Mar68-2

I thought the NVA ground assault would follow up. Later they found bodies of 51 NVA in a grave 2 miles from us.

Mar 28 1968

Only got 3 rounds of incoming at Camp

Carroll today.

Radar spotted 10 track vehicles moving last

night about 4 miles north east of us.

We fired 60 rounds at them and other

batteries also fired.

Mar 30 1968

Our operation chief is Sergeant Popenhagen.

We fire 200 to 300 rounds of 105s per day now.

Each shell weights 35 pounds on the average an

has a killing radius of 50 meters.

Popenhagen likes to work out on the guns helping

out loading or whatever if they are short a guy on

whatever gun.

End of March 1968

Mar 17 1968

Lt. Nalley, one of the Lieutenants I work with, went on convoy to Da Ha, got a fractured ankle when a truck turned over and rolled on his foot. The driver got a broken back and ribs they are both in the hospital now. I sent a 5-cent MPC (military payment certificate) back home in the mail. We took two rounds of incoming today, not even close. From 12:00 to 18:00 we took incoming. It is not half as bad as it sounds. First they started off with the 2 rounds of Pack 75’s then a few more. Then 6 or 7 rounds from 130 MM guns, then about 20 rounds of something? We have people who keep count of incoming rounds. They also are creator analysis teams. They find out what kind of round it was by looking at the hole it made, the fuse they dig out and the direction it came from. Not one round hit “A” Batteries area Ha! Our 105’s and “C” Batteries aren’t big enough to shoot at. Most all the incoming lands in “K” Batteries or the Army’s area. The “K” 155 self-propelled and the Army 175 self-propelled are the NVA’s main targets. They have longer range, mobility, and accuracy. Our little 105 howitzers are towed and don’t have the range, but our 105 howitzers definitely kill charley. We kill more NVA than grunts see Ha!

Mar 22 1968

Got a new paper from home in the mail the Sacramento Union. Something to read while burning the shitters. Not my Pix.

Mar 23 1968

Got traffic ticket summons in mail today, they want $115.00 for a fix it ticket got in California (Broken Tail Light). It says; “a traffic warrant for your arrest has been issued by the justice court of Tulare”, and paying it will save you embarrassment and inconvenience of an arrest on this charge. Wrote back said if they had the balls to come up here on the DMZ and collect the money I would gladly pay it Ha!

Mar 18 1968

I am listing to baseball on the radio (armed forces radio), Red Sox vs. Cardinals. Khe Sanh got hit this morning by a ground force and artillery. The Red Sox won 3 to 2. Recon calls in a fire mission and they don’t know how to adjust fire on the NVA? But they got the job done. We got a lot of NVA with “A” Btry. So far and no friendlies yet! Rained today and a rock ape scared the hell out of the people on guard post, he shot a red flair, that means ground attack and it was only a ape in the wire Ha! Some times if you through a rock, at night, at an ape’s it will through back Ha! Last night I was sitting on the sandbags topside of the slit trench during incoming and this lifer comes by. He gives me a ration about being outside your hole during incoming. I don’t care so he asks to see my dog tags and notices I have no preference to religion on them. He goes ape shit and says don’t I care when I get blown away who prays over me? I don’t so he says get back in the hole anyway. I do; he leaves, so I get out again.

Mar 19 1968

B-52s are hitting (Dong Ha mountain) again what a show. You can feel the heat and the blast so the ground shakes like a earthquake rumbles like rolling lighting.

Mar 26 1968

Got 2 rounds of incoming then set Looking North to Dong Ha Mountain

around on watch. Had an outdoor movie set up to show on plywood painted white for a screen. It was Honcho with Paul Newman. The movie was kind of distorted it was not the right size for the screen. There is a lot of air traffic around here now. The Air Calvary moved into Dong Ha Mountain area and we are shooting a lot more rounds now! How does the war look from home are we winning or losing?

Mar 20 1968

We are having a mount out inspection today. The Captain makes sure everything is in order so when we do move out we can do it in a hurry. This morning wefired 38 rounds at NVA in 4 bunkers and fighting holes. It took about 5 minutes and there were no bunkers,fighting holes or NVA left. We have guns (105 Howitzers

carriages) off Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, old stuff. We fire H&Is at night about 80 rounds. Most of the time we fire about 250 rounds during the daytime. The Army 175’s fired support for Khe Sanh in the morning and the evening. The Army people have to stand on top of these 175 self propelled guns during a fire mission to load and fire. We got incoming 122 rockets with delayed fuses. An 0811 gun grunt goes into our outhouse a 122 goes under it. He digs himself out of this pile of smoking plywood and diesel andstands there covered in smoldering shit. Wow, we have a four -hole shitter. Later on a guy tries to put a frag into?

Learned to hear incoming rounds pop out of the tubes, so then you have 3 maybe 4 seconds to get into a hole before they hit. You can hear them in your sleep, sometimes only a second or so? Also you can here the rounds coming back through the sound barrier it is a pop when they slow down maybe. The 130 MM guns are too fast you don’t have time to get down. Can’t here mortars for shit.

Mar 24 1968

We shot battery 2 rounds (which is 12 rounds) of 105s at 15 NVA in the open; so far we only got 2 confirmed kills. We got 2 beers per man and maybe next Monday a movie Ha! Headquarters has a tent converted into a kind of club called Snoopy. What’s all this stuff about Johnson trying to call off the war? Have you herd anything more on it? We aren’t being hit to much around here now. I had a Pack 75 MM hit just about 10 feet outside our tent I was sleeping inside. Nobody was hurt at all.

Mar 25 1968

Well we got 10 rounds of incoming today nothing much was hit. They landed where the Army 175 used to be, they moved out.

There were 11 wounded on the hill (Camp Carroll) and 4 KIA. The 2 people from “A” Btry. Were hit at the P.X. in the 12th Headquarters area. The Army lost 1 KIA also. Ruff and Roberts were in the hole or trench outside the P.X. with 10 other people waiting for their turn to go in and a 107MM rocket hit directly in it. Am going to move back to the FDC today. Our Gunnery Sergeant got up here recently. He is supposed to be the oldest gunny in the Marine Corps. They say a German 88 blew him out of a foxhole in France during WW II. When we get incoming,…. well I think he got shell shocked? Didn’t see him anymore after that. Think he got his ticket punched and they got him out of here. During incoming we sit around and say “here they come, there they go”, when they go over. Most people try to guess if they are Pack 75s, 130 MM guns, 122 MM rockets, 107 MM rockets, 152 MM guns or just mortars. When they hit the Pack 75s and the mortars are hard to tell apart. But you know when a 122 MM rocket is coming in it sounds like a Jet. The other day a F-4 Phantom scared the hell out of me when it flew over low from out of the south Ha! The 130 MM guns rounds scream in and tear the hell out of everything. The rockets were coming in volleys of 6 at a time. I got caught out in the open and laid and watched them come in at us 6 in a row. Maybe 6 times then back over us again.