NO ROOM FOR SWAG

The executive officer job on Nui Ba Den gave me a lot of opportunities to strengthen our defenses. I was always going around the perimeter trying to strengthen the weak spots, but also trying to find ways to lure our enemies into the kill zones that were covered by our .50-caliber machine guns.

The Viet Cong knew our defensive layout from the spies who were embedded in the Vietnamese forces sharing the mountain with us. What I tried to do was confuse them by randomly moving the .50-caliber guns around the perimeter.

The M2 is an incredible killing machine, but it has to be maintained properly to do its job. When reassembling one, the headspacing has to be perfect, or the gun could malfunction and kill or seriously injure the assemblers.

On one such move, one of my men got complacent and just guessed the headspace. He could not find the Go or No-Go gauge he needed to set the headspacing, so he took a chance and set the barrel from memory. He guessed wrong, and it cost him dearly.

By the time I reached the bunker line, he had bandaged his own hand and was in good spirits, so I assumed it was a minor injury. I had him unwrap the hand to see if he needed to be medevaced, and I almost passed out.

He had a perfect circle the size of a silver dollar blown out of his hand. I could see right through his hand. It was a horrible wound, and I could not believe he was not in pain.

When the medevac arrived, he informed me he had been in a bad auto accident as a kid and had no feeling in that hand. He was discharged from the Army three months later.