of cheap booze, always free to make a run on the ville or try your luck with one of the doughnut dollies when you feel a ‘whiteout’ coming on… and all we got to do is document the division’s activities at our own pace. What do you think? Ready to go to work?”
“Sir, no offense, but I’m gonna do everything in my power to get out of this assignment.”
For a brief moment, he stared at me as if unable to comprehend my response. Then, smiling, he said, “No offense taken, Captain. Want to be a hero? Well, you just go on out there and get your ass shot off.
I’ll write about it.”
Colonel Know was about to leave his office for the evening when I returned and informed him that although my interviewer in the division’s historical section found me acceptable, I found him and his job unacceptable. The colonel did not look upon my announcement in what I felt to be a fatherly fashion.
Colonel Know, I discovered, was a man with a short temper.
“Unacceptable, my ass!” he exploded. “I’m sick and tired of your goddamn bellyaching, Captain! Just who in the hell do you think you are to pick where you’re gonna work in this organization? Who? Goddamn it!”
“Sir, I.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me, you insubordinate little sonofa… whatever!” he screamed as his face turned a deeper shade of red.
This man is obviously pissed! I said to myself. There’s simply too much stress on this staff for me to be a part of it. I must serve in a calmer work environment… someplace like the boonies. I remained silent, however, recalling another of Sergeant Fallow’s ageless axioms:
“Always remember, Jimbo, a good ass chewing is really a beautiful thing to behold. Enjoy it; it’s a disappearing art form.”
“Now listen, Captain, and I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,”
Colonel Know continued in a calmer, more constrained voice. “You will report to the division historical section at 0700 hours tomorrow. There you will write the history of this division until such time as I feel it appropriate to reassign you… which may be three months from now, or six, or twelve. And, Captain, if I see you in this office again before I feel it appropriate to reassign you, or if you dare go over my head on this, whether it’s to the chief of staff, IG [inspector general], chaplain, your congressman, or whoever, I’ll see to it that you’re still here writing the history of this magnificent division when the war’s over and the rest of us have redeployed to the continental United States, be that two, five, or ten years from now!” His voice had risen steadily throughout this brief discourse and was once again approaching the screaming stage.
“Do you read me loud and clear, Captain?”
I replied, “Yes, sir!” It seemed the appropriate thing to say.
That evening, in celebration of my new duties with the division’s
“hysterical” section, I decided to go to the Cav’s headquarters officers’ club… and get smashed. Working on my fourth or fifth Jim Beam and branch, I was well on my way to never-never land when Major Bork came over and sat down beside me. He too was visibly into his cups.
“Bastard’s gonna make you write history, huh?” he commented more than asked.
“Yes, sir, gonna write the history of this magnificent division.”
“You know what you ought to do, Estep? You know Colonel Lich?
Pronounces his name like.” Bork smiled faintly…… like ‘like.” Uh… commands the base security battalion.”
“No, sir, I don’t know Colonel Lich… and I don’t like Colonel Know.
(Heh, heh.)” Ignoring what I felt to be a really funny remark, he continued, “Well, if I were you, and I’m not, and I wanted to go to the boonies, and I don’t, I’d go see Colonel Lich.”
“Who’s Colonel Lich? Shit, I know he’s not my congressman. Is he the chief, IG, chaplain, or what?”
“No, goddamn it! I just told you. He’s got the base security battalion, Fifth Cavalry. They’ll be rotating back to Bong Son—LZ
English or thereabout—in a couple of weeks. Why don’t you go ask him to take you along? I mean, shit, if he’ll accept you in his battalion, my boss will roll over. Bastard’s not gonna fuck with a field commander’s request for a line officer.”
I left the club immediately. Later that night, after a hot shower, coffee, and a change of uniforms, I met with the commander of the base security battalion in his quarters. Lieutenant Colonel Lich was a decorated veteran of the Korean war, had previously served with Special Forces, currently commanded in the Fifth Cavalry with distinction, and would eventually command a Special Forces group in like fashion. In short, he was a soldier’s soldier, through and through.
After hearing my tale of woe, which he thought somewhat humorous, he welcomed me to the Fifth Cavalry, telling me to pack my gear and report to his headquarters the following morning.
“The good Colonel Know can just find someone else to write his damn history, Estep.”
I was ecstatic. “Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! Uh… and good night, sir.”
“Not good night, Jim,” he corrected me, “not in Robert E. Lee’s former command. Here, we part with the salute ‘Ready’!”
“Ready, sir!”
And I was.
Unfortunately, when Colonel Lich so graciously accepted me into his command, he didn’t need another rifle company commander. What he really needed was a “good staff officer.” Hence, I was assigned duties as the battalion’s adjutant (the S-1). But what the hell, at least I was serving in a line battalion instead of writing the history of what line battalions do.
As Major Bork mentioned during our hazy conversation in the O’club, the battalion was at the time pulling duty as the division’s base security force. Although often referred to as a “stand down,” it was not. True, soldiers performing this mission had an opportunity to shower and change uniforms far more frequently than they would’ve had they been in the boonies. And, unlike with duty in the boonies, they had hot meals, clubs, and movies and could occasionally make a run on An Khe’s ville.
However, these soldiers were responsible for all facets of Camp Radcliff’s defense, including manning its vast perimeter and patroling its “doughnut ring.” (The doughnut ring was essentially a no-fire zone surrounding the entire camp several kilometers beyond its outer defensive perimeter. Within this ring base security forces could patrol and ambush freely, day and night, confident they would not become accidental casualties of friendly artillery fire. It was a good idea and, inasmuch as Camp Radcliff was never attacked in force, obviously worked.
In addition to these defensive responsibilities, the base security battalion underwent an intense refit-retrain program during its short stay at Radcliff. In sum, the battalion’s soldiers stayed busy.
Before they sallied forth to again battle the North Vietnamese in Binh Dinh Province, I had an opportunity to meet most of the battalion’s officers and key NCO’s and many of their soldiers, or “snuffies,” as they were then called. Collectively, they possessed a phenomenally upbeat, can’t-lose attitude toward the war and the enemy they fought and well they should. In the two years since so soundly defeating North Vietnam’s finest in the Ia Drang Valley, barely two months after the division’s arrival in country, the First Air Cav had kicked Charlie’s ass whenever and wherever it found him. The problem now lay in finding him. North Vietnam’s military chief, General Vo Nguyen Giap, had made this task difficult since concluding, after assessing his losses in the la Drang campaign, that his forces couldn’t shove the American Army around with quite the same impunity they had enjoyed while fighting the French. Hence, he had placed his army on the tactical defensive, directing his commanders to avoid combat with U.S. ground forces in general and, we snuffies supposed, the First Air Cav in particular.
This can-do winning outlook was so ingrained in the minds of the division’s soldiers that it influenced virtually every facet of their daily existence. They quite simply believed they were better than their foe.
And of course they were. The account of a young Cav trooper’s first night in I Corps, after deploying there with his unit from Binh Dinh, is illustrative of this attitude. Supposedly, he sat down under a palm tree, in the black of night, on a defensive perimeter shared with the Marine Corps… and lit a long cigar. Seeing this abhorrent breach of light discipline, a Marine Corps officer ordered him to extinguish his cigar, quite naturally fearing it would draw enemy fire. In response, the young soldier, still sitting with the glowing cigar between his teeth, calmly replied, “Relax, Lieutenant, Charlie don’t fuck with the Cav!”
Granted, his quote will never go down in the annals of history alongside
“damn the torpedoes,” but, apocryphal or otherwise, it certainly embraced the division’s purview toward the
