Last night, while vaping a wonderful Sativa strain called, Lemon Bean, I engaged in some conversation with my most recent favorite AI, ChatGPT 4o. A variety of topics were covered, including politics, which was interesting! At one point GPT asked me if I thought that our military was prepared to handle a possible violent citizen revolt, should the Donald lose the election. I explained my viewpoint that in fact, they are probably as prepared as they can be, but it won’t be enough.
I was thinking back to my experiences in riot control as a military policeman at Presidio in 1970. I said that facing an enemy of the United States on the battlefield is one thing, but facing your fellow citizens in a potentially hostile, even violent situation, is very different. It’s unique and while MPs are trained how to handle riots, it’s the kind of thing that really screws with your head. I was very fortunate that the weekend threats of over-running Presidio all turned out to be very non-threatening, but when we initially marched out the gates of Fort Presidio to face the crowd, we never knew what was in store until we stood there in full riot gear, looking at their faces. It was 1970 in San Francisco, so what we faced for the most part were flowers being thrown at us.
These memories of Presidio soon chained to another memory, this time from Vietnam. I and some of my fellow soldiers from Pr’Line Mountain found ourselves in an extremely bad position, where we soldiers had to face a crowd, this time one that was increasingly angry, and hostile, and many of them were armed. Had things gone differently that day, it would have been one for the history books.
Like so many of the few Vietnam War memories I have left, I don’t remember the day or month that these events occurred. They are blocked out due to trauma, I’m told. Even now I’m a bit hesitant to write about my war memories, as I get periodically told by someone who cares for me that I really need to forget all about Vietnam, or at least move past it like so many other vets have done. I always take some offense to this, as I think I have done exactly that. More so, I don’t want to forget and I know I will never be able to put these memories back in the bottle entirely. So, it’s true, I do think about Vietnam and I’ll admit that I do this every day because inevitably, something reminds me of the war. It is what it is.
My VA therapist, when I had one, told me this is a clear sign of PTSD. But I don’t dwell on it anymore, I really don’t, not like I did before I wrote my paper called, “Claymore Alley.” That cathartic writing experience stifled my daily recall of war events and transformed my then crystal clear, technicolor memories of the war into black-and-white memories, made dimmer with the patina of age. It also ended the nightmares I referred to as “screamers.” And to be honest, while I somehow managed to pull my life together, I still find it somewhat therapeutic to talk about my experiences. So, I’m going to continue occasionally writing about it.
October, coincidentally, is the month that the incident I wrote about at Claymore Alley happened. I am not certain, but the incident I am about to recount for you happened around the same time, or shortly after the Claymore Alley ambush.
A Fateful Collision
It was a morning like many others on Pr’Line Mountain. The sky was blue, the temperature was beautiful. It must have been a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, as these were the three days we ran supply convoys from our hill to the closest city, Dalat, the old French capital of South Vietnam. The Security Platoon I was a part of always cleared the road for 10 kilometers before the trucks would make the run. Snipers and occasional ambushes on this road were not uncommon. I was part of the track squad, a team of soldiers assigned to one of the two armored personnel carriers (APCs). On this day we were taking the APC all the way into town (20km) instead of stopping halfway at Checkpoint Charlie to await their return.
These vehicles were also referred to as “tracks”, due to the tank-like treads they had. Later, when I made sergeant, at the ripe old age of 20, I would be put in charge of the two APCs. I usually drove, because it was something I loved to do, and I was very good at it. Otherwise, I sat in the turret in what was called the TC position. TC is an abbreviation for “tank commander,” a holdover from WWII probably. Our APCs had names. One was called, Snoopy One, the other, Snoopy Two. One even had a nice picture of Snoopy that a soldier from the hill painted on it.
The armored personnel carrier was a bit of a beast. It weighed 11 tons and was made of a substance called, homogenized aluminum, a metal soft enough that you could literally carve off a piece with a sharp knife. The idea was that bullets and shrapnel would get buried in it and not penetrate. This worked, but only to an extent. This was evidenced by drivers, who would often sit on their helmets, afraid they’d lose their balls when they hit a road mine.
I referred to our track as “11 Tons of Rolling Death.” It was armed with the 50-caliber machine gun and two M-60 machine guns. Later we even mounted a mini-gun on it that we’d traded a stolen jeep to the ARVNs for. That never worked right, and we were freaked out a bit by the amount of ammo we had to sit among inside the track. It was like sitting in a bomb, so we went back to the 50-caliber. LOL! Let me tell you though, that when we “lit up” the weapons on our track, it was a force to be reckoned with! I’ve got the calcium deposits on my eardrums to prove it!
On this particularly fateful day, another man, Ron Walker, a guy from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, was driving the track and I was manning the 50-caliber machine gun mounted in the turret. It’s weird, but I cannot remember the names or faces of the other men who were on the track that day. We were usually a team of 4-6 people.
The trip from our hill to Dalat was uneventful. After entering Dalat, the convoy trucks drove off to pick up supplies from the local outpost at Cam Li, while the rest of us got to go and play! “Playing” usually meant we were on our own to go anywhere in town we wanted to. The usual haunts were, “Ann’s House” and “Madam Thai’s”. Other hot spots were the Modern Hotel and another huge hotel (still there), called the Palace Hotel, I think. Yes, all operated as houses of so-called “ill repute.”
The hotels relegated this activity to just a couple of floors. Ann’s House, on the other hand, was a restaurant with a whore house upstairs. The food was good! The girls, many being of French-Vietnamese descent, were very pretty for the most part. I don’t know what the rest of the team was up to that day, nor what I was doing, although for me it would probably have included lunch at Ann’s House, then catch a ride to Madam Thai’s to see my girl, Be Hai. Afterwards we all met up and climbed aboard the APC again, ready to meet the rest of the truck convoy and head back to Pr’Line Mountain.
Whatever else transpired earlier that day, I eventually reconnected with the rest of the track team and we started heading toward the edge of town where we would meet the rest of the convoy.
Dalat is an actual city, with city streets, and we were heading down one of them in the wrong direction to meet the convoy, so we had to turn around. The APC steered using two levers that would put the brakes on either the right or the left tread. So turning around involved stepping on the gas, lurching forward a short distance, then jamming the right or left steering lever which would cause the track to suddenly stop and spin in place, like a top, reversing direction. I enjoyed the reputation I had as someone who could turn the track around on a dime.
In this case, being in the turret position, it was technically up to me and the guys manning the two 60-caliber machine guns to keep an eye out for obstacles. The driver has little all-around visibility. I don’t know if any of us saw this Vietnamese civilian buzzing down the road to our left that day. It is a memory that has plagued me some in the past. Did I see him and blow it off as nothing to be concerned about? Did I see him and think he was not in harms way? Or worse, did I see him and think, “So what?” I’ll never know. I may well have been at fault in the following story.
What I do know is that Ron had to turn around, so he gunned the engine, moved forward very fast, then spun the track around to the left. As he did so, I have a vague memory of seeing the Vietnamese civilian on his Honda 50 zooming along to our left. We ended up smacking that guy and his motorcycle with the side of our track so damn hard! Bam! It was a death blow. Ron stopped, stunned. We were all stunned. We jumped down to survey the injured man. I remember seeing the man lying in the street, his bike smashed. He was on his back and bleeding from every opening, the corners of his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth. It was horrific. Ron was in shock, which was understandable.
I don’t know who contacted the local Dalat military police. What I do know is that this terrible situation was not an isolated incident that day in Dalat. It turns out that earlier, a local Army vehicle, a deuce-and-a-half truck, hit and killed a young girl at almost the exact same spot where we killed the civilian. A very bad situation suddenly had gotten much worse.
As we waited for the MPs, I imagine an ambulance of some kind was called, although I have no memory of it. A crowd started forming around our APC. They were mostly civilians. Someone identified him. He was a man with a bunch of kids, 5 or 6, I think. As the news spread, the crowd started to get noisier. Soon ARVNs, our South Vietnamese Army counterparts, started showing up. Many of them were armed with M-16s. The crowd now was getting quite loud and began shouting who knows what. Nothing good, I am sure!
When the MPs arrived, they said, “Get the hell out of town, now!” We looked at the crowd and the ARVNs looked ready to start a fight. They were so angry. Their faces full of hate. Who could blame them? I locked and loaded the 50-caliber machine gun. This action makes a very loud, threatening sound. I wanted to be as threatening as possible because I honestly thought I might have to fire on the crowd if they started shooting. I’ll never forget that feeling.
Payback!
Fortunately, the crowd realized that this wasn’t going to be a good idea, and we left, reconnecting with the convoy for the drive back to Pr’Line. By this time, Ron was no longer driving, someone else was, and I was inside with several other soldiers who were catching a ride. On the opening on the top of the track several soldiers sat with the two who were manning the 60-calibers. I don’t remember who was in the turret with the 50-caliber. I think it might have been a Puerto Rican guy named, Peewee.
On the way back to the Hill, the locals managed to get their revenge and we were ambushed! Charlie fired two RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) at the APC. One landed a foot or so in front of us, the other a foot or two behind us. Being inside the track felt like being inside a tin can with someone battering it with a large metal hammer. It was so loud it plugged my ears and my head rang like a bell. The guys who’d been sitting up top were all blown into the inside of the APC with me. All hell broke loose as we opened up on the hillside with everything we had. While a few soldiers jumped out of the track to fire on the hillside with their M-16s, I did what I could to patch up a wounded ARVN who’d been hit in the shoulder with shrapnel. Fortunately, shrapnel wounds don’t bleed much usually. He survived.
When the firestorm was finally over, it ended as they usually. Frayed nerves and no bodies to show for it. Like friggin’ ghosts, the enemy disappeared. In such situations, we sometimes could find blood, but rarely a body. I do remember Pee Wee getting his photo taken lighting a cigarette off of the barrel of the 50-caliber machine gun. I sure wish I knew what happened to that photo. It was amazing! We always had to have a spare barrel on hand for situations like this, because the barrel of the 50-caliber would get so hot it glowed red. And yes, his cigarette did light!
Later, back on the hill, the injured were told they’d get purple hearts (a jeep ran off the road and injured some soldiers during this event). If someone had checked my ear damage, or for a concusiion, I’d have got one too, but I was not interested in any friggin’ medal. I was still in shock myself, I believe. It had been one helluva day!
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