An RPG-7 is a Russian- or Chinese-made shoulder-launched, unguided missile that was fired from a handheld tube. The missile had fins on the end; it looked too similar to our own bazooka rocket. But unlike the bazooka, the RPG missile was not launched from inside a tube that might have increased its accuracy. Instead, it was stuck on the end of a launcher that had a trigger handle halfway down its length.
Later, I would learn just how fast a well-hidden enemy could jump up and fire one. In two short months, we would see for ourselves that thirteen inches of solid steel was equally vulnerable. An RPG could enter at almost any point and spray the inside of the vehicle with a jet of molten steel.
Like any weapon it also had its limitations; fortunately for us, it was highly inaccurate. To ensure a hit, the shooter had to position himself very close to his target. Fortunately, too, most RPG hits were not lethal, provided a crewman wasn’t directly in its path when it punched its way inside the vehicle. But it was catastrophic if the molten jet came in contact with any of our four-foot-long 90mm main gun rounds—of which there were sixty-two stowed inside the tank. Therefore, a hit from an RPG was a crewman’s worst nightmare.
Now I was more curious than ever about the fate of the crew. A million questions ran through my mind. What had happened on the inside? Did the crew get out in time? Was the gunner spared? The three of us hoped to satisfy our morbid curiosity by looking inside. We climbed up on the tank and opened the loader’s hatch.
“Holy shit!” we said in unison as we looked into each other’s awestruck faces. We had opened the door to a crematory whose smell overpowered us. We jerked our heads back, trying not to gag.
None of us was prepared for the unbelievable sight. The inside, once white, was now jet black. The radios had been melted into an unrecognizable pile of scrap, and the plastic control handles at the gunner’s station had melted away. Each of us dwelled a little longer on the spot where his own crew position would have been.
We sat back up to catch our breath with another gulp of fresh air. From the ground, Embesi reminded us to see where his wire entered the turret.
The three of us held our breath again and looked back inside. As we had suspected, it came in right next to where one of the 90mm rounds would have been stowed. Obviously the RPG had detonated the projectile sitting there.
Probably curious as to our reaction, Sergeant Embesi climbed up on the tank and looked inside the loader’s hatch. Unfazed, he said, “Now there’s an oversight on somebody’s part, leaving the .30 in there. Somebody go down and pull that gun out. We can always use another machine gun.”
Leave it to Embesi to make lemonade out of lemons, but I couldn’t believe what he was asking us to do. Had it been anyone else, I’d have said, “If you want it so bad, you go down there and get it.” It was one of those orders directed at no one in particular but meant for either the driver or me. We wanted no part of climbing into someone else’s coffin.
He and I just looked at each other, hoping the other would make the first move.
Sergeant Hearn sensed our hesitation and lowered himself through the loader’s hatch. He tried to remove the machine gun, but it wouldn’t budge. Welded in place by the intense heat of the explosion, it was as worthless as the rest of the tank. That was fine with me, because I felt taking it would be like stealing from the dead.
Embesi’s initial observation had been right. The RPG had detonated the first round it came in contact with, and then the rest of them. No crewman could have survived such an unlucky hit. Embesi was quick to explain to us that this was a perfect example of infantry not working with the tanks. Little did I realize that this would be a constant struggle throughout my entire coming year. It was natural for the grunts to want to stay behind such a large, solid object as a tank; they thought of us as being invulnerable. They didn’t realize just how much we needed them to flush out the enemy RPG teams ahead of us.
Well, I thought to myself, that was a hell of a welcome to Vietnam. I had just been splashed in the face with a cold bucket of reality. Suddenly, for the first time since becoming a tanker, I felt vulnerable. The fingernails of my subconscious dragged across the blackboard of my consciousness, sending shivers down my spine. My suspicions were suddenly confirmed: I was not going to like this place. And the already unfathomable next twelve months seemed more like twenty years.
Thoughts of that blackened tank and its crew stayed with me for several months. In hindsight, that burned-out shell of a tank could have been the worst example to show an FNG (fuckin’ new guy). For me, it was the best example. That charred interior galvanized in my mind the vitally necessary cooperation between tanks and infantry.
IT TOOK THE REST OF OUR COMPANY another two hours to get ashore, then we got underway. We must have made an impressive sight—twenty tanks moving out in one long column. Next to flattening the Thomaston’s bell, it was the best part of my day.
We traveled through the outskirts of Da Nang into the countryside, still traveling on a dirt road. The road was on an earthen berm, elevated about five feet above the ground. I looked around, expecting shell craters and burned-out vehicles along the way. I never saw even the faintest suggestion of a war, except for the constant amount of military traffic. But it was the amount of civilian traffic that surprised me most of all.
We passed several troop-laden vehicles heading in the opposite direction. The passengers turned their heads to gawk and point at us, then laughed. The more trucks we passed, the more obvious it became, until I was sure we were on the outside of an inside joke. At first I thought it was the large mass of armor that was drawing everyone’s attention our way. I supposed it wasn’t every day that one saw twenty tanks traveling in a column in The Nam, as if out on a Sunday drive. It never crossed my mind that we might be the joke. All those passing veterans saw were twenty brand-new tanks with crews in clean stateside uniforms traveling as if on parade, as if the circus had just come to town. In their eyes, we were instantly branded FNGs. It must have been embarrassing for the returning veterans in our company, some of whom were back for a third visit.
We began passing some of the ubiquitous rice paddies that make up the lowlands throughout all of Vietnam. It was the first time I saw people working their sunken plots or was treated to the common Vietnamese practice of squatting in a paddy to relieve one’s self, right in plain sight, followed with a whip of the hand to dispose of what had been gathered from the barehanded wipe. They were their own source of fertilizer and didn’t mind sharing the view with us.
“Jesus!” I moaned out loud without taking my eyes off the woman in the calf-deep muddy water who had just wiped and flung. Embesi and Hearn laughed at my typical FNG reaction, but I made a mental note to never eat Vietnamese rice for the duration of my tour.
We turned onto a side road, which led up a steep grade and into a combat base. Our grand and noisy entrance brought all activity inside the base to a standstill. We were subjected to incredulous stares. As we pulled into the tank park of 1st Tank Battalion, I got my first glimpse of what real tanks looked like—after serving in the field a little too long. After thirteen months of stateside tank duty, I could only stare in disbelief at their beat-up, disheveled condition.
Four or five of them were being worked on. Most were undergoing a PM (preventative maintenance) procedure—a glorified oil change that all tanks receive every three months. These were fighting tanks that had been in-country for years and thus showed their wear, tear, and mistreatment. All of them were missing their headlights. Most were missing one or more fenders and had homemade replacements of corrugated roofing material. Their infantry phones on the rear fender had been ripped off long ago, and only one or two tanks still had searchlights. These veteran tanks had been in combat longer than any World War II tank had ever served.