American Valor Quarterly Issue 5 - Winter 2008/09 | Page 32

Joe Portnoy/American Veterans Center

about 20 kilometers. We had a night observation device that let
us see just as far out as during the day, and we had a pair of
battlecruiser Navy binoculars. We could see quite a long way and
call artillery down on whatever we could see. In theory, it was
first-round accuracy. In reality, it was still dumb artillery. You still
had to make some adjustments.

if we did not leave then, we never would. One of the lieutenants
who was up there with me led the rest of the party out, while I
stayed behind and called for blocking fire. As Wes mentioned, it
is terribly difficult to disengage with any unit that is in the attack.
Your back makes a bigger target than your front. The only thing
I had left was a platoon of artillery to shoot blocking fire. The
only location that they had was where the enemy was, which was
The sergeants, mostly the sergeant major and the first sergeants, my previous coordinates. I was maybe 30 meters away from
had an idea of what we were getting ourselves into. It was going them.
to be a hybrid squad out of the headquarters - somewhere
between communications and forward observing and survey. It was a direct fire mission for them. They could see the firebase.
So we needed to have a good sergeant, and I did. I had to have I asked for blocking fire on that position and got it eventually.
pretty good people out of each of the supporting batteries, so Just as they were getting ready to shoot, I started running. An
that the personalities would click and there wouldn’t be any internal alarm clock went off in the back of my head that told me it was
dissention. The advantage
time to zig and zag to stop
was that we were all new to
presenting such a wonderful
the equipment, we had all had
target to the enemy that
to learn what the equipment
might have foolishly crossed
could do and we all had to
over and tried to continue
learn each other’s jobs. So for
the assault. I say foolishly
five or six weeks even
because
they
were
though I had several
monitoring our radio signals,
assignments to observe from
and we were monitoring
different locations, we were
theirs. There were no secrets
always teaching each other
up there that day – from
what we knew, which built
either side. If they didn’t get
cohesion. Everybody knew
me, the artillery would
how to do each other’s jobs.
because it was going to be
We didn’t expect to get a
variable time, an airburst.
replacement that could do
You didn’t want to be
exactly everything that the
anywhere close to the
Col. Wesley Fox signs a copy of the 2008 conference program for one of the
person who left could do. So
firebase when that artillery
weekend’s younger attendees.
we made sure everybody
started coming in.
was able to operate a radio, everybody was able to call artillery
fire, everybody was able to do maintenance on a generator, I got off the trail to catch up with the others, but it wasn’t too
everybody was able to do survey, and so on. That was my primary long before I realized I wasn’t going to catch up. The best thing
asset – having taken five or six people that didn’t know each that I could do was to find some cover, hunker down for the
other and turning them into what turned out to be a really good night and see what the morning brought. My guess was that
squad. If they hadn’t done their job when the first rounds came because there were four artillery tubes on that firebase, the South
in, I would have never woken up that day. Let me put it that way. Vietnamese were not just going to leave them there for the North
Vietnamese to use against them. That was a correct guess. South
The operating instructions that we went by were that the two Vietnamese rangers took it back the next day.
people that were awake were always fully armed. Their job was
to wake us up, go f ܝ