TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

John Burwell Wilkes
satchel charges and RPGs, was able to penetrate the center of the
mountain’s defenses and blow up 2/12’s FDC and make it within 50
feet of Col. Barrow, the regimental commander and a future
Commandant. If we had not been resupplied, we could have easily lost
the whole headquarters and one company of the 9th Marines, as well
as all the units of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Marines – a disaster of
unimaginable consequences.
The main trust of the attack was to the center of the mountain and the
regimental and artillery battalion headquarters, but one of the suicide
sappers actually made it into one of 1st Prov’s gun pits and detonated
himself as a human bomb. The result harmed nothing, except to cause
a nasty mess that needed to be cleaned up. The howitzer stayed
completely functional.
With the battalion FDC and its FADAC computer gone, we had to
revert to shooting off the manual gunnery charts and sticks. This was
not really a problem for us because we had been doing full manual
solutions on every fire mission as a check to the FADAC all along.
Soon thereafter the weather patterns changed for the better and Col.
Barrow was able to persuade his bosses that we needed to send the
infantry into Laos, which was a huge development of global
significance. For a while we had the belief that we were safe from 122
incoming as long as the clouds were gone and the airplanes were up.
On or about February 15, we received credit for destroying one of the
122mm guns and Marine air had destroyed a second gun. For a while
the enemy gunners had lain low, and blue skies were like periods of
R&R, but the successes of the Marine infantry finally forced them
back into action. One day as I was leaving to walk down the ridge to a
meeting at regiment, one of our radio operators, a blond­haired
corporal, who looked like he ought to be on a surf board, was taking a
break and preparing to sunbathe outside the FDC on his rubber air
mattress (commonly called a “rubber lady”). With the sun shining
brightly out of a blue sky, he was sure he had no worries.
When I returned a good hour later, he was still on his rubber lady. I
told him he had been on break long enough and to get his butt back
into the FDC. He “rogered” that and got up to follow me into the FDC.
The FDC door had a protective wall constructed with wooden 105
ammo boxes packed with dirt. As we were entering the FDC, we were
kicked through the door by a massive explosion on the other side of
the wall. A 122 round for which we had heard no tube noise had
actually impacted the rubber lady. The fuse was in the ground exactly
where the surfer Marine had been sunbathing, and there were little
pieces of rubber all over the general area.
One night, the Russian 122 gunners scored a lucky direct hit through
the door of one of our gun pit’s powder bunkers. For obvious reasons,
we kept powder canisters and artillery rounds in separate bunkers. The
ensuing fire resulted in exploding powder canisters exiting the bunker
and burning all around the gun pit. We had just been involved in
several fire missions, and there were many rounds of different types
sitting around the pit, outside of the projectile bunker, and in danger of
exploding from the heat of fire. This gun pit was also very close to the
next­door ammo dump for the entire fire­ base. I ordered everybody
anywhere near the gun pit to evacuate and get far enough away in case
we had exploding rounds, but Cpl. Hickey, the section chief, knew
there were several high explosive, white phosphorus, and firecracker
rounds vulnerable to all the flaming powder bags raining down on the
gun pit. The possible specter and the gravity of these rounds cooking
A‐80