Tanks are large vehicles manned by four crewmen, three of them in the fighting compartment. The driver is isolated in his own compartment, right up front, in the center of the vehicle. The three other jobs were the loader, whose job it was to keep the .30-caliber machine gun fed and the 90mm main gun loaded with its four-foot long rounds; the gunner, who aimed and fired the weapons and never saw the outside world except through his periscope and gun sights; and the tank commander, the man in charge of the vehicle who also had his own mini-turret, which housed a .50-caliber machine gun. I loved any job around the beasts, but driving was everybody’s favorite.
After getting off the bus and staring in disbelief at all the activity that lay before us, we crossed the road and headed to our barracks, closer to all the commotion up on the ramp. Each tank had its tarp spread out in front of it, with all its equipment neatly placed on top. By itself, this was no unusual sight. Every three months, each tank’s tools, equipment, and crew were inventoried and inspected.
“Is this what it’s all about?” I wondered aloud. “Just a silly inspection?”
A classmate offered the first good explanation I’d heard all day: “Maybe it’s part of our readiness response test.” He was referring to a test that occurred once a year, at random, to check how well prepared we were.
Carrying our sea bags into the barracks, we asked the first man we saw what was going on?”
“Bravo Company’s mounting out,” he said. “The Twenty-seventh Marines are boarding planes right now!”
We looked at him in disbelief. “Where are they going?”
“Rumor has it, to rescue the crew of the Pueblo.”
Even in Los Flores, the rumor machine was alive and well, I thought. When it became obvious that we hadn’t brought any new information with us, the Marine dropped us as quickly as an ugly girl on a blind date.
Then I bumped into John Cash, whom we all called Johnny, because he played country guitar just like his musical namesake. “What gives?” I asked.
“Nobody’s saying, but rumors are that Bravo Company’s going to The Nam—tanks and all!”
That was the second time someone had mentioned Bravo Company. I breathed a sigh of relief, hoping my billet with Charlie Company would keep me out of whatever was going down. But Bravo Company couldn’t possibly be going to Vietnam. It was made up of recently returned Nam veterans, who were assured a year in the States before they could be rotated back to Indochina. At least that’s what we liked to think. The truth was, they could send you anywhere they liked, except Vietnam. Your “year away” could mean a six-month stay at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, followed by a six-month Mediterranean cruise, then back to The Nam. Therefore, using flawless logic, Bravo Company was obviously going somewhere, but it wasn’t RVN (Republic of South Vietnam).
Another thing didn’t sound right. This was 1968, and already there was so much equipment in Vietnam that everyone flew there; no one went with his tank. It was common knowledge that once you flew to Vietnam you would be assigned to either the 1st or the 3rd Tank Battalion. Both had been in-country since 1965. Getting orders for Vietnam always brought fear to any tanker or other supporting-arms Marine, because there was no guarantee you’d end up in a tank unit. If they were desperate to fill grunt positions, you could be snoopin’ and poopin’ in the grass and never see a tank except from your foxhole. That was not the travel package any tanker wanted!
I didn’t know that this scenario, in a slightly different form, had taken place prior to my getting back to Las Flores. I was about to learn what I had been lucky enough to miss.
I quickly got to my barracks, unpacked my stuff, stowed it in my locker, and sought out my tank commander. I had been told that Sergeant Molocko was up on the ramp, so I started the short walk past the other barracks. Even the mess hall was a flurry of activity. Metal carts piled with sandwiches, along with several large drink dispensers and other foodstuffs, were making their way to the ramp.
This was the first time I had ever seen food brought to the men. Something really big was in the air. The closer I got to the ramp, the more nervous and inquisitive I got.
Most tanks were parked behind the battalion’s maintenance building. When I passed the building, I saw two civilian tractor-trailers. One was disgorging the new-style searchlights we had been a waiting for more than a year to get. Now, magically, they were here. The other truck was unloading large wooden crates, one of which a forklift was delivering to each Bravo Company tank.
I immediately recognized them as fording kits. Used only for amphibious landings, they allowed a tank to cross deep water safely, so long as the water didn’t reach over the top of the tank’s turret. This was a sure sign something major was in the works. I thanked my lucky stars that I was in Charlie Company, where there wasn’t much activity going on.
I walked down to the Bravo Company tanks, where I bumped into Sergeant Molocko. He seemed overly glad to see me, and I assumed he was visiting friends who were part of the mount-out. “Where’ve you been the last two weeks?” he asked.
“NCO school. But enough chitchat. Does anybody know what’s going on?”
“Well, about twenty tankers were shipped off to the Twenty-seventh Marines early this morning, to become grunts. They’re boarding planes. Is that enough for you?”
Holy shit! I thought. Maybe I’d been lucky to be away at NCO school.
Molocko explained that all the tank crews had been reassigned within the battalion. Most of our Charlie Company platoon had been transferred to Bravo Company. “Bet you didn’t know you were in Bravo Company now, did ya?”
“I’m part of this after all!” I gasped.
“Yes, we are,” he said sarcastically. “I’ve already done one goddamned tour in Nam, and only six months to go before I get out. I don’t like this shit!”
“So, where are we going?”
“Nobody’s saying, but I’d bet Vietnam.”
On the ramp I noticed a lot of men I didn’t recognize. Most were just standing around with their hands in their pockets.
“Who are all these strange faces?”
“Fuckin’ amtrackers!” was Molocko’s disgusted reply. I soon discovered that they had been sent over from the 5th Amtrac Battalion to fill vacancies left by the tankers now boarding planes as grunts! Well, that explained why so many were just standing around like lepers in a nudist colony. What military genius had decided to break up a well-trained tank unit—and then thought they could be replaced with amtrac crewmen?
It defied explanation. An amtrac, or amphibious tractor, was officially known as a Landing Vehicle, Tracked—LVT for short. They were designed to carry about twenty Marine grunts ship-to-shore in an amphibious assault. They were huge, lumbering aluminum boxes about the size of a bus that could waddle through the ocean and drive up onto a beach.
About the only thing amtracs and tanks had in common was that both shared the same .30-caliber machine gun. The idea that LVT crewmen could easily transfer over to a tank must have been dreamed up in division headquarters by some idiot with no knowledge of either vehicle’s capabilities and limitations. His absurdly unfortunate decision would come back to haunt us two months later. Why hadn’t they simply taken the amtrac crewmen for the grunts?
People were scurrying all over the ramp. New equipment was arriving all the time, and what didn’t arrive fast enough was robbed off my former Charlie Company tanks. About the only good news Molocko had heard was that our platoon sergeant, Robert Embesi, wasn’t going to change.
I never met anyone in the Corps who knew more about tanks than twenty-seven-year-old Staff Sergeant Embesi. He was the only platoon sergeant I’d ever had in my short Marine career with 5th Tanks, and I had more respect for him than any officer I ever encountered. Robert Embesi could have been a recruiter’s poster Marine. Always sharply turned out, he expected the same of his people. I had never seen him in a fight, but everybody knew you didn’t want to mess with him.