Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet
Memoirs of a REMF
Copyright©
2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All
Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express
written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate
events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.
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Chapter 14
Advanced Killing and
Other Useful Skills
“It is
forbidden to kill; therefore, all murderers are punished unless they kill in
large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”.............Voltaire
On Monday, March 10,
1969 we went to the “Quick Kill” range. “Quick Kill” was a shooting method,
which taught one to shoot quickly and accurately without taking time to aim. It
was much like pointing your index finger at an object except you pointed your
weapon with your index finger. It was supposed be useful in the jungle where
the target could be a VC firing at you from a very close range. If that were
the case, there would be no time to aim. You would just point and fire, very
quickly.
Again, it was very cold at the range
that day. In a letter home I said the temperature was “in the ‘teens with a
very small amount of snow…flying by in the wind, which went right through you.
We were outside the whole time.”
We used a BB gun to learn the “Quick
Kill” technique. I began with my partner tossing a small aluminum disk a few
feet into the air in front of me. The weapon was gripped by holding the barrel
with the left hand in a manner that allowed the left index finger to point
straight down the barrel. The B-B gun was brought up in one swift motion while
your finger pointed at the target (and directed the shot) as you fired. After a
bit of practice, it was possible to hit the disk almost every time. We started
out with a disk that was about three- or four-inches in diameter and gradually
worked it down in size until we were able to hit a nickel-sized disk with the
BB gun.
I did very well with the “Quick Kill” technique
and it was a great confidence booster. It was quite similar to shooting quail
in South Georgia. When shooting quail, the hunter could be close to the quail
when they were “flushed” from the brush, flying off in any direction. You had
to pull up the shotgun, point, and fire quickly without necessarily taking time
to aim properly.
In my letter home I also said that
after the “Quick Kill” instructions and practice “we had bayonet practice for an
hour and a half and then two hours of leadership training.”
During the fifth week of BCT I wrote to
Carol Ann, “Tomorrow we go to the grenade range and pitch a few hot ones.” This
was another way to kill the enemy. Blow him up with a hand grenade. I learned
that it wasn’t as easy to throw a grenade as it looked in the movies. I didn’t
realize how heavy a hand grenade was until I picked up a real one. A
fragmentation grenade weighs about fourteen ounces, only two ounces short of a
pound. In comparison, a baseball weighs only five ounces. The grenade was round
and about the same size of a baseball and, except for the weight, throwing it
was very much like throwing a baseball.
The standard delay from the time the
pin was pulled and the spoon released to the detonation was usually four to
five seconds but could be as few as three seconds if the grenade’s fuse was
defective. It wasn’t exact so you didn’t want to hold one any longer than you
had to.
Both the trainee and instructor stood
inside the “pit,” a three-sided concrete structure about chest high with an
open end at the rear. The trainee faced the instructor, standing maybe twelve
to eighteen inches away, with the trainee's left side (if he were right-handed)
towards the target. The trainee held the hand grenade tightly in the right hand
(if he were right-handed), pulled the pin from the hand grenade with the left
hand, tossed the grenade as far as possible (hopefully, over the wall), and
then dove to the ground before it went off. The instructor stood close enough to
pick up the grenade and toss it out of the pit should the trainee drop it.
It could be a little nerve-wracking
standing there with a live explosive device in your hand. And yes, there were
several guys (I seem to recall that one of them may have been PVT Lett) whose
nervousness caused them to bobble and drop the grenade. But the instructor was
always right there to pick up the fumble and get it over the wall in time.
Another combat-related skill we learned
was “Land Navigation” (also known as orienteering or map reading). We were
taught how to find an objective by using a topographical map, a compass, and a
set of directions supplied by the instructor. We did a few practice runs during
the day but the qualification test was held at night. As usual, for night training,
it was a very dark and moonless night.
Trainees were paired off and each pair
given a map, a compass, and a set of instructions. Each pair of trainees had a
different objective. The instructions were something like, “Begin on a heading
of 315° for 113 paces. Change to a heading of 278° for 242 paces, etc. etc.”
When these instructions were completed we were to report back to the instructor
and tell him where we ended up.
My partner and I seemed to be doing
well. We were on the last leg, thinking we were about to reach our objective
when we paced right up to a cyclone fence. The fence was an obstacle that was
not on the map and had not been addressed by the instructor. Not wanting to
second guess ourselves since we were being trained to solve problems, we
decided our best course of action was to climb the fence and keep going until
we completed the required number of paces. So, over the fence we went and continued
until the required number of paces was reached. When we stopped at our “X,” we
found it difficult to determine our location on the map because of the
darkness. We could tell that we were standing on pavement and no longer in the
woods but the map showed no paved road anywhere near us. Then we noticed the
rotating beacon and realized that we were standing in the middle of the runway
of Ft. Leonard Wood’s airport. We had climbed a security fence unseen by any
guards that may have been out there. We didn’t think this was our intended
objective but we still had to go back and report the outcome to the instructor.
There was no time to repeat the exercise so we reversed ourselves until we were
back at the starting point. When the instructor asked where we ended up we said
something like “near the airport.” We passed the test, which is all that
mattered.
Another piece of combat gear that I had
been carrying around for almost four weeks without using was my gas mask. It
was carried in a pouch on my web belt and I was finally going to use it. We
were marched out to what looked like a sharecropper’s farmhouse with all the
windows covered with plywood and tarpaper. This was the dreaded “Gas Chamber.”
Our DI formed us up outside of the
house and asked if any of us had any open wounds. I raised my hand and the DI
came over to see what kind of open wound I claimed to have. My helmet liner had
rubbed a sore on my forehead, which had become infected and developed into a
boil, or carbuncle. I had said nothing before this and had not gone on sick
call for fear of being recycled. I pulled the homemade dressing from the boil
and showed him the huge red bump oozing pus. He took one look at the hideous
thing, recoiled in revulsion, and told me to get my ass to the dispensary in
the morning. He told me I could repeat the exercise at a later date and assured
me that I would not be recycled.
I watched as the remainder of the
platoon was divided into small groups and sent inside the house one group at a
time. CS gas (“tear gas”) was released into the dark room after the door
closed. The trainees were not allowed to use their gas masks until instructed
by the DI in the room (he already had his mask on). They were crammed in like
sardines, their eyes were burning and tearing, and saliva was drooling from
their mouths before allowed to use the mask. Then they walked up to the
instructor, took off the mask, and stated their name, rank, and serial number,
put the mask back on, and proceeded to the exit. Unfortunately, the stinging,
burning, runny nose, and drooling didn’t end once they were outside of the
building because their clothing was saturated with the CS gas, which irritated
any exposed skin, making them miserable for a considerable length of time after
the exposure. Just standing close to those guys was enough to make my eyes burn.
After seeing what they went through I was not looking forward to my time in the
gas chamber. But this would turn out to be another small personal victory for
me. The DI forgot to note that I had not participated in the exercise and I
never had to make it up. Just as I had gotten out of donating blood, I had now
managed to get out of going through the gas chamber. However, I would get to
experience CS gas several times once I was in Vietnam.
The next morning, I went on sick call
for my boil. The medic tried lancing it with a scalpel but after cutting and
squeezing for a couple of minutes he decided it was not yet “ripe” enough for
lancing. He instructed me to use hot soaks on it and return to the clinic in
five days. Where the hell did he think I would get these hot soaks? When I did return
to the clinic five days later the boil was lanced and expressed. I was given a
week’s worth of an oral antibiotic. The medic also noted that I had an eye
infection, probably the result of pus from the boil getting into my eye. He
gave me a tube of Cortisporin eye ointment to use three times a day.
About this same time, I wrote Carol Ann
and asked her to send me some “real” cough medicine and more antibiotics. I was
afraid that I might be getting walking pneumonia like so many of the others and
I didn’t want to be recycled. I wrote to her that I had “a little bit of fever,
my throat hurts when I swallow, I am congested in my chest and throat, my cough
is deep (violent at times - I almost throw-up I cough so hard) and harsh.” I
don’t remember whether she sent the medicine to me or not. I do remember purchasing
several bottles of Vick’s Formula 44 from the PX.
Continued in Chapter 15, Bivouac and the Hole that Wasn't There....
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