Turn the Heat UP
 While
serving my tour in Vietnam, I was on convoy detail once. We were going
to escort a five ton truck with flatbed trailer from Phan Rang AB
to Phu Cat AB, and back. We were going to pickup a load at CRB,
about 24,000 lbs., of dog food for the K-9's.
Photos by Carl
Tripp. Convoy Phan Rang, 1968
 The
Sgt in charge told me to ride with the truck driver. There was one
gun jeep in front and one in back of the truck. About 10 or 15 miles
out of Phan Rang on Hwy. 1, we stopped to relieve ourselves. The truck
driver pulled the truck as far off the road as he could and stopped.
There was a steep bank and a real muddy ditch at the bottom just at
the edge of the road where we stopped.
When I opened the truck door to get out, my rifle (M16), which I had
placed in the doorwell, fell out and down the bank. The rifle landed
with the barrel stuck in the mud. I jumped out and scrambled down
the bank to retrieve my rifle. Pulling it out of the mud, I climbed
back up the bank as fast as I could. When I got back up on the road,
I found mud was really packed into the barrel quite a lot
I climbed back into the truck and told the driver that I had to get
the mud out fast. As we began to roll again I found out that I didn't
have a cleaning rod with me. We were approaching a bad place on the
route, where there was a rubber and coconut grove on both sides of
the road--a place convoys had been subject to sniper attacks.
Well, I began to hit on the barrel, but the mud would not break loose.
I then asked the driver if the heater worked on the truck. He said, "I don't know, who needs a heater in this *##% country." I told him to try it and turn it as hot as it would go!
The
truck's heater was heavy duty and began to blast out heat, so I placed
the rifle barrel up to it. After about a minute or so I began to hit
on the side of the barrel with an M16 mag, and small pieces of dried
mud fell out. This process took a while and we were getting very hot
and sweaty in that truck cap. It took probably five to ten minutes
to get the barrel cleared to where I could see through it, just before
we arrived at the grove of trees.
We
went on to Phu Cat and back to Phan Rang without any trouble.
I was the one who had trouble and a hot ride for awhile, but someone
else could have turned the heat up that hot day in 1966. From then
on I carried a cleaning kit with me... and convoys were No Sweat. |
