, we made it back again without injury.
- Paul Gronski
Next: FNG at the DMZ
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