His story:

While we worked, snipers would try to pick you off almost every five minutes. You could hear the rounds going ‘ptwing’. The beach head was actually, at one time, the largest ammo dump in the central highlands of Vietnam. We would unload 500 to 1,000 pound bombs and station them at the beachfront. Everything from LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks – ships with ramps to unload cargo and vehicles right onto the beach.) went on the beach. We had trucks, forklifts and cranes, but no warehouse. The beachfront was the warehouse.  The stuff from the pier was taken off the pier by the huge forklifts and driven down to the beach head. Basically, we had to get the ships unloaded and get the cargo off the pier or the pier would be jammed. At the beachhead, the trucks would come in to be loaded. We worked 24 /7. When they were short of drivers, we would have to drive the supplies into Tuy Hoa, where they had the warehouses. I would tell them I don’t have a license to drive a tractor-trailer, an 18 wheeler, but they had me drive anyway. You could have heard me 10 miles down the road with the gears, I’m grinding them away. They did not care. After several convoys were hit regularly they finally wised up and brought in the quad 50s (four .50-caliber machine guns) on a deuce and a half (2 ½ ton truck). A quad 50 is an anti-aircraft gun. At point blank zero range it just chopped off the heads of anything that came at you. I’ve seen that. I have pictures of the piles of bodies after we used it. Not one body had a head, it just took them off.

The enemy would fire mortar rounds at the tanker. The tanker would break off [disconnect] the lines and just go. The first mortar round hits they bust it (disconnect the pipeline) and they’re gone.

Battleship retaliates

While at Vung Ro Bay I saw the USS New Jersey in action. It was this big (holding his fingers an inch apart). The only reason I realized it the USS New Jersey was that I kept hearing what sounded like a freight train going over our heads. I didn’t see the shells, but I heard them. I said, “what the hell is that?” We all hit the dirt. We never heard the firing. We had a Republic of Korea Army had a compound about 10 miles out. Whatever assistance they needed I guess they called it in [the fire support]. The company clerk comes out and asked “why are all you guys on the ground or in your foxholes?” He said don’t worry about it they called and they told us about the fire support, but the clerk never told us! It went right over our heads and not very far inland. Shortly thereafter we heard the booms and bangs.

 Casualties

I lost one buddy, as a matter of fact he drowned. It is hard to explain what happened. Like I said, we work 24/7. We worked at night and he was operating a forklift. I think we had incoming enemy fire at the time. I guess he panicked, or whatever, and fell off the ship. They threw him a rope but it was too short. He went under the LST and the engines were still going. An LST has to keeping its engines running to maintain its position or it will drift. I was there the next day when they pulled him out.

Another accident happened when they sent three guys out in a DUKW (amphibious truck) to fix a rupture in the pipeline. The aviation gas was a slick floating on the water and it got sucked into the diesel engine of the DUKW. The vehicle blew up. I was right on the beach when it happened. I watched the guys fly up into the air. I can still see it today. There were flames all over the place. Everybody else in the company went up on the hill as they were fearful of the explosion. I’m stuck there on the God damn beach. The boat crew and the repair man had to be taken away on a medevac helicopter.

To fix the pipeline, they sent somebody out there on a swift boat (a 50 foot long, shallow draught vessel). They went out there, turned engines off and drifted to the repair site. After the repair was completed, the boat drifted some distance before starting the engine.