Snubby in Vietnam

[SF VET]

Brings back memories, Lobo. In SF, the pre-jump brief was always an "individual tap-out." Yeah, right. We put the biggest guy at the front of the plane, ie, the last one out. His job was to push as hard as possible to get the "stick" out in a few seconds; being SF, we were maybe 12 guys in a stick. We left the airplane as fast as we could get near the door. We also diid some "ramp" jumps, where you just walk down the lowered ramp, and step off. In Jump School at Benning, I fell on top of another trooper's chute, and my own chute slid off the side and deployed, and I was fine. We were told landing with a T10 was like jumping off a basketball hoop.

We had to jump once a month to maintain "jump status', which paid I think something like an extra $100 a month. These were "Hollywood Jumps", often from Slicks, no gear, just in our fatigues and a 'chute. Once, one of my team told us he was going to "trick" the Huey's crew. On a UH 'chopper, there was a big wire rope across the back engine compartment, where we would snap our static line to, then sit on the door edge, feet out on the skids, and when up high enough, just scoot off. This one trooper, when the crew chief pointed for him to jump, held up his static line's D ring, and asked what do I do with this? With a look of disgust, the crew chief snapped him to the wire road, and our laughing trooper hopped off.

The drop zones at Bragg were a reddish sand. Since we had the softer landing, semi-steerable chutes, we were pretty good at turning so as to land sideways, boots, side of legs, side of hip, then shoulder blades, and never helmet. If we did so, we did not brush off the sand, but if it was a "feet-butt-head" PLF (parachute landing fall), we would quickly dust off our tell-tail crummy landing evidence and act like we had a good PLF. The lack of sand didn't fool anyone.

There were two ways to get out of your chute. One, the big flat 3 inch circular mid-chest harness: pull a tab, and turn then whack it, and four harness straps drop out. Or, if being dragged by wind, two press and pull down links up above your shoulders which released your harness from the risers to your chute. This was added because of deaths from being dragged on windy drops. But you had to be on your back and conscious to reach them. I never used them.

It was exhilarating to be coming down on a warm sunny day, looking all around for those seconds. I loved those qualification jumps.

By the way, when I was a rookie 2nd LT just into the army at Benning in the summer of '69, (when I hear the song "The summer of 69, I was just barely alive....," it brings it all back to me, some of the enlisted privates jumping with us had never been in an airplane, and when they would jump they would often out of habit hold their nose like leaping into water.

It is so long ago and we were young and foolish and naive, with no idea of what our life was to be for us.

All the best, and thanks for the memories. SF VET

 

[SF VET]

5th Group back then was easy living. Our company was in a WWII wooden Baracks on Smoke Bomb hill, long gone. Have a leisurely breakfast in the mess hall, cooks taking orders for what we wanted. Even today, when I make some eggs for b'fast, I remember now those cooks could hold five eggs in their hand, and break all of them at once, and drop the eggs onto the grill. All the bacon you could want. Whole handfuls of the stuff. Maybe go check out some Soviet weapons and drive out to a range for fun. Once, I failed to note the small difference in some Russian ammo, and stuck a round in a barrel of a pistol. It all looked the same to me. Or a short hike to one of the lakes, sun and swimming. Maybe a day at the pool. We did no PT or PE, nobody went to a gym, and if we had had to do a one mile Ruck hike, we would have all just died. There was always the faint whiff of alcohol in the air. Maybe evening Captain of the Guard, or cleaning weapons. Occasionally some overseas trip, or stateside evaluator duty, or the fun of being a guerrilla aggressor, sort of like camping out. Sometimes, I would just take off for a solitary weekend camping in the Uhwarrahi forest. Just me and my little stove. Never occurred to me to be aware of bears or panthers.

One of our Team Leaders had a ski boat, go skiing out on one of the lakes. Or try to help Lt ... he was later badly shot up in Vietnam, get his Harley Sportster to start, which we never managed to do. Occasionally some Post assignment, but for a single guy, it was easy and fun, and occasionally very interesting.

The saying "...it's all fun and games until someone looses an eye" is sometimes is very true.

Like the time a Turkish SF officer took me deep into the Casbah in Ankara.......

I believe Army units now days train and condition intensively, but we sure didn't. It all was about to change when I was in the mideast and the '73 Arab/Israeli war exploded. We got into trouble in Greece on the way back when our Battalion Commander bit a bar girl on her mammary, more about that escapade later.

All the best... SF VET.

 

[ron_c]

It was exhilarating to be coming down on a warm sunny day, looking all around for those seconds. I loved those qualification jumps. SF VET

The descent was over with much too early for me. You wanted to stay at a certain altitude and just look at things, except during the Winter jumps. It was nice and warm when you exited the plane but became cold very quickly. Then it took forever, it seemed, to land as it was so cold, then it was the slow drive back in the back of a deuce and a half back to the barracks. We would always jump on the Sicily or Normandy Drop Zones at Bragg. I guess because they were larger drop zones and they could drop more guys on these than the smaller ones.

It is so long ago and we were young and foolish and naive, with no idea of what our life was to be for us. SF VET

When I was 18, my friends and family members was getting married after high school. Some to get out of the draft at that time. I knew I wasn't mature enough to be getting married, besides I was looking for adventure and joined the military especially Airborne.

 

[ron_c]

The drop zones at Bragg were a reddish sand. Since we had the softer landing, semi-steerable chutes, we were pretty good at turning so as to land sideways, boots, side of legs, side of hip, then shoulder blades, and never helmet. If we did so, we did not brush off the sand, but if it was a "feet-butt-head" PLF (parachute landing fall), we would quickly dust off our tell-tail crummy landing evidence and act like we had a good PLF. The lack of sand didn't fool anyone.
SF VET

You could always say, you landed in a tree and that's why you didn't have any sand on you.

 

[SF VET]

replied to your PM Lobo, hope it got to you, I am never sure of this sort of thing.

When I was in SF at Bragg, maybe mid '73, we were called out along with others to look for a jumper who had never made it to his pick up point on a nite drop. He was a jump student or exchange solder from some mid-eastern country. I talked with the troops who found him. He was all tangled up in his lines, and drowned in a small creek. If he had been able to just stand up, it was only up to his knees. Something for the State Department to handle. I did not know him.

Nearly a decade later, back at Bragg as a staff pediatrician, and for half my two years there, chief of pediatrics, my wife and now three children, living in quarters, had a retiring neighbor, a LTC, who was going back somewhere in the NE to run for some sort of office. He had married a young trooper in his unit, and had one (or two?) small children. He went for a sport jump with the Post jump club, borrowing one of the then new sport chutes, and went straight in, no chutes, in front of his young family. As you can image, his young wife was a wreck, so I wrote out a couple of Valiums for her, and in a few days the moving company came and the young widow was gone.

In an aircraft, if the jump master and crew chief decide to abort a jump with a jumper in the door, he was so primed to jump with the slightest touch. So you would give the hand signal with the air crew chief, and on the mutual signal, grab the jumper and yank him back into the plane, because if you just touched him, he was gone.

If a jumper was hung up flailing around behind the aircraft for some reason, he was supposed to put his hands on his helmet, so the crew chief or jump master could immediately cut his static line, hoping then the jumper would use his reserve and land relatively safely. The aircraft had winch retrievers, but if the crew tried to reel the jumper back in, it was dangerous because the jumper was quickly becoming unconscious from the constriction of his harness, or from banging into the aircraft.

My dad was a sailor on the Navy's first carrier with his brother, both leaving that doomed ship to become pilots; the USS Langley, then a sea plane tender, was sunk with great loss in the Java Sea in early '42 along with several old destroyers. Later, as pilot of a B25 out over the Atlantic out of Jacksonville, looking for U Boats, one of his crew came up between him and the co-pilot, and somehow his chute deployed out the top hatch, but did not fully open or he would have been yanked out thru the top of the cockpit. But he was near asphyxiated from his harness, and they tried and tried to pull him back in, being afraid to cut his chute lines. Eventually they got him back in, and when they landed, he must have been dizzy, because he stepped right into a prop. Like they say, when your time is up, it just is.

After I left active duty, I never parachuted again. Just too busy I guess.

All the best... SF VET

 

[ron_c]

After I left active duty, I never parachuted again. Just too busy I guess. SF VET

Yeah, that's it, "too busy", or as in my case, I got wiser and thought "What the Hell was I thinking"........hahahahaha

On injuries, once I saw one the guys get the lines twisted up so bad, it chocked him out to where he was unconscious, He said, the only thing he remembered something was wrong and the next was someone was looking down on him lying on the ground asking if he was ok. He didn't remember the descent or landing.

The most common injury it seemed is somehow someone would get the static line under his forearm, next to the reserve chute, instead of outside the forearm and when it pulled it would remove all the top layer of skin in a large area and be raw until it healed over and left a scar. If you looked at post #532 above you can see one of the guys is trying to bicycle around to get the lines untwisted.

 

[SF VET]

As I have told, for my second six months "in-country", when my tour as a MAT Leader in the mid-delta Kien Phong province was completed, with really no results, I requested another field assignment, turning down some sort of admin slot in one of the big city HQ's. I was used to living an austere life, and had no need for an airconditioned billet and quarters. Or spending money in some club every night. Besides, I was living on less than ten bucks a month and putting the rest in my Big Ten finance savings account. I was thinking that at some point I was going to need tuition and living $ to pursue some sort of a medical career.

So someone decided to send me way south, to the very tip of Vietnam, just south of the UMinh Forest. Soon after my arrival, the Major, officially the District Senior Advisor, left to see his wife in Hawaii on R&R, and got sick, and never came back. So our HQ up in Camau must have just forgotten about me, and I inherited the job. I turned down both an in-country R&R at China Beach or Vung Tau and an out-of-country R&R, although what I head about the Australian "escorts" sounded pretty enticing.

My counterpart was a Vietnamese LTC, an experienced war fighter, not someone I could give advice to. He spoke perfect English, and his sister was married to a US officer, and he had been to some of our US army schools.

He lived in the other half of our "hootch", under a metal sided and roofed shed. I was often invited over for meals, esp when his wife and kids would come down from Camau for a visit. I thought him a fine officer, a good leader, but graft and corruption was every where , so am not naive to think that he did not also supplement his meager pay like everybody else seemed to.

He smoked a pipe, so my parting gift was a fine pipe I had my folks send over to me before I DEROS'ed. I had them send over my Puma White Hunter sheath knife which I gave to the XO. By the way, only a year ago I finally replaced my Puma.

Here, at our main entrance from our two outside the wire helipads. Looking at it now, there was no reason for the mud berms, there were no vehicles anywhere, so all they might have done was provide cover for an attacking force. Best to have clear "fields of fire" in any defensive position.

With the news of surrendering Advisor compounds becoming more frequent, a chopper came by for an "eyes only" brief at the helipad, saying if we were over-run, any rescue helicopter would not also rescue any Vietnamese leaders. I was told to pick out a secret location, known only to us 2 or 3 US where we would escape to for rescue. As if we could have escaped thru our own wire in a battle. But I told them we would try to exfiltrate to a spot along the river, some hundreds of yards north. We never would have survived any attempt to do so.

Anyway, long ago, far away, in that so tragic and wasteful war.

All the best,,,, SF VET

 

[SF VET]

The Battalion Commander and the Mammary.

Back in the '60's and '70's each SF company and its higher battalion had a specific area of special interest. We were supposed to learn about our "AO", climate, culture, terrain, and likely friendly and enemy forces. My company, A of the 1st Battalion, 5th Groups, had Turkey. Others had other Mid East countries like Iran, and others. Even though the legacy and legendary history of SF was forged in Vietnam, it actually wasn't our official area of interest. It was the Mid East.

More about that mission and how a fellow Team Leader came to totally disrupt a semi-secret intelligence operation with his complete lack of morals in another post.

In '73, most of our Battalion was sent to our specific AO's, to become with familiar with what it would be like, and who we would likely pair with, should "the balloon go up." My team ended up at some God-forsaken airstrip in central Turkey, where we prepped for a drop and link-up with Turkish SF for some joint training. Being an aircraft enthusiast from my dad's career, I recognized parked over to the side was a row of abandoned WWII British Typhoon fighter/bombers and Spitfires.

Up in the dusty control tower, broken windows and all, I saw an advertisement for some US airline, and could hardly believe it when the model in the fading poster was Margie W... a lass I was enamored with, someone I had met down on the NC beach earlier. Later, she told me she had indeed done some modeling. Who knew.... Sadly, that promising relationship same to an end when in a tender moment, she called me John, and my name is Hal.

We nite dropped, me losing and finding my bent M16, and linked up with the Turkish SF on the ground, and moved out. I am sure the Turks were just amazed at how out of shape we were, as I had to keep halting our nite march to let some of my huffing and puffing team members catch up. The Turks were like mountain goats, us, like lumbering donkeys.

We flew out for some hours in one of their old DC3's, so I got to jumpmaster out of one of those for my jump log. We all fell asleep, and when their crew chief woke us up, I moved to the left side door as he opened it up and was startled to look UP at the trees! The pilot was flying nap of the earth, rising and falling just over the ridge lines between the pine trees, and I just hoped he would at least gain some altitude before we jumped. He did, and we went out into the night

But it was interesting how a country with much fewer resources was so adept at utilizing what they did have. One dark nite, we lined up along a mountain top meadow, and while just waiting, they brought in a very short landing and take-off single prop plane, like the Storch of Nazi Germany. One moment, quiet as a mouse, the next moment this plane landed with barely a whisper. I thought "...where did that come from". It soon took off with hardly any runway or noise.

I had one of my team members work up a secret E&E plan for us if we had to break contact and escape, and gave that to our stay behind team. No doubt the Turks would have easily hunted us down if they chosen to do so.

There wasn't anything the Turk SF could learn from us, and I came away with a feeling that if we ever had to go toe-to-toe with them, we would likely come out second best. Tuff, tuff solders.

We had a fine dinner of goat with a local Shepard in his cabin, and when I looked up thru his roof at the stars, and asked what he did when it rained, and he (thru our interpreter) replied "...I get wet."

After several weeks of field duty, we came out, debriefed, exchanged a few gifts, and were picked up by a US C130, and arrived in Istanbul at dusk. Our gear was on pallets, and was offloaded, and I told my team I would guard our stuff and they were free to see the sights, but to be back about dawn, as we were leaving on anther C130 then. So I climbed up on top of our pallets, and sat there all night with my unloaded M16 ( I had exchanged my bent one for another straight one) hoping if some evil folks decided to abscond with our gear, I could scare them off. At dawn, my team was back and we loaded up for the next part of our journey home.

I'll continue this with another post, this is getting long.

SF VET

 

[SF VET]

We were just exhausted. We landed in Athens abut midnight, and were to take off as soon as our C130 was refueled. So we dutifully staggered off, and stood by our aircraft, then the crew chief gave us the "bad" news that an engine was bad, and it would be the next afternoon before a replacement would accomplished. Our tired Teams immediately came to life, and as soon as we all arrived at the rented hotel, now all five Teams of our company, we trooped over to a nearby bar. We caroused and drank and exchanged stories, and towards dawn, about the time the bar owner was about to close up, our Battalion Commander, a really great leader, all the right SF qualities, bit one of the dancers on a mammary, so we thought it best to walk back to our hotel to catch some much needed rest before heading back to the airfield for our next flight. But I and several other officers decided we were not likely to ever be there again, and as usual, I had my trusty Pentax loaded with Kodachrome, so we took a taxi over to the Acropolis.

Back then, visitors were free to wonder all over the hilltop, but from what I see now, much of it is fenced off from tourists. It was interesting to see Nazi names and unit insignias carved into the marble ledges, and I reflected on how soon they would have been in mortal combat with US and British troops. Took some closeups of them.

It was something I will always remember, and when I walked near our hotel, I hiked over to some rocks on the edge of the Aegean Sea, and thinking I would never likely be there again, just leaned forward and let myself fall into that so clear cool water. After just floating around for a few minutes, climbed out, and walked back to the airfield, soaking wet, and again we all loaded up.

We flew to some other place I can't recall, where we transferred to a US Naval troop landing ship, and proceeded to sail westward, pausing at the big harbor in Crete. Looking down at the sea floor, it was so clear that I imagined if I dropped a dime, I could read the coin's date. We left the ship and formed up on the dock, and some SF Major, from another company, gave us Heck for our causal formation, and grubby fatigues. I thought he was bucking for some sort of promotion. I did not think him made of real SF fiber.

We travel on, and anchored off Mallorca, Spain, where Europe goes to live the high life. It was a fun few days, shopping and swimming, and then coming back in the evening on the ship's launch for the night.

I and several other officers went for dinner at a posh restaurant, just along the warf, and ordered Paella, the yellow rice bowl, with some of the fisherman's day's catch in it. Shrimp, mussels, fish, and it had a few fishheads, as is traditional. I had really liked Paella in Spain before, but one dumb Lt held up a fish head, and loudly demanded who was putting such a thing in his dinner.

I was embarrassed and just said sit down and leave that on some plate and don't make us all look like fools to the other patrons and staff.

Bought my dad a nice leather coat, which he wore the rest of his life. Soon we were back on the ship. The Navy told us we would be passing thru the Straits or Gibraltar in the middle of the night, that 40 mile wide Strait separating Europe from Africa. All the other officers took rooms up in the ship's "Officer Country", but I stayed in the troop compartment with my Team. No special privileges or meals for me. In SF, leaders carry and do every everything their men are expected to do. I did.

So in the wee hours, I looked up in the Moonlite at that great, imposing "rock" and thought about all the history of that famous, historical landmass.

We then tied up at Rota, the big navel base on the west coast of Spain.

But then the '73 Arab/Isralie war exploded, and my life was about to be very interesting. But we were tied up for a week before all that, and every evening, I had dinner and Spanish beer in the Post Officer's Club, and there met a young female Naval officer who had a car, so she would drive me back to our ship at bar closing. Those men who have been away from any female companionship and conversation for extended and stressful periods know how comforting it is to just talk with a woman. From time to time back in that time in my life, I found it so.

There, in the Officer's Club, still angry at the Major who had berated us back in Crete, I found a sheet of paper, and wrote to the Registrar at the University of Nebraska, in Lincoln, where I had been in ROTC from '65 -'69, and said I was coming back to take the necessary courses for a career in medicine. I was never going to be subordinate to an officer like him ever again.

By the way, when I did arrive back in Lincoln, now a civilian, and went to the Registrar's office, I told him I needed a new student identification card. When I had been a freshman back in '65, they issued me an embossed card with my name and SS. The stupid guy asked me why I didn't still have the one from 8 years before. Sometimes the idiocy of bureaucracy is just mind boggling.

Then, the war....

All the best... SF VET

 

[F4phantom]

Soon after the TET New Year in '68 we took some more rockets and several planes were destroyed along with our radar/comm shop in the hangar. Someone was listening to the radio and came across Hanoi Hannah. She was saying how bad it was that our squadron was destroyed and the all the personnel were killed. She mentioned the squadron by name and then began to mention names of the people in the squadron who were killed, mostly officers and a few NCO's. We were a little taken aback and than began to laugh because we were all there and most of our planes were still able to fly. No one in the squadron was killed. A couple of guys in the squadron were shared the hangar with were killed when their hootch took a direct hit, but that was some time later.

She did play some decent songs.

 

[Llance]

My brother-in-law was 101st He said all of his training prior to landing in Normandy was done a 450 feet. "combat" jump height. I've never felt a need to depart an aircraft above wheels on the ground height.

 

[SF VET]

F4, I would bet the names of the men in your squadron were provided by one of the virulent Anti-war activists of the era.

SF VET

 

[SF VET]

The Alley Tom Cat

All of us young captains would talk over drinks at the Bragg Officer's Club about our post-war plans. It was apparent to all of us SF types that we had no future in the Post-Vietnam army, as our forces pivoted to face the Russian threat, and wanted to leave the distaste of the failed, costly war behind it. Being in SF was then a "career-killer", and we knew it. I was pretty sure I was going to try for a new career, and some of the others were thinking of mercenary work; it paid well we heard. Others Maybe CIA, and the like. I had turned down a HALO school slot.

It was apparent to the Army, and I think in retrospect to me, that personally, after over two years of being my own boss and being able to do what I wanted, how I wanted, I just would chafe working in a conventional unit. The army knew us chaps were just too Feral to ever adapt to the usual Army ways. I had already "had" it with a certain Major back in Crete, and there were many more like him in the regular army.

One of our team leaders was the perfect personification of a Special OP's officer, (I don't recall that now common term being used then; I think it came from the Seal's missions much later). Tall, just an Adonis in his fatigues. Combat hero, having faced the NVA PT 76 tanks in a border engagement. He would have been perfect in a recruiting add.

But he had the personal morals of an Alley Tom Cat.

Most of us were leaving the active army about the same time, early '73, and for his last month or so, he moved over to oversee a 40-50 all female intelligence operation. Near our area there was a secret building, full of mostly young women, who's job was to read and gather any information on our potential foes, then send it to analysts to see if they could glean some useful intel on our possible enemy. I had been over a few times, and under the former commander, it seemed to be a smoothly functioning operation.

Then Captain Adonis was posted to take over and he began to work his way thru the females, which predictably caused jealousy and hostility, and the whole place promptly collapsed. I would drop by, and what had previously been a quiet set of dedicated women was now full of arguments and accusations.

I would have suspected this outcome. But he soon left the army to continue his own career, way out west.

I am going to be away for a short period. I often mention my trusty Pentax, and have perhaps a thousand or so military-related slides, but am about out of the ones I had professionally digitalized. But I just ordered a home slide dup device, and from the reviews, it just may let me convert many of them with near pro-resolution. I will see, and be back soon.

As for "no picture, it didn't happen", I think I can make that happen.

All the best... SF

 

[Greyman50]

Some pics from Vietnam could not be posted. As the old saying goes, “Vietnam, if you were not there shut the up”.

 

[ron_c]

The army knew us chaps were just too Feral to ever adapt to the usual Army ways. As for "no picture, it didn't happen", I think I can make that happen.
SF

Once at Chu Lai I was traveling with an Officer trying to hitch a ride back to our unit at Duc Pho, when I overheard one of the Army personnel that worked at the air strip say, "Oh S***, it's the f****** Special Forces. They were hitching a ride somewhere else. I thought it was funny hearing that.

The no photo, didn't happen, this was just a way of saying we wanted to see the French girl.

 

[Greyman50]

Yea but posting pics like that will get one banned as well as some others that some would not want to see.

 

[ron_c]

Yea but posting pics like that will get one banned as well as some others that some would not want to see.

It was a little humor, hence the smiley face. Of course, he couldn't or won't post anything like that.

 

[SF VET]

A moderator has already reviewed the forum rules with me on a PM. I get the humor. I do have quite a few pics, wounds, POW's, and the like that won't be seen here. I really do enjoy hearing of other's military adventures. All the best to all of you, see you soon.

SF VET

 

[fordson]

Waiting on your return and more stories.

 

[Sistema1927]

So, do we talk about SF VET behind his back while he is gone, or just wait until he gets back?