George lived about a block from where I grew up. A Vietnam veteran and avid hunter, he came back from the war and opened a gunsmith shop attached to his home. Every morning, he simply walked from his kitchen out onto his driveway and into his shop. He spent his days working on customer’s firearms and then wrapped up in time for supper. His precious wife taught me sixth grade.
I came of age in the 1970s. Back then, the internet was but a gleam in a young Al Gore’s eye. I will be forever thankful for that fact. With a relative dearth of stupid, mindless things to do, I spent my time after school wandering the neighborhood on my bicycle. One of my regular stops was George’s gun shop.
Now picture this in your mind. George is a grownup with a family. Some 11-year-old kid pedals up to his shop a day or two a week and just waltzes in to kill time. I didn’t have two dimes to rub together. I couldn’t have afforded to buy a box of ammo from this guy. Yet he was always patient and considerate, walking me through whatever project he was working on and fielding my often-asinine gun-related questions. A great deal of what launched me on a successful career in the firearms industry began with me sitting on an ammo box listening to George just talk about guns, Vietnam and life.
Back then, the publication Shotgun News (Firearms News these days) came three times a month. Those things stacked up pretty quick as a result. George sent his old copies home with me. I pored over them compulsively and thought he was doing me a great favor. In retrospect, that just meant he didn’t have to throw them away, but I will be forever grateful.
War Stories
I don’t recall specifically what George’s job was or when he was in-country. I do remember some stories about 1st Cav fire bases, however. The one tale that really stands out involved a small supply convoy running cross country across open terrain. George was part of a security contingent assigned to shepherd this handful of deuce-and-a-half trucks safely through that dangerous country.
All went well until they cleared a modest hill and struck out across a wide open space. At that point they began receiving intense automatic weapons fire from an elevated ambush position. The convoy commander stopped the trucks and pulled everybody back behind the cover of the hill to assess the situation.
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They soon found themselves at an impasse. Whenever they eased around the hill in view of the well-sited fighting position, the VC fired upon them. They had an M2 .50-cal. machine gun on a ring mount on a truck and a recoilless rifle mounted on a jeep for security. However, in short order, they had expended all of their available ammunition for both of these heavy weapons. Nobody was in any big hurry to give their lives so that the guys on the far end could enjoy their mail and Mermite cans full of hot chow.
With the benefit of hindsight, I don’t see why the convoy commander could not just ring up a little air support. Unimaginably lethal air assets are what reliably separate American military operations from most everybody else on Planet Earth. As a former Army aviator myself, I was a small part of all that airborne carnage.
However, for whatever reason, helicopter gunships or, better yet, fast moving Tac Air from the Air Force or Navy were not on the menu that day. Perhaps the weather was bad or radio coverage was spotty. Regardless, this was to be a come-as-you-are fight. With daylight fading and everyone getting antsy, George volunteered to take a buddy or two and get this thing sorted.
Weaponry
These were hills, not mountains. With a little time to maneuver, George struck out on foot to circle around the modest terrain feature that was shielding his hill from the VC fighting position. He was carrying an M16A1 rifle charged with 20-round magazines. He explained that they never stuffed more than eighteen rounds in these boxes to ensure optimal reliability.
We take reliable proper-capacity rifle magazines for granted these days. However, these were the days before PMAGs and anti-tilt followers. Those flimsy aluminum magazines were originally envisioned as being disposable. You had to take care back then to keep your mags happy and your weapon clean to get reliable operation out of those early M16 rifles.
Tactical Details
George crept around behind the enemy position and ascended the reverse slope of the hill in question via stealth. Carefully peeking over the top, he spotted two VC behind a pair of AK-47 rifles focused intently away from him and in the direction of the covered convoy. They had no idea he was there.
These two guys had clearly put some effort into preparing their fighting position. They were within easy range of the road and had stacked modest boulders around to form a parapet behind which they could hide. That had effectively shielded them from the recoilless rifle and Ma Deuce. However, in so doing, they had also hollowed out a rocky depression in which to array themselves and their substantial supply of Combloc ammunition. This was to be their ultimate undoing.
Ambushing the Ambushers
When the time seemed right, George leapt to his feet and emptied his magazine into the enemy fighting position from the top on rock and roll. That’s normally a really inefficient way to prosecute this hard business. It tends to waste ammunition and results in abysmal accuracy. However, not this time. Given his superior vantage and the rocky backstop, that full auto M16 was the perfect tool.
George said his rounds chewed into the two Viet Cong irregulars and then ricocheted around the surrounding rocks making everything hugely worse. The two VC died on the spot. George policed up the weapons along with whatever else might be of interest to the intel guys on the other end and made his way back to the waiting convoy. They completed the mission by sundown.
Ruminations
Nothing about war is glorious or cool. We expect military service to be fun and exciting, and it is that, to a degree. I willingly drank that Kool-Aid myself. Sitting on that ammo can listening to George dispassionately relate what he had to do to get the food and mail through on that now-forgotten afternoon in South Vietnam drove home the grisly reality of the enterprise. George wasn’t particularly proud of what he did that day. It was just something that had to be done.
War, even a little bit of it, changes a man. A lot of war invariably changes a man a lot. No matter the time, the place or the kit, the human part is always the same — young people fighting for those on their left and their right.
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