The Worst of the Fifth

When the officers and flag of the Big Red One, as the First Infantry Division was known, were rotated back stateside from Vietnam in the spring of 1970, its soldiers got medals. Then we got reassigned to other units.  I got assigned to a 155mm artillery battery of the First Battalion, 5th Infantry Division, Mechanized. Soon I learned why it was nicknamed “The Worst of the Fifth”.

It is the nature of soldiers everywhere and through time to complain—about everything. True to form, we had our share of complaints about our situation in the Big Red One. But I would never have known how good a unit can be if I had not been assigned to the aptly named, Worst of the Fifth.

The Fifth was headquartered at Quang Tri, just south of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone, way too close to the North Vietnamese regulars to suit me. Because the base commander wanted to minimize any disturbance to his sleep caused by the noise inherent in artillery, he had a gap cut in the barbed wire around the north perimeter of the base and extended the wire out a couple of hundred yards along the high ground into the rice paddies, like a big finger, and placed our guns near the end of the finger. That was as far from his sleeping quarters as was physically possible. The result was that the battery was not only vulnerable to attack from the rice paddies on three sides simultaneously, it was basically indefensible. We were, to mix metaphors, sitting ducks ripe for the picking.  Fortunately, we never got that ground attack.

That was the stupidity of the Commanding General. But how to explain our battery commander, the Captain? His priorities concerning the safety and well-being of his troops really made me appreciate what we had in the Big Red One. 

For example, no matter where or when soldiers in the artillery in the Big Red One slept, we were protected from flying shrapnel and small arms fire by thick walls on all sides and usually by overhead cover, as well. In contrast, we troops in the Worst of the Fifth slept protected by thin corrugated metal overhead and plastic screens along the sides of our hooches. Oh, yeah, and our sleeping bags. That was it.

Similarly, at Lai Khe, the home of the Big Red One, all artillery ammunition was surrounded by sandbag walls and covered by metal sheets called PSP that supported a layer of sandbags. At Quang Tri, our ammunition had no protection at all. None. A single AK round or piece of hot shrapnel could have set off a chain reaction of explosions among the projectiles and propellant powder that probably would have wiped out the entire battery.

When it came to busy work, our Captain was truly creative. Artillery propellant powder is shipped in sealed metal canisters on wooden pallets. The pallets are banded with steel bands and the canisters are both held in place and separated by three-inch thick billets of wood with sawn semi-circles notched on two sides to match the shape of the cylindrical canisters. When the bands are broken and the canisters removed and stacked for use, the pallets and notched billets, which we called “ruffle board”, usually become scrap. 

Usually, but not in the Worst of the Fifth. The Captain had a better idea: He had us spend hours nailing the ruffle board together into little fences that we painted red and white to decorate the entrances to our hooches. There was not a bit of protection against shrapnel anywhere in the battery, either for us soldiers or for several tons of gunpowder canisters and high-explosive projectiles. But, by God, in front of every hooch we had the cutest little red and white ruffle board fences you ever saw.

When I arrived at Quang Tri, the Captain already had a history with the troops of A Battery. I never learned what it was but morale was low and drug use was high.

Every soldier was on rotation to pull all-night guard duty, something I never had to do in the Big Red One. One night on guard duty, I was manning a guard post bunker. The battery was preparing for a fire mission. I could hear the familiar crackle of the land line from FDC relaying fire data to the gun crew. I thought I heard the “mumpf” of the crew ramming the projectile into the howitzer chamber and the heavy ringing “clang” sound as the gunner closed and locked the breech bolt. It took a few minutes to align and check the gun sights.

Suddenly, a huge white ball of fire lit up the night, like a flash bulb from world’s largest camera, and milliseconds later there was a thundering blast. Quicker than I can tell it, I hit the deck, heart pounding, temporarily blinded by the brightness of the flash. What the hell was that? 

Then I heard the howls of laughter from the gun crew. Whatever had happened, any danger had passed. Later, I learned the crew had been completely ripped on weed. In their state of marginal ability to function, they had prepared everything for the fire mission….except for the projectile. They had fired the cartridge powder without the bullet. Twenty five or thirty pounds of propellant gunpowder with no projectile will make one hell of a fireball blast.

Now they had a problem: they had on hand one 155mm artillery shell, all 95-pounds of it, which they were not supposed to have. In the army, ammo records, if nothing else, are fastidiously maintained and everything has to match perfectly. (In the Big Red One, the specialist who kept ammo count was awarded the Bronze Star.)  So the next day, still laughing, gun crew #3 were busily digging a deep hole to bury the projectile that was not supposed to be there. Your tax dollars at work.

On another occasion, I was on top of a perimeter bunker near dawn after all night guard duty. The first sergeant walked by. He had been checking the bunkers for marihuana and he had definitely struck pay dirt. He was carrying a clear plastic bag bulging with what he told me were over 700 joints. Dope doesn’t necessarily lead to bad morale but bad morale can sure lead to dope.

Few entertainers did as much to boost the morale of American soldiers worldwide as Bob Hope and nowhere more than in Vietnam. His USO programs there were the stuff of legend. Because FDC included the battery communications center, I had access to all the radios and radio codes. That is how I learned that Bob Hope and his variety show were coming to Quang Tri. 

Artillery is a 24/7 business but at any given time, only half the battery would be on duty, the other half on stand down, ready and available to see Bob Hope. We came up with a system of drawing straws so that half the battery could see the show and half stay behind to man the howitzers and fire direction. It was completely fair and everybody agreed to it.

Everybody, that is, except the captain. With the wisdom of a modern day Solomon, our captain decided that, if everybody could not go, nobody could go. Bob Hope’s generous gifts to the morale of troops all over Vietnam were no match for the gift of our captain to destroy what little morale we had. 

As I already said, our FDC was also the commo center for the battery. One morning the land line rang and I answered it. Somebody was yelling that a soldier had shot himself in the head with a pistol and needed a dustoff (a medical evacuation helicopter) NOW! I got the necessary information and rang off. Then I frantically tried to figure out how to call for a dustoff. When I finally got through to the right people, I probably was not very coherent as I blurted out the critical emergency situation.

A calm voice on the other end of the line asked me for my name and rank. I was stunned as I answered, “Specialist 4th Class Robert Orr Jr!” wondering what the hell difference that information could possibly make. The voice, still calm, then informed me that I did not have sufficient rank to order a dust off. Click. The line went dead.

Presently so did the soldier. Mortally wounded, he lasted a while before he died. Who knows whether a dust off would have saved him?

Later on the entire battery assembled for a service by the chaplain and a few words from the Captain. I have no recollection of a word he said. But whatever he said, it made no difference - it was clear the men in the battery, bitter and silent, held the Captain personally responsible for that poor soldier’s suicide.

In Vietnam, when the word, “frag”, was used as a verb, it had only one meaning: a US soldier using a fragmentation grenade, the common hand grenade, to kill a higher ranking US soldier, usually an officer. 

Several weeks after the funeral assembly, during a routine police call, somebody noticed a #10 can where one should not have been - under the Captain’s bunk. In the can was a hand grenade. Its clip was wrapped with black plastic tape, the pin pulled. The can was filled with gasoline which in time would have dissolved the tape, releasing the clip. No telling how close the crude but effective device was to detonation. The culprit was never identified.

The only lower morale in an army unit than trying to frag the commanding officer is killing yourself. But that had already happened.

Even today, if in an airport or somewhere else, I see a soldier wearing a uniform with a small red diamond patch on the upper left sleeve, I shake my head in silent sympathy for that is the emblem of the Worst of the Fifth. And I feel very proud, and lucky, to have had the experience of serving in The Big Red One, a completely different kind of unit.

by Rob Orr