We were about to be droped onto another firebase by helicopter. And when the chinooks were circling we saw green, white, and red tracers everywhere. The red ones were ours, the other ones were charlie's welcome wagon. And he was trying to give us a very warm welcome. After a while, between the grunts and gun ships. They were finnaly convinced to leave the area, and we were dropped on the hill. This was a newly cleared fire base and we had to dig in as soon as we landed. The guns had to be placed and the battery layed, complete with comunication lines before anything else got done. Digging your sleeping bunkers wes dead last on the construction schedule. Needless to say that it was dark before we got done and a lot of the bunkers weren't completed. Ours was more or less done, but the command bunker only had a plastic sheet for a roof, instead of sand bags an PSP (steel runway planking). It was only a few yards from our bunker and the top of it was at ground level. Everyone was getting setteled for the night except for the guys that got stuck with guard duty. We had a guy in our section who was a hopeless screwup. His name was Dallwimple. A disaster looking for a place to happen. We had to watch him all of the time because he was dangerous to himself and everyone else if left alone. As soon as we all got sacked out, he had to go to the can. He also couldn't remember where it was, so I told him to crawl out of the bunker and turn right to the end of it then go straight to the edge of the hill and that's where it was. So out he goes. A few seconds later we heard a crash and the first seargent(Top) screaming bloody murder. All of us scrambled out to find the plastic gone from the command bunker, the first seargent with a 45 jammed against this guys head, and murder in his eyes. By this time everyone was screaming at him not to shoot Dallwimple. Top finnaly let him go and we put the plastic back up to calm him down. That dumb ass went left instead of right when he left our bunker, walked on top of the command bunker, fell through the plastic and landed on
Top's chest. Dallwimple survived, but he got put on every shit detail that Top could find for a month.
Every once and awhile I got elected to drive the battery commander around. One morning when we were on fire base Birmingham I got the call to go get the old man's jeep and hook up the trailor. He wanted to go to camp eagle and stop at the PX, then go to LZ Sally which is outside of Hue. By the time I got everything ready and drove over to pick him up the Battery Exec. decided that he wanted to go along too. I thought, "just what I need. A jeep load of brass to break my balls all day". Great! They jumped in and we headed down the hill to the main road, and off to camp Eagle. we pulled into eagle and straight to the PX. After the brass got what they wanted, we headed out to LZ Sally. On the way through Hue the traffic was crazy. There were motor scooters, little 3 wheeled busses, trucks, cars,and every other kind of transportation that you could think of. All trying to go everywhere at the same time. The wind up was, a guy on a small motor bike ran into the side of the jeep and dumped the bike. I stopped and we all got out to see if he was all right. Now you have to remember that in that kind of traffic if your moving at 10 miles an hour, your flying. There were no cuts or scrapes on this guy. I guess he figured that his ship had come in, and uncle sam was going to pay big bucks for this. It didn't take the old man long to see that it was a scam. So we left him laying there screaming something in vietnamise while we dumped his bike into the trailor. That got his attention and he stopped yelling. Then we grabbed the little guy and dumped him into the back of the jeep. The XO got in next to him and we took him to the hospital after we checked him for weapons or explosives. Once there we carried him in and handed him over to the MP on duty. You would not believe the meraculous recovery that took place then. He had just watched his ship sink at the doc.
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