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Date Posted: Tue, January 18 2005, 2:53:46
Author: Larry Lusk
Author Host/IP: 66.214.61.174
Subject: Re: Welcome Home, Soldier
In reply to: Wayne Gregory 's message, "Re: Welcome Home, Soldier" on Mon, January 17 2005, 10:23:00

Wayne, I know that beer at least was very available in our base camp (Camp Evans). The few times I was in the base camp I saw refrigerators outside a large majority of the larger tents/bunkers. On two occasions I saw what was in those refrigerators because someone opened one while I was walking by. It was loaded like a Bud commercial; top to bottom with cans of beer. There was a refrigerator (they were just like the ones you would see in a kitchen back in the world) outside the tent that was just behind the 175mm gun emplacements. I don’t know if there was an EM club on the base camp but I’m not sure they needed one. It’s hard to knock your own Division but damn, what I saw seemed to be way out of control. On the hill top fire bases that we protected many nights there were no refrigerators and I saw no one ever drinking a beer. I don’t think they got a beer ration more often than we did and that almost never.

When my platoon was on Hill 950 at Khe Sanh during Operation Phoenix we were outside the range of our own artillery support. One afternoon we started taking sniper fire from a hill about 400 meters away. Our Lt. called down to the Marine base and asked for fire support. He (our Lt.) gave coordinates that should have put the first round 350m from our perimeter. It was SOP for Army fire bases to fire a smoke round then a WP round from which we could correct before they fired any HE. What we got from Khe Sanh was a 155mm HE round (I’m guessing by the size of the explosion when it hit) that landed less than 50m from the perimeter. We heard it go by overhead and it couldn’t have cleared the top of the hill by more than a few feet. Now this hill had been a Marine observation hill since the Marines set up in the valley. It had almost been over-run at one point during the first days of the Tet offensive. The Marine plotters should have been able to put a round within a few feet of any spot we asked for anywhere near that hill. We called off the fire mission immediately out of fear for our lives. Luckily a FO was in the air near-by and he sent in a “Thud” which plastered that hillside with 30mm cannon fire. We didn’t get any more sniper fire after that.

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