Snubby in Vietnam

There are pot holes, and then there are potholes. I was up in Camau, the capital of the Mekong Delta area, and checked out a jeep, this I think a 151 variant, to run some sore of errand. Don't recall for what, but went down this city street and was just splashing thru shallow puddles, when the driver's side of my jeep just sank down to the axles. Couldn't chug out with 4 wheel drive, or perhaps that part of the drivetrain had been removed or was inoperable. Maybe removed by the local VN mechanics and traded for something on the local Black Market. So before I walked back to the US compound to arrange a tow out, turned around and shot this pic. Just a typical city street, trash, muck, debris, smells, kids everywhere; and the occasional deep pot hole. I was pretty used to all this sort of thing, so just another day at the office for me.

For several years I have been restoring a '52 Army M37, basically an army 3/4 pick-up truck. This past fall, took, my 6 year old grandson out four-wheeling, and managed to sink hub deep in mud, and had to use my front 200# winch to pull us out. It barely worked, so completely rebuilt it. Was a beast to make it fully functional again.

Anyway, all the best, and stay safe.... SF VET

One of the first things I noticed about the Vietnamese in general, male or female was their unique smell. I was in the Danang area and knew that they ate Nuoc Mam and was told once that they would not eat rice without it, no sauce...no eat. I tried it and found that just a few drops was all that was needed to give your rice a fishy flavor. Our Papa-san told me it was made by putting a small crock in the earth, place a larger crock with a hole in the bottom on top, fill with scrap fish and salt, cover and bury for a month or so. Not at all different from a kind of caviar made by native tribes that was salted and buried, known by old timers as Siwash Caviar. I also liked the local food and preferred it to Korean War vintage C-rats, I never got sick eating Vietnamese food but did get a serious case of food poisoning eating some pork cooked in tomato sauce that our mechanic/cook had rustled up, I got their after it had cooled and sat in the galley...closest I ever came to thinking I was going to croak from eating.
I forgot to mention that the other thing that gave them a unique smell was that ridiculus smelling tobacco they smoked, I don't think the beetle-nut helped either.

SF VET said:

So before I walked back to the US compound to arrange a tow out, turned around and shot this pic.

Click to expand...

Would not have been surprised if that jeep had been stripped clean down to the frame by the time you got back with the tow.

This is a chopper view of my compound deep in the Delta. My home was in the left side of the nearest and left metal building. Two 105 batteries on my side of the compound, another in a far corner. The Song Ong Doc (literally, River Mr. Doc) curves around my compound, with a shallow canal where we would pole our Whaler out to deep enough water to start our Johnson's. A small hut next to our Whaler for this and that. Always lots of rats in our supply hut. Two helipads, lots of wire all over the place. In the distant haze is the South China Sea. Once, a fire control officer from a US Destroyer dropped by to see how their fire support was doing, they could shoot something called RAP, a rocket assisted projectile for much longer range. I gave him a captured VC or NVA flag to take back to his ship as a measure of our comradeship. All of these fields were fallow and not farmed.

The South Vietnamese national flag was broad red and yellow bands, and a derogatory comment was '...what isn't yellow is Red...."

Sometimes our radio would pick up bounced FAC conversations from up north, when the US first began to have controlled "smart bombs", I think somehow using a TV for precision guiding. The conversation would have excited pilots blowing up NV armored vehicles working their way south. Like "... look at that xxxx burn!"

I was a sure sign of a war soon to change.

Like when the Bad Guys finally had small shoulder fired surface ro air missiles. Where as before our choppers flew maybe a thousand feet up, they immediately flew Nap Of the Earth, so they could overfly an enemy site in seconds, before becoming a target.


Time for me seemed to pass quickly, and soon , or so it seemed, a chopper came by to pick me up to come back to the "Land of the Round Eyed Girls"... I had a new plan for my life and career.

All the best, and stay safe. SF VET

Please keep your stories coming and this thread alive. Brings back lots of memories SF VET. Small correction for your last post ... not two 105 batteries but rather two 105 howitzers. A RVN 105 battery contained 6 howitzers or guns. And again, a great thread sir. Thanks for your service to our Nation.

Yes, and here is a 105 in recoil, sending US Tax dollars down range. This at Me An, was over-run soon after this shot, I suspect these troops had little time left....

SF VET

and this is what an aimer sees looking thru his sight. I don't know what these grids and markers mean, someone else can maybe explain.

Once, at my second post further south, one of the guns fired some interdiction, or more likely just wanted to train or even use up some ammo for the brass cases. There weren't supposed to be any non-combatants or friendlies out that way, but later in the day, a dad brought in his teen son, who had had his foot blown off by our overly enthusiastic gun team. Looked the sad lad over, and sent him up to Camau. Wherever he is now, I hope he has a useful prothesis.

Just one of those incidents....

All the best, and stay safe.... SF VET

SF VET said:

Yes, and here is a 105 in recoil, sending US Tax dollars down range. This at Me An, was over-run soon after this shot, I suspect these troops had little time left....

SF VET

Click to expand...

Those empty shells were made into beautiful vases by Vietnamese artists. Reshaped into a flared vase, hand carved in floral patterns or themes (tigers, elephants, nature scenes), and highly polished brass. Lots of those went home with GIs.

At Dong Ha the 105 howitzers were placed all around the compound to provide artillery fire in any direction, as well as direct fire with fleschette rounds (like a big shotgun, about 4" bore, shooting finned nails by the 10-lb. box). The artillery was inside the perimeter, so our defensive bunkers were in front of and below the guns. The concussion was deafening, the air was compressed in a shock wave that hit like a truck, and they seldom took the time to alert us that a fire mission was going to happen before opening up right over our heads. Day or night made no difference, when a fire mission was called in the cannon-cockers went to work and the grunts on the line hunkered down to try and retain a little bit of our natural hearing abilities.

Also a helicopter refueling and re-arming point in the compound. Huey and Cobra gunships roaring in at all hours for gas and rockets. Big rubber fuel bladders that were a prime target for NVA rocket attacks. The NVA were pretty slick about setting up their rockets, set to fire on a battery-powered switch when the water in a can evaporated to a point that the circuit was closed, so our counter-battery fires hit nothing but empty real estate. I remember a story about a Vietnamese mosquito setting down on the slick pad one night and the guys had two pods of rockets mounted and a couple hundred pounds of JP-4 loaded before they noticed it wasn't a helicopter (probably a slight exaggeration, but the skeeters were large and aggressive critters).

Daily patrols around the outside of the perimeter for a few clicks. Occasional night ambush patrols around the area when signs of activity were found (we also had noise and motion sensors around the area).

I remember one night very clearly. Unusually heavy and extended rocket barrage, hunkered down in the bunkers, monitoring the starlight scopes in case of a ground attack. Something clicked in my head, and my thought was WHY DIDN'T I JOIN THE COAST GUARD?

On the LCU I worked on we used to haul 150 ton of 155 howitzer pusher charges, the canister that contains the powder bags. One of the guys looked up the cost of each one and said it was $500. per shot, just the powder...I called b.s. but it wouldn't suprise me when you find out stuff about whose family owned stock in what munition company or in LBJ's case who wife's family owned the company that carried the stuff over.

Kinman said:

On the LCU I worked on we used to haul 150 ton of 155 howitzer pusher charges, the canister that contains the powder bags. One of the guys looked up the cost of each one and said it was $500. per shot, just the powder...I called b.s. but it wouldn't suprise me when you find out stuff about whose family owned stock in what munition company or in LBJ's case who wife's family owned the company that carried the stuff over.

Click to expand...

I imagine that each 155 round, all in, costs a bit more than the stimulus checks they are sending out right now.

Sistema1927 said:

I imagine that each 155 round, all in, costs a bit more than the stimulus checks they are sending out right now.

Click to expand...

Well, we should care enough to send the very best, don't you think?

U.S ARMY VIETNAM WAR ERA FLECHETTES 1960'S BEEHIVE ROUND 105MM APERS-T M546

Also nicknamed "nail rounds". I first experienced these rounds learning to fire them out of 105MM artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

YkcorCal said:

U.S ARMY VIETNAM WAR ERA FLECHETTES 1960'S BEEHIVE ROUND 105MM APERS-T M546

Also nicknamed "nail rounds". I first experienced these rounds learning to fire them out of 105MM artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images2/360/1015/05/10-s-army-vietnam-war-era-

flechettes_360_4e9e9e5b5d398880b962f7f03da27c1f.jpg

Click to expand...

Wonder if they would work in 12 guage ?

I began to develop a real affection for the children in my compound. They always seemed to be happy, and surly had no concept of a different life, with safety and hygiene and toys. I wrote my mom and dad, and had them send me a bag of plastic kids' jewelry, rings and bracelets and necklaces and the like. When I gave them out, the little girls were just happy as can be, as none of them had ever had any sort of "jewelry" before. As is typical in cultures where there are scarce aids to motherhood, the older children, always the girls of course, did much of the care of their younger sibs.

I shot this pic of three of the children in the compound. I am sure I made the oatmeal cookies, as Co, our housekeeper and cook, would never had had any idea of making oatmeal cookies. Rice cookies, I am sure, but she had surely never even heard of oatmeal. The boy on the right is her son, she was a war widow. The other two youngsters are Cambodian, their father was a dedicated soldier, but couldn't been over five feet tall. I have blacked out a Playboy centerfold on the door frame.

My briefing charts are against the far wall, with our covered tactical map. There wouldn't have been any need to conceal it, as Chuck probably knew more about our Friendly Outposts than we did. Our mascot, the black cat, is on the chair cushion, before Pop, our handyman, at him.

All the best, and stay safe..... SF VET

Don't you know that you can get in trouble leaving guns out with children?

Two M16's and an M79, right out there in the open.....

jpage said:

Wonder if they would work in 12 guage ?

Click to expand...

Yes, they were made and used but were notorious for "blood trails" and not body count as I understand.

jpage said:

Wonder if they would work in 12 guage ?

Click to expand...

A version of the fleschettes was loaded in 12-gauge shotgun shells during our involvement in Vietnam.

Another use was in the 40mm grenade launcher M79.

105mm howitzer ammunition intended for direct fire applications, close defense uses.

2.75" anti-personnel rockets fired from aircraft used fleschettes.

Probably others.

I grew to really like being at the distant end of any command interest or direction or even authority. A versatile, adaptable officer can succeed in both field and staff positions, but too much independence early in one's career can hinder development of such traits. I declined a staff position after my first six months as a MAT leader, with nobody interested in what I was trying to accomplish, and requested another field assignment for my second six months "in-country." I am not sure I would have thrived in some comfortable staff position. Every now and then, a little excitement keeps life interesting.

Apparently, another CPT, who had done a 6 month extension on his tour was leaving a district further south, in An Xuyen Province, the southernmost province In South Vietnam. So he left about the day I arrived, with an experienced Major in charge. We set about building our "hootch", in a newly built compound a few hundred yards for the old one next to a very small village, or hamlet on the river. Within a month, the Major went home for some R&R but developed some illness, so did not return, so HQ up in Camau just let me stay on. Which was fine with me.

Every now and then, some sort of stateside care package would be dropped off by our weekly supply chopper. One day, we got model car boxes, and set about putting them together. When I was growing up, I really got into models, although not cars, mostly ships and airplanes. Here, SFC Tom is looking over his kit, and the Winston smoker out of the picture to the right was another SGT posted for awhile to us. I never smoked, and I don't recall that Tom did either. I have no recollection if we finished or what happened to our car models. We kept our rifles loaded and chambered.

Time passed quickly for me.

All the best, and stay safe.... SF VET

jpage said:

Wonder if they would work in 12 guage ?

Click to expand...

My section sgt when I was at Ft Polk had been with the 5th ID up on the DMZ. He said one night they were attacked and fired off evrything they had available, the next morning they went out to do an assessment and found a few bodies that had been hit by fleshette rounds.

bummer said:

My section sgt when I was at Ft Polk had been with the 5th ID up on the DMZ. He said one night they were attacked and fired off evrything they had available, the next morning they went out to do an assessment and found a few bodies that had been hit by fleshette rounds.

Click to expand...

Fort Polk is located exactly 188 miles slightly southwest of where I grew up in very southern Arkansas. The jets practicing for Vietnam would come over my High School cut on their afterburners and it would drown out the teachers and rattle every window in the school with the roar from their engines. I graduated High School in 1967.

Remember the 60s Vietnam inspired music!