"H.E." Webb


by Mark Orr


It was somewhere within my first week in the field that I learned that a leader could make mistakes. It wasn't a lesson I wanted to learn, but it probably was one that I needed to learn. To correctly figure one's odds for staying alive he needs to know that his leaders are not infallible.

The mistake I witnessed and took a small part in was also a valuable lesson for the couple of guys who were more directly involved. One of them got a life long nickname out of the deal. The other learned that the easiest way is usually not the best way and that in Vietnam or any other war, that "path of least resistance" is probably a targeted area.

It was one of those things that you could either laugh at, or freak out about. When in happened things couldn't have been more serious, but we all chose to laugh it off within an hour or so. Freaking out in the field is not healthy anyway. It's a good way to get your friends to beat the hell out of you. However, now that I think about it, I guess it wasn't really a laughing matter either

Here's the deal. The mighty third platoon, my platoon, was going to pull off a mission that involved moving under the cover of darkness an hour before dawn. We were ready and moving at around 4 a.m. The AO was just outside the gook infested "Eight-click ville" and the moving was very slow because of the darkness. I can personally testify that if you're not first in line, the stopping and starting gets on your nerves. In fact, this might have been the first time I peeked at the only apparent positive side of walking point. The caterpillar effect of the constantly stopping and starting column of men got progressively worse according to how far back in line you were. Those last in line then, only got to take a few steps at a time. This (to me) was unbearable. Especially when carrying all your heavy gear and it's very hot and muggy.

We were humping with full gear out of the village area and across an large expanse of rice paddies to eventually join the rest of the Alpha Company at dawn in a Company strength "sweep" of another small hamlet where Vietcong activity was suspected. My squad was somewhere in the center of the column. The squad that was "bringing up the rear" was Sgt. Mayer's squad.

Mayer was relatively new in country. He had been there perhaps three weeks or a month. He was a bright young smart achiever type person from California, and the Peace and Love attitude of his home state stayed right with him through his year in Vietnam. If you were looking for his helmet in a pile... it would be the one with the peace symbol drawn on the front. He had a knack for identifying things that were stupid and the will to change them. Since he also had the E-5 rank he had the authority to give an order once in a while to the eight or so people in his squad. He was not (for the record) one to abuse this privilege, but it was what got him into trouble this time. Mayer couldn't stand all the stopping and starting and not making any forward progress. He also must have recognized another intolerable quirk about being last in line. Sometimes the fresh trail that the point man walked was pure shitty mud by the time the last guy got to it. If the trail was a dyke in a rice paddy it was even worse. One may as well just slop through the paddy itself rather than to try and balance yourself on a slippery disintegrating dyke. [note: you really weren't supposed to walk on the dykes anyway, because the Vietcong- would often boobytrap the dykes knowing we liked to keep our feet dry.]

Anyway, at one point Mayer had had enough. A college boy with a brain just naturally thinks of "the better way" to do things. He decided to "take the flank." This meant he would take his squad to the next dike over to the right of the main column which ran parallel to our path. Why not? However, once he did that, he and his squad traveled on a fresh dike with no obstructions, naturally they could travel faster... and they did.

In a minute or two Mayer and his squad reached a point where they were actually out in front of the entire rest of the platoon. in the main column, and about 50 yards to the right. It was still very dark. He could not be seen. He kept going until he sensed something was wrong at which time he just stayed in one spot quietly listening for a sound of our main column in order to confirm his own position. But he had told no one of his idea, so when the point man of the main column heard a noise out in front and to the right... everybody froze in place. We all thought we had met what we were after... a group of Vietcong guerillas. Word was whispered back from the point man. He'd heard noises out in the paddy. The situation was very serious. If we weren't on that Company wide mission we would probably have just popped a flare and commenced firing at whatever moved in it's illumination. That would have probably been fatal for Mayer and squad, but it was standard procedure just the same.

But our platoon was not yet where it was supposed to be as needed for the Company operation to begin. Flares and shooting would no doubt ruin the Company's operation which is ok... but there had better not be any mistakes about it. Whoever was in charge of the main column was trying to make a tough call, and was probably on the radio to the company commander. The rest of us all had our weapons ready to rock and pointed in the general vicinity of where the noises were supposed to be coming from. Just then I heard something myself. Others did too. We adjusted our aim and very tensely awaited the command to open fire... or something. Finally a decision was made to have one single parachute flare shot by the M-79 man. When the flare lit up the paddy, we were supposed to kill anything that moved out there in it's light. At this point no one knew it was Sgt. Mayer who was about to get fired up by every weapon in the column. I could hear footsteps in the water now. (Mayer must have been getting desperate.) The flare order was passed back to the M-79 man.

[note: An M-79 man was , of course, the man who carried an M-79 as a weapon. This weapon looked and worked like a break-open sawed-off shotgun with a big fat barrel. There were various types of ammunition that could be fired from this weapon including H.E. (high-explosive) rounds, flashette (hundreds of little nails packed together) rounds, CS (tear-gas) rounds, flare rounds, and signal rounds. You could tell which was which by the shape and color... providing of course it wasn't dark out and one could see what one was doing.]

Bob Webb was our 79 man. He was as new in country as I was. But he loaded a round in his weapon and was ready to fire seconds after the request. He fired one round. According to the manual... there would be daylight in four to seven seconds.

Me and about twenty others looked down our respective barrels toward what we heard in the dark and got ready to cut loose as soon as the flare illuminated the target. Tense... is the word that comes to mind. Then it happened. There was a single loud explosion out in the rice paddy before the flare even went off. In fact, it never did go off. Webb had loaded an H.E. (high-explosive) round in his M-79 instead of a flare... by accident. There was yelling out in the paddy. Sgt. Mayer was yelling "My God! Stop! Seize Fire! It's me! Sgt. Mayer.!!!"

As we all let go the breath that we had been holding for the last minute or so... Mayer rejoined the main column of the platoon and was severely reamed out. The Company's mission and our cover was blown. The Company commander would probably be very pissed-off. To the common groundpounder though, there came a short small sense of temporary security. We were safe for a moment at least. That's what happens when you give away your position when you're trying to set a trap under darkness. Altough anything could still happen, chances were that the VC would avoid passing through an area where they had just heard an M-79 firing.

None of us made a big deal out of Sgt.Mayer's mistake. You shouldn't laugh at someone who out ranks you. Instead, we picked on and laughed at Webb's mistake. From that moment on he would always be known as "H. E. Webb." He wore the moniker proudly though. In fact, he never really admitted that he didn't fire the H.E. round on purpose.

epilogue: Both Mayer and H.E.Webb made it home in one piece after their year was up. We all learned from our mistakes of course, but in Vietnam it wasn't the preferred mode of education.

Orr