Place: Market Time, U.S. Navy Com Sta, Central Coastal Zone,

                  Cam Ranh Bay, Rep of Vietnam

                

    

    Now 1972, by early summer things in Vietnam had really started winding down.  All of the US ground forces except Special Forces types had left.  Now even the Koreans were beginning to pull out.  U.S. Army aviation units were still in the field supporting ARVN troops.  We were Vietnamizing other helicopters by turning over repaired/overhauled aircraft to the VNAF (Vietnamese Airforce). 

     Soon the Vietnamese would be flying their own support missions. This meant there was less and less need for US contractor employees.  Then there was the expected RIF.  Whether the RIF was good luck or bad luck, I'm not sure, but I had to find another job if I wanted to stay on in the far east. 

I wasn't ready to return to CONUS quite yet. I had been living in the village of Cu Sa, which was in Cam Ranh Bay area. So I packed my little`getaway bag', told my Vietnamese wife goodby, and then caught a ride on a C-130 at the Air Force Base to Saigon.

    The way that world events were progressing, I thought that this would be a good time to see about getting my hand back into the `Telephone World'.  In my former life in Florida I had worked for Southern Bell as a toll test, voice-carrier equipment, microwave, and mobile-radio technician. 

    With some regret, I mentally prepared to leave the field of Army aviation.  I was hopeful and knew that this Dumb-Ass war couldn't continue forever, so I though that this would be a good time to plan ahead in order to be up to speed with the "Telephone World" again.  I had hopes there would be a job waiting for me at Ma Bell, when I returned to Florida.

    In Saigon I checked out job possibilities with Page

Communications and Federal Electric Corp.  Subsequently, I was employed by Federal Electric Corp. (a division of ITT) as a microwave technician and I'll be darned if the company didn't send me right back up to Cam Ranh Bay.  I was attached to the  U.S. Navy Communications Station, Central Coastal Zone, which had been code named "Market Time" (the Navy must have liked that name as they had used it before).

    My supervisor at Market Time, John Haithcock (from Findlay, Ohio) was an ex-Super Chief (Master Chief Petty Officer, E-9) who would remind nearly everyone who met him of Sherman Helmsely.  Cocky, smartalicky, and all the rest, but he was really sharp. 

He was one of the best all round Electronics Technicians (ET) that I have known during my life.  He had spent 22 years in the Navy (most of them as an E.T.), during the course of which, he had witnessed many unusual events.

     The following subject came up one day after reading a Navy magazine.   The Navy publishes a service oriented magazine called  "ALL HANDS",  which is much the same as our Air Force "AIRMAN"  or the Army's "SOLDIERS".  This particular issue of `All Hands' that brought about my memorable conversation with Haithcock, was one that was totally devoted to Congressional Medal of Honor winners (most of which, had been awarded posthumously).  A lot of the recipients were Navy Corpsmen and while the average reader may not be aware of it, the USMC is supplied it's Medics/Corpsmen by the Navy. 

    The magazine listed the recent CMH winners of the other services as well. In scanning over the citations, I was amazed at how many recipients had received their CMH by throwing themselves on a grenade to save their buddies.  If ever there was a preferred way to die, this certainly wouldn't be the way I'd choose to do it.

    Even with my limited experience with explosive devices, I had always wondered about anyone committing an act such as this. 

My feeling was that this is always an unnecessary waste.  All explosives tend to Blow Up, grenades, mortars, rockets, only excluding shaped charges that are cone down.  The proper self preservation act, would be to just hit the deck, dirt, or what ever.  An 82 m/m mortar can drop in just a few feet away and you'd never take a frag if you had been flat on your belly.  Maybe a hell of a head ache, but alive.  Never stand up or run, they will bite you.  Anyone completing Boot training ought to know that. But then there are some drill instructors that are full of that Hollywood poop too.  And lastly, there is the "Death Wish," a result of too many days in the line, complete frustration of a senseless war and wanting a quick way out, anyway out.

    John and I were discussing this method of dying, and then he said, "Let me tell you a story". 

    His story had taken place in 1967 while he was still in the Navy and stationed with the U.S. Navy River Patrol Force, code name `Game Warden' in the Mekong Delta.  Task Force 116 was under the naval component of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. (MACV).  The overall code name was "OPERATION MARKET TIME".

   They were equipped with the PBR, (Patrol Boat, River; NOT "Pabst Blue Ribbon") an off-the-shelf commercial design by United Boat Builders of Bellingham, Washington.  For those readers

who are not familiar with a PBR, it is a 9.5 meter fiberglass boat, propelled by an inboard engine that drove a pump-powered steerable water jet. Since the PBR did not use a propeller for thrust, the boat could run in shallows that would rip a prop off of a normal boat and it could run these shallows at 25 knots.  They were armed with either single or dual .50 caliber Browning machine guns on the bow (the Mah-Duces), two M60 .30 cal. machine guns, one on each side the mid-ship control center  and another .50 cal mounted on the aft deck.  In lieu of a deck house, the PBR had tubing frame-work that was covered with a canvas canopy.  The PBRs were not heavily armored but they had speed on their side.  While on patrol they traveled in pairs,  enabling them to protect each other in the event of trouble. 

   Their primary tasks were to stop any and all river traffic, search for contraband, and to support our troops whenever they were engaged near the waterways.  They would also conduct patrols deep into the many side canals that most of the Vietnamese used

for transporting goods to market. 

    At times, this normal everyday routine patrolling became boring, as there wasn't much that Chuck could do to them out in the middle of the river;  consequently, for a little excitement, someone thought up an exhilarating new game.  This game turned out to be a type of practical joke of a very risky nature. 

    On patrol the PBR boats would cruise in line-astern (In a direct line, bow to the stern of the next boat).  To play, someone on the Lead boat would ease up to the fantail with a concussion grenade of the MK3A2 verity, pull the pin, flip the spoon, count 1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000 and drop it over the stern.  That is, assuming that the color code on the grenade spoon showed it to have a five-second fuse.  To quote from Murphy's laws of Combat: "All five second grenade fuses burn down in three seconds".  If things worked out right, two seconds later the grenade  would have settled to about 6 feet under the bow of the trailing PBR, and Ka-boom! the bow would pitch up, and most of the crew would lose their footing for a moment.  Lots of fun to watch and the big joke of the day.  

    As their twelve hour patrol progressed, the boats would switch positions and the other boat crew would get their chance to drop a grenade off the fantail.  Rarely was there any damage to these boats and nobody usually got hurt, therefore, such activities had normally been overlooked by the commanders.  The PBR boat crews were a loose, rough bunch of macho guys normally `skippered' by a first class petty officer.  This is not to say that the Officers in Command were not aware of the `joke', it was just that nothing was ever said about it.

    Well, one day a `Newbie' was assigned to the outfit.  He

was a kid who had just finished Boot Camp, Navy Gunnery school, and then had been sent to South Vietnam to be a Bow .50 gunner on a Brown Water Navy PBR. 

Nice guy, but he was a klutz.  He'd seen the grenade trick a

few times and one day he decided that it was his turn to try it.  So he's standing there in the fantail, pulls the pin, flips the spoon and accidentally drops the grenade on the deck inside

the sternboard.  He's scared and now tries to scoop it up and

toss it overboard but fumbles it and when the time runs out, the grenade detonates.  The kid is dead and someone had better have a good story, because this sort thing shouldn't happen; indeed, can not have happened!

   Naturally, Task Force 116's commanders have to cover their butts. (CYOA!) 

   So they did; by putting him in for the Congressional Medal of Honor!

   The Citation read something like this: "PBR #xxxx (Patrol Boat, River) and other members of our PBR patrol were searching Rach B- ---- River for Viet Cong supply sampans. 

After sailing up stream for approximately 2 km we were navigating a bend in the river.  At this time a Viet Cong threw a hand grenade which landed inside the fantail of PBR #xxxx.  Gunners Mate Apprentice "John Doe,"  our .50 cal bow-gunner, observed this and realizing the danger to his shipmates, made

his way to the fantail, shielding the explosion with his own body.  Greater love hath no man than he who would lay down his

own life for his shipmates."

    The reader should understand the consequences of such an accident and know that many heads would have rolled if what had really occurred had come to light. 

    For a moment, let us analyze the facts in this grenade incident.  The Seaman's bow-.50 cockpit is about 25 feet from the fantail.  Between these two locations there is the mid-ship control center that has 5 inch catwalk running along for 10 feet or so, and as the story has it, the boat is underway and in a turn.  He rapidly traverses the catwalk and then sprints to the fantail.  All of this in less than 5 seconds!

    If in fact, the story had been true, the procedure for any near-by crew to have followed, would have been to hit the deck. It surly would have hurt their ears, but that would have been about the extent of it.

    In relating this unhappy version of this action, I hope that it will not disturb anyone's fond memory of a friend or relative who has been lost in combat.  However, wars are full of bizarre tales just like this one.   My friends and I used to swap anecdotes in which we had personally been involved or had heard about first hand.   We'd laugh and ask each other, "Back in the `World',who do you think would ever believe these tales", which were combination of either heroism, utter luck, stupidity or all of the above.  To those of us who were there, hardly anything surprised us any longer, as our witnessing or hearing of similar incidents became the normal and commonplace.  

    Recently I needed to research a few facts for one of my stories, so I checked out some books on the Vietnam war from our base library.  As I skimmed through one book, "The Vietnam War- Vol 5- The River War," I found a chapter covering  `Game Warden' operation on the Mekong, and I'll be hanged if there wasn't this paragraph or two about the young sailor on one of the river patrol boats who gave his life for his shipmates by jumping on a VC grenade.  I had always thought that it had been just another War Story, but John hadn't been stringing me along after all!     

     As John and I continued our discussion about medals and awards, it reminded me of the days when I was working as a photographer on that BDR job (Battle Damage Report survey) while I was attached to the 214th Combat Aviation Battalion at Dong Tam, the 9th Infantry Division Base Camp.  I related to John the following story.

    The 214th Battalion CO was a Lt. Colonel, though how he had ever attained that rank, none of us could fathom.  He was a rated rotor-wing pilot but was not especially adept at flying helicopters.  When he flew, the guys in Hq. company always managed to put a really sharp Warrant Officer pilot in the other seat.  So he'd go out flying the C & C (Command and Control) ship on the 9th Div. "Ball Games" (enemy ground contacts) as many times as he could because he couldn't be talked out of it. 

"Cougar Six," a real combat chopper pilot indeed, flying in order to get his ticket punched and all the blank spaces filled before he rotated".

     On operations one afternoon, one of our Eagle-flight ships (four or five helo-lift troop insertion) unfortunately took too many hits and went down in the LZ (Landing Zone).  It was nothing very serious, just a HARD landing.  The colonel seizes the opportunity, (he needs a "decoration") so he dives in to make a daring rescue.  The colonel, having just missed a mid-air collision with another chopper already on a short-final to the same LZ, lands and declares a gallant rescue.   Fortunately, the downed chopper crew and it's Grunts were out of danger anyway and had made it 200 meters beyond where the VC positions were.

    The CO wrote himself up a real nice citation for the Silver Star with Valor, prompting nearly everyone in the O'Club to tell comic versions of the harrowing rescue.  Thankfully the colonel seldom went to the Headquarters Co. O'Club, usually frequenting instead, the Officer Club down at Division for Majors and above.

I later heard that the word got out to the 1st Aviation Brigade Hqts. at Can Tho, and his citation never made it.  However, his being the Commanding Officer and a Lt. Colonel did get him his packet of various citations,  civic awards and even the Bronze Star, but nothing with a "V".  He got his Ticket punched and that is about the extent of it.

    John and I laughed about the story and then he said to me, "I've got one stranger than that.  In that PBR outfit that I was with on the Mekong, we had a PBR harbor dredged out just off the river on the 9th Div. Base Camp at Dong Tam.  For the PBR crew's living quarters the Navy had us set up on a barge-like thing called  a "APL" (non propelled barrack barge),  which, somehow, they had towed  across the Pacific".  (Author's note. At the end of WWII, while in the Navy, I had lived on one like it, myself.)

    "It had three decks, with one deck being below the water-line, where the bunks were stacked six high for enlisted crew's quarters.   The engine room for power generation was on this deck also.   On the first upper deck there were quarters for the NCO's, a few office spaces and the mess hall.   Topside was "Officers Country" and the Command and Communications Center.   The entire operation floated on water some 15 to 25 feet deep."       "In our unit there was a Lt. Commander who had many of the same aspirations as your Lt. Colonel.  One night there was a PBR action.  It was a pretty good fire-fight with some VC trying to slip several sampans loaded with cargo and men past our guys.  The Lt. Commander had only been on the fringe of the operation and was never in any real danger.   He put himself in for a Navy Cross,  but he didn't get his "medal" either."

    "What makes this a really strange story is what happened a few months later at our Dong Tam anchorage.  Some VC frogmen swam in one night and set up some Limpet mines (underwater explosives with adhesives that would stick to the hull) on our APL.  When

they detonated them, the barrack barge sank into the mud of our little harbor."

    "Naturally, with the power room being below decks, the power went out.  Some of the EMs (enlisted men) who were near the ladder-passageway made it out right away.  The others were either drowned or trapped, not having known which way to go to escape.

    Enter our old friend the Lt. Commander.  He found some hand- line and one of those 50 year old Navy battle lanterns that hang on bulkheads of all Naval facilities (and always work) and into that dark ladder-well he went.  No scuba equipment, no mask or anything, only that hand-line, which he had tied to his belt. 

He found men still alive in air pockets and started bringing them out.  He brought out ten or so people before he was exhausted and unable to continue his part in the rescue. But, by that time, other sailors were standing by ready to follow his example.  He was neither cited nor did he seek to be cited.  How do you figure people like that?  Here was an example of real bravery."

   "I reckon that this time that he wasn't trying to be a "hero", he was just doing what had to be done.  In the confusion of

the night it was up to him to take the initiative and save those men."     

    For many years I have pondered about the how and why of the many different awards designed to recognize the brave deeds performed by our people in combat.  However, there is an award which doesn't require bravery, the "Purple Heart".  Many times it amounts to getting a badge for being in combat and being unlucky.  Of course, sometimes just being there and doing your daily tasks, can be pretty heroic. 

    However, after all the battles are over and our heroes are back home, the Purple Hearts, Air Medals, Bronze or Silver Stars along with 75 cents, will get you a good cup of coffee.  I'm betting that in lieu of a medal, most disabled  GIs' would rather get a disability check that they could survive on or some decent treatment by concerned medical personnel at the VA whenever they were in need of it.  Of course, it would help matters if our government funded the VA in the manner that it should be funded.

    If, however, you are a career military person, all of those little bits of ribbon are important to your advancement in grade, that is unless a `Purple Heart' or whatever, had left you in a non-repairable condition.

    It has been my good fortune that I've never been called upon to do anything heroic, but I think that I can understand something about heroism. I've had my `mule' scared pretty good several times. Friends have told me their stories and I have read many personal accounts, that were not braggadocio.  If a person is involved in combat, things happen.  One of the requirements to receive an award is to have the action witnessed.  Needless to say, the people to whom I am referring, all received awards of one kind or another during their careers.  Some awards were unexpected because they felt that they were just doing their jobs.  On the other hand, most of these individuals had participated in  other actions of which they were justly proud; 

times when they and their men felt that they had really accomplished something, and these actions were never recognized, because they were involved in unauthorized or `Black' operations or when there were no proper surviving witnesses.  (Men killed in Black operations were often listed as dying in training accidents).

    The real heroes usually do not plan to become heroes, they just hang in there and do their job.  If they survive the ordeal, it's their training that pklls them through, but there is usually a lot of plain old fashioned good luck involved, and, very probably, the Hand of God.  Men of this cut, aren't thinking about winning a ribbon, they are thinking about staying alive; they know that there will be always another day and another battle to fight. 

   There have also been times when heroes were artificially created.  Our Military and our war-time government needs Heroes -- you know, "Rally around the flag boys" and that sort of thing.  Such an example was Colin Kelly, our first CMH hero of WWII.  He was flying out of Clark Air Base, Philippine Is., in one of the few B-17's left after Dec. 8th.  Kelly had been scouting for the Japanese invasion fleet.  The Japanese fighters intercepted his aircraft and shot it down with no surviors.  These were the early hours of WWII.  Kelly's deeds gave the government justification for awarding the CMH, while Flying Crosses were awarded to the rest of his crew members.  The government used the names of these men and their citations to sell War Bonds.  A medal for just dying?   The fiction generated to justify the citations, demeaned the real sacrifice that Kelly and his crew had made for their country.  These men were only doing their jobs like thousands of other GIs in WWII.  

     There were those in command that gave or passed on the orders that not only grounded our Airforce but had all the aircraft parked for easy access for a Japanese air raid. By rights, they deserved awards as heros the Japanese Empire. If justice had been done, there should have been several Courts Marshalls and the individuals hung. 

    To be a hero, it isn't necessary for a person to be honorable, w­ell liked, or a natural leader of men.  In war, unusual events, inspire unusual responses.   Col. Gregory (Pappy) Boyinton ex-USMC fighter pilot, once said, "Show me a Hero and I'll show you an SOB."   I believe that he based his opinion on an honest evaluation of himself and his personal knowledge of acts of bravery performed by other men who also had imperfections.

    I'm certain that most of us would not willingly trade our lives to be a hero.  A piece of ribbon is hardly worth anyone's life.  However, many try to qualify for an award by pencil whipping it.  Some times the "Good O' Boys" will do it for one another, it looks good for their next promotion.  Fortunately, there are always men of honor that will never stand still for such schenanegans.

    After these many years, I have grown philosophically and its now my opinion that all wars are fought purely for reasons of financial gain for the elite in power and not for the good of the common citizen.  Moreover, the common citizens or soldiers on either side of the warring factions are nothing more than pawns in the hands of these Elitists.  The people who hold power do not care which side wins or loses, for they always win anyway.

    In conclusion, sadly, all of the bravery, all of the suffering, all unnecessary death of the world's finest young men, (theirs and ours)  old men, women and children caught in the cross-fire, the meaning of war all comes down to what is expressed in that often heard Vietnam-GI'ese remark, "it don't mean nothin, it don't mean a fucking thing."

 

 

   It has been some twenty-five years since my part in the Vietnam war took place but I continue to reflect almost every day on the things that I saw and witnessed there.  At present I am employed by the US Air Force at Robins AFB, Ga.  I never regained my previous position at Southern Bell, because someone at Southern Bell didn't like something in my past, I suppose.  But    many times misfortune can become good fortune, as I later worked my way into the Electronics Warfare section of Air Force Avionics, a job that I really enjoy going to each day.   

    I have three Vietnamese/American sons, two of whom are in college and one who is in the 6th grade.  I'm 68 years old or young, whatever, so it looks as though I'll have to enjoy my Air Force EW/ECM job for a while longer to keep groceries on the table and tuition's paid. 

   In addition, in my spare time I have been attempting to pen readable stories about Slicks, Gunships. and the Heavy lifters, using the after-action crew-member interviews that I've saved from my time spent working with Army Aviation, a rewarding, but sometimes exhausting task.

                          

                    Tony Spletstoser

                    LZ TIGER

                    Cochran, Georgia

---

Tony's Index
Literary Works Index
Light Horse Home