Part VI: War story

By Temple Ligon
December 12, 2013

After our big bad day in the field near the Angel’s Wing along the Cambodian border on Sept. 5, 1969, when we walked into an ambush by what intelligence later called a regiment, our luck stayed down. Part of the problem was with our company’s leadership. CPT Jack Dempsey took charge soon after we lost our company commander on Sept. 5. We took a step down with Dempsey, and unfortunately we had to stay down for around two months while poor Dempsey maintained our nickname as Hard Luck Charlie, Second ‘Hounds.
 
Actually we were C/2/27 Wolfhounds, 25th Inf. Div., but the nickname stuck.
 
When our platoons went out on night ambush patrol, 81mm mortars were called in instead of artillery because of the tight proximity with the enemy. Our smallest artillery’s high explosive round, 105mm, was too big for most night ambush situations.
 
For reasons I can’t remember, we had a 60mm mortar, but we didn’t have a 60mm mortar set up at our fire support base.
 
And even though the 81mm mortars were smaller than our smallest artillery, the killing radius for the mortars was still too much to call in close. Many times the need was not for the high explosive rounds but the troops’ night positions needed illumination, chemical candles that popped out high in the night air and floated down under parachutes, keeping the ground illuminated while the firefight continued or while the kill zone was swept for any enemy still alive and for enemy equipment and documents, anything that could help intelligence.
 
If more illumination for longer periods was needed, then the 105mm howitzers could send out illumination rounds and just about light up the night sky. The problem with good illumination, however, was kind of like lines of sight in trout fishing. If you can see the trout, they can see you.
 
Rarely was a prisoner taken due to the risk and the exposure right after a night firefight. With the same logic understood by the enemy that a run-in with one of our squads or platoons meant the rest of our company was probably nearby, our ambush patrols would clean up the kill zone real quick and relocate as soon as possible for the rest of the night.
 
One of our platoon leaders, ILT Pete Ransom of Birmingham, Ala., managed to take his platoon and further advance the complete company’s reputation for hard luck by not doing what he said he was going to do.  
 
In early December 1969, as I best remember it, Ransom took his platoon out beyond the wire at FSB Harris on night ambush. His platoon was supposed to split in half for two separate ambushes, and I had my acetate-coated map marked with grease pencil exactly where to locate the two patrols for the night. If Ransom and his patrol needed artillery or mortar support or if the second patrol needed support, the tubes were already oriented for action.
 
Sometime around nine at night, we troops back at the fire support base saw and heard explosions from possibly about a thousand meters away where Ransom and his two ambush patrols should have been. From what we could gather, all the uproar looked and sounded like one spot, not two.
 
The enemy opened up with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and automatic weapons fire, unloading all they could for no more than a minute before they took off while Ransom began to pull together his counter-attack. He never got it together. Burdened by its combined killed and wounded, Ransom’s platoon didn’t have much left to fight.
 
Ransom’s troops were configured together in one position, not split in halves at two positions with split leadership, Ransom in charge of one patrol and his platoon sergeant in charge of the other. The full platoon huddled in one night position along a bamboo line, which made for an attractive target even though the enemy was fewer in total numbers. The enemy shot its RPGs a little overhead, striking the bamboo and exploding as an airburst about five feet in the air. At that height the RPGs’ delivery of shell fragments was at its peak effectiveness over the entire platoon.
 
Ransom called for illumination and for medivac extraction. What was left of his platoon returned that night to FSB Harris.
 
Dempsey was relieved of his command the next day. Ransom stayed with us.
 
Soon after Christmas 1969 we moved to FSB Kotrc. After an attack by 120mm mortars with delay fuses, which was covered in Part III, we increased our night ambush patrols along the Cambodian border with the help of an ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) infantry company. Most patrols were with the ARVN troops, and most mixed patrols were half-and-half, something about President Nixon’s Vietnamization program.
 
Soon after he was inaugurated in January 1969, Nixon initiated the withdrawal and began a big push for Vietnamization. So when I arrived in South Vietnam in August 1969, even though we still had something like a half-million troops in South Vietnam, we were already shutting down. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel, as it were.
 
The big problem for us junior officers, the guys who directly led the troops, was a running discussion. Why are we going on ambush patrol tonight? I heard President Nixon. Hell, we’re outa here.
 
My running discussions were with just people, my radio telephone operator and my recon sergeant. Ransom, a first lieutenant and a platoon leader, had many more running discussions than my two, and they all wanted to know why they still had to go out.
 
No one wanted to be the last to take a hit in South Vietnam.
 
One year after Nixon’s withdrawal and Vietnamization speeches began, January 1970, Ransom went out with his platoon and an ARVN platoon. They were to set up ambushes roughly halfway between FSB Kotrc and the Cambodian border. Kotrc was a little more than a mile from the Cambodian border.
 
We had a 20′-high lookout tower in the middle of Kotrc, and as explained in Part III, the damn tower was a great aiming point for far-off enemy mortar crews. But it was also our great advantage as a lookout platform where we had set up a super-starlight scope for night vigilance.
 
The starlight scope was the beginning of what we now see at the movies where the night stalkers have on night goggles, giving the wearers a night vision somewhat like a green television screen. Our smallest starlight scope, maybe a 2 diameter front lens, could be attached to the top of an M16 rifle, the same way a telescopic sight could fit.
 
The super-starlight scope and its tripod we put on top of our lookout tower platform had a front lens with a diameter of about a foot, if I remember that right after more than 40 years. Anyway, our super-starlight scope really was super. We could see just about anything out there, all with a green tint.
 
So back to that night in late January 1970 when Ransom was developing work relations and mutual trust with our South Vietnamese brethren. As he and his ARVN counterpart left the wire with their two platoons, I was in my bunker, having done my job in marking my maps and calling the numbers and locations to the mortar crew and to the artillery battery’s fire direction team.
 
Maybe just short of an hour after our integrated platoons left for their night ambush positions, I climbed the lookout tower to look into the super-starlight scope for no other reason than I wanted to. I scanned in all directions, just taking measure of the night air and activity until I saw movement about halfway between us and the Cambodian border. They were not walking away, but they were not coming towards us, either. Must be Ransom, I thought.
 
I studied my map and I stared into the super-starlight scope to be certain of my directions and distances. I then came up with a subject location within 10 meters, an accurate spot as I was the master map reader for the company.
 
I got Ransom on the radio, and I asked him where he was because I was looking at movement, a shuffling of maybe as many as a company. Ransom asked if he could get back with me in a minute or two since he was still laying out everybody’s ambush configuration. Fine, I said, but hurry it up.
 
Ransom radioed back to ask me what were the coordinates of what I was looking at. I gave him the coordinates, and he assured me he was nowhere near that. I told him to be sure because I was about to call in the mortars on top of the movement. Ransom said go ahead.
 
I told the mortars to go ahead.
 
After the first explosion, Ransom yelled with a voice that could probably be heard inside the wire without a radio. Cease fire! Cease fire! GD it! CEASE FIRE!!!
 
I conveyed all that to the mortar crew. We killed two South Vietnamese soldiers, and we had another half-dozen wounded between the Vietnamese and the Americans.
 
I was upset. The higher-ups were all upset. Battalion higher-ups flew out the next day for an inquiry. Ransom had to go.

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