27 Nov 2023
SOME THOUGHTS FROM VIETNAM….JOHN LALLIS ‘69
FIRST LIEUTENANT U.S. ARMY ARTILLERY - ROTC
January - October - 1971 time in country…
DALAT - Central Highlands…
“A Lesson” - stationed on an artillery battery up on a hill…what used to be a French farm. Captains and Lieutenants bunked in an old farmhouse. Couple days after I got there we were all talking around 12:30 AM when the phone went off…one of the guys grabbed it and repeated the word “incoming” They all had places to go, but I didn’t. Quiet as hell, so I decided to go out onto somewhat of a porch overlooking the downward slope of the base to see if I could figure out what was going on. We had ARVN troops on the base as well, and out of the black stillness I heard someone speaking Vietnamese. Something in my brain
literally snapped, and an “unnecessary” but all too real fear gripped the back of my neck. What if the VC had infiltrated us, and it was they speaking. I chambered a round in my .45 and
Said to myself that if anyone would start walking up the incline towards me and it wasn’t an American, I would shoot him. thoughts of Lt. Calley and MyLai ran through my mind. Luckily, no one came my way, and things were over in about 15 minutes or so…I think.
I have always kept this memory with me, and anytime I hear about a cop shooting someone I am reminded of this situation, where I wasn’t in ANY danger, but thought I was….fear can literally grip your thoughts and change everything…
PHU BAI - near Eagle Bowl and the DMZ.
One of the big things among the guys I knew was counting down from 365(days) till you were “short” and then your tour was over. When you got to 99 you were a “Two Digit Midget” and when you got to “9” well, you could taste going home. Everyone’s biggest fear was that something would happen when you were almost done.
I had less than a week to go when the CO called me into his office and told me he was putting me in command of a small
convoy taking munitions and supplies out to one of the fire bases.
It was Sunday night, dark as hell, about twenty miles out and then
back with five vehicles and a fifty caliber machine gun as our
protection. Couldn’t see because of the tall grass on the side of the road. At this point in my tour I was no longer frightened, just
angry that I was so close….Of course, out and back with no
incident, but you can never take anything for granted.
LET ME SAY THIS - I was lucky where I was , and “when” I was.
Lot of guys from Dartmouth, and even more from my high school
went and never came back. Think about them every day.,,,
SOME LIGHTER MOMENTS…
We had a weapon on the base in Dalat called a “DUSTER.” It looked like a mini tank, but it rapid fired large projectiles almost like a machine gun. One night around one in the morning we heard four or five bursts from it, but there was no notification of
trouble. I ran into the NCO in charge the next morning, and I asked him what was going on.
He said that they had heard someone walking near the perimeter, and they put some rounds out to clear it up.
“Didn’t you try to find out who it was first?” I asked somewhat incredulously.
His answer in cemented in my memory:
“Whoever it was they had no business being out there at
one o’clock in the morning!”
—----------------
When I was in Phan Thiet(along the coast) I was in charge of
five guys in the command control center, and our main job was to
coordinate three firing batteries with the Vietnamese infantry who had by this time taken over most of the ground war. All the firing had to go through us to be cleared and then given the go ahead.
There was also a lot of red tape that had to be taken care of.
So one morning I went through this long list of information that was needed from A Battery, and then I was about to ring up B
Battery when my driver, SP4 Anthony Padula looked over at me…
“Wait, you need the same information from B and C Battery that you just asked A Battery, and you’re going to call each of them separately? Didn’t it dawn on you to just call them all at once?”
Of course he was right, and I looked over at him with the
most deservedly dumb expression imaginable.
He shook his head and grinned…”How did you ever make
Lieutenant?”
How indeed….!!