Suddenly the veterans started treating us first-timers like second-class citizens. Even though we were all figuratively (and literally) in the same boat, they despised us because “we” hadn’t yet done our part, yet here they were, going back over for a second time—some for a third. I could sympathize, but I hated their strange and unfair rationalization and the way they took their anger out on us.
The USS Thomaston was to be our home for the next three weeks. She was fourteen years old—considered new by Navy standards and a tub by us Marines. Everyone gathered on the fantail and watched as the California coast sank beneath the horizon.
Few spoke as we watched the land disappear. We wouldn’t see the States again for thirteen months. The reality of what was happening began to set in, along with the uncertainty of what lay ahead.
I thought about my father and his similar departure to a war in the Pacific in 1944. Now his son, a Marine just like him, was shipping out, twenty-four years later.
It was announced that we would be stopping in Guam for refueling in about twelve days. Guam was in the Marianas, the same island chain containing Saipan and Tinian, the two islands where my dad fought. He had survived three landings and served in his war for three years, until its conclusion. Marines of the Old Corps had served for their war’s duration, waiting to be either victors or casualties. Right then, I couldn’t understand how any of them had managed to survive.
Thinking about it, I realized I had it a lot easier, having to survive for only a year before I returned home. But at that moment, it seemed like an impossible goal. Eternity was staring me in the face.
Chapter 2
Crossing the Pond
As the shock of learning our destination wore off, we looked to find our assigned berthing areas. They assigned a swabbie to lead our 2nd Platoon’s five tank crews to the berthing area, where we would sleep during the next three weeks.
All passageways look alike aboard a Navy ship, so he tried to explain how to find our way around using a numbering system painted on every bulkhead throughout the vessel. The system was more confusing than the ship itself, impossible for any Marine to interpret, but the swabbie assured us that we would know our way around in just a short time.
As we soon found out, that—along with anything and everything the Navy told us—was a bold-faced lie. Actually, it took something close to two weeks before we got the hang of it, which meant many hours of wandering a frustrating myriad of corridors—“passageways.”
Our first days at sea found Marines bumping into each other throughout the bowels of the ship. A conversation would start out, “Do you know how to get to the ship’s mess?”
“No. Do you know how to get to the showers?”
But for some of us, those three weeks were a blessing. Many inexperienced amtrackers had to assimilate what was normally an eight-week Tank Crewman School without the benefit of land for practice. They had no experience driving a tank, much less firing any of its systems. But, hey, aren’t tanks and amtracs just about the same thing? In some idiot’s mind, they were.
Twice a day news was posted on a bulletin board outside the ship’s radio room—once we could find our way there. Each subsequent posting fed us a little more information as to why we had been pulled out of California so abruptly. We were part of a response to the Tet Offensive, which had caught Army Gen. William Westmoreland’s Military Advisory Command, Vietnam (MACV), totally off guard.
Only days before our own departure, the 27th Marines had left California by plane and were already in the field in Vietnam. Some ex-tankers were humpin’ the boonies as grunts. We didn’t ignore our luck. We were a lot safer aboard ship than in the field with the mud and the bugs. Luckier still, our three-week voyage would count against our thirteen-month tour of duty. God must have meant for me to be a tanker!
But, just like our own tanks, we were crammed into a berthing area efficiently designed to pack as many people into as little space as the Navy was willing to provide. Our compartment, straight out of every World War II movie I’d ever seen, consisted of a free-standing row of bunks, stacked four-high down the middle of the compartment. Down each side of this center island ran aisles only two feet wide. Against each bulkhead were more bunks, also stacked four-high. The ship was one giant sardine tin, with us as the sardines.
Shipboard life brought us into direct contact with our Navy brothers. I say “brothers” because the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy. We had no problem with this arrangement because we considered the Navy to be like a giant department storeand we Marines were its men’s department. We often bragged how the Corps built the Navy so that we could get around.
In short, the two services weren’t particularly fond of one another; and the squids—as we called Navy personnel—loved to pull practical jokes on us unsuspecting landlubbers. Squids always liked to make us Marines look stupid, which wasn’t always hard to do. After all, we were strangers in an alien environment. A little showmanship and convincing lines made many a Marine into an easy mark.
We had been at sea for only a couple of days when one squid visited a hapless Marine around 3 a.m. and told him, “Wake up. It’s your turn for mail buoy watch.”
Being awakened for a two-hour watch was hardly unusual; every outfit always had some kind of watch going on. At three in the morning, a groggy Marine didn’t ask too many questions. Conditioned to obey orders automatically, he would do whatever was asked of him—provided it was delivered with enough authority.
“What’s mail buoy watch?” he might think to ask.
“For the next two hours,” the squid would explain, “it’s your turn to stand watch on the ship’s bow and watch for the mail buoy.”
“What’s a mail buoy?”
“All the forwarded mail for you Marines gets flown out ahead of the ship and dropped in a bright-colored buoy. Your job is to look out for it.”
To the half-awake brain, this sounded more than halfway plausible. Much as the tanker craved sleep, he sure didn’t want to be the guy everybody resented for missing their letters and packages from home! For the remainder of our cruise to Da Nang, it wasn’t unusual to see one lone Marine standing on the bow, cigarette in hand, scanning the horizon for letters from home.
Wouldn’t victims of this prank band together and warn their comrades? Quite the contrary, because the sucker, embarrassed by his own gullibility, wouldn’t breathe a word. Sometimes, he would even aid and abet the Navy pranksters’ next attempt, helping lead his fellow Marines to the slaughter. Each new sacrificial lamb helped restore the previous victims’ self-respect, reassuring them that they weren’t that dumb after all.
Our days weren’t free by any means. During the voyage, we maintained normal working hours. Amtrackers attended class while we worked on the tanks. Something on those complex mechanical beasts always required attention. One day, which will stay with me forever, I saw my brief life flash before my eyes.
Sergeant Hearn ordered me to disassemble and clean the main gun’s breechblock assembly. This was the solid steel block that slammed home after a round was loaded into the chamber. It closed with enough force and authority to intimidate any new tanker. Disassembling and cleaning the breechblock had to be done from inside the tank. It involved hooking a chain hoist to the top of the turret to lift the very heavy block out of the gun.
One of several tricks to expedite its removal involved elevating the gun instead of jacking the chain hoist. I hooked up the hoist and began elevating the gun, which meant that the breech, inside the tank, was going down. As it did, it slowly pulled the block out of the breech. I had elevated the gun almost to maximum when I heard a soft muffled pop.