Fire Mission

Dak Pek was located near the Laotian border in the northernmost part of the II Corps tactical zone. The tri-border area was adjacent to our Area of Operations (AO). We had many square miles of area to cover, but concentrated on the places where we found evidence of infiltration of men and materiel from Laos or Cambodia.

The camp sat in about the middle of the AO. It consisted of seven small hills in an area about 300 yards across at the widest place. Each hill was defended by a different company or platoon of CIDG troops, about 90 percent of which were ‘Yards, with the remainder being Vietnamese. Our main defenses were trenches and bunkers with timber and dirt roofs. Each position was surrounded by its own barbed wire barriers, punji sticks, claymore mines and the like.

Our biggest defensive weapon was the 4.2 inch mortar. As a lieutenant I had been a 4.2 mortar platoon leader, so was well acquainted with the 4.2 and its capabilities and limitations.

Shortly after my arrival at Dak Pek, I asked the heavy weapons NCO, I’ll call him Wally to protect the guilty, to meet me at the mortar pit. The mortar had not been fired since my arrival in camp, and I wanted to see the team’s mortar drill in action. I asked him to see if he could hit a clearly visible clearing on a mountainside about 2 klicks to the north.

I have to interject at this point that firing a mortar from a pit cannot be done in the same manner as it usually is. The pit was deep enough that aiming stakes, which give a line of reference from which to aim the mortar, could not be seen from the mortar sight while in the pit. We had to improvise by painting degree marks on boards around the perimeter of the pit so the mortar could be fired in the right direction. You might have figured by this time that we did not like to use the 4.2 for close support fire missions because of the inherent inaccuracies of our method.

Wally yanked off the tube cover and lined the tube up in the right direction. He chose a white phosphorus round so we could see the impact of the round. He carefully counted and attached the right number of explosive propellant charges for the estimated distance to the target. The range of the mortar round is determined by the elevation of the tube and how much propellant is on the round. Since each round comes with the maximum permissible number, the number of charges has to be adjusted on each round before firing it. When he was ready, he confidently dropped the round down the tube and stuck his fingers in his ears.

A second later, there was an uncharacteristic whoosh rather than the expected loud bang. Also uncharacteristically, a cloud of white smoke spouted into the air. We watched in horror as the 37 pound projectile wobbled a few yards into the air and fell right in the middle of the recon platoon’s area, not 200 feet from the muzzle!

Whoever designed the fuse for the 4.2 mortar round must have been well versed in Murphy’s Laws. The particular one that applies in this case is the one that says, “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.” Knowing that there would be people like Wally using their products, they designed the fuses so that it would take a considerable bang to arm the round.. Unless it gets quite a bang, the fuse will not arm and the round will not explode. Thank God!

The round imbedded itself in the soil and did not detonate, miraculously missing the people who were wandering around in the recon platoon area. After our hearts started beating again, we quickly recovered the projectile and returned to the mortar pit. When we inspected the tube, we found several inches of water in the bottom of the tube. We were reasonably sure that rain could not have passed through the muzzle cover and put that much water in the tube. This incident confirmed our suspicions that there was at least one VC among our CIDG troops.

When the mortar was swabbed out, the firing proceeded without further incident. After the firing was concluded, Wally and I had a heart-to-heart talk about safety procedures before, during and after firing. We also started a daily inspection of our mortars, and never again found water in it.

As good as the 4.2 mortar was, it had a relatively short range of 5,500 yards--just a bit over 3 miles. Since our patrols routinely went 10 or more miles from camp, I kept asking the B team commander to get us some artillery. That was at the time that the US divisions were getting a new kind of 105 MM howitzer. Thinking back on it now, I am reminded of the old saying--be careful what you ask for, as you just might get it. One day, to my great delight, two CH 47 Chinook helicopters showed up, each with a 105 MM howitzer hanging by a sling underneath the ship. They set the guns down, landed, and unloaded a few cases of ammunition. A sergeant asked me to sign for them, and immediately departed with the helicopters. This might sound like good news, but I was an infantryman--I didn’t even know how to load or fire those guns, much less hit anything.

When I asked for help learning how to shoot the guns and compute firing data, the B team commander arranged for a couple of NCOs from one of the US divisions to spend a few weeks training gun crews and fire direction center (FDC) operators. We soon found out that the “book” on artillery gunnery was not very useful when working with ‘Yards. Few of them had any formal education at all, and those that did had only rudimentary math skills which are necessary to compute firing data. I was pleasantly surprised that they even knew what numbers were. Their usual manner of describing the number of enemy they had seen—if there were more than two, there were “many.”

The FDC operators were eager and learned fast. The gun crews worked hard preparing gun pits and learning to operate and maintain the guns. We had to improvise to make sure the guns were pointed in the right direction. The scale on the gun sights went from zero to 3200 mils, or a half circle, then started over zero to 3200 mils in the other half of the circle. We soon found out that the gun crews could and would point the sight in exactly the opposite direction of that desired, with results not quite as expected. To cure that problem, we divided the gun pits into four quadrants, and painted each a different color. We made the first element of a fire command a color. The crew would point the tube toward the stated color. The gunner would then turn the sight to the announced deflection so that the sight pointed in the general direction of the aiming stakes. It was crude but effective.

One day I inspected the gun emplacements and the guns. To my dismay, I found that the guns had been wiped clean as a whistle, but with no protective oil, they had started to rust. I let the gun chief know in no uncertain terms that the guns needed to be covered with a light layer of oil or grease to protect them from rust. I really couldn’t blame them too much--they had little or no experience with anything more complicated that a hand made ax, so how could they know about complicated machinery like a modern cannon? When I returned the next day, I found each of the guns covered with a layer of heavy axle grease--including the tires and sight optics. Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it!

Patrols we dispatched from Dak Pek usually had at least two Americans, sometimes more. The U. S. team members were supposed to be advisors, but we frequently found ourselves in positions where we had to take charge to survive. The Vietnamese Special Forces team members who were theoretically in charge were more interested in lining their pockets than finding VC and NVA to fight.

On one occasion, the VNSF decided to send out an all indigenous patrol with neither U. S. nor VNSF leaders. A Vietnamese soldier and a few ‘Yards were sent out without my knowledge. For once, the VNSF showed a bit of initiative.

We had no communications with the patrol, but the VNSF did. The patrol had one radio, an HT-1. That radio was about the size and shape of a box of crackers, and was notoriously unreliable. We joked that sometimes the local guys didn’t really need the radio—when they used it they shouted into it loud enough to be heard for quite a distance. I guess they thought that the louder they shouted, the further the radio would transmit.

The patrol had been out a couple of days when it first came to our notice. An hour or so before sundown on that particular day the VNSF rushed into the team house with the news that the patrol had spotted a company of VC in bivouac. What terrific news! We rushed to their team house to check the map and determine the location of the patrol. We wanted to do something about that company of VC.

When we saw the patrol’s location plotted on the map, it was evident that the target was quite a bit too far for our longest range weapon the 4.2” mortar to reach (this was before we got the howitzers). The range to the target was way beyond the 4.2’s maximum range of 5,500 yards. The VC/NVA knew that as well as we did and simply stayed outside of the mortar’s range.

But this was too good a target just to dismiss because of a simple thing like maximum range. We quickly loaded one of our 4.2s on a truck, loaded another with ammunition

and drove to the south end of the airstrip, closer to the target. The bridge across the Dak Pek River had long since been destroyed, so we could take the trucks no further. Using a handheld compass we lined up the mortar in the general direction of the target and settled the base plate with a couple of rounds at charge 41.

This requires a bit of explanation. Each 4.2 round came with charge 41, the maximum permissible number of explosive propellant charges. They were about 3 inch square thin sheets which were perforated so they could be divided into eighths. The mortar’s range was determined by the number of charges and eighths of charges.

Then we started firing with charge 41. When the initial round exploded down range, the accompanying VNSF with the radio told us the range was too short. I instructed the gunner to begin increasing charges by scavenging them from other rounds. We kept increasing the number of charges until we got the message that we were on target. We sent the VC another 10 rounds or so at charge 52! When we finished, the bottom of the mortar tube was so hot that the paint was burned off and the metal had started to glow a dull red. We had to wait until it cooled down to move it back into the camp.

A couple of days later the patrol came in with a report that the next morning they had found many blood trails where wounded or dead VC had been dragged away. They also brought in equipment and weapons that had been abandoned when the VC fled. I have a 35mm slide of a couple of the proud ‘Yards holding the captured weapons they brought in.

I have to admit that shooting like that was foolish. If the mortar tube had failed due to the excessive number of charges, the entire crew would have been seriously injured or killed. Although it worked that time, I am now appalled at how recklessly I risked my team members’ lives in that way. I am thankful that the mortar’s designer over-designed the strength of the tube. He must intuitively have known that some fool (me) would someday do such a stupid thing. Remember Murphy’s laws?

Copyright 2005