I had spent another night of drinking atop our bunker nearest my hooch. Close to midnight, one of my two drinking buddies suggested we get some sleep just in case we got another attack. I started gathering the empty cans and stopped when one of them said, “Man, just leave’m there. Let’s just go!" We grabbed our weapons and flak vests and headed for our hooches. I stumbled onto my cot, removed my boots and placed my weapon and vest next to my bed.
I had inherited a four foot by eight-foot mahogany bookcase brought from the states when our unit deployed to Vietnam. It belonged to the orderly room, but there had not been room for it in our small unit orderly room. A senior electronics technician adopted it for his sleeping area. Some two months later, he returned back stateside upon completing his two year draft commitment. I took over his area and its mahogany bookcase when I arrived at 101st Airborne Division. It had become a public library for the many paperbacks we got from Red Cross, and I would often find others sorting through my bookcase looking for something interesting to read. Everyone knew to donate their used paperbacks to my bookcase. My mahogany bookcase had become a public community entertainment center.
I was awakened by a loud noise and crash. I jumped out of bed in the dark to find myself covered with debris believing our roof had collapsed on me from a rocket or mortar attack. I yelled “INCOMING” and began searching for my flak vest and weapon. Most of the men in my hooch were now awake with their weapon, gas mask, LBE and flak vest in hand and ready to run to our assigned bunker. With a couple of flashlights aimed at me, I embarrassingly noticed it was my bookcase with its large volume of paperbacks that had fallen on me. Two men uprighted my bookcase and began putting the books back on the shelves. Everyone else went back to sleep as I gave thought to somehow find a way to securely fasten my bookcase to the wall.
But this was not to be the highlight of that night. I was still awake feeling foolish for waking everyone up with my shouts of “incoming”. I heard snoring across the hooch and lamented how some day back in the world the army was going to provide me my own room with soundproof walls. Just as the snoring started getting louder, the first rocket fell uphill from my hooch and probably no more than fifty meters away. The woosh and explosion were tremendously loud and frightening. My hooch being in a dugout portion of a hillside was sufficiently protected on three sides. The open sides not protected by the cutaway from the hillside were covered by two sandbags wide and some four feet high.
The rocket had hit on the hillside beyond my hooch. Before I could again yell “INCOMING”, other men were already running towards the bunker next to our hooch. I was in the far corner of my hooch farthest to our assigned bunker. I grabbed my gas mask, steel pot, flak vest and rifle then made my way to the door shining my flashlight into every cot to insure no one was left behind. I got into our bunker as someone was taking headcount. “Ok, we got everyone!” he reported on the radio. One of our men in back of the bunker wanted to go back to our hooch for his steel pot. I stopped him and everyone in our bunker backed me up. “You’re safe here, dumbass! You don’t need your steel pot!” someone yelled at him. I shared with him how a fellow Advisor in my previous Advisory Team 99 left the safety of our sandbagged wall to retrieve his steel pot. A rocket or mortar landing nearby sheared off half his skull killing him instantly.
We were were all scared and wondering just how long the attack would last as the rockets and mortars kept falling all around our company area. Doug Bonnot mentions in his book “The Sentinel and the Shooter” about that night which was to be one of the most frightening rocket attacks we suffered. Days later it was learned that our 265th Radio Research Company had been targeted because of our mission intercepting enemy radio traffic.
Our three-quarter ton utility truck loaded with five-gallon cans of diesel, kerosene and gasoline took a direct hit and erupted into an enormous fireball that I could see from my bunker some forty meters away. This was a sad loss because this was the three-quarter ton truck we used going to Danang visiting their China Beach resort and their Air Force Base PX some 150 kilometers away. The truck’s second gear did not work making it difficult crossing the mountains into and out of Danang. But that was our main transportation to shop the several PX’s and restaurants in Danang. It had been one of the best trucks in our unit and also used for resupplying our gas and diesel fuel cans from Phu Bai once or twice a week. If a utility truck could be considered a workaholic, this three-quarter ton truck would be it! It was a huge morale blow to lose it and felt very much like having lost a good friend.
A two-and-a-half ton truck parked just in front of our utility truck also took shrapnel which penetrated the undercarriage gear box, radiator and frame. Our motor pool maintenance tent also took a hit and destroying our vehicle maintenance and repair capability.
When friendly artillery guns and aircraft began unloading their firepower on the enemy guns, the attack stopped. Sleep was no more an option as we began evaluating the damage around our company area. Sadly, all evidence pointed to the fact that only our company area had been targeted that eerie morning. The 801st Maintenance Battalion which was right behind our company area was intact. Two other adjoining units did not sustain any damages.
One of our men was sufficiently wounded to require immediate evacuation. It was not yet daylight, so First Sergeant Winters directed two trucks facing in back of our company area with enough separation for a medevac Huey to land. With their headlights on high-beam while the rest of the camp was still in blackout, First Sergeant Winters got on the radio and directed the medevac to land between the headlights.
Come daylight, First Sergeant Winters asked me to get my shovel and cover the blood spills on the ground. I vividly recall Sp5 Thompson’s enormous pool of already darkened blood spilled halfway up the hill to his hootch. As I struggled to cover the large blood-stained area, I recalled thinking Sp5 Thompson would never make it. Forty-plus years after this incident, I read in Doug’s book that Sp5 Thompson made it through the ordeal and is very much alive. Back then, when someone was medevac’d, that was the end of the awareness. One never questioned whether that someone had lived or died. Insensitive and bad karma to do so.
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