No. 1 GUN

Most war stories are about soldiers and battles. Rarely do we examine war through the unique bond between a man and his weapon—in this case the M60 machine gun. I was drafted on Nov. 10, 1965, and assigned to the 4th Infantry Division. I traveled to Fort Lewis, Washington, and trained there for 10 months before deploying to Vietnam as specialist 4. At Fort Lewis, every recruit learned to operate various weapons. To my surprise, I qualified as an expert with the M60 machine gun, nicknamed “the pig” because of the size, weight and sound of the weapon.

At that time, an infantry company consisted of about 150 men. Each company had eight M60s. The machine gun was also mounted in the UH-1 Huey helicopter and other Army aircraft. It weighed 24 pounds, was 43.5 inches long and had bipod legs that folded down to stabilize the weapon when firing from a prone position. The gas-operated, belt-fed gun had a maximum rate of fire of 550-650 rounds per minute.

In the hands of a well-trained machine gunner, the M60 was a devastating weapon—so feared by our opponents that they usually aimed their first shots at the machine gunners, who were often in positions exposed to enemy fire. We were told in training that the life expectancy of a machine gunner was about seven seconds from the moment the first round was fired.

When I was assigned to the M60 in advanced individual training, I decided that if I had to be a gunner I would learn everything there was to know about the weapon. Soon I could take the gun apart and put it back together in the dark. To keep busy on the boat ride to Vietnam, my unit—Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment—held competitions where we took the gun