STEVE COX
December, 1968 - January, 1970
2/9th Arty & 1/69th Armor
4th Inf Div, 3d Brigade
INDUCTED
INTO THE US ARMY
I
was inducted into the U.S. Army on 12June68 at the
Cincinnati, Ohio induction center. There, I lifted up my right hand and swore an
oath to the Constitution and the flag that flies over this country. Then we left
for the Cincinnati airport to fly to Fort Polk, Louisiana (Little Vietnam) for
basic training. From there I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. (I was placed in a
radio/electronics MOS). And I had no idea
how I was picked for this. I did not know
one thing about radio or electronics, another army mistake. On the second day, I
asked how I got picked for this, so they told me that I would be reassigned to a
new MOS. From Fort Sill, I was sent to Fort Leonard Wood to start training as
a 36K field wireman pole climber, radio operator, how to work with SOI, and how
to setup and use a crypto machine. From there, after going home on
leave, I would go to Vietnam.
A
NEW BOOT
I
arrived in Vietnam around 12Dec68, at Tan Son Nhut air
base. Two days later, I was at Camp Enari, headed to the 4th Infantry
Division 3rd Bde. One day later, I was standing in the 2/9th Artillery Headquarters Service Battery. In just hours I
was told that I was going on a convoy down south to Ban Me Thout. This was my
first convoy riding as shotgun on a 3/4 ton. We were going down south to bring a
gun battery back to Enari. Before we reached Ban Me Thout, one of the APC tracks
was hit by a B-40 rocket . …. THIS IS WHEN I LEARNED A LESSON, THAT I WAS A
NEW BOOT ON THE GROUND. You need to clean your M-16 when you get it out of the
Armory…(you better clean it).. IT WILL JAM UP. The round would not
eject. Gasoline will work to clean it good and fast. And keep a cleaning rod
taped to the stock of that M-16. Loading up the gun battery, the next day we
made it back to Camp Enari with a clean run on the road.
A
NEW ASSIGNMENT: WORKING WITH 1/69th Armor
Two
days later, I was on my way to the Oasis (with a clean M-16). I was told that I
would be going to the HQ at the Oasis and on to the 1st of 69th
Armor unit, I would be working in their
Headquarters TOC, clearing all artillery firing grids around 1/69th and bringing
up gun batteries for fire support, for the FO in the field with the 1/69th.
I would be working for Lt. Robert Baird, who later on was HQ company CO
at Camp Enari, and he made captain at the Oasis. I also worked with Ronald L.
Watts, who was from Lexington, KY, and Eugene E Lea from MO.
HOW THE ASSIGNMENT REALLY HAPPENED
There
is a story about how I got to the 1/69th. Back at Camp Enari, that
First Sergeant really liked his Jack Daniels. So, when we were all assembled together,
waiting on that old first sergeant (and he was old) to tell us where everyone
was going, he came out of his office about ten sheets in the wind. I should have
gone to "A" Battery, and Robert Brown, who I went through AIT with,
should have gone to HQ at the Oasis. Robert Brown and I were AWOL for a month
or two, until one of the pounding typewriter clerks, figured it out.
LT STEVEN RILEY HUFFSTUTLER, KIA
Sometime
in early January, 1969 I was sent out to help Lt. Steven Riley Huffstutler and his
RTO. They needed help on the radio at night. I remember that it got cold at
night up there on that mountainside. It was high up in the clouds, hot in the
day and cold at night. I kept my field coat when I came over from the States. I
did not turn it in and it kept me warm at night in the mountains of Vietnam. I
have a photo of Lt. Steven R. Huffstutler when we were together. The Lt. was
from Mentone, CA. I would like to get that photo to someone that is in his
family. I was only with him about a week, or two that
fire base it was guarded by CIDG’s. Lt. Steven R. Huffstutler was
killed in an LOC chopper crash on May 18, 1969. The Lt. came in country 28 of
August 1968... If you read this and
you knew Lt. Heuffstutler, I would like to hear from you; and if you are a
family member, I live in Dayton, Ohio and I’m in the phone book. Email address
is (madcox05@aol.com)
or (dcox05@gmailcom).
"WE'RE BUGGING OUT IN THE DARK"
I
was sent back to Oasis and 1/69 Armor. On March 3, 1969, Company B of the 1/69
armor got in a tank battle with North Vietnam Army at Ben Het. This was up near
the Laotian and Cambodia and South
Vietnam border. This is when the North sent five PT76 lightweight tanks to hit
Ben Het. The B company 1/69 Armor was guarding a special force camp at Ben Het.
B company took out two of the PT76 and a light track APC. Sometime on or around
March 3, 1969, at the Oasis we were told to get ready to move. We were bugging
out for Ben Het. By the time the other 1/69 B company that had been
working west of the Oasis near the Cambodia border on highway 19 got to
the Oasis, it was dark. They told us we were bugging out in the dark. The convoy
headed north to Camp Enari and Pleiku and on to Kontum then to
BEN HET -- 22 DAYS OF DIVING FOR A HOLE
The time I spent at Ben Het with Lt. Baird and Watts plus Lee is a time I
will not forget. We had to stay alert at all times. That first eight days at Ben
Het, I think we had about 98 rockets and mortars, if I remember that right. I
think everyone knew where all the HOLES were to dive into. We had a bunker in a
bunker to get away from the 122mm rockets.
I remember when a 122mm rocket hit a bunker that one of the gun batteries
at Ben Het was using. I went to help load up the chopper with wounded on the
dust off. I think there were three KIA that day. I know for sure one was
killed--that one is burned into my mind. If I think about it now, it was one of
the big guns--an 8 inch SP or 155 SP that got hit that day.
SPECIAL FORCES CAMP
Around the end of March or early April, we headed back on the long drive
to Pleiku and Camp Enari and the 4th Inf. Div. I was glad to get to
the 2/9 Artillery HQ rear. I got cleaned up and turned in everything. I looked
like a NEW BOOT. I headed for the Oasis HQ forward. I am not quite sure when I
got to the Oasis, but I was sent out with a captain as his RTO. I can not
remember his name, but he was with Lt. Steven R. Huffstutler and me on a
mountainside in January. We ended up down southwest of
Ban Me Thout at a Montagnard Special Forces camp. The Montagnards
had run into a North Vietnam Army supply unit. They went at that NVA supply unit
for two days, and then called for an air strike on the third day. The 4th ID
sent a split battery down just in case. I think it was two 105's. It turned out
nothing happened. While I was there, some airborne rangers came into camp and
all of them had been over in Cambodia. They were doing everything they could do
to the NVA over in Cambodia, digging all kinds of holes for bung pit, laying
land mines, trip wire claymore mines and booby traps. This bunch was a group of
nuts--all of them had two or three tours in Vietnam. We had sat around for a
week or so. Then we got a chopper out to a base that had a runway, and caught a
C-7 Caribou back to Pleiku. Then we headed back to the Oasis. I went to work
around HQ helping out the Commo team running field wire and just cleaning up the
compound.
A MOTHER AND FATHER'S PRAYER
By May, I was doing
anything to make the time pass at the Oasis. Monday, 12May1969, is a date
that all that were there at the Oasis will not forget. I remember
rounds started coming in that night. Mortar rounds were hitting
everywhere, and B-40 rockets were hitting the trees. A field phone hard line
cable got hit and cut in two. Because this line came out of the fire direction
center, the FDC could not bring up the guns at the Oasis. The communication
officer got the Commo Sgt and me to run line on the ground to a box on a
telephone pole, with rounds hitting all around us. Then I was asked to take a
prick (PRC) 25 radio to a bunker. I think it was bunker number 1 or 2. I remember it
had a guard tower next to it. All the time at Ben Het and all that was going on
around us, it did not get to me. But taking that radio to that bunker, I could
see some trigger happy GI taking a shot at me with all that was happening at the
time. I kept low in a drainage ditch that ran along the front of 4th
ID HQ. Our FDC had called the bunkers and told them I was coming out to bring
a radio for them to use. Later on, they came and told me that I was going to be
put in for a medal. I told the sergeant I was just doing my job. A mother’s
prayers work, and God will talk to them and make them aware of what is going on.
After getting home in 1970, on Mother’s Day my mother told me about what had
happened to her last Mother’s Day. She told me that the Lord woke her up from
her sleep on Saturday night late. Early Sunday morning, she got my father up and
told him that they needed to pray for Steven right now. My mother prayed all day
Sunday and that night.
TAKING A
JOB AT ENARI
I had been to
Camp Enari and was headed back to the Oasis with the mail room and message
center clerk. He would bring the mail and paper work for the Sergeant Major and
Battalion Commander. The clerk told me he was going home in a week. It came
to me to ask him what his MOS was, when he told me that it was 36-K, the same as
mine, I knew that I had to ask for the job. When we got to Oasis, the first
thing I did was go find the Communications Officer. When I found him, he was
walking from his tent to the FDC. I
stopped him, told him that the clerk was going home, and that I wanted his job.
I had been out in the field for six months and would like that job. He looked at
me and thought for a minute, and then he said OK. I think this was around June
when I got to Camp Enari. My new job was going to 4th
Division HQ, getting the mail and all paper work, and taking it back to
2/9th Hq and getting the mail ready to go out to all batteries. I would take the
mail out to the Oasis. It was a good job.
I would help the
commo group sometimes, when my job got slow. I would go and bring up the RTT rig
on line in the morning sometimes and anything else that I could do. This kept
the First Sergeant off my tail. My job was exempt from guard duty and all other
duties. This 1SG was one that no one liked--he had no friends, not
even other sergeants. One of the men
who had been in the same unit in Germany with him told everyone in our unit
that one morning someone in the formation came out of formation after him with a
knife, and an officer disarmed the GI before he got to the first sergeant.
Someone even tried to get him at the 2/9th Artillery Hq Svc Btry
before I got there. I was told that someone booby trapped his foot
locker, but he found it first. No one liked to come into Hq, Service
Battery at Camp Enari, from the field , even for rest or even to going to the PX
because of that first sergeant. One of the gun batteries set up a supply tent
down near the motor pool and sent in a sergeant to run it. The sergeant was
given a letter he was told to give to the 1SG if he came calling for
bodies to do work around the Hq Svc Btry. That letter had came
from the Battery Commander.
MAIL ROOM - COURIER - MESSAGE CENTER
CLERK
After the 4th
ID turned over the Oasis to the SIDGs, they moved the forward HQ to Camp
Enari. I got more added to my job since the courier was going back to the
states. I got his job added to mine, and now I was the one that went to Division
HQ to pick up the SOI and radio frequency changes when someone would lose their
SOI or frequency booklet. This happened a lot.
We would get a call from Division and off I would go to 4th
ID to pick up a pack to be sent out to all the batteries.
Then I was off to all the gun batteries to make a deliver. I had a lot of
flight time in choppers before coming home. I would sometimes go out with the 2/9th
Bn CO, or the Sergeant Major, to
get SOI and radio frequencies out to the gun batteries. About the middle of
December, it was time for someone else to get some flight time in a Huey -- a
new boot named Jesse White from Tennessee. We hit it off--I was born in east
Tennessee. When you get short, it’s time to stay in base camp. Around 12
January, I was headed for the States and Fort Lewis, Washington and then on to
Dayton, Ohio and a wife and a new life.
??? THE ARMY AND ME ???
The Army and me were not done yet. About a year and a half later, they
wanted me at Fort Drum to help out a reserve unit from Springfield, Massachusetts.
Well, I had just been laid off. This would be fun and I’d get paid for it.
Well, they put me in an infantry unit in a heavy weapon squad, mortar and
recoilless rifle.
Well that was my time in the army. I know there is more in this head of
mine. It’s just locked up somewhere in there. I would not trade it for
anything, but I would not want to do it again.