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Mud and muddy shallow water, are serious impediments to the eleven ton
Armored Personnel Carrier, M-113A1, and its two tons of equipment and men and gear.
Consequently, bent on living up to its reputation for ingenious invention, the
United
States of America provided us with an innovative vehicle known as The Bridge
Track. In July 1969, The Bridge Track made approximately its forth appearance
in the field with us on an operation that required, if possible, that we cross a
patch of ground and water, that was impassable for us, except with a piece of
equipment like what the creative minds behind the clever Bridge Track intended
it to do, which was an ingenious concept. Unfortunately, on each such occasion, The Bridge Track failed,
never due to the same vulnerability, but never the less...it was too slippery and tons of track, equipment, gear, slipped unstoppable, sideways
off
into the water, or when treads were added to the bridge, it broke down and wouldn't extend or
wouldn't contract, or, as on this day, it just
simply didn't work, leaving us stranded for most of the day on a tiny island in a
bombed out area where Charlie Cong could have slaughtered us without much
trouble, because we just gave into the situation and had a picnic, and because
Charlie Cong was probably laughing too hard to draw a good bead. Charlie Cong
didn't have "Laugh In". He had us to entertain him and this must have been
important to the morale of Vietnamese troops who would ordinarily be plotting to
kill us, to have these little breaks from the war, a USO like Laurel and Hardy
act to watch and be amused by. If he were bored he'd have shot us, so we were
grateful we were funny. And there was humor in it for us, too, because we knew how it felt to be lab animals, while a concept was tried over and over, instead of being proven before it was brought to the field where it's failure could unnecessarily endanger men's lives. There was humor, because there was nothing else we could do about it but laugh. During all the years of Nam, the Pentagon developed many systems by using us as the Test Dummies. Maybe there should be an additional category of back pay allotted for this service, don't you guys think? And maybe some kind of special memorial bonus for the families of those "Dummies" who didn't survive field testing.
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On the other hand, during that month, thirty years ago this month, as this page
is being written, The United States Of America put two men on the Moon. So failing to
get us across a crick seemed all the more absurd, but this was The Nam, and you
had to have been there.
-- EA July 1999
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