DISJOINTED
MEMORIES OF DELTA
by
Joseph
E. Chandley
(Possum)
I have been reading some of the things on the D Company site. This will be off the cuff comments on lots of things.
PART 1.
First about me. I was a shake 'n bake Sgt. when I arrived in sunny scenic Southeast Asia that second week of September 1968. I was extremely fortunate that a man I knew somehow found out that I was arriving and was waiting for me when I reported in for assignment at Bien Hoa. He got me assigned to the 11th, then at base camp, to 1st Squadron and the to D Company. What a stroke of good fortune! It certainly helped keep me alive!
I was first put on D-33 as a replacement TC. I had a scratch crew because the others had been dusted off with WP burns. I was told that a Lt. Parker (?) had wired some C-4 to a 155mm WP round and the detonated it without warning the crew. Instant casualties. SP5 Larry Parks always swore that his dream in life was to "whip that man's ass!" SP5 Lambgo (sp?) was just a happy with that officer.
D-33 was home until about May or June '69. (The dates sort of run together) Then I moved my stuff to 1-Alpha, the 1st Sgt.'s tank. He was very rarely on that, simply because of his work to keep us full up with men, munitions, beans and bullets and above all, POL.
Delta-33 was the tank that finally wound up running around in a circle with no one on it except Xin Loi, that cute black dog. (What ever happed to the mutt anyway?) It always had weird problems. 1st firefight I was in on the tank, the main gun had a hang fire, the coax jammed, the pintle mount on the .50 cal broke and the .50 wound up in the bustle rack. That left us with a 53 ton M-60 machine gun carrier. Not fun! That afternoon, after the bullets stopped, the Third Herd was ordered back to Xuan Loc on a rapid return due to a report of an anticipated ground attack there. (It didn't happen)
On the way out of the brush, as we rode along, my gun tube was over the left fender. The tank in front of me curved around to his right and there was a huge explosion directly in front of me. The loader (John Klinepeter maybe?) and I were knocked down into the turret, as was the driver, Larry Parks. Of course, everyone popped caps and fired while moving through the ambush site and getting together on line. Then quick sweep through the area and we moved out. Later I learned that the big Boom was my hang fire going off! Good thing my gun was pointing away from that tank in front! Of course as soon as I found out I ran right up to the 'Toon Daddy SFC Reeves and told him. RIGHT!!?? Not likely! I felt stupid enough. At least no one was hurt.
That night I grabbed the coax,
trying to figure out why it had jammed. Finally
giving up and just a little bit peeved, I raised it over my head and slammed it
onto the turret floor. Would you
believe that that M-73 never jammed again?
The floor must have warped something so that it finally became that rare
exception…a fully functional M-73 MG
One of the commentaries about the TC cupola talked about not using the M-85 cal.50 in the cupola. True we did not. The reason for that was that the M-48A3 was equipped with the M-2HB cal.50 in the cupola. Many of the TC's in Delta had two 50's. One in the cupola in the usual mount and frequently loaded, and one, the main .50 on the cupola in the pintle mount. It's amazing how a tank company could combat loss so many ground mounts for .50 cal's! I remember one tank had a mount on the side of the cupola as well. Yes, we, as TC's were exposed when using the .50 cal, but at the same time, the trade off was that the ability to see and control the tank when moving and/or fighting was tremendously enhanced. In plain English, if you weren't willing to risk your neck then you might lose it.
Another comment was about the amounts of ammo. I don't know about other tanks, but I do know that 1-Alpha had three mini-cans full of 7.62mm belts. When the curved can on the turret wall was empty, it was so much easier to just lower a can onto the floor of the turret and load the coax from that. You had to watch out for a fouled belt occasionally, but it was a faster re-load than trying to fill the coax box. We certainly took most of the floor cans out and placed cans of coax and .50 cal on the floor.
I know that at one point, my tank had well over 5,000 rounds of .50cal and over 25,000 rounds of 7.62mm on board. In addition, we had the right rear sponson box full of C-4. Not only was it great to cook with, but a ping-pong ball size clump of C-4 would remove the tightest end connector in a hurry. That was done frequently when playing in the woods. Also made for quick destruction of small ammo caches.
Many tanks had extra weapons. At one time Reeves had a 60mm mortar strapped on his travel lock. Mad for an interesting H&I fire at night. Then someone always had an AK or two and sometimes an RPK or SKS. Wasn't unusual for some green tracers to go out during and H&I. (Remember in the Great Swath while we were moving towards Tay Nihn that night, when we had two Cobras make a run on the NDP because someone fired off a burst of green tracers?) There were lots of other weapons around. I had an M-2 carbine with about a thousand rounds of .30cal for it. Traded a case of c-rats for that. Someone else had a Thompson submachine gun. I wonder if he took that home?
Then there were all sorts of regular US weapons. I know that for a while, every tank had at least one M-60 machinegun for the back deck gunner. Many tanks (including my own) had two guns. Most tanks had M-79's, every tank had a couple of M-16's and a couple of .45 cal M-3 submachine guns (Grease guns.) and everyone had a .45 cal pistol. (My Grease gun had a cut off .50cal drive spring substituted inside. It would fire a 30 round magazine faster than an M-16. The only problem was that once you raised the cover and pulled the trigger, it fired until it was empty.) Then there was the time when we traded in our m48A2C's for the M-48A3's. we all kept the .30 cal coax's and mounted them in front of the loader's hatches for an additional recon by fire weapon. Kept them until Georgie Patton decided they'd be nice to give to the Vietnamese. Oh, well.
So, let me see. At one time on my tank, we had a 90mm cannon, three .50 cal's, (two mounted) two M-60 machine guns, one 7.62mm M-73 coax machine gun, two M-79 grenade launchers, four 5.56mm M-16's, two .45 cal M-3 subs, four .45 cal pistols, one .30 cal M-2 carbine, one SKS 7.62mm rifle, about 60lbs of C-4 stored in the right rear sponson box, about 24 hand grenades, about 24 assorted color smoke grenades, (several hanging around the turret) and assorted knives.
By the way, I do believe that in the photo gallery, the D Co XO? Is it actually the man who was for a time the XO, Paul Garrell? Any takers on whether or not it is him? Any clue where he is now? I would like to get to talk to him.
END OF PART 1
To be continued