M18A1 Claymore Mine contains
C-4 which we used to heat C-rations
I was checking our company area after an early dawn rocket attack and found two unexploded rockets embedded into the ground some 60 feet from my sleeping quarters and right beside our bunker. I had quick illusions of pulling it out of the ground and smuggling it back home as a war souvenir but quickly determined it to be too big and too dangerous to smuggle it home without it blowing up or getting caught.
A farmboy friend from Kentucky walked up, evaluated the situation and suggested that we remove them before they blow up and cause additional major damage. He suggested that as long as we don't touch or hit the primer area, they would be safe to remove. He and I grabbed one trying to twist it loose, but it wouldn't budge. We went on to the other rocket and again tried twisting it loose. It, too, would not move. Other exploding rockets had unearthed some good-sized boulders. Grabbing a good-sized boulder with both hands, I began pounding the side of the rocket as hard as I could to dislodge it while carefully avoiding the primer area. By the sound of the hits, it was evident that it was very well lodged into the ground. We sat there on the ground besides the imbedded rockets thinking of what to do next.
Farmboy had just suggested we get a shovel and mattocks from the pioneer set of our company truck1 when we both realized that in the excitement of the attack, we hadn't eaten anything. We gave up at this point and went to boil up some canned hot dogs in beer for breakfast. I had no sterno cans for heating it up but farmboy remembered we had a cracked claymore mine2 . We could not use cracked claymore mines for their intended purpose, so we would harvest the C-43 to heat our food. I had some coarse hard bread I had gotten from my friend Gonzales who worked in the neighboring unit's mess hall. That was a typical breakfast for us when we did care to venture over the hill to the mess hall for eggs, cereal and bacon.
After breakfast, we headed back to our two rockets, but we were too late. The whole area around the rockets including our hooch and bunker was now roped off by an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team who was keeping everyone away from the area. I recall farmboy's evaluation of the situation "Too much wasted effort. We could've taken them out if we only had a sledge hammer."
I remembered this particular incident when I heard from some TV preacher many years later that "God looks out for and protects the dumb and the ignorant". I believe we qualified in both categories.
Farmboy and I both completed our Vietnam tours and made it home safely.
1 Military vehicles are equipped with Pioneer Tool set consisting of a shovel, an axe and a mattock.
2 The M18A1 Claymore mine is a directional anti-personnel mine used by the U.S. military. The Claymore fires shrapnel in the form of steel balls out to about 100 meters across a 60° arc in front of the device.
3 U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War era would sometimes use small amounts of C-4 as a fuel for heating rations as it will burn unless detonated with a primary explosive. Amongst field troops in Vietnam, it became common knowledge that ingestion of a small amount of C-4 would produce a "high" similar to that of ethanol.
Copyright texan@atudemi.com - January 2022