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
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