"Under the Southern Cross"
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Some thoughts from Larry Tolle We (the 11th Bde) left Schofield Barracks for 'Nam in early December, and it took us 21 days by troop ship, the General William Weigel, and we arrived and debarked at Qui Nhon. We convoyed north on Hwy 1 to a place to the east of Duc Pho, not far off the beach. We were there for Christmas, living in tents, and moved to LZ Bronco sometime in January. We got mortared about every 2-3 weeks, a couple of rounds falling outside our hooches, causing no significant damage except to our underwear. One fell just on the other side of the sandbags from my bunk, but as we had just done a 24 hr. shift at the Cage in order to switch shifts, I didn't wake up. SSgt. Perella woke me up, bonking me on the head with his helmet liner, pissed because he thought I was dead, but found me alive and just sleeping! Platts, Daucher, "Mother", Pepperdine and I were all on the same shift at the Cage at that time, along with Sgts. Crute and Glass. Sometime near the end of February, I started guarding wounded prisoners, transporting them to various hospitals. When the big Tet Offensive of '68 began, I had a VC female with a sucking chest wound to transport to Qui Nhon. They were very busy in the hospital, and I had to stay a long time before they would sign my release receipt, so I got to watch them insert the tube without benefit of anesthesia. Not much fun. I spent the night with the local MP's, but we spent most of the night in bunkers with wounded GIs, as the war escalated. I flew out of there by Huey, and we never got back to Bronco, we just flew out to that remote SF LZ in our area, and picked up more wounded prisoners. I escorted them to Cam Rahn Bay, and spent the night with some HQ Co. guys, where I watched my first TV in months. I lost my wind-up mechanical razor there, because I usually carried it in my pocket on those trips. Anyway, we spent part of that night in the bunker and I flew out of there to another LZ (I really don't know where!) and picked up another wounded prisoner to take to Chu Lai. All in all, I spent 3 days travelling during Tet, and everywhere I went, we were under attack. Once, I spotted a squad of VC on the ground, and thumped the pilot on the helmet to call his attention to them. He nodded, but I don't know if he called it in or not, because we were in a non-combatant Dust-Off. I knew better than to shoot, but it was tempting. When I returned I learned that a top VC cadre member had escaped the cage, and there was hell to pay for awhile. They finally figured out that he had switched tags with an IC, and our guys gave him a nice ride to the Duc Pho Police. 'Glad I wasn't involved. After a couple of months, we rotated responsibilities and I was assigned to convoys. I was made a gunner, and rode up and down Hwy 1 wearing a flack jacket embroidered with an Austin Healy patch (Pepperdine had Porsche on his, and another guy had Ford). We all wore our steel pots, and an O.D. Triangular Bandage for a dust kerchief. We all enjoyed the reefer runs, and I liked the enterprising ice guy, who made his ice-plant out of jeep engines and Junkyard Wars-like contraptions. They got hit during Tet, but they all lived (with a mortar hole in their roof). Nice people. Once, John Mirandonna hit a pothole in the road so hard that I flew up in the air and landed solar-plexus downward onto the M-60! I did some helmet-bonking of my own when I recovered. John grew up in NY City, and never drove before entering the Army. Slim Pepperdine, however, was a fantastic driver, and scared the stitches out of my britches on a drive up Baldy! Subsequently, he's had a long and very successful amatuer career as a Formula V driver, and is considered a legend in that motorsport. Me, I just race up the Tehachapi Grade everyday after working in Bakersfield. After another couple of months I was transferred to the 198th, and after guarding TOC one day, they sent me to the river (North), where I stayed through the Summer. We were sitting ducks out there, but we all loved it. We ate with the Seabees and I remember on the 4th of July we had filet mignon and lobster! They also had a great ice-cream bar complete with all the fixin's. I put on a few pounds there! I started as a gunner, then was promoted to Senior MP just before I was called back in to run the cage. I replaced a big black SSgt. everyone called Tommy T. He and I hit it off immediately and I did all I could to help him, learning all I could about running the cage. I then took over when he left, and ran the cage from about September to December when we flew home, via Cam Rahn Bay. |
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Another Story Sent to Webmaster June 05 Sometime in November
of '68, we suffered one of our worst sapper attacks on LZ Bronco. They
actually overan a couple of perimeter bunkers on the south side. At about
3:00 AM, they mortared the heli-pad heavily, pinning-down both the choppers
and the MP's in the adjacent hootches. Rudely awakened, I grabbed a bandoleer
of 00-buck, riot gun, boots and my steel pot, then dove into the nearest
bunker. Otherwise, I was only wearing my chonies. Unfortunately, it had
been raining hard and the bunker was full of water...and mosquito larvae
"wigglers". We had to stay put and endure the worst tickling
of our lives. Some of the guys pinned-down with me were those assigned
to protect the officers' hootches during an attack. some of the mortar
rounds were landing within about 25 feet of us, so we were going nowhere.
Interesting that they knew who to pin-down! |
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