TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

A Tour of Duty in Vietnam
As we approached the gun pit, I am sure he was in awe of what he
saw. I doubt anybody had ever seen such spit and polish in Viet Nam
before. The ground was lined with shiny green sand bags. He looked
for a long time before focusing on the collimator. The conversation
went like this. “Collimator, huh?” asked the general.
“Yes, sir.” I was about to faint. I think he knew how stressed I was.
“Show me how it works,” ordered the general.
My response was to the gunner standing at attention by the sight.
“Corporal Lowe, show the general how to aim your piece.”
The General looked at me, and I swear he winked when he said, “I’d
like you to show me.”
Luckily, when we had first set up the collimator, I had taught myself
and the gunner how to use it from the directions in the box it came in,
and I was able to somehow make it through the syllabus by almost
rubbing cheeks with the general as we took turns looking through the
aperture of the gunsight.
The rest of the inspection went well and I had almost returned to
normal health by the time the general left to go inspect my friend
Harvey, and I never heard another word about the collimator.
One of the first operations in 1969 took place right along the Laotian
border just west of Khe Sanh. We set up a firebase directly in front of
an impressive vertical­faced mountain that actually is in Laos called
Co Roc. The mountain was full of tunnels and cave openings facing
east into Viet Nam. During the siege, Khe Sanh was shelled
mercilessly by enemy artillery from those caves. The caves had made
them virtually immune to attack from the air.
As far as finding enemy to kill, the operation was a complete
disappointment. We had suspected a lot of resistance and maybe even
hot landing zones. The only dangerous thing that happened to me
happened upon our arrival. I was in the back of the CH­46, so I was
one of the first Marines off the chopper. Because of the noise made by
the 46, I had no idea whether we were taking fire and immediately
looked for cover. On the possibility of a hot landing zone, I had
decided to arm myself with an M­16. I spotted an old fox hole and
jumped into it and pointed my M­16 outboard with my back toward
the chopper as I waited for it to empty. As usual, the downdraft was
horrendous but suddenly I felt one of the rear wheels hit the back of
my helmet. For some reason the chopper had not settled on the
ground. The crew had tried to hold it in a slight hover just above the
ground while the Marines disembarked but apparently had not been
able to keep it in one place. It may have been because they thought the
ground was not flat enough or a hover might offer a quicker getaway if
they were fired upon. I hunkered down into the hole until the 46 lifted
off hoping it wouldn’t get any lower.
Because we had so few targets to shoot at, somebody up the
chain asked if we could do anything about the cave openings that had
housed the NVA artillery. I responded with a resounding affirmative.
We had plenty of concrete piercing delay fuses, and 1st Prov was the
most accurate artillery battery on the planet. I asked for and received
one of those big 25­power naval binoculars that sit on a pedestal. I
spent an entire week closing the cave openings, dropping the cave
ceilings, and causing rockslides to cover the openings. I sat in a
folding chair with the big binoculars right next to the howitzer that did
all the precise shooting. In spite of the distance, we were mainly
shooting direct fire, so the FDC was minimally involved. The gunner
on the howitzer was only a few feet away from me. I would give him
A‐75