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First-Person Accounts |
The following first-person account of the "Four Days That Can't Be Forgotten" comes from the hometown newpaper of Sgt. John A Quatroke, who joined Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment in October, 1967. His story was written as a memorial to some of the men who were killed in action while he was in the field.
Four Days That Can’t Be Forgotten
By John A. Quatroke
At the McHenry County Government Center stands a memorial
dedicated to the memory of the men who gave their lives for their country in
Vietnam.
One name on
the memorial is that of Ernesto Gallardo, whose name also is found on the
Washington, D.C. Vietnam Memorial on panel 46 west, line 59.
Who was
this person, Ernesto?
I met him
in January 1968 when he and Robert Rivers came into our unit, 2 Battalion, 14th
Infantry, B Co., 1st Platoon, 3rd Squad, 25th
Infantry Division. As the
sergeant sized these men up, he picked Rivers, a 6-foot-3, 19-year-old
weighing over 200 pounds, for ammunition bearer for 1st squad, and
Ernie, a 5-foot-9 24-year-old at 165 pounds, for my machine gun team.
At first
Ernie’s attitude and mine didn’t match.
He was upset about being drafted after he had begun his career and
about being put in with a bunch of 19- and 20-year-olds.
In looking
back, I realize that I, too, resented taking orders from those younger than
me. After all of these years, I
understand his viewpoint much better now.
Once we
settled in, I learned that Ernie had grown up in Union, near my hometown of
Algonquin. He talked at great
length about being Mexican American and having a hard time being accepted by
the locals.
We talked
about sports in high school. Ernie
had been quarterback on the football team at Marengo High School in the same
county where I attended Marian Central in Woodstock (1965). Ernie and I had some mutual friends.
Our job
called for close and unwavering support for each other.
Our daily activities in ‘Nam were patrolling and searching for the
enemy.
At night,
we either were on guard duty on the perimeter or were out on ambush.
Guard duty meant you slept for two hours and were on guard duty for one
hour – after you already had patrolled all day in 90-degree heat carrying an
average load of 70 pounds or more.
On ambush,
you were out of the main perimeter, hoping and praying you would not make
contact with the enemy because you had limited firepower and were part of a
small group.
As I look
back, we were just a trip wire to warn the main body if we had enemy movement
in our zone.
Four dates
stand out in my memory – March 24, and 26, May 17, and Aug. 29, 1968.
March 24, 1968
On March 24 my unit was put on a chopper and flown to the edge of a
village in Trang Bang. We got on
the line and moved out about 300 meters.
Suddenly we
received fire from the village. The
first man killed in my unit was Stephen Halstead from Bainbridge, Ga.
Ernie and I were about 50 meters from his position.
We deployed our weapon, fired it for about two hours, using about 10
boxes of ammunition.
The barrel
of the M-60 turned red and the gun jammed.
I turned to Ernie and said, “Give me your cleaning rod,” which he
always carried on the side of his helmet.
One of them was bent into a U-shape.
I cursed
and said to him, “Why are you carrying a bent rod with you?”
He explained that the rod was bent by a bullet that had struck the rod
while he was wearing the helmet. I
saw the copper from the bullet on the bent portion of the rod.
That was
one of many close calls.
On March 25
we swept what was left of the village. The
enemy suffered heavy losses. Our
platoon had 26 members on the 24th, but on the morning of the 25th,
we had 11, four of whom had come in after the battle.
Late in the
afternoon, word came that they wanted what was left of us to make a line and
assault the village. We formed up
and made a mad dash of about 50 yards to the next rice paddy dike.
I looked down the line and saw about 30 soldiers lying behind the dike.
Ernie and I
were next to the commanding officer. He
wanted us to put up a wall of fire with our M-60. Ernie informed our CO that our gun was out of commission,
that he had four guns brought up on line early in the day, and we were the
only team still with him. The
only fire we could put up was M-16 and .45 –caliber pistol.
The brigade
commander had us disengaged, and A Company, with the support of two tanks and
four armored personnel carriers took our position. They made an assault and were repulsed with many casualties,
including the loss of one tank and two APC’s.
March 26, 1968
On the morning of the 26th, I talked with Barton Carey from
Kansas. He asked how we kept from
getting hit. I told him, “Once
they zero in on you, you keep your head down.”
Carey said he couldn’t do that because he had to see what was going
on.
At about 11
a.m. a chopper came in to pick us up. I
had a bad feeling about this. When
the chopper began to land next to the village, I knew I had been right.
A North
Vietnamese regiment was in the village. They
hurried out of huts to prepare their fighting positions.
The choppers landed. We
disembarked and got behind a dike. We
were scattered.
Ernie and
Carey were behind a dike to my rear. I
was about 25 meters from the enemy; Ernie and Carey, about 35 meters.
They deployed their M-60 over the dike and discharged the magazine.
All hell broke loose over me, so I lay there for eight hours.
I remember
eating a can of peaches my mother sent me.
I shared that place with John Campos.
Night fell on us, and we found the rest of the company.
That night
you could read a newspaper so much fireworks were going on.
About 3 in the morning, a group of 12 of us went up to retrieve our
killed in action.
I helped
put Carey on a poncho and brought him back into our lines.
After March
26, our unit was combat ineffective. We
received many replacements. Ernie
was a fine team leader. My friend
Roy Tweed of DeKalb was squad leader, and I was the other team leader.
Our morale was back up, and we began to work as a team.
May 17, 1968
On May 17 we were on a sweep close to the Saigon River.
Our platoon was point. A
chopper dropped a smoke grenade that spooked a VC soldier hidden in a spider
hole. He opened up with his AK-47
on the point – Ernie, Roy and a boy from Michigan named Smith.
Smith was
the most seriously wounded. Roy
was hit in the back while he was throwing grenades.
Ernie’s weapon, an M-79, was totally removed from its stock.
When I saw Ernie, he was holding his mechanism.
He looked as if he was in shock. Then
Roy walked out. I thought he was
all right, but he said he got hit in the back.
Smith was carried out on a poncho.
All three got dusted off (picked up by a chopper).
We engaged
the enemy and lost two more new men. Davis
from Maryland and Kenneth Berrier from North Carolina, who had been manning
the M-60.
We pulled
back about a half mile. Thousand-pound
bombs were dropped on the enemy position.
The bombs falling from the aircraft looked like boxcars.
We formed
up and made one of those insane on-line assaults, lost another man, and were
withdrawn from the field. They
brought in another Company from our battalion, but they had as little success
as we did.
The next
day, they swept the area and found a bunker complex and a .51 caliber
anti-aircraft weapon.
August 29, 1968
From June and July and early August, we made little contact with the enemy.
We suffered most of our casualties on booby traps.
Ernie being one of the casualties.
He spent time in the hospital and went on his R and R to Japan in early
August.
A rule
states that after a soldier has earned three purple hearts, he would get a job
off the field in the rear of the action.
Like most unwritten agreements, headquarters waived it.
They could not keep up the supply of men to the infantry, especially
experienced personnel.
So, Ernie
was returned to the field for the third time.
It was too short a stay.
He came out
on a resupply chopper. The
position we were in wasn’t right. I
could sense it from the mood of the villagers.
Ernie and I
ate our dinner together. He was
excited about his trip to Tokyo. He
told me in detail about his experience there.
About dusk,
a few VC close to our position opened up with their AK.
No one returned fire, which was odd.
This probably saved us some early casualties.
One of the
VC had a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a weapon primarily used to knock
out armored vehicles. Because we
didn’t fire, they had no good target to use their weapon on.
Things
settled down. We made a short
sweep in front of our position and dug a foxhole that could accommodate three
people for sleeping. The position
was manned by the platoon leader. There
were seven of us.
The
lieutenant didn’t like sleeping in a hole, so he set up about 20 feet from
the foxhole. Ernie and Larry
Franz took first guard duty. The
platoon sergeant picked a position about 50 feet behind the foxhole in a small
rice paddy dike. Campos,
Jorgensen and I slept in the foxhole.
About 15
minutes after we got settled in, we came under a mortar attack.
The first round landed about 2 feet from the foxhole.
Larry Franz’s lifeless body fell into the foxhole on top of me.
I could hear Ernie and the lieutenant calling for help.
It seemed
like a lifetime before I could get the courage to go to Ernie and give him
comfort. To this day, I can’t
understand why he didn’t die when the round hit him because he was only
inches from it.
We got
Ernie on a poncho. We carried him
over to the dust-off area.
Someone
came to help and laid Ernie’s arms on his chest. Ernie noticed that most of his hand was missing.
Immediately, he went into shock.
As I held
him in my arms, I felt his life slip away and I knew I wouldn’t see him
again.