USMC, 1st Radio Battalion, Vietnam Veterans
USMC, 1st Radio Battalion, Vietnam Veterans
Stories - An Hoa
Rob
Charnell - Operation Durham Peak - July 18-August 13, 1969
We hadn't had a shower in better than 2 weeks I think. On July 27th, Watson told me to grab the next chopper back to An Hoa, get cleaned up, and grab some supplies we needed for the comms equip. My birthday was on July 28th and he thought this would be a nice birthday present. I was also told to freeze some beers from the 1st Plt. NCO hooch (it was a tent I believe) and bring
'em back to the hill later for the rest of them. In other words, bring 'em, don't drink
'em. They figured by the time they thawed with the temps in the 100's, chopper ride back and all, they hopefully would only be lukewarm.
The arriving CH-46 was circling our LZ, but our encampment on the hill was on the other side. I grabbed my M-16 and started heading up the hill to the LZ. The chopper only touched down less than 30 seconds. I couldn't see it from where I was. It picked up other Marines (a squad I believe), and then took off, circling the hill. I was only half way to the LZ and realized I missed my 'R&R'. I was really ticked off. I turned and started walking back down the hill when I heard all sorts of machine gun fire. I looked out to see the
CH-46 taking direct fire. You could see the fire coming from the adjacent mountain. I couldn't believe it. I was supposed to be on that chopper.
I always carried my Instamatic camera in my trouser leg pocket. I took a couple of shots of the chopper, but only the one turned out. The chopper went down in deep jungle terrain about a mile or two from us. It took them several days to finally secure the crash site. Unfortunately, all
8 Marines and 1
Navy corpman on board had died from the crash. The NVA gave our guys
a lot of grief trying to get to that crash site. The terrain was very difficult to traverse.
I didn't leave that hill for almost a week after that. When I did, I arrived at An Hoa, walked immediately into the NCO hooch, opened the frig, grabbed a Budweiser out of the freezer section, and downed it in one gulp. I don't remember anything after that cause I collapsed. The guys thought I bit it for good. My whole system went into shock from the freezing beer. After I recovered, I took a shower, got the supplies, and went back to that frig and got 4 more beers to take back with me.
When I got back to the LZ later that afternoon the beers were greeted with enthusiasm, even though they were now lukewarm after two hours in transit. We spent another 2 weeks, I believe, on that mountaintop. By then the operation was winding down, and the 3rd Bn 5th Marines were going to have to hike it back to An Hoa. I thought, 'God, I hope we don't have to walk out of here in all this jungle terrain'. Our Radio Bn CO got the 5th Marines Commander to send his chopper to get us off that LZ.
We were flown back to the 3rd MAF compound in DaNang where they dropped us off. I remember that as well. I'm not sure where Gordon or Watson made off to, but suspect they reported in at our Bn Comms center at 3rd MAF. I headed over towards the barracks to get rid of the filthy fatigues and shower. I passed a bunch of guys from our Comms unit standing in formation by the Comms center and said Hi to one of them (don't remember who). A 2nd Lt. comes up to me and says, 'Get in formation Sgt!' I said, 'Huh?' He repeated, 'Get in formation for inspection.' Well, I want you to know that I am as much for discipline as the next guy, but this was ridiculous. Needless to say, I stood in formation, with all the other guys in pressed fatigues, shining boots, and cleaned M16's.
I believe it was Major O'Brien who arrived to conduct the inspection that morning. He showed up and was looking down the line, and saw me standing there. He walks up and says, 'Charnell, didn't you just get off a chopper and come in from that operation in the QueSon mountains? What are you doing here?' I said ‘Yes sir, but the Lt. told me to fall in.’ He said, 'Will you get out of here, get a shower, and get cleaned up!' He was talking to that same Lt. as I made my way to the barracks, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.
top
Jerry Stephenson - The Roach Chasing Rats - March, 1970
Anyhow, I managed to get one of those big rat traps and baited it with C-rat peanut butter. I heard the trap go off about the same time he/she visited me before and said to myself "got the doggon thing", in a little more colorful language, and went back to sleep. When daylight came I looked over at the trap and it was empty with blood on it. I found the rat outside the tent running around in circles. Guess it's dope got screwed up by the whack on the head. I broke it's neck with the battery axe and disposed of the body.
I lived to tell the story, I think. Some time later, I noticed a rat chasing roaches and stopped killing rats. Hate those roaches!!
top
Rob Charnell - My Rats are Scarier than Your Rats - March-April, 1970 It was late
at
night and we were all tucked in our cots in one of the hooches(???). One
of
the guys had bartered with the cooks at the grunts mess earlier that
evening, and had gotten a couple of those 1 gallon cans of potato chips.
We
had munched on them during the evening with some beers, and stored the rest
for the next day. The chip cans lay on the floor of the hooch, with the
lid
covers on.
While laying there in the cot, you could hear rustling in the rafters from
time to time. We all knew they were rats and not the field mice the
ARVNs
found as delicacies. Well, all of sudden I heard the door of the hooch
creak open. It was totally dark, so you couldn't see anything. All
of a
sudden you hear this sound of grinding metal and then the sound of the
can(s) being dragged down the center of the hooch toward the door. I
reached for my M-16 and chambered the magazine, but felt absolutely
helpless, stupid, and was not about to get out of my cot. Someone cried
out
'Shit, what is that?'. Some else exclaimed, 'You've got to be kiddin'!'.
No one ventured out of their cots to save the chips.
We never did see those cans again. That was the last time we ever left
uneaten food in our hooch.
Those same rats (or some of their friends) attacked one guy going to take a
shower one night. I always wore my boots to the shower, never my
flipflops
that I wore in some of my pictures. At An Hoa the dirt was like dust
powder
and would leave you just as dirty after the shower when you had to walk back
to your hooch. Hence the boots.
It was always very dark at night when the moon wasn't out, and because of
the no-lights condition (what's that called again???). Didn't need a
sniper
or random shots fired at you, so we lived in the dark. You could always
see
those eyes staring at you when you walked to the showers. Very eerie and
unsettling.
Well, one guy was going to the showers and it was totally dark, with no moon
visible. He was walking along, carrying a flashlight (off of course),
staring at all those eyes, when one pair starts winding its way towards him.
He backed up a few paces and it kept on coming. Then it lunged at him,
sinking its teeth into his boot. He took his flashlight (one of those 1
ft ones) and smashed the critter upside the head. The rat tumbled off him 2
or 3 feet away, hissed (or whatever they do) at him, and slowing ambling away
from him.
I cannot remember the guy's name, but he never made it to the shower.
He
comes running back to the hooch, telling us his story. We all railed on
him
about his concocted story, but each of us remembered the potato chip cans.
The next day, one of the guys found the dead rat between the hooches, near
the showers. Our story teller felt redeemed.
Those rats looked like small dogs, certainly bigger than Chihuahua.
top
Rob Charnell -
The Matrix and the Buffalo -
March-April, 1970 I was fortunate to have been able to work in DaNang and having the
opportunity to work with many of these code matrices employed by various NVA
units. When I was assigned to Hill 37 in December 1969, and later An Hoa, we
typically intercepted these voice transmissions of NVA communiqués. These were
usually sent to DaNang, were they were translated and subsequently forwarded to
various Marine regiments. The ARVN linguists who worked with me were usually
quite inept in decoding these communications as well. We typically never carried
the code matrices themselves when in the field, but they were readily available
and used at 3rd MAF 1st Radio Bn. During most of March 1970, after I returned from R&R, I worked with Xan
in 1st Platoon at An Hoa. We worked with the 3rd Bn 5th Marines and had been
receiving a significant amount of voice communications from NVA regiments in the
surrounding QueSon mountains. When I looked over the numbers we were receiving,
I immediately noticed similar patterns to code matrices I used in DaNang. It
didn't take Xan and I long to begin decoding and translating the documents
immediately into English. We found the NVA units were talking about
future actions (a novelty given their prior history of reporting battles after
the fact). They were planning rice and food re-supply runs into the local
hamlets, and setting up ambushes for sweeps the 5th Marines were doing in the
vicinity. Xan, I, and another linguist who we called "Flash" provided Intel to
the 5th Marines for several weeks in March 1970. It was amazing. The 5th Marines
were able to ambush the ambushers and managed to engage every re-supply run the
NVA tried in our operating area. One afternoon in March, the 5th Marines S2
officer took Xan and I over to a holding compound, where quite a few NVA
prisoners and families were being held. The officer said that this was the
result of the Intel we were providing the 5th Marines. NVA families were being
forced to leave the NVA units in the QueSon mountains in search for food. When
they did, the 5th Marines were waiting for them. It was very gratifying to see
results from the efforts everyone made at the 1st Radio Bn. We didn't sleep for the next 3 days as the S2 officer was just about tied to
our hip. He ran with everything we gave him. We lost no one that I know of
during those NVA offensives. It felt good to part of such a contribution and be
able to save American lives. Even though Xan and I received a Bronze Star for our
efforts, it was the concerted contributions and efforts of everyone in 1st Radio
Bn, An Hoa and Hill 37, that helped save American lives. The most humbling thing
to remember is that all of us made the contribution as a unit, and not just any
single person. Xan and I didn't do anything different than any other linguists
who manned stations and provided intelligence on Dong Ha mountain, Hill 37, Hill
327, Hill 65, Con Thien, or elsewhere. The fellas on Hill 37 were parked on
those frequencies just as we were, monitoring developments, and passing Intel to
one another. While it was very gratifying to have been honored in such a way, I believe we
all deserved these awards.
top
Chuck Truitt - Gas Attack - July, 1970
Of other interest, in the lower left was a field. When I first
arrived into An Hoa, we drove across that field upon entering An Hoa
from Liberty Bridge, and "the other Hill 10." That field was very
liquidy mud, and the wheels of the PC vehicle made a red wave that went
across the field. After it dried out, that whole area was like red
talcum powder. We had a hardback hootch, for awhile, just beneath that
green spit that protrudes from 3 oclock into the center of the base.
One night when the gooks hit us, they came through from that side and in
the morning there were some dead gooks laying on the ground, out in the
open right in that area. We also had a 122mm rocket crater fight near
there. One night the whole hootch shifted and basically collapsed. We
had to find a new living area. It was then, if I recall, next to the
runway, abreast of the ops bunker. My last night in An Hoa, before
leaving back to DaNang, and a couple days later my rotation out of
country, we were gassed with CS. The round must have landed real close
to our hootch, and I had packed my gas mask in the bottom of my WP bag
for rotating tomorrow. That was miserable - they got me good that
time. When I ran out of our sleeping hootch towards the ops bunker,
where I knew there was an extra mask hanging on the wall, I ran right
out into a heavy cloud of the gas. I fell onto the ground coughing,
sputtering, gagging and crawled for a little way until some unknown
Gunny grabbed me by the collar, pulled me up out of that little benjo
ditch, that I had fallen into (I couldn't see - snot, mucus, saliva,
dirt covered my face) dragged me to some hootch and handed me a mask.
I still remember the misery - it was by far the worst gassing I ever
had, far worse than any gas chamber.
I have a lot of memories of my few months at An Hoa - they are
flooding back. The 175s were right next to the runway at about 2:30
oclock. The 8' battery (army I believe) was out of the picture at the
other end of the runway from the 175s. I remember that one time the
175s fired over our head and the rain detonated one of the rounds over
us. Made a BIG boom, and we had shrapnel on top of the ops bunker.
Seems like the runway lies basically north to south, with the 175s
at the north end. top
|
I was fortunate in not having any close to me die before my eyes. I came very close to a similar encounter that killed Greek when I was Operation Durham Peak in the
Que Son Mountains. That was sometime late July or early August 1969. Photo at
right shows smoke trails just after the chopper has gone down. I had been in-country only 3 or 4 weeks, and was just learning the ropes at being a linguist. I had been out with Gordon,
Dieu, and CWO Watson on the Operation out of An Hoa. I was burnt to a crisp from the sun, we had little water cause choppers had some difficulty landing on our LZ due to intermittent ground fire. They did bring in a water buffalo for everyone to use, but we were on water rations.
(
Then toward the end of March 1970 events surrounding the assault on An Hoa
began unfolding over the course of 3 to 4 days . There were major assaults at An
Hoa, Liberty Bridge, and other hills. Our 1st Radio Bn guys on Hill 37, Pete
Peterson actually, put me onto the heavy comms traffic about 1 a.m. one morning.
We were at An Hoa, with Xan and I receiving communiqués and the S-2 Cap't for
the 5th Marines looking over our shoulders. We had gotten him out of bed at 2
a.m. because we were receiving encrypted communications from forward NVA units
who were talking about hitting several targets. We couldn't nail down where the
NVA were going to hit. Xan was writing the code while I was decoding and
translating at the same time. The Comms traffic was heavy on alot of frequencies
that night. At one point they kept talking about linking up at some buffalo.
Finally Xan looked at me, and we were stumped. What buffalo? There were buffalo
everywhere in the fields around the local hamlets. But at night? It wasn't
really buffalo they were actually talking about, but a 'water buffalo'. Xan and
I walked out of the 1st Platoon bunker with the S-2 officer, got on top of the
bunker and looked around. It was really too dark to see much, but we did see a
water buffalo parked near the showers. Xan looked at me and said 'That kind of
Water Buffalo! It's us they're attacking!' The S-2 officer immediately checked
the area and found there was a water buffalo parked along the western perimeter
at An Hoa. He immediately called commanders and within 5 minutes Marines were
groggily manning the perimeters. AK47's and mortars opened fired within minutes
of the general alarm, with mortars hitting several hootches were Marines had
been sleeping minutes before.
You asked about the 1st RadBn location at An Hoa. In the picture
there is a tower at 9oclock. Just to the top-left of that tower is a
long bldg at 11oclock of the tower - That's the 5th Marines S2 bldg. I
believe. I see a square bldg just above that S2 bldg which may have
been the 1st RadBn bunker, although it seems just a bit wrong. The
picture indicates 1967, so probably the 1st RadBn building that I knew
in 1969 is not made yet. Regardless, the Ops Bunker was in that general
vicinity - I believe.