Never A Hero

This night was as quiet a night that I could remember.  We kept our radio turned off because the squelch seemed like it could be heard for miles.  About midnight, I could hear the Vietnamese talking.  At first I thought that was our troops.  But the ARVN Battalion commander crawled over to me and informed me that there was a large group of VC moving down the trails that lead back to the cache of rice.  My thoughts were that this was going to get ugly fast.  I told Jerry to get ready and he grabbed the radio.  I quietly told Jerry and the commander that I was going to shoot the eight-inch guns and walk the fire right down the trail in our direction.  This would bring the VC closer and our infantry would have an opportunity to light them up.  He needed to tell his troops to be quiet and not to panic.  Sure don’t panic, this was easy for me to say.

The VC voices were getting louder and closer.  I had the squelch from my radio as low as possible.  I called Charlie Battery 5^th of the 22^nd Artillery, my unit and gave the command, “Fire mission, danger close.”  Lt Holtz got on the radio and asked me to repeat my command.  In a very soft and low voice I said, “Fire mission danger close.”  I also gave him the defensive target number.  He comes back with a question.  He wanted to know if I said danger close.  I kept thinking that everyone in the valley could hear our voices and I was trying to be as quiet as possible.  I got back on the horn and told him that I have VC all over the place and quite possibly inside our camp.  I am going to walk the fire down on top of us so be careful.  He finally understood.  They were ready for my command to fire.  I told our commander to get down as this round was going to be close.  Unlike the 105 howitzers, the eight-inch guns did not have a smoke round.  When you fired an eight inch gun round, those babies were for real.  There was not a second chance to see if you could get it right.  On the plus side I always felt that the eight inch guns were more accurate.  The first round came over our heads and I could remember thinking that this is a lot closer than what I had expected.  The ground shook as the round exploded, I could hear the VC yelling and screaming at each other.  At least I thought they were the VC.  For all I know, this could have been our troops.  I motioned to the commander to get down because the next round would be closer. 

I called the battery and told them drop 50 and give me two rounds and danger close.  As a matter of fact it was very close.  Lt Holtz got back on the radio and wanted to know how close the last round was.  I told him close enough to scare the hell out of me and everyone else out here running around.  Drop five zero and give me two rounds, now.  The next round whistled even closer and this time not only did the ground shake; shrapnel was flying above our heads in the trees.  Man this was close but as I recalled from my training, the bursting radius of an eight shell was 80 meters.  I figured that the shell had exploded at least a good 120 meters in from of my position.  The second round exploded and it seemed to land just a bit closer.  There was yelling and screaming but I still did not know if this was the good guys or the bad guys.  My instinct told me that these were the bad guys.  The ARVN troops were crawling past Jerry, the ARVN Battalion commander, and me, trying to find a place to hide and hoping that I