Saturday, May 25, 2019

My Thought's Keep Going Back.

                                                                                                                                     


5/25/2019

Forty nine years ago today I returned from my tour of duty in South Vietnam. Here is a story I have written about that deployment.

                                                 My Thought’s Keep Going Back.

As of late my mind keeps going back to random memories, and the only recognizable commonality is the time of year. Perhaps this is happening because I am now old and recently lost a loved one, my brother who I miss dearly. It was March of 1969 the weather was hot and humid, normal for the jungles of South Vietnam. I am in the back of an Army deuce and a half, the bed is open with side rails and I am standing holding on to the top rail as the truck heaves and bounces going down the rough jungle path. It is more a path than a road and the tree branches are brushing up against my body. I am in this truck with other soldiers that have been in country for some time so this is not new to them however it is to me and George. We are replacements, newly assigned to an artillery battery about three clicks from the Cambodian border, where just beyond, lies the Ho-Chi Minh trail. ( a North Vietnamese supply route to the south) At some point, it dawns on me we could be ambushed at any time, I chamber a round and set the fire selector to full auto. No one even looked around at me when the noise of the bolt sliding forward sounded, they were already locked and loaded.


We arrived at the Battery around two PM and George and I having been together for about two weeks now, waiting for our assignment had become good friends. Unfortunately we were not assigned to the same gun. We remained friends throughout our tour of duty (now called deployment) and traveled home together and visited each other, his New Jersey home was fairly close to my Pennsylvania home. There was an occasion when I stopped in his hometown of Newton and gave his house a call, his mother informed me that George was killed in a car accident. I can still feel the shock and sadness at the news. George was a good person, and I will never forget him.

These memories are now so vivid that George is here, alive, and we are throwing a football back and forth, the day is waning but it is still hot. I am watching the football soaring toward me fairly high in the air when I hear a low whistling sound that I immediately recognize as incoming artillery fire. As the first round explodes George runs toward his gun while I run toward mine. These guns are 105 mm howitzers that are self propelled, many people would mistake them for tanks but they are bigger, the crews can actually stand up inside them and fire the artillery piece. George and I being new are positioned outside our guns and our job is to feed rounds into the firing crew as they “hopefully” return fire. I have donned my helmet and flack jacket and my heart is pounding as the rounds are getting closer and closer to my position. In order to accomplish this, the enemy had to have someone that could see us, calling in the fire on our position (a forward observer) because the soldiers shooting at us could not see where their rounds were landing in relationship to our position. Our gun sergeant looking through a scope caught sight of the enemies muzzle smoke and got a fix on their position. Then the orders started coming for me to set the rounds, charges and fuses and start feeding the artillery shells into the crew to begin returning fire. It seemed like a long time however; only minutes had passed. We are now in a full blown artillery battle, the rounds are exploding fairly close, there is a small army pick-up truck parked about 30 feet from where I am standing and a round goes through the canvas roof and explodes inside the cab shredding the truck like paper. I hear the first sergeant yelling my name “Rogan take cover” I enthusiastically oblige. I enter into a sand bagged bunker where a few soldiers are already seeking cover. I remember thinking “ a ground attack is coming”, there is an opening in the bunker that we may have to fire out of and I tell one of the other soldiers to clear the ledge. In retrospect I cannot imagine that I was thinking that clearly. Thus began my indoctrination into the Vietnam War, a War whose controversy continues to this day. It has always been my feeling that some people in South Vietnam did not want to be under Communist rule and that was why we were there. Today that War is viewed mostly with negative memories however for soldier’s in combat there is only one issue, survival. All US artillery personnel  survived on that March day in 1969, however that night we sent two tanks out to clear the enemy from the area, only one tank came back the other was destroyed and took casualties.

War is organized killing and we’ve become very good at it. Today I think of all war as the inevitable outcome of people, that lack the ability to get along, because the intelligence that would allow them to do so is absent. It is March of 2019 today there are soldier's globally deployed and if they are lucky they will survive and perhaps have memories like the one I am sharing. It is said that as we age we gather wisdom yet old men do not refrain from war because they are wise, old men are simply not up to the rigors and stress of combat. Wisemen do not have wars. Today instead of being wise with age I find myself more and more confused. I do not understand how we can say we love our children and send them to War. Wise people that love their children would find a way to keep their children safe. Is it possible that wisdom is tiered and we are now at a level that allows us to be wise enough to see, that we are not wise?

Bill Rogan
Acworth, NH
Charlie Battery 3rd Battalion 6th Artillery 52nd Artillery Group, Pleiku South Vietnam. 69/70


My thought’s and heart are with all that served, those that were wounded and those that died serving. Today I’ve come to the realization that we were misled and used by politicians for purposes that were not in tune with our service. Today many of the Vietnam veterans are suffering the ill affects of the war and the chemical's used in the field, chemical's that we were assured were not harmful to humans. This is just one of many lies that a government lacking compassion has perpetuated on its loyal soldiers. Today the United Sates of America in many ways is not what soldiers would be proud to defend.