Getting Ready To Come Home
General
I am becoming short; John Lee, Smock and Sergeant Engle had
already gone. I had my orders for Fort Carson (just 45 minutes
from home), but first to Aberdeen Proving Grounds where I went to school on the
new Sheridan (M551).
Leo was still there, but that was it for the old group. Leo was to leave a week before me, but his flight would have taken him to Ft. Dix in New York (for what reason I can not tell you). He was truly a small town man, and did not want to fight that Metropolis. Somehow he got our schedules changed and I left before him, destination Dix.
The new motor sergeant was a new E5 that, I guess, felt that he had to exercise his authority. He was a new SP5 straight out of NCO school and I was a veteran who had earned my SP4 rank, and I was not technically in his maintenance group. Needless to say we did not blend well.
I was at the top of my MOS and could not get a promotion, I (and, as I found out, others ) thought I deserved my next stripe. After all I was the guy that was up all hours of the day and night, keeping the guns shooting, and performing maintenance after everyone else had turned out the lights and gone to bed. I was the guy that was on top of the guns recharging the hydraulics in the pitch black of night, with the only light in sight, and kept the all the crew serve weapons healthy.
When I spoke to Sergeant Engle about it, he indicated that the CO was talking about a Bronze Star for me.
This sounded so ridicules that I thought he was trying to be a smart ass, so I walked away. The next day I had my MOS changed and applied to school in Aberdeen, MD. I still don't know if Sarge was serious.
I did go to Aberdeen, after 30 days of leave, where I studied the Sheridan -- then back to Ft Carson in Colorado and a M109 Artillery unit in the 5th Infantry Division.
If I had stayed in the Army, I know that I would have gone back to Vietnam -- and the 11th -- and to one of the troops that got the Sheridan. I did not realize at the time that I would have probably returned to the Cav --- If I had, I would have re-upped. Information is everything . Oh by the way I got my E5 stripe 2 weeks after reporting to Carson
Lai Khe
One of my last missions took us to Lia Khe. I was told the 101st and the 1st Infantry was having some problems there. Our area of responsibility was the territory on the east and west of highway 13, so we went there to assist. This was the only time we ever stopped in a town or village. The rocketing that we saw as we drove up had stopped.
It was like R&R, we didn’t even set up for a mission, and it lasted around 10 days.
Nothing to do but relax and get our personal gear up to date. Some of the guys went to the local bars and got into trouble. Once again, I was told that, because a couple of their bars were torn up, we were asked to leave, seems we did not have the social graces necessary to remain in their town.
True to the Cavalry Code we rode silently into the sunset to our next endeavor. As we left, and looked back, the rocketing had resumed.
Going Home
Another Operation began and we were right in the middle of it. We wound up in the mountains somewhere and the day I left, the unit was heading for An Loc again.
I got into a duce and a half and took a very short trip to an Air Force landing strip where I boarded a leaky, oil dripping Caribou back to Blackhorse.
As I landed at Blackhorse, I could hear the rattle of bullets hitting the fuselage, and when I asked what was happening, I was told that the VC were getting bad.
Back to 1How and the clerk told me that the Regiment would not be back --- that their new home was to be An Loc. He also told me that our wrecker had struck a mine and that the driver, John Wilson, had been seriously injured.
John was one of the originals with me from the beginning, (the skinny guy with his back to the camera while digging the foxhole in MY first clip), but had to go home on emergency leave, and this trip was his first since coming back.