WHY LUCK BEATS SKILL

 

In the summer of 1970, we had been out for nine days and were scheduled to stand down for three days, which meant we got to enjoy those luxuries that made life tolerable.  Things like a shower, a haircut, a beer, sitting on a crapper instead of squatting in the grass—important stuff.  After standing down from sunrise alert, Capt. Dallas called the platoon leaders together. 

“We’re not going in today.  Birds will be here in twenty minutes with rations and water, and Shrimp and Calley.  We need to hump about five clicks and secure a little fire base.  The ARVN’s have a company there, supporting the 1/77th’s four-duce platoon and a couple of dusters.  They’ve been probed the last two nights.  Brigade doesn’t trust the ARVNs so they’re being pulled out, and we’re replacing them.  We’re to walk on rather than be lifted, so maybe the NVA’s won’t know that they’re dealing with us, rather than ARVNs.”

“Why us?  We need the rest.”  I don’t recall who asked.  It wasn’t me, and I immediately regretted not saying it, or at least saying “Amen.”  Not that it would have done any good.  Captain D wasn’t any more enthused than we were.

“It’s an Eagle Flight job.”  Captain Dallas responded.  (Eagle Flight was the brigade’s ready-reaction force, comprised of the First of the Eleventh’s maneuver company not currently assigned to a mission.  “As of now, Charlie Company’s already being deployed someplace in the Quang Tri Vally, so we are, officially, Eagle Flight.  Saddle up.  It’s uphill all the way.”

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Uphill all the way was almost true.  We had been on the river that night, probably not over fifty meters above sea level, on a little nob not ten meters above the river.  The fire base was back in the hills between the Quang Tri and Dong Ha rivers and would have an elevation of probably 300 to 500 meters. Once we walked off our little nob, we headed up river, into the hills and the heavy jungle. After about 5 hours, we had covered no more than four or five clicks, when we finally hit this little track, a secondary road that had not seen much travel, or any maintenance at all, although one or more tracked vehicles had been over it within the past week or so. 

Bud said the road had been swept this morning by the ARVN’s, and we were supposed to take it.  An ARVN minesweeping team didn’t induce much confidence; nothing the ARVN did induced much confidence, but we were tired, so we took it.  I still don’t know whether it had really been swept, but we didn’t hit anything, and, as far as I know, the ARVN’s who walked away an hour or so later had no problem, so maybe they had actually swept for mines that morning.  Because there were NVAs in the area, most definitely, and they should have done something to that road.

Anyway, we moved rather gingerly up the road, well spread out, in a double column.  We were on the left side, with first platoon on the right, then Capt. D and his command group, and second platoon in the rear.  I had a squad, Frenchie’s, I think, with Sgt. Bennet about fifty yards ahead of us, as an advance party, and we had three flankers out to our left, possibly fifty yards out in the jungle, where we couldn’t see them, nor hear them, if they were being quiet. 

I believe all of us would have rather been off that road, where we were targets; it would have been better busting a trail in the jungle, where you weren’t a sitting duck, but it was late, and we needed to get to that fire base and get the ARVN’s off of it, so up the road we went.

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It was almost three before we reached the fire base, and as we walked in, the ARVN’s walked off.   The “position” we found was, to our way of thinking, abysmal.  There was no barbed wire in front of our positions, no mines in place to channel an attack, no adequate fields of fire cleared to permit engagement in a timely manner.  There was a “trench” completely encircling the position but nowhere was it deep enough for an American to move comfortably along without being exposed.  In places, it was no more than two feet deep, too shallow to fire from, and to move along without crawling, but deep enough to shelter an attacker who reached it, until he was ready to move out.  The bunkers were poorly sited, some with very restricted fields of fire, and were mostly sandbag emplacements, not properly dug below ground level to provide maximum protection from small arms and mortars.  It was, in short, little more than a night defensive position.  We occupied NDP’s every night, but not ones that had been probed repeatedly, so that an attacker had ample knowledge of its myriad weaknesses.

We set in to doing what we could to improve the place, including clearing some fields of fire for our machine guns, digging in the fighting positions better, and relocating one bunker in my platoon’s sector—Jake’s platoon had to rebuild three, and so he had time for very little else to improve his sector.  We were, of course, tired out when we got there.  It was our tenth day in the bush, and it had been a very hard march to get to the site, but we all got to work, and had a better, albeit still poor, defensive line when, just before sunset, stuff started happening. 

                                             ~~~~~

Before I go on, I need to say a word or two about mortars.  A mortar consists of a tube, which sits on a metal plate and is supported by a bipod.  It fires a round that is somewhat smaller than the mortar tube.  To fire a mortar, you literally drop the round down the tube.  It strikes a firing pin at the bottom, which explodes a charge, propelling the round out of the tube and to the target.  Since gravity supplies the momentum for firing the charge, the mortar is necessarily a high-angle fire weapon--at somewhere around 50 degrees, the round simply slides too slowly to have enough force to go off.  Since it fires at low muzzle velocity, at a high angle, Army doctrine teaches that a mortar is an “area weapon”, that is, it is used to saturate an area, but is not effective at hitting pinpoint targets. 

Mortars are the infantry’s organic artillery.  In our battalion, each infantry company has an organic mortar platoon with three 81-millimeter mortars.  As a rule, we brought only one mortar with us in the field.  They are heavy, the ammo is heavy, and they have a minimum range such they are not ideal for close support of a single company’s perimeter.  We carried nothing but “illum”—parachute flares used to light the area at night, to provide us with visible targets.  I don’t recall whether we had a mortar with us that night.

The battalion also had a “four duce” battery of four 4.2” mortars.  1/11’s 4 duces were permanently assigned to defense of Camp Roberts, our base camp, to provide pre-registered fire in case of an attack on the camp.  The mortars at this fire base were from the 1/77, the tank battalion in our brigade, but they did not have their carriers with them.  Like the eighty-ones used by line companies, the four duces were not considered precision weapons.

Mortars are light (although they don’t feel like it when you are humping one) and can be carried almost anywhere a man can go.  Because they could carry them without vehicles, they were, for the most part, the only artillery available to the NVA, and  they were proficient with them.  At that time, NVA doctrine called for, in the attack on a prepared position such as a fire base, a mortar barrage lasting until the attackers were within the blast radius of the attacking mortars, that is, a hundred feet or so.  This barrage was designed to inflict casualties, and to keep the defenders heads down, so they would be unable to observe and fire on the attackers.  It is an effective way to support an attack.

                                             ~~~~~

Just before sunset, as we were completing such improvements as we were able to accomplish, I heard (as did others) the distinctive “thunk” sound that a mortar makes on firing, and, a few seconds later, a mortar round went off about 100 yards short of our position.  Seconds later, a second round landed just outside our perimeter, close enough that shrapnel hit some of our sandbags (but none of us.)  A third round went just over the perimeter, damaging sandbags in a bunker on first platoon’s front. 

Even before the second round splashed, I heard Samuels yelling,

“LT, LT.”

When I acknowledged, after ducking and waiting for the explosion, he continued.

“I saw a flash, over there, like metal reflecting sunlight.”  He pointed to an area in the general direction of the sound of the mortar fire. 

Anderson joined in.  “I saw it too.  It was pretty distinct.”

“Come on.”  We headed for the CP, which was next to the 4.2 platoon.

“Cap’n, Samuels saw something, maybe sun flashing on metal.  It was down there, by the creek.”

The lieutenant commanding the four duce platoon—I never was introduced and have no idea of his name—was right there. "Where was it?"

Samuels pointed out the area, "That low spot on the ridge.  About twenty or thirty meters to the left."

“We may as well let them know we care.  They sure know we’re here.”

He went to his own CP, and in a few seconds, his mortars were getting ready for a fire mission. He started, as the NVA had, with a single ranging round. 

He gave an azimuth and a distance to his fire control center, which computed the data for the mortar to set its sites.  Once the mortars were set, the order was given:

“Tube one only.  Hang.”  The signal for the gunner to place the round he was holding at the mouth of the tube.

“Fire.”  That signaled the gunner to drop the round.

The round dropped and we heard the classic “thunk” sound of a mortar being fired, and then the wait, actually up to a minute or more, as the round follows it parabolic path from tube to target, and

“Splash.”  The signal that the estimated time had elapsed for the round to strike the ground.

Simultaneously with the crew chief calling splash, we saw the explosion as the round landed, very close indeed to the spot where Simon and Baylus had seen the metallic flash.  Had I had time to think, I would have mentally congratulated the mortarmen on their shooting, but I didn’t have the chance.

As the flash and smoke and dust from the round began to rise, there was a second, larger flash, accompanied by a yet larger mushrooming of smoke and dust, followed by a series of additional flashes, with increasingly vivid smoke/dust clouds.  As the last of the flashes ended, the sound began to arrive, the boom of a mortar round exploding, followed immediately by a second, louder boom, and a series of booms, like rolling thunder in a storm. 

Our first shot had hit something explosive, almost certainly an ammo dump.  We didn’t then know if it got all the bad guys’ mortar ammo.  We didn’t even really know whether it got any of his mortar ammo or something else altogether.  We didn’t know whether Charlie was planning to attack us that night, and, if he was, we didn’t know whether this would alter his plans.  But we knew that, if he attacked, he’d have less of something to shoot at us.  A lot less. 

It was a lucky shot, and any mortarman would concede the same.  Mortars are not pinpoint weapons, and, even if the person aiming the mortar had seen the flash, it is doubtful that he would have been able to hit the flash exactly.  His azimuth might have been perfect, but range is at best an estimate.  Anyway, the glint Simon and Baylus saw might not have been where the mortars were, but something else altogether.  But it was pretty clear they had seen something.  Something that was, for us, very important.

                                             ~~~~~

We didn’t know exactly what had blown up, but it wasn’t just jungle.  The mortars had the range on something, so the fired a fire mission, probably three or four rounds from each of the tubes, and plowed up a good bit of jungle, if nothing more, but had no more secondary explosions.

Those secondary explosions might have been enough to cause the NVA to cancel any planned attack, but maybe not.  So, better safe than sorry.  That night, from sunset to an hour after sunrise, we pulled 100% guard, which meant that, by the time sun rose with no further activity, we had all been awake and mostly working hard for 44 or so of the prior 48 hours.   For the most part we were pretty keyed up at night, expecting something to happen at any moment, so, when the sun came up, we were all ready to drop, but there was no rest of the wicked.  At about nine, we started wrecking the post, knocking down bunkers and cutting up the sandbags, filling holes, and getting anything to be left behind (including a fair amount of mortar and duster ammo) ready for demolition. 

That afternoon, we were “reinforced” with a mechanized infantry company from 1/61 and a platoon of tanks from 1/77.  While these road-bound warriors parked their personnel carriers and tanks in places insuring we’d be unmistakable targets, Alpha Company patrolled down to the area of the big secondary explosion.

It wasn’t a wise maneuver.  My platoon was sleepwalking and the rest of the company was in no better shape.  We had slept, on average, six hours over the last three days—not six hours per day, but six total—marched about fifteen kilometers, mostly through heavy jungle and all uphill, and been on short rations, since we never got a resupply when we were diverted.  Had there been any NVA left along that ridge, they would have kicked our asses. 

But there wasn’t.

The explosion sight was easy to find, as a significant patch of jungle was literally shredded.  Bits of cloth and paper, and some fragments of wood that may have come from ammo boxes were scattered about, and we did find several stains we identified, probably correctly, as blood.  We did not find any weapons, any ammo, any rations, anything, in short by which we could even confirm that the detritus we found was NVA, rather than ARVN or even ours.  We didn’t care.  We didn’t find anybody that wanted to shoot at us, and that made us very happy.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to make brigade, or I Corps, or MAC V happy.  They wanted something for the daily press briefing, I guess.  I learned later that we got credited with killing about a dozen NVA—perhaps we did, as we found several stains that looked like they might be blood.  I assume it was bloodstains, but it could have been from a dog or even a horse—they sometimes used pack horses in the mountains—or oil, or food, or who knows what.  And everybody who bleeds doesn’t necessarily die.  Frankly, we didn’t care.  What we did care about was that, following that shot, Charlie lost interest in trying to overrun us.  We cared about that a lot.

Our reward for our physically and emotionally strenuous thirty-six hours was to lose half of our normal stand down.  Not much, until you consider that, had we been merely good, rather than lucky, we might have had a very hard fight, instead of just a sleepless night as our reward.  Had we been unlucky, it would have been the NVA round that hit OUR ammo, and we would all have been dead.

                                             ~~~~~

The NVA’s mortarmen were skillful.  They fired three rounds and placed them right where they wanted them.  But they weren’t lucky.  Somebody got careless and let a piece of metal gleam in the sun.  According to Saigon, it cost 12 NVA their lives.  That is bad luck.

Our mortarmen were skillful, too.  They hit what they shot at.  Still, it was almost pure luck that they hit that ammo dump.  It pays to be good, but it takes luck to hit the jackpot.