- Joined
- May 31, 2004
- Messages
- 356
- Points
- 53
One Shot Charley
As April ‘67 gave way to May things began to change around Duc Pho. The first thing that went was the name, LZ Montezuma just didn’t sound right when the Army said it, so the place became LZ Bronco. The brigade CP arrived along with a mess tent, meaning we could have a hot meal when C rations got boring. But along with the mess tent came a One-Shot-Charley (otherwise known as an OSC). Officially he should have been called a sniper, but the fundamental difference between an OSC and a sniper is that a sniper would occasionally hit something. LZ Bronco was built snug up against the west side of the Witches Wart, the mountain that stuck up out of the plain and was infested with the biggest landmine collection in the known world. But Charley had figured a way around the mines, he just tunneled through the mountain and created openings in the side where, coming from underneath, he had dealt with the mines and could now look down on our little ol’ LZ. The result was that we would occasionally hear a shot ring out from up the mountain and people would dive for cover. It became standard procedure for our gunships returning from a mission to fly close along the mountain and pepper likely looking places just for the fun of it. No standard policy existed for dealing with OSC’s until the day we were all in line at the messhall and a shot rang out. Now infantry types have a different way of dealing with this then aviation people. When they hear a shot, they dive for cover, figure out where it came from and deal with it. When helicopter crews hear a shot, its no big deal. If it was going to hit you, you never would have heard it. Besides, in a helicopter you can’t duck for cover. The net result was that every time the OSC fired and infantry guys jumped for cover, aviation types simply moved up in the chow line. Soon all of the aviation guys were at the front of the chow line and the infantry was still behind cover. When they figured out they had lost their place in line they were mad. An LTC from brigade stood up, dusted himself off and created the first Bronco edict: When fired upon, the messhall is closed. Thou shalt seek cover and not take your fellow soldiers place in line. We never really solved this problem until we had built the perimeter all the way around the base of the mountain.
One OSC that continually plagued us was located on a hill about a mile south of Bronco. As the aircraft flew around the mountain and turned the base leg before turning final we were at about the extreme end of his accuracy and he would occasionally shoot at us. He was persistent and was still there doing his thing long after Duc Pho become uptown enough to have its own air traffic control tower. Sometimes he would fire tracer. After I went to the Sharks I remember having this memorable conversation with the tower.
“Duc Pho Tower, this is Shark 426, flight of two turning final, guns cold, breakers out.”
“Roger 426, this is Duc Pho Tower, wind north-northwest at five, altimeter two niner niner seven. No reported traffic, you’re cleared for final, be advised you are taking fire.” A green tracer whizzed past the door. Whether or not the OSC was doing his thing became part of the landing advisory. The interesting thing about this particular OSC was that in all those months he never hit anything. One day we were gathered in the operations tent awaiting the latest word on our next bit of fun when a sycophantic lapdog of a staff officer blustered through the door and picked up the phone without asking permission. It seemed that our local OSC had fired at his boss as they flew by and this clown was going to have our friendly neighborhood Charley done away with once and for all. He wanted a platoon to sweep that hill and find the guy. When we figured out what he was doing, about 40 voices shouted “NO!” and maybe even a couple of guys slapped him. Chagrined he listened as our CO carefully explained that if this OSC was removed, the VC might actually replace him with someone that could hit something.
We did finally get one OSC, although in a most unusual fashion. A CH-47 happened to be trundling from Chu Lai to points south, carrying a few short-timers to catch the big bird back to the world. About five miles north of Duc Pho they developed some hydraulic trouble, and having the nice beautiful beach at hand, they decided to land and check out the problem. A hydraulic problem on a Chinook is nothing to sneeze at, I have seen those suckers literally rain hydraulic fluid inside. The only problem was, however, that the stretch of beach they landed on was, in a manner of speaking, contested. No Charley in his right mind is going to let that big green sausage set on his beach without taking a shot, and there were a lot of right minded Charley’s and they shot a lot. Unfortunately, two of the short timers had gotten out to stretch their legs on the sand and were hit and killed. The hydraulic problems in the Chinook were aggravated by bullets, but they took off anyway, abandoning the two dead guys, only to discover that one engine had been shot out. They struggled toward Duc Pho throwing out anything that wasn’t nailed down just to keep airborne and sort of collapsed the aircraft on the ground when they passed the barbed wire. We were airborne at the time and heard these idiots screaming over the radio so we hustled over to the beach, saw the Chinook limping south to Duc Pho, and there, sure enough, were two guys lying on the beach and they sure enough looked dead. We argued with a gunship from Chu Lai about who was going to land and check them out, but he won, having more weapons. He approached from the ocean, landed, his crewchief jumped out and checked the guys, they were dead, so the gunship took off again. Then he said he would cover us while we went in and recovered the bodies, but a Dustoff showed up and we provided diversion while he took care of it.
We turned back for Duc Pho and began seeing duffle bags and other gear on the ground where it had been jettisoned from the Chinook, so we began picking up whatever we could find. It was during one of these stops that we heard a round from an OSC. When we got back to Duc Pho everybody was mad at the collective stupidity, at the CH-47 pilots, at Charley, at the two guys who got shot and then we told them about the OSC. I guess part of the battalion staff had taken enough, the arty officer, the SGM and some unattached butterbar climbed aboard and we went looking for the OSC. We flew slowly over the area at about 50 feet, every ounce of our being screaming, “Here Charley, nice Charley” and finally we heard the shot. We skimmed the ground and our infantry contingent jumped out and spread out on line. We had worked out a strategy that we would fly around until a shot was fired then they would move closer to the shot. When they squatted down, we would try and get the guy to shoot again. I’m not sure what we were thinking at the time but it sure sounds stupid now.
The terrain was low scrub brush right on the edge of the sand dunes and we kept narrowing down to a large patch of brush. Finally our “infantry” was right on top of it when I heard a shot go off. The SGM, creeping through the brush saw a rifle barrel sticking up out of a hole. He crept up to it and got on the side where he could see the rear sights of the rifle, then peeked into the hole. A VC was sitting on his haunches in the bottom of the hole with the rifle, an old WW II Mauser, sticking out. Every time we flew anywhere close he just shot straight into the air. The SGM reached down into the hole and picked the guy up by his collar, lifting him completely out of the hole. It seems the guy was so deaf from firing that rifle in the hole, he wouldn’t have heard the SGM if he had been playing bagpipes. The guy was just firing when our shadow passed over him.
Regards,
Rotorwash
As April ‘67 gave way to May things began to change around Duc Pho. The first thing that went was the name, LZ Montezuma just didn’t sound right when the Army said it, so the place became LZ Bronco. The brigade CP arrived along with a mess tent, meaning we could have a hot meal when C rations got boring. But along with the mess tent came a One-Shot-Charley (otherwise known as an OSC). Officially he should have been called a sniper, but the fundamental difference between an OSC and a sniper is that a sniper would occasionally hit something. LZ Bronco was built snug up against the west side of the Witches Wart, the mountain that stuck up out of the plain and was infested with the biggest landmine collection in the known world. But Charley had figured a way around the mines, he just tunneled through the mountain and created openings in the side where, coming from underneath, he had dealt with the mines and could now look down on our little ol’ LZ. The result was that we would occasionally hear a shot ring out from up the mountain and people would dive for cover. It became standard procedure for our gunships returning from a mission to fly close along the mountain and pepper likely looking places just for the fun of it. No standard policy existed for dealing with OSC’s until the day we were all in line at the messhall and a shot rang out. Now infantry types have a different way of dealing with this then aviation people. When they hear a shot, they dive for cover, figure out where it came from and deal with it. When helicopter crews hear a shot, its no big deal. If it was going to hit you, you never would have heard it. Besides, in a helicopter you can’t duck for cover. The net result was that every time the OSC fired and infantry guys jumped for cover, aviation types simply moved up in the chow line. Soon all of the aviation guys were at the front of the chow line and the infantry was still behind cover. When they figured out they had lost their place in line they were mad. An LTC from brigade stood up, dusted himself off and created the first Bronco edict: When fired upon, the messhall is closed. Thou shalt seek cover and not take your fellow soldiers place in line. We never really solved this problem until we had built the perimeter all the way around the base of the mountain.
One OSC that continually plagued us was located on a hill about a mile south of Bronco. As the aircraft flew around the mountain and turned the base leg before turning final we were at about the extreme end of his accuracy and he would occasionally shoot at us. He was persistent and was still there doing his thing long after Duc Pho become uptown enough to have its own air traffic control tower. Sometimes he would fire tracer. After I went to the Sharks I remember having this memorable conversation with the tower.
“Duc Pho Tower, this is Shark 426, flight of two turning final, guns cold, breakers out.”
“Roger 426, this is Duc Pho Tower, wind north-northwest at five, altimeter two niner niner seven. No reported traffic, you’re cleared for final, be advised you are taking fire.” A green tracer whizzed past the door. Whether or not the OSC was doing his thing became part of the landing advisory. The interesting thing about this particular OSC was that in all those months he never hit anything. One day we were gathered in the operations tent awaiting the latest word on our next bit of fun when a sycophantic lapdog of a staff officer blustered through the door and picked up the phone without asking permission. It seemed that our local OSC had fired at his boss as they flew by and this clown was going to have our friendly neighborhood Charley done away with once and for all. He wanted a platoon to sweep that hill and find the guy. When we figured out what he was doing, about 40 voices shouted “NO!” and maybe even a couple of guys slapped him. Chagrined he listened as our CO carefully explained that if this OSC was removed, the VC might actually replace him with someone that could hit something.
We did finally get one OSC, although in a most unusual fashion. A CH-47 happened to be trundling from Chu Lai to points south, carrying a few short-timers to catch the big bird back to the world. About five miles north of Duc Pho they developed some hydraulic trouble, and having the nice beautiful beach at hand, they decided to land and check out the problem. A hydraulic problem on a Chinook is nothing to sneeze at, I have seen those suckers literally rain hydraulic fluid inside. The only problem was, however, that the stretch of beach they landed on was, in a manner of speaking, contested. No Charley in his right mind is going to let that big green sausage set on his beach without taking a shot, and there were a lot of right minded Charley’s and they shot a lot. Unfortunately, two of the short timers had gotten out to stretch their legs on the sand and were hit and killed. The hydraulic problems in the Chinook were aggravated by bullets, but they took off anyway, abandoning the two dead guys, only to discover that one engine had been shot out. They struggled toward Duc Pho throwing out anything that wasn’t nailed down just to keep airborne and sort of collapsed the aircraft on the ground when they passed the barbed wire. We were airborne at the time and heard these idiots screaming over the radio so we hustled over to the beach, saw the Chinook limping south to Duc Pho, and there, sure enough, were two guys lying on the beach and they sure enough looked dead. We argued with a gunship from Chu Lai about who was going to land and check them out, but he won, having more weapons. He approached from the ocean, landed, his crewchief jumped out and checked the guys, they were dead, so the gunship took off again. Then he said he would cover us while we went in and recovered the bodies, but a Dustoff showed up and we provided diversion while he took care of it.
We turned back for Duc Pho and began seeing duffle bags and other gear on the ground where it had been jettisoned from the Chinook, so we began picking up whatever we could find. It was during one of these stops that we heard a round from an OSC. When we got back to Duc Pho everybody was mad at the collective stupidity, at the CH-47 pilots, at Charley, at the two guys who got shot and then we told them about the OSC. I guess part of the battalion staff had taken enough, the arty officer, the SGM and some unattached butterbar climbed aboard and we went looking for the OSC. We flew slowly over the area at about 50 feet, every ounce of our being screaming, “Here Charley, nice Charley” and finally we heard the shot. We skimmed the ground and our infantry contingent jumped out and spread out on line. We had worked out a strategy that we would fly around until a shot was fired then they would move closer to the shot. When they squatted down, we would try and get the guy to shoot again. I’m not sure what we were thinking at the time but it sure sounds stupid now.
The terrain was low scrub brush right on the edge of the sand dunes and we kept narrowing down to a large patch of brush. Finally our “infantry” was right on top of it when I heard a shot go off. The SGM, creeping through the brush saw a rifle barrel sticking up out of a hole. He crept up to it and got on the side where he could see the rear sights of the rifle, then peeked into the hole. A VC was sitting on his haunches in the bottom of the hole with the rifle, an old WW II Mauser, sticking out. Every time we flew anywhere close he just shot straight into the air. The SGM reached down into the hole and picked the guy up by his collar, lifting him completely out of the hole. It seems the guy was so deaf from firing that rifle in the hole, he wouldn’t have heard the SGM if he had been playing bagpipes. The guy was just firing when our shadow passed over him.
Regards,
Rotorwash
. When we were operating in the Highlands around Bao-loc, about 80mi. due west of Phan Rang, there were alot of Montagnard villes in the area. A buddy of mine, Beetle, traded a 'Yard a couple of cans of C's and a survival knife for a crossbow and 6 arrows. It was made out of a red hardwood of some kind and had about a 4ft. span. Needed both feet and strong arms to cock that mother. The arrows were about 3ft. long. The thing could shoot through 3 sandbags at 30yds. no problem if you could hit them. A wicked weapon.
