RINGED IN STEEL

Colonel Michael D. Mahler, wrote a book about his experiences as Squadron Executive Officer with 3/5 Cav entitled Armored Cavalry, Vietnam 1967-68: Ringed in Steel. It was published in hardback by Presidio Press: Novato, California, 1986 and in paperback by Jove Books, New York, 1987. A few short excerpts give both a flavor of the book and a feel for some of the distinctive character of the unit [page number references are to the above paperback edition]:

We directed the A Troop commander to leave one platoon at Apple to protect the artillery unit operating there and to march the rest of the troop toward Bien Hoa. Our squadron commander, who himself had only a fragmentary order on the mission, told the troop commander to start marching, that he would brief him later over the radio while the troop was moving.

The troop had barely started its march along Highway 1 towards Bien Hoa when it ran into its first fight of the morning at Trang Bom, a village close to the fire support base. The troop's orders were to move to Bien Hoa, though, and the men drove through the ambush without slackening speed, concentrating the fire of their ACAV machine guns on the road edges as they continued to move. The shock of this fire suppressed the enemy fire sufficiently for the troop to get through without suffering any serious damage, and it continued to move toward the airbase. Next it encountered a gauntlet of strip villages --- villages that were built one house deep on both sides of the road and which stretched out for almost a mile.

Each house seemed to contain a gunner of one kind or another this morning, but the troop managed to keep moving. Farther along the highway, the lead tank came up to a concrete bridge that crossed a stream. It rolled on across the  bridge without stopping; then a tremendous explosion dropped the entire span into the stream behind it before any of the other armored vehicles could follow. Our ACAVs quickly turned off the road, skirted the bridge, and found a place to ford the stream, but the heavier tanks could not get across and had to be  left there. A Troop moved on toward Bien Hoa, now with only one of its tanks.

It was now beginning to move out of radio range of the squadron operations center at Blackhorse, but it still had not been able to make radio contact with the air base.

When the troops entered the city of Bien Hoa, which lay between it and the air base, the lead platoon found the city's central square filled with people. Because of the pressure on them to reach the air base quickly, they just kept moving, dispersing the crowd by the force of their passage. It was only after they were in the midst of the crowd that it dawned on them that they had hurtled into several companies of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers. The enemy soldiers quickly recovered from their surprise at seeing an American column burst into their midst and opened fire on the passing vehicles, disabling two ACAVs. The second platoon in column, alerted by the firing, drove into the square with all its machine guns blazing and was able to push the two disabled ACAVs off to the side, pick up their crews, and continue on. The troop now consisted of one tank and eight ACAVs.

At this point the squadron commander joined the troop overhead in his light observation helicopter and reestablished the communications link between it and the squadron operations center. He stayed over the column and directed it through the narrow maze of city streets and out again toward the air base by the most direct route. As the column approached the nearest entrance to the base, the squadron commander spotted several hundred Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers in the ditches ahead on both sides of the road, where they were apparently waiting to stop just such a relief column as ours on the way to reinforce the besieged base.

Forewarned, the remnants of A Troop swung off the road and drove parallel to it, but behind the waiting enemy. As they passed, the ACAVs raked the waiting ambushers from their rear, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy, who had suddenly become vulnerable to our quick maneuver. Then the troop was through the gate and into Bien Hoa, where it joined up with an infantry battalion. They moved with hardly a halt to one end of a runway that was about to be overrun by sheer force of numbers, arriving just in time to stop the penetration.

At about this time the squadron commander, who was still circling above the troop, was almost blown out of the air by the force of the explosion that we actually heard a moment later at Blackhorse, some twenty-three miles away. [pp. 112-114]

Our helicopter link also became a medical evacuation link in those first grim weeks of the Hue operation because we were the only ones flying. Marine aviation was not willing to fly when the weather was below minimums, and on many days no Marine helicopters went in or out of Hue. Minimums  did not bother our young warrant officer pilots, and our squadron commander felt a compulsion to make the every-other-day attempt to keep contact with our troop.

Therefore, we launched whether we had minimums or not, and more often than not made it in and out on the same day. After word got around about our more-or-less regular flights, not a few wounded Marines owed their lives to an uncomfortable fifty-mile ride in a litter rigged to the skids on the outside of our little helicopters.

Since then, whenever I hear criticism of Army aviation and our flying warrant officers, I think of those flights in and out of Hue on days when the more sophisticated Marine pilots, with their jet-aircraft and multiengine qualifications, would not leave the ground. Our guys did not know that they should not have been flying; they just flew. [p. 127]

One of the major problems in Da Nang turned out to be keeping the peace between the squadron's night foragers, who wanted to help me obtain parts, and our Marine hosts. Cavalrymen, left to their own devices, are inveterate "scroungers," and being isolated from our normal sources of supply simply served to reinforce that natural bent. [p. 131]

Just as the column started to get under way, two Navy criminal investigators found me where I stood in the middle of my lined-up vehicles. They had been assigned to investigate recent reports of pilferage and wanted to know if I could provide any information on the subject. I assured them that we had thoroughly shaken down our troopers quite recently and that we had not found any new evidence of stolen parts or equipment. Our all-out effort to get everything working did not, however, make me feel very secure in my statement, and my insecurity was not lessened any by the sight of  several troopers passing by in the semidarkness carrying what appeared to be radios in their arms.

I was quite sure that the radios were not the result of filing any last-minute requisitions at the Danang depot. I cast a worried eye at the fenced vehicle park that adjoined the road. I knew beyond a doubt that the passing troopers were returning from a visit to the Marine amphibious vehicles that I could barely see outlined against the horizon inside that wire enclosure. The investigators did not, however, notice anything amiss, and I was not about to disrupt our embarkation by bringing up what I merely suspected. [p. 142]

Not far from the C Troop bivouac area were several brand-new Marine tanks, which had been offloaded from a supply LST and were awaiting transportation to Dong Ha. They were sparkling new and still had all their accessories packed in the original wood packing cases that were banded to the tank decks --- accessories that C Troop had long since lost or had damaged in combat. After dispersing their vehicles and digging shallow holes in the sand to protect themselves against mortar attack, C Troop soldiers turned their attention to those brand-new tanks. They spent the next several hours sneaking up on the tanks without being observed by the Marine permanent party that manned this busy supply beach.

Eventually, some troopers managed to get next to the tanks with wrenches and started carefully to unbolt the sides of the packing boxes on top of the tanks. It was tricky work in the dark because they could not afford to be spotted at their work by the Marines and because the bolts that held the boxes together squeaked as they turned against the wet plywood. Ever so slowly they backed out the bolts and slid the wood box tops off --- only to find piles of rocks inside. B Troop had been there before them! [p. 144]

A few days later C Troop moved out on another search mission and was stopped on the road by a military police patrol. An aggressive military policeman pulled his jeep across the front of our column and demanded to see the convoy clearance for the troop.

The troop commander patiently explained that he was on a combat mission, that he did not have a convoy clearance because he was not a convoy, and that he was losing valuable time as they talked. The military policeman was not to be moved. Finally, the captain ordered the lead vehicle to start forward, with the clear idea of making the military policeman move his jeep out of fear of being run over by the lead ACAV.

No such luck. The jeep did not move, and the ACAV ground to a halt inches from it. The troop commander then got on the radio to ask the squadron commander what to do about the uncompromising military policeman.

His radio transmission could be heard by the military policeman in his jeep because the captain's command track had a small loudspeaker bolted to its top deck that eliminated the need for earphones. Back came the laconic advice from the squadron commander. It was simply, "Shoot him!" The military policeman did not know what to do. His demand for convoy clearance had been spurned by the captain, his vehicle had almost been run over by an ACAV, and now the voice of authority over the radio was suggesting that he be shot if he continued to interfere with our mission. That was too much for him, and he backed out of the way. [pp. 159-160]

Ringed in Steel was republished by Presidio Press in September 1998 and is available online from Amazon.com, or from your favorite local bookseller.