Getting Wired: The Alive and Wired Series, #1

By T. Daniel Mason

As a teenage boy in the Sunshine State in the 1960s, Ron Tucker was living the good life. An avid surfer who excelled at all high school sports, including girls, Ron spent his days and nights living a young man's dream. But when he signed up for the draft in 1971, as expected, his life took a wide turn into the unknown future of a young soldier during the war in Vietnam.

From his senior year in high school, his relationship with his high school sweetheart to graduation day, basic training, and beyond, Ron sees the reality of adulthood coming at him at the speed of a giant wave. However, growing up proves to be the hardest wave to ride. It's unpredictable and filled with all types of characters and experiences that prove there's much more than just a lot of fish in the sea.

This story follows Ron on his journey from home, to basic training, to realizing his sweetheart may not be who he thought she was. Ron explores new friendships and a whole world beyond the beaches of Florida. One thing he learns fast; is that while riding that wave of life, sometimes, you're going to wipe out, but once in a while, you ride that wave all the way to the beach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T. Daniel Mason
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215438886

Book preview

Getting Wired

The Alive and Wired Series Book I

T. Daniel Mason

Copyright © 2023 T. Daniel Mason

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 9798386263485

ISBN-10: 1477123456

Cover design by: Kasun2050

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to family and friends, new and old, who listened to most of these stories many times over the years.

And especially to all those service members who had no input or control over what their significant other was doing while they were away performing their duties for their country.

Having been there, I assure you the pain was uncomfortable.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Preface

Prologue

Part I: Getting to Know Him

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Part II: Basic Training, Army Style

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Part III: (A) The Junior Class

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part: III: (B) Being The Senior Class Now

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Part IV: (A) Thirty-Day Leave, R&R

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part IV: (B) Back to Ft. Bliss

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part V: That Long Flight to the Other Side of the Globe!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

About The Author

Introduction

Inside this book, you will read an interesting story about a young Army soldier but only a fraction or segment of time in this spirited kid’s life that might surprise readers of all ages. This writer takes you straight into the Vietnam War from the teenager’s High School to PVT Ronald L. Tucker’s Basic Training and AIT (Advanced Individual Training). You’ll follow him from his initial duty in that country to his later assignments, which included many close encounters with the enemy in his sights and his Army brothers in theirs.

You’ll read of the willingness of this young teenage soldier to listen to the advice of his older brother, uncles, friends, instructors, and teammates in the field and his willingness to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible from those brave men who have been there and done that. How this helped him was vital. This was the beginning of an education you never graduate from; not even when you leave the NAM and begin a new life back in the world, you can only hope to survive it.

As the story unfolds, PVT Tucker begins his transformation from an inexperienced young lad into manhood while at the same time becoming a soldier who will gain multiple and distinct skills. These same unique skills will later give him and his teammates, whom each have their own set of talents, a better than average chance to survive the winding down of, and to the ending of the War in Vietnam; the one True School of Hard Knocks of the sixties and seventies.

Pick a spot among the countless locations around Southeast Asia where so many unnamed battles were fought, not only on the battlefield itself but in the hearts and minds of the brave men and women who were there. They were the ones who physically participated in those same battles. Then fit this story in along with them.

To this very day, some still fight that battle!

We always need to keep them in our daily prayers.

CAUTION; YOU are now secretly entering a young man’s life. A life in which he is determined cannot and will not end up in Arlington, Virginia, or any other National Cemetery on their ultimate roll call for the deceased, before his time.

Ronald L. Tucker’s late teenage and early twenty-year-old life is exposed throughout this book. He has his share of struggles and a little fun, with many happy and some not-so-blissful adventures along the way—his personal life’s path changes in several directions during this snapshot of time in his early life. It is an emotional ride of the highest of highs and lowest of lows, including the somewhat mundane grey areas of each character that this story will introduce.

Soon after he left for Basic Training, his girl back home decided not to write him. She didn’t even send him the Dear John letter either. His first thoughts were of the infamous Jodi he had just learned about. Just following that soap opera alone is worth the read. He will meet two other girls during this same time period, females that truly are both welcome ventures into his life, to say the least. Then, later, they assist him in his struggles to maintain his sanity at many different points. One of those two women he had a significant influence on and was one herself for Ron Tucker. All these ladies are his early love stories. Love in life and then The Love for Life interact throughout this book.

Then you learn how Sgt. Ron Tucker somehow maintains his focus by showing the will to survive in the end ultimately. This will to live came even after losing his two closest Army buddies in their service for our country. One, who was dying in his arms, looking at Ron, desperately gasping for his last breath of life, while the other perished differently. Then while revealing how this soldier (Tucker) and his remaining teammates managed to carry all their wounded and dead from an unimportant and definitely luckless skirmish that went the wrong way, only to make their last stand a few hours and several klicks later with a much larger force and then praying that their distress calls would or could just please be heard on anybody’s radio somewhere out there. That help would have to come to them, or it would be over. The enemy could see by their valiant actions that these few had not completely lost all hope or their faith in God above.

This story is based on specific facts and first and second hand accounts of some or particular events, with even a few hear-says (your basic BS) scattered throughout. Some areas are down-played, as well as other parts, where some liberties, along with extra longitude and latitudes, have been taken to enhance and give variety to some other various portions of the book purely for entertainment, but only to keep the story flowing in its proper manner—it is a novel. The writer’s goal was, and is, to transport readers of all ages back into the Vietnam Era of the late 1960s and early 1970s with flashbacks and time capsules of related events that will pertain to this Nostalgic Period, including a lot of the music. You will also find some related and unrelated Historical facts and trivia scattered and sprinkled throughout as basic reminders for the same reason.

Preface

Some time back, my wife, kids, grandkids, and I were at her brother’s house for a pool party. Both my brother-in-law and his wife had been in the Air Force for numerous years. His wife retired early, but he finished twenty-two years (most of them in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base), and then they moved close to us in Tennessee. At this party, I was goaded into showing them how I was once a springboard diver back in school when I was much younger. During these dives at the party, I became braver and bolder, with each dive being more impressive and difficult. It was leading up to my finale. A dive that was a make or break at an event when you needed to score those extra points to catch up in a competition. This particular dive was a one-and-a-half-back flip with a twist from a low diving board. When done right, it is a beautiful thing. I did not calculate my age, my weight (192 lbs.) at this time in my life, or all those miles that were now affecting my body.

The drums were rolling. Knowing I would need the extra height to get my fat butt airborne enough to attempt this feat, I started my preparation with a heightened awareness. On the second bounce of the non-competition and non-adjustable diving board for spring, which should have given me enough lift to become airborne enough for the dive, my left ankle collapsed. The unexpected fall into the pool did not have the grace I or anyone else had anticipated. My family of fans could not and did not conceive what they had just witnessed. They were all laughing at me when I broke the water’s surface at the pool’s edge with a painful grimace on my face. My first words were, I need help! They immediately came to my aide yet still smiling but in bewilderment of my real need, for I, like most proud older men, never ask for help unless it’s absolutely necessary, ever. As they pulled me from the water, my ankle was out of my control. In fact, anxiety was beginning to creep in. It was just dangling there and swelling to melon size almost immediately. My day of grandeur and fame was over before it had begun. I iced the ankle down, and a short time later, the feeling of life had come back, but I was left with the nagging pain of a severe toothache or worse, much like that costly trip to the Dentist taking care of it does.

After agonizing for two days with this pain, I gave in and went to our family doctor. He examined my busted ankle and sent me to his Orthopedic Surgeon buddy, who saw me the same day. This doctor took another X-Ray but did not like how the swelling had not gone down after several days of icing. He then scheduled an ultra-sound. I did this at the end of the same week, and there was a blood clot behind the calf muscle above the injured ankle. I then returned to my original doctor, who gave me prescriptions for several meds, including taking ten days of Lovenox shots (Heparin) in the stomach twice a day. I quickly discovered that this would not be a pleasant experience. I did half the first shot by myself, then asked my wife to finish it for me and to continue with her aide for the duration, which she agreed to. She might even have enjoyed seeing me in duress, laughing for her getting some payback on this old fart. I immediately gained a greater appreciation for all the diabetics and other shot-takers who do this daily.

At her suggestion, we went up to the mountains the next day for some much-needed relief from my angst after that first shot of the day. The third morning there, soon after she had given the morning shot into my now bruised pincushion of a stomach, I went out onto the deck to sulk awhile and rub my multicolored bruised belly where she couldn’t see me. She brought coffee and my laptop as I gazed at Ole Smoky, Mt. Le Conte, the highest and most recognizable mountain with its peaks inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the Tennessee side. I had not been on the internet to surf or check my e-mail since this fiasco had happened. One thing I noticed was that my skin had become extremely sensitive. It seemed like every scar on my body, old or recent, was beginning to itch. Some of my bad dreams came back but were not as surreal as they once were. Maybe it was from the medicine, or finally, the hour to face that time in my life in a new way.

I turned the laptop on and signed in. After checking what seemed like a hundred or so e-mails and forwards, admittedly, I was fast losing interest but marched on. While continuing to read and scroll, I came to a specific e-mail I want to share with you readers in a moment. A few months later and back in the mountains, I showed this e-mail to my wife and youngest daughter first, then to my stepson. When the oldest daughter and her family came to town for a visit, I felt compelled to show it to her too. Later that same day, we all were sitting in front of the fireplace. My oldest daughter wanted her husband, who is somewhat of a writer who has been published, to have a chance to look over the e-mail. After reading the article, it seemed as though he, too, became much like the others trying to pull together their thoughts. My son-in-law said, Dad, this sounds like you. Maybe someday you might tell us some stories about your time in the service or write something down as it comes back to you. They were all so sincere and genuinely kind with their words to me at that moment, not knowing what really to say because of the effect the argots from the e-mail still showed on my face and in my eyes. We all sat there in silence for a while, simply gazing into the fireplace as the wood snapped, crackled, and popped as we watched the flames dance to their own rhythm.

A few days after the company returned to their homes, I called my Veteran Brother-in-Law from where I had injured the ankle. I told him about the e-mail and sent it to him. He called me back, and we talked for a while. It was during this conversation that I finally decided to write something about the war, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. He said he would help in any way he could by volunteering his services as my son-in-law did. I took him up on that, but he didn’t realize he was being moved from auto to the speed dial on my phone. We had more than one conversation about the loneliness in the military that one often feels. Lenny had spent many years in the missile silos out west and knew how the loneliness, boredom, and excitement of eminent response and danger affect military veterans. He never minded my calls and always found references for me when needed. These kinds of talks, brother to brother, were far better than doctors or medicines can do for some veterans.       

And that is how this opus began more than a few years ago.

Here is that same e-mail that was shared with me, and then later I shared with my family on that cool mid-October day at the cabin.

This is a Powerful E-Mail sent from [e-mail] to their customer base. I wanted to introduce it into this book the same way it was sent to me for personal reasons, as well as hoping to launch all readers into a different state of mind as it did my family and me. I am also sharing it to help various readers to remember or think of what it was like being alive and physically active from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s during such an emotional time of change and unrest in this country’s history.

This same e-mail also mirrors the life story of many veterans, particularly the main character in this book, as he describes his life just before, during, and after his time in the Nam while featuring this three-year peek into a window of this young man’s life.

The e-mail went like this:

Are you a Nam Vet…can you relate?

This letter was sent to us by one of our customers…we can relate, and I know you Nam customers can relate as well. Take time to read it, and you’ll realize that you could have written this letter as well.

A couple of years ago, someone asked me if I still thought about Vietnam. I nearly laughed in their face. How do you stop thinking about it?

Every day for the last forty years, I wake up with it and go to bed with it. But this is what I said. Yeah, I think about it. I can’t quit thinking about it. I never will. But I’ve also learned to live with it. I’m comfortable with the memories. I’ve learned to stop trying to forget and learned instead to embrace it. It just doesn’t scare me anymore.

A psychologist once told me that NOT being affected by the experience over there would be abnormal. When he told me that, it was like he’d just given me a pardon. It was as if he said, Go ahead and feel something about the place, Bob. It ain’t going nowhere. You’re gonna wear it for the rest of your life. Might as well get to know it.

A lot of my brothers haven’t been so lucky. For them, the memories are too painful, and their sense of loss too great. My sister told me of a friend she has whose husband was in Nam. She asked this guy when he was there.

Here’s what he said, Just last night. It took my sister a while to figure out what he was talking about. JUST LAST NIGHT. Yeah, I was in the Nam. When? Just Last Night. During sex with my wife. And on my way to work this morning. Over my lunch hour. Yeah, I was there.

My sister says I’m not the same brother that went to Vietnam. My wife says I won’t let people get close to me, not even her. They are probably both right.

Ask a Vet about making friends in Nam. It was risky. Why? Because we were in the business of death, and death was with us all the time. It wasn’t the death of If I die before I wake. This was the real thing. The kind where boys screamed for their mothers. The kind that lingers in your mind and becomes more real each time you cheat it. You don’t want to make a lot of friends when the possibility of dying is that real, that close. When you do, friends become a liability.

A guy named Bob Flanigan was my friend. Bob Flanigan Is dead. I put him in a body bag one sunny day, April 29, 1969. We’d been talking, only a few minutes before he was shot, about what we were going to do when we got back to the world. Now, this was a guy who had come in country the same time as myself. A guy who was loveable and generous. He had blue eyes and sandy blonde hair.

When he talked, it was with a soft drawl. Flanigan was a hick, and he knew it. That was part of his charm. He didn’t care. Man, I loved this guy like the brother I never had. But I screwed up. I got too close to him. Maybe I didn’t know any better. But I broke one of the unwritten rules of war.

DON’T GET CLOSE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE GOING TO DIE. Sometimes you can’t help it.

You hear vets use the term buddy when they refer to a guy they spent the war with. Me and this buddy of mine….

Friend sounds too intimate, doesn’t it? Friend calls up images of being close. If he’s a friend, then you are going to be hurt if he dies, and war hurts enough without adding to the pain. Get close; get hurt. It’s as simple as that.

In war, you learn to keep people at that distance my wife talks about. You become so good at it that twenty years after the war, you still do it without thinking. You won’t allow yourself to be vulnerable again.

My wife knows two people that can get into the soft spots inside me. My daughters. I know it probably bothers her that they can do this. It’s not that I don’t love my wife. I do. She’s put up with a lot from me. She’ll tell you that when she signed on, for better or worse, she had no idea there was going to be so much of the latter. But with my daughters it’s different.

My girls are mine. They’ll always be my kids. Not my marriage, not distance, not even death can change that. There are some things on this earth that can never be taken away from me. I belong to them. Nothing can change that.

I can have an ex-wife, but my girls can never have an ex-father. There’s the difference.

I can still see the faces, though they all seem to have the same eyes.

When I think of us, I always see a line of dirty grunts sitting on a patty dike (in a rice field). We’re caught in the first grey silver between darkness and light. That first moment when we know we’ve survived another night and the business of staying alive for one more day is about to begin. There was so much hope in that brief space of time. It’s what we used to pray for. One more day, God. One more day.

And I can hear our conversations as if they’d only just been spoken. I still hear how we sounded, the hard, cynical jokes, and our morbid sense of humor. We were scared to death of dying and trying our best not to show it.

I recall the smells too. Like the way cordite hangs in the air after a firefight. Or the pungent odor of rice patty mud. So different from the black dirt of Iowa. The mud of Nam smells ancient, somehow. Like it’s always been there. And I’ll never forget the way blood smells, sticky and drying on my hands. I spent a long night like that once. That memory isn’t going anywhere.

I remember how the night jungle appears dreamlike as the pilot of a Cessna buzzes overhead, dropping parachute flares until morning. That artificial sun would flicker and make shadows run through the jungle. It was worse than not being able to see what was out there sometimes. I remember once looking at the man next to me as a flare floated overhead. The shadows around his eyes were so deep that it looked like his eyes were gone. I reached over and touched him on the arm. Without looking at me he touched my hand. I know man. I know. That’s what he said. It was a human moment. Two guys a long way from home and scared shitless.

I know man And at that moment he did.

God, I loved those guys. I hurt every time one of them died. We all did. Despite our posturing. Despite our desire to stay disconnected, we couldn’t help ourselves. I know why Tim O’Brian writes his stories. I know what gives Bruce Weigle the words to create poems so honest I cry at their horrible beauty. It’s love. Love for those guys we shared the experience with.

We did our jobs like good soldiers, and we tried our best not to become as hard as our surroundings. We touched each other and said, I know. Like a mother holding a child in the middle of a nightmare, It’s going to be all right. We tried not to lose touch with our humanity. We tried to walk that line. To be the good guys our parents had raised, and not to give into that unnamed thing we knew was inside us all.

You want to know what frightening is? It’s a nineteen-year-old boy who’s had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It’s a boy who, despite all he’s been taught, knows that he likes it. It’s a nineteen-year-old who’s just lost a friend, and is angry and scared and, determined that, Some *@#*s gonna pay. To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling.

As I write this, I have a picture in front of me. It’s of two young men. On their laps are tablets. One is smoking a cigarette. Both stare without expression at the camera. They’re writing letters. Staying in touch with places they would rather be. Places and people they hope to see again.

The picture shares space in a frame with one of my wife. She doesn’t mind. She knows she’s been included in special company. She knows I’ll always love those guys who shared that part of my life, a part she never can. And she understands how I feel about the ones I know are out there yet. The ones who still answer the question, When were you in Vietnam?

Hey, man. I was there just last night.

So was I.

Bill

LZ NAM

www.lznam.com

Prologue

Son of A Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield, 1968

Ron solemnly admitted, "I was fighting for my life in a country not many in the western or modern world had ever heard of until the 1960s, in a war, which one could say was less popular than ants or other insects and critters at a Sunday picnic. This was when he discovered that music could have the power to save his life. Ron began to learn how these mystical experiences could happen in his Basic Training class when he met a guy named Daryl R. Lynch. This cat was just another raw recruit from Detroit, Michigan, who had volunteered to be a part of Uncle Sam's modern-day Army. But he would leave such an uncanny yet lively impression on Ron and several others that he would never forget.

Lynch was a formidable-looking young man, standing well over the six-foot-tall mark and weighing in at an impressive 250 pounds with skin as smooth and dark as day-old coffee. To say he was intimidating to look at would most definitely be an understatement. But inside that impressive NFL-caliber body beat a pure heart filled with righteous soul. You see, Lynch's father was a Baptist Preacher and had wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. However, Daryl, the rebellious type, had other plans for his life. He had always wanted to be a Disc-Jockey—a DJ spinning those thirty-three and forty-five rpm vinyl records in some soulful radio station around or inside the heart of Motown. By the time Lynch had joined the Army, he already had his radio call name figured out. He would use his unique voice, which sounded like a cross between James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman, to become infamously known as Doctor Bop. Sometimes after lights out and all was quiet, Dr. Bop would sing a song or two. In a voice so controlled, one might have thought Ben E King or Barry White had stopped in for a visit, depending on the tune. Ron's personal favorite was Stand by Me. You could hear a pin drop upstairs when he sang it. His singing could put you all the way back home, listening to the ole radio beside your bed if you let it. Lynch was gifted, an artist who could control his emotions and northern accent like a seasoned professional, whether talking or singing.

For Private Lynch, it was much more than just a job. Being a disc jockey was a calling, a passion that would ultimately be his chosen career path. It wasn't enough for him to know every record's name and who sang the songs. He wanted his new buddies to know where the artists were from and some of their backgrounds too. That is, if his prayers trumped his fathers.

One intriguing day, he sold his convictions to everyone when he explained that songs could mark a period in the history of a person's life, such as where you were when a certain song was played and what you were doing at a particular moment. Time can be instantly recorded that way. For instance, the first time you were at a party and gave your first girl a real kiss, or when you got your first set of wheels, or maybe your first bonafide backseat fling. Ya Hoo! The guys bought into it then, and many song titles throughout this book are used to mark time in this manner. One example is One Tin Soldier, the theme song for the Billy Jack movies. A few say that Billy Jack inspired more guys to be better soldiers than will ever admit to it, especially the young man, who is the primary focus of this book.

Select recordings can evoke powerful memories by using the song titles, lyrics, or even the theme, including conjuring some of them back to life. Using the lyrics and/or rhythm of the music creates an authentic relationship to the time and place of each story throughout this book, which hopefully helps the reader find some foundation or insight into the thoughts and convictions of the book's characters. All the songs chosen are relevant, but none more so than The Rolling Stones, Can't Get No Satisfaction, in which retribution for the death of a buddy or the reasons and circumstances as to why they had perished could not be attained swiftly enough in the minds and hearts of those directly involved.

Music plays an integral part in everyone's life, whether they agree with it or not. And Ronald L. Tucker shares many songs with you by way of his buddy Daryl Lynch at just the right moments in this book.

Lynch believed, like Jimi Hendrix, who once said, Music is a Religion for me. They'll be music in the hereafter, too. As for me, I feel the same way.

Be you round or be you square; you'll have the sounds to rock a bear. Many thanks to you, DR-Bop, for that rare insight of yours. You were one cool and righteous dude from back in the day! Wishing you well, my man, wherever you may be.

Paperback Writer - The Beatles, 1966

Once again, Tucker and the guys were out on a convoy as escorts. They had just finished rebuilding the guns on yet another M-42 track earlier that morning with little help, I might add, from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, also known as the ARVN Marvins. The twin 40mm cannons were loaded and ready for action if needed, as were the two machine guns perched on either side of the big guns turret. All four tracks that day were ones the trainers had rebuilt, but with little to almost no help from the ARVNs when and if they got it.

This convoy was larger than most that they had been on before. It had two extra tracks, two additional Quad-50s (4 fifty caliber machine guns on a mount) mounted on the back of the staggered two and 1/2 (deuce and a half), and 5-ton trucks scattered throughout the convoy. There were also several jeeps with 50cal. machine guns mounted on them where the back seat should be (aka Rat Patrol style) like the ones that MPs patrolled around the bigger airports and problem areas within the country.

They were not much farther than ten miles out when the convoy started taking sniper fire, which wasn't unusual. A few rounds here and a few rounds there was the norm for most trips. Around the next bend in the road, the preverbal shit started hitting the fan. The hillside began to erupt with small arms fire directed at the covered trucks in the convoy. The local NVA spies must have told someone that there would be ammunitions traveling by ground today instead of by air.

Depending on which pair of captains or convoy commanders were sent out might determine whether or not the casualty list was high or low on any given day. There was always one American and one ARVN designated to lead each convoy. The wrong ones were sent out on this day from both militaries.

The captains received reports of fire coming from the left flank but stopped to listen to the full report. In doing this, the convoy almost came to a complete halt. Instantly recognizing this, the NVA mortar crews started to lob in their direction, not taking much time zeroing in on any one particular truck at first.

Ron Tucker's track was designated #2, and his track commander, Sgt. Lee, had been waiting for instructions to engage, except time had run out. The mortars began finding their targets, so he directed his track, which was covering the rear of the convoy at that time, to fire. Spec. 4 Ron Tucker, the track's gunner, brought his guns around. Now aiming at the flashes coming from the ridge line to his left, he began to fire. He saw more flashes and fired again. Spec. 4 Brown, the driver, had now pulled entirely out of line and was gaining speed to climb a small foothill just off the side of the highway. Smithy had already fired several belts of ammo through the 30-Cal. on his side of the turret with much accuracy onto the small arms fire.

Then Sergeant Lee, track #2's commander at the time, directed the counterattack while the captains finally took their heads out of their asses, got the convoy started around the next bend, and called for air support. The Quad-50s stayed with the convoy along with two Rat Patrol jeeps and the other tracks for their security.

The NVA were adamant this day that they would blow up at least one of the trucks carrying the ammo. They started firing small rockets along with their mortars and machine guns, which had joined in on their ambush. The trucks were being hit, but nothing had gone ablaze yet.

Dillon returned around the corner with track #1 with Wallace on the 40 mm's and Taylor on the 50-Cal.., just in time to see two RPGs finding their mark, exploding a five-ton truck into a ball of fire. Even before these explosions started, there was no hope for the two men in the truck's cab. Their TC (Track Commander) Staff Sergeant Holt was in contact with the TC from track #2 when the explosion happened, prompting him to say, Holy Shit, what was that? In a matter of seconds, the ammo that wasn't destroyed in the initial blast instantly began to cook off like a 4th of July celebration.

Brown had almost reached the foothill when an RPG rocked their track. Suddenly a machine gun was also zeroing in on them. During this time, Tucker had been giving the ridge line hell. He fired as fast as the two ARVN soldiers could load the cannons. The entire ridge and surrounding forest were on fire from the high explosive rounds. He had been so busy engaging with the enemy forces that he hadn't