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Riding Tango Boats into the Plain of Reeds was scary. We were not used to being unable to
swerve or quickly dismount in case of ambush, or bring our fifty calibers and one mighty Honeywell
to bear on an enemy we could not usually see. In the boats, we felt completely at the mercy of
forces we had no control over. Having even the smallest sense of authentic control, in a place
where life ended in a fraction of a second, was vitally significant to us. Most of us who lived, have
probably reached middle age before we began to lose our pucker. (Ben Luc Bridge in background)
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The View From The Top Of The Rope!
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(On The Road) First Platoon provided Convoy
security from Check Point 39, a triangle of dirt,
across the street from an old Shell Oil station, on
the southwest side of
Saigon, to
Dong-Tam and back, in November and December 1968. Here, they take a rest at the side of Highway 4.
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On July 20, 1969, APOLLO ELEVEN's Eagle landed on the Moon. Three courageous men who were
almost as far from home as us, flying there in Colombia, and two stepping miraculously onto the lunar
surface on behalf of all Humankind. (Bravo 1-2 Delta, Jun-Jul '69)
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From the top of an APC was the more normal view as
we moved about the countryside. We rode on
top, because inside, we could be mangled and cut
to ribbons, or our brains turned to jelly, or our
eye balls scooped out by concussion if we hit a
mine, which
happened more often than we really enjoyed.
Sometimes, even riding on top did not save us,
providing
a whole new meaning to the term "airborne".
(ABOARD THE 1-2)
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First Platoon, Bravo was a tight platoon. It meant one's fortune was good to be
assigned to First Platoon. One's odds went up some, which was always welcome.
But then, those of us who were members of First Platoon would be biased.
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Harold (Doc) Peterson, Charles (Frenchy) DeLong,
Plt. Sgt. Quin Sommer, and Ed Barry were four
excellent reasons our odds were up. On the track
behind them, known as "The Cherry Buster", is
pictured the mighty Honeywell, a Navy weapon
someone traded a fifty caliber for. It fired forty
millimeter grenade rounds that were loaded into a
belt and fed into the side of the Honeywell by
turning a crank, while someone held the belt up in
the air, tight, because it had a habit of
otherwise
jamming if one did not. When done right, it could
set a green wood line on fire. The 1-2 Pony was
named "The Cherry Buster" by John Baker, who was
the driver at the time, passing this duty on to
Lee Tyre when John became squad leader. Lee asked
John, "why Cherry Buster?" To which John
replied, "You're too young to know." When John
left, Ed Barry became squad leader. Then Lee
went to
drive the Captain's track and Richard Sperry took
over driving. He turned her over to Ed Andrews
when he
in turn Derosed. Over a year's time is accounted
for in these men's tenure as Bravo 1-2 Delta.
The time came when the 1-2 became
one of the few tracks in the company still
operating, that were as old as she was. She became
a
vehicle of proud traditions, probably now rusting
in some paddy, or cut up for scrap, her hearty V-
6 diesel
mounted in a truck held together by chewing gum and
bailing wire. The Vietnamese are a
marvelously ingenious and creative people. Though
she may be gone, we who were her soul, who yet
survive, will always remember her and she will live
on.
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On the other side from the Honeywell was a second fifty. Most tracks had only their authorized
compliment of one fifty and two M-60s. Inside, next to the driver's seat, was where the log book was
kept, fresh empty pages, where Hotel Bravo would first begin to take form on July 4, 1969.
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Driving a track was not always as
glorious as it sounds. Maintaining one
sometimes required long hours with one's
hands in grease up to one's eyebrows and
sometimes dismantling and reinstalling
the array of shelves and benches we built
inside to carry
much of the one thousand pounds of
explosives and materials required to
supply a squad that ordinarily only saw
base camp once in a while for an over
night stand down. We became attached to
our tracks as a turtle is attached to his
shell. It was the most reliable object
that meant any kind of security, outside
our
friends, whose character and reflexes
would do more to keep us alive than
anything, but friends went away more
frequently than tracks and after a while
we
didn't even learn the names of our new
friends, as they filtered past us in the
fog,
like the pages of a flip book with the
image of a running figure in it, one
draws in
grade school as an amusement.
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Our deepest Gratitude for the Sounds used on Hotel Bravo. See the H.B. Credits page.
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