The Luckiest Guy in Vietnam by James A. Lockhart

Author:James A. Lockhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-31T14:15:54+00:00

As we continued our rotation between the field and firebases, some unpleasant and troublesome events occurred. Most of these are not listed in the logs so I can’t put a date to them but their details remain perfectly clear to me. They fell into the categories of accidents and outright mistakes and sometimes a mixture of the two. Without doubt, Company A’s luck was at work in minimizing the damages. Except for a few of these incidents, as commander, I bore the ultimate responsibility.

Our maps weren’t always accurate and, of course, this was frequently cited whenever anyone misread a map or became lost. However, on one occasion we were in an area where I had previously operated with Recon and I knew that navigation was going to be tricky. It was even more so because that was the area where the “out” platoon would rejoin the rest of the company.

My plan was to meet at a certain point on a river. We would purposefully intersect the river somewhere upstream and then travel downstream to the rendezvous point instead of trying to hit it directly. This technique of offset navigation was often used in such uncertain situations. The uneven, 12-foot-tall vegetation made the process even worse.

When I felt that both elements were getting close, I called a halt for everyone. I instructed the platoon leaders to personally go to each man and explain what we were doing and the direction from which they could expect the other element to approach. When I received confirmation that this had been done, I gave the order to proceed.

It was not long until firing broke from the platoon behind our headquarters group. I called cease fire and the radio operator called the platoon leaders to halt. Moving back along the file I quickly found the cause of the firing. The point man of the “out” platoon had come in at a right angle to our group and when he burst through the underbrush, a rifleman unloaded a full magazine on automatic fire at him at a distance of 15 meters.

A miracle trumped stupidity and the point man was unharmed. His canteen, poncho and some C-rations cans were full of holes and a hand grenade had been split open without exploding. Needless to say the point man had a bad case of jangled nerves but to his credit he had the presence of mind not to return fire.

As for the trigger-happy soldier, I gave him a large dose of crazy ex-Recon platoon leader in a towering fit of rage. In the end, we found that the man had poor English skills and may have been mentally deficient. It was another lesson that I learned the hard way.

Back on one of the firebases, perhaps Bowman, we had been doing some housecleaning and found some unserviceable mortar rounds in the permanent mortar pits. Naturally, it was time to have a little fun by destroying something with demolitions. We gathered the rounds, some C-4, blasting caps and fuses and we were in business.

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