GUNFIGHTER -PART 5

PRODIGY(R) Service Personal Message 04/30/96

To: AFWA58C

From: AFWA58A

Subject: Gunfighter -Part 5

Date: 04/30/96 03:27 PM

* * * * GUNFIGHTER -PART 5 * * * *

In the last segment, I described how unit social occasions

changed the outlook and morale of each man in the squadron.

 That same type of thing did much for the Wing morale as well.

 When I first arrived, the "Officer's Club" was only a memory

 from the "real world. " At about the six month point, though,

 word got around that they were building a nice new building in

 the Air Force Compound that would serve as a real club, with

real food and occasional entertainment from visiting bands and

 singers. While it was only an unpainted wood building , it was

 clean and served as quite a contrast from the day-to-day work

 and combat world. (The "DaNang Officer's Open Mess"

, incidently, spelled acrostically, The "DOOM" Club.)  Dinner at

 the "DOOM" club was different from  anyplace else we had

ever been.


 You walked through the line  past a display of very good

 looking steaks on ice and picked  out the one you liked best.

 You then got a raw potato  wrapped in foil and a BIG chunk of

 bread smeared with butter  and walked out back to the large

 grill, which was already surrounded with "diners". You slapped

 your steak on the grill,  threw your potato on the coals and at

 the proper time, laid  your slab of bread on the grill to warm

 and toast "just so."  Compared to the mess hall routine, it was a

 little piece of  heaven. Wing morale went up at least 100%.

Meanwhile, residents of my barracks (about 10 of us) began to make some "home-style" changes as well. The barracks was surrounded by a four-foot tall by two-foot thick box of sand, with openings and an offset wall at each end, like "_--_".

The wall around the barracks behind us joined a bomb shelter that was conveniently built between us, and the combined walls formed kind of a courtyard in the middle. Well, one enterprising soul had his maintenance shop fabricate a great barbecue grill from a 50 gallon drum. Somebody else made a picnic table from scrap wood. Our barracks had the crewmembers living there who flew "Gunfighter Airlines", the cargo C-47's that went to lots of places throughout the theater for supplies. So... we made up a shopping list for each trip. The crews brought back charcoal from Thailand, Russian bread from Hong Kong (of all places), fresh fruit (especially pineapple) from the Phillipines, fresh vegetables from Saigon, and other such delicacies from wherever they could be found. Steaks could always be traded for from the Marines. (We swapped some truly strange things for steaks. ) We formed a barbecue club with all barracks members chipping in for supplies and then enjoyed the group cookouts in our private courtyard. That also boosted morale a lot, even though, at times we had to leave our meal and duck into the bomb shelter. At least it was convenient!

Thinking about that courtyard reminded me of one of my first times sitting at the picnic table and just talking with some of the guys. It was during my first week and I remember seeing the young Captain who was my Maintenance Supervisor at the time. He was just sitting there talking and I remember watching a fly land on his face and walk across it TWICE and he didn't even notice it. I just thought, "MAN, is that going to be me in 8-10 months?" (After a few months working with him, I also realized that I had probably never seen him sober!  Maybe that explained the lack of feeling in his face.)

TET was a Vietnamese religious holiday which began on January 31st and I believe was roughly equivalent to our New Years Day. It was an annual event that usually included fireworks, so you can see a little parallel to our day. January of 1968 was to be quite different, though.

The North Vietnamese regular army stayed mostly in North Vietnam and supplied and trained a civilian peasant guerrilla force (the Viet Cong) made up of dissident South Vietnamese as well as a number of North Vietnamese peasants who had some axe to grind in the south. All Viet Cong actions up to this point were small numbers and mostly sabotage operations. They also hauled in 122 millimeter rockets and mortars which they fired sporadically at airfields around the country in the middle of the night. And to this point, all actions had been directed against U.S. and South Vietnamese military installations.

On January 31st, 1968, the North Vietnam Regular Army commander, General No Nguyen Giap (rather famous for defeating the French army earlier in Vietnam) , ordered the TET OFFENSIVE. For the first time, the Viet Cong AND the North Vietnamese regulars attacked in Brigade strength sized units against cities in the South as well as against military installations.

On that night, after a full 14-hour workday, I had finally gone to sleep about midnight, when I was awakened by the familiar "whoosh-boom" of 122 millimeter rockets. I rolled under my bunk and pulled down my telephone and two-way radio to check on the condition of my troops. About that time, you could hear numerous large explosions as rockets hit around the field. We couldn't know it until later, but one of those hits was directly on a portion of the ammunition dump that contained small-arms ammunition. All we could hear was the loud, multiple, rapid fire of small arms. It sounded like an army was coming over the fence for sure and I eased out of my "bunker" long enough to get my flak vest, helment and M-16 rifle. Soon after squeezing back under my bunk, a very loud explosion hit close enough to our barracks to throw dirt on the roof. I would guess that one was no more than 40-50 yards away. Though all of this was taking place in a period no longer than about 10-15 minutes, it was one of the longest nights of my life. Lying there on the cold concrete floor with a very thin piece of steel between me and a very large rocket left me feeling very insecure. Hearing all of the small arms fire absolutely terrified me at the time. I don't know which was worse, the loud noises or the quiet that followed, when you visualized the enemy inside the fence. Like many other nights, this one too passed eventually and we slept until a gratefully welcome morning.

The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong made a terrible mistake in attacking cities. Before, they had stuck to rural areas and rallied the peasantry into attacking foreigners in their military bases. When they attacked cities, they had been led to believe that the citizens would welcome them with open arms as "liberators." Instead, this caused them to lose much support. The civilians, by and large, rallied against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The other mistake was in choosing to fight in large organized units. This presented the perfect targets for U.S. and South Vietnamese weaponry and many North Vietnamese units were decimated.

That was one night when the Viet Cong DID make a major attack against both the city of DaNang and the DaNang Air Base. They were driven back and suffered large numbers of fatalities. The "Spooky" AC-47 aircraft (with the 7.62 millimeter gatlin guns out the side) had a field day with large unit targets to shoot at. The amazing thing after the battle was won and the bodies stacked, was that many of the Viet Cong were identified as men who had regularly worked as laborers right on DaNang. One was even the barber who had cut my hair on more than one occasion! You never really knew WHO the enemy was in Vietnam! As time went on, the barracks we lived in changed dramatically.

When I first arrived, there were about 15 living there and most bunks were