True, we drew a lot of fire, but the grunts seldom realized it was fire no longer aimed at them. They objected to our tanks’ noise and the occasional breakdowns that would hold them up, forcing them to stay with an injured vehicle until it could be repaired. Also, they felt natural resentment toward anyone who rode while they walked, who had food and water when they didn’t, and who didn’t have to carry supplies on his back. But once the shit hit the fan—when the cry of “Tanks up!” went out and a unit of pinned-down grunts saw the mix of accurate and devastating firepower we could provide—suddenly they loved us.
There were drawbacks to being a supporting arm. We were totally subservient to the infantry, which meant our tanks were often misused in unimaginative ways. The infantry’s concept of armor was born of ignorance and lack of experience, compounded by the constant turnover of grunt officers. For some strange reason, officers were rotated out of the field after only six months in-country, which added to the already high turnover of new, hastily trained junior officers who became casualties to their own inexperience.
This policy also created resentment toward officers. If they didn’t have to spend their entire thirteen-month tour in combat, why should we? It seemed grossly unfair. More importantly, just as an officer who survived long enough became proficient in the field, he was relieved, often saddling the unit with another FNG officer—and it was FNGs who got men killed.
The grunts’ lack of tank experience doomed us to being viewed as mobile pillboxes or bunkers on tracks. The uninitiated grunt officer often made several false assumptions about tanks. The most common was our perceived invulnerability, followed closely by ignorance of our capabilities and the type of terrain we could (and couldn’t) negotiate. Consequently, we often found ourselves delegated to the static, mundane jobs of protecting bridges and fire base perimeters, which nullified our two strongest assets: mobility and shock effect. Grunt units rotated in and out of bridge security jobs while we were condemned to sit there, day after day after day, in our perpetual role as bridge protectors. Boredom became an enemy and familiarity a cause for sloppiness—and it was sloppiness that Charlie looked for when he planned an attack.
Shifts of night watch became less critical with the passing of each uneventful night. For the first month we seemed doomed to play the role of immobile artillery. We settled into the boredom of filling sandbags and complaining about the awful heat and the constant upkeep that tanks required. And when we were done complaining, we could bitch about the heat some more.
While sitting at a bridge site, sometimes we would play games on the grunts. During the long days, when we had a lot of spare time, we would sometimes get visits from curious grunts who wanted to see a tank up close. We developed a little routine to play with them and to make it appear they really missed out not being a tanker.
Sometimes it was downright scary some of the borderline idiots we ran across. I never again wondered why we Marines are known as Jarheads.
Some of their questions were ludicrous, like, “Y’all got air condishonen?” “Hey,” I’d call down to the loader in the turret, “turn on the air conditioning!” That was the opening line for a well-rehearsed play, with our tank’s entire crew as part of the cast.
First, the loader would turn on our air-extraction motor. To some people, I guess, the air that it blew out of the turret convinced them that we had air conditioning; they never asked why the blower motor was so loud. But that was only half the routine. Seconds later, the loader would pop out of the turret with a can of beer in his hand and ask if the grunt wanted a sip. Of course, we were sorry it wasn’t chilled, “but our refrigerator is out.”
A beer materializing out of nowhere was unusual enough, but an apology for its being warm usually freaked the grunt out. He would go away convinced we had it way too easy.
The most memorable prank we ever pulled on a grunt—another of Dixie’s finest—only convinced me that the draft was still on and was accepting anybody who showed up.
We had already pulled the beer skit when the grunt wanted to know more stuff about the tank. He pointed to the searchlight over the main gun.
“What’s the box for?” he wanted to know. “It looks just like a TeeVee!”
Well, that was all I needed! “It is a TV,” I told him. “It’s to entertain the troops in the field.”
“Y’all gotta TeeVee?” he asked, incredulous. We could tell he thought he had stumbled on a real secret and had made quite the find. “Well, what’cha y’all git, with that there Tee Vee?”
“We get AFVN TV,” I replied, using the call letters of the radio station we all listened to. “What time you got?”
“It be six-forty-five.”
“Hey, Bonanza is on in fifteen minutes. Let me know when it’s close, and we’ll all watch it.”
However unlikely you might think this is, let me assure you that it really did happen. At almost 7 p.m., he called up to me, “It’s almost 7 o’clock, Mr. Tank Man.”
I turned the turret completely around to the back of the tank, so that the main gun was over the engine. Then I lowered the gun so that it was sitting on the armor plate. I signaled for him to go sit on the gun tube: “It’s the best seat in the house.”
Once the country bumpkin climbed up the back of the tank, I had him move farther back so that he was precariously straddling the gun tube near the edge of the tank. I had the loader take off the stiff canvas cover protecting the glass front of the searchlight. The grunt was all ready for his personal viewing pleasure. He was staring into the searchlight’s silvery mirrorlike reflector, which he still believed was a television’s picture tube.
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so dumb. Surely any minute he would realize he had been duped.
“Hey,” I called down from the cupola, “you want a beer while you’re waiting?”
I thought he was going to die of delight when I handed him a warm can of beer, “Sorry it’s warm, but the refrigerator…”
His mouth dropped as he took the warm beer. I worried that our loader was going to give away the ruse because he was about ready to bust a gut. I couldn’t blame him, for we had never taken the joke this far before; we were making it up as we went. I told him to go below and turn on the air conditioner. He was thankful for that, because the sound of the blower motor covered his stifled laughter coming out of the turret.
“Damn!” our guest exclaimed. “Y’all got everythin’. I wish I was a tank man.” He glanced at his watch.
I had all I could do to keep a straight face. “We don’t want to waste our batteries. Tell me when it’s exactly 7 p.m.”
A minute later he said, “It’s time!”
“Okay!” I reached for the switch that turned on the searchlight from the TC’s position. Suddenly, Bonanza and every other TV show he had ever seen hit him right between the eyes with 75-million candlepower. He flung up his hands, lost his balance, and fell off the back of the tank.
All four of us were in hysterics at the victim’s unusual exit. We walked over to the back of the tank. “You okay?” we asked. He was holding his hands over his eyes, moaning that he couldn’t see.