Bob - The navy Years, Chapter 13

+Wounded as a Result of Enemy Action

The explosion knocked me over backwards.  When I hit the ground my left knee hurt like hell. I thought maybe my leg had been blown off.  I wiggled my toes as I lay  there on my stomach. People were yelling "Get down, Get down".  Many times after a terrorist explosion like that the enemy would ride by on a motorcycle and rake the area with machine gun fire.  So we stayed down.  After being on the ground only a second or two, I felt something trickling through my hair.  Very soon a stream of blood began pouring onto the ground in front of me and I realized I was bleeding pretty badly. The guy next to me handed me his handkerchief and I pressed it to the top of my head.  That seemed to stem the tide a little.  Laying on the ground you could hear people moaning, calling for help, people scurrying around trying to help and give aid to those they could. After several minutes our Commander yelled for us to get up and get to the jeeps.  The guy beside me helped me up, my leg was killing me, and helped me as I limped to the jeep.  I can't remember who helped me, or who drove the jeep, but we headed for the base hospital.

The diagram at left shows the explosion. We were in an outdoor patio setting.  A chain link fence covered with vines ran along the street side. A Claymore mine was hung on the fence.  These mines are remotely detonated and are a shaped charge.  They blow out in a 'V' shape as shown. U. S. Claymore mines are filled with steel balls.  These mines are anti-personnel mines, meaning they are meant to kill people.  Viet Cong Claymore mines are usually filled with nails, screws, bolts, and any other kind of small metal objects they can find to put in there.  They are very effective at killing and maiming people.

Arriving at the base hospital, along with dozens of other vehicles coming from the same place, it was like on M*A*S*H, the  medical personnel went through the injured establishing the priority cases.  Though my leg hurt like hell, it wasn't anything serious.  Not even cut, but like somebody had kicked me hard!  My head wound wasn't serious either, but because it was a head wound it bled a lot.  A small piece of metal went under my scalp.  I was lucky. The explosion killed one person, injuring 28 others, some of them very seriously. When they finally got around to working on me they decided to leave that little piece of metal in there saying it shouldn't hurt anything and I would always have a souvenir of Vietnam.  Of the 8 of us in my Detachment seated at the table, 3 of us were injured. One, the Air Force Captain, not the one I came up with, had a small piece of shrapnel go through his knee. It went through cleanly and caused him to have a limp for awhile, but recover OK.  The other, one of the Navy Chiefs, had a piece of something hit his thumb and broke it.  He had a bandaged thumb for a few weeks but he recovered OK.  So, our little group came out of that pretty good, considering. I later looked at the jeep that took me to the hospital. I had been in the back leaning against the plastic window and canvas. Man, was it covered with blood.   Our Detachment earned 3 Purple Hearts for being wounded as a result of enemy action.  About a week later, the Colonel from our main Headquarters in Saigon came up and pinned our medals on us.  Also, during that time I earned a promotion to YN2, and the Colonel presented me with my new stripes. 

It is very difficult to make 2nd Class Petty officer in the Navy  when you just serve 4 years. You must have a year left in service to be promoted, so that meant it had to be done in 3 years.  I was proud of that.
This was early November.  I was settling into our small Detachment in Nha Trang.  We had a small office on the Army Base, right beside the Air Field.  Also, right next to the Special Forces Camp.  My daily routine was office work, but because of the small group, and me being the lowest ranking person there, I had a lot of other duties.  I drove to get the mail, kept the jeeps' oil changed, ran all kinds of errands.  Leaving our compound you would take the perimeter road.  Going to the left out of our gate ran you right in the front of the Special Forces Compound.  They had a large cannon, often firing into the hills behind the camp.  They had a standing order to fire when they wanted  when not targeting anything special.  Anytime a jeep went by the road they made it a point to fire that big gun right as you passed under it.  Talk about making you jump!  Even though I knew the gun was there, and they would fire it, I would often forget and it would catch me by surprise.
One day, and I can't remember why, we needed to make a trip to Cam Ranh Bay, about 40 miles south of us, also on the Coast.  We couldn't just drive down there.  We needed to hook up with a convoy headed that way and go with them, coming back the same way.  Chief Zajak and myself made the trip, going down one day and coming back the next.  Now, on this trip we wore a flak jacket and helmet because we were definetly going through areas that could be hostile.  Going down, the convoy was stopped.  They had received sniper fire from a Rubber Plantation.  The convoy brought up a jeep with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the back and fired into the trees.  This would stop the sniper fire.  Well, while firing into the trees a car full of Vietnamese drove in front of the jeep.  They didn't stand a chance.  When the convoy finally started moving we passed that car.  It looked like the car in "Bonnie and Clyde", only there were 6 bodies hanging out of the car instead of 2. 

At this point I'll bring up something I've always said.  It's easy to get killed in a war zone and I don't mean from the enemy.  Any place you have everybody walking around with a gun, those guns with them day and night, drinking or sober, it's easy for accidents to happen.  Not only that, but people drive like maniacs and those jeeps were open and didn't have seat belts.

Things went along pretty smoothly after the explosion.  This will take us up to the 1968 Tet Offensive that started during the early hours of January 31.  This event changed the War.
To be continued...........