1st Battalion 22nd Infantry Khun's Story Page 7

1st Battalion 22nd Infantry

TUY HOA
Aug-Sept 1971

It was during the first or second week back at base that I got called into HQ. They had received a call from the Red Cross
inquiring about my condition. My mother had been trying to find out for weeks what happened to me and finally got through via
the Red Cross. At some point while in the hospital I did manage to write a letter to my mother informing her of my malaria,
but then I forgot all about it and never wrote back to tell her that I was ok. I regret having unintentionally worried my mother sick.
That is the last thing she needed! The Red Cross people called her back to let her know that I was ok and I immediately
wrote an apologetic and reassuring letter to her.

I was still feeling weak and was still on light duty but I couldn’t stand it. Everyone except me was out working at night.
I had the whole barracks to myself and was as bored as ever. I asked to be put back on the guard roster but they refused
without a release from the Dr. I started going out to the perimeter with the guys at night on my own even though I didn’t have duty.
I went to a bunker that was within walking distance of the barracks. Usually I just sat around and BS’d with the 2 guys
that were assigned to that bunker until it got dark. Then I would walk back and sleep in the barracks the rest of the night.

That idleness and boredom almost got me into big trouble. It was just about dark and we were just fooling around
in the bunker when I found a smoke grenade lying around that somebody before us had left behind.
Smoke grenades are of no use at night in a bunker. The only time we ever used them was out in the field to signal our
location to a chopper that was coming to pick us up. They are labeled with different colors and the chopper pilot would call
over the radio and tell us what color smoke he saw. That is how he confirmed that it was us signaling him in and not the VC.
I saw the letters “WP” on the grenade and wondered what color that stood for. I was betting on white and out of shear boredom
I decided to pop the smoke grenade and nonchalantly tossed it out of the bunker window. Suddenly the night lit up like daylight!
I was confused at first and didn’t know what had happened. Smoke grenades just quietly make colored smoke.

There was this huge area of white hot burning material everywhere just outside the bunker near the concertina wire
where I had thrown the grenade. What a really bad mistake I had just made! I should have known that “WP” stood for
white phosphorous grenade but I never saw one before. We never used them and I have no idea how that one got there.
That incident could have been tragic. We could of all been burned really bad or killed if I would have dropped the
white phosphorous grenade or had not tossed it far enough. We were just standing there with our jaws dropped
and mouths wide open when the radios started chattering. The other bunkers were all calling and thinking that
we got hit. I was thinking we are in trouble and this is going to be hard to explain and I was not even supposed to be out there!

We felt that we had to follow through with the fiasco to cover ourselves and shot a few short bursts toward the perimeter.
Soon all was quiet and the WP burned out. We responded to the radio calls stating that we did not know
what happened and didn’t see anybody and everything was fine. LT soon responded over the radio saying that it was
probably just a dud round that had exploded and to stay awake and keep your eyes open. I walked quickly and quietly back
to the barracks in the darkness thinking to myself how stupid I was. Nothing more was ever said about the incident. I suspect
that the official report stated that we had stopped a sapper from entering the perimeter.

I think the next two months were the longest and worst two months of my tour. The days and nights were dragging on
slower than ever. Everything was quiet, too quiet. As strange as that sounds the boredom and homesickness became
EXTREME and overwhelming. I missed Home terribly. It seemed like we were all going insane. The morale had tanked.
Everyone was sick of being there. The older guys were going home and very few replacements were coming in.
We were short handed and worked for weeks straight without a night off. Finally they started using some of the
air personnel on base to augment the perimeter guard duty to give us a break. That may have made it worse.
Now we had more free time on our hands.

Drug usage and racial tensions became a problem on base. The batallion implemented a drug testing program
to weed out the offenders. Careless accidents were occurring frequently. Guys were hurting themselves and each other.
One of the guys got killed in a bunker from an accidental M-79 round exploding. Another one was burned badly
from a hand flare that went off after falling to the bunker floor. Fraggings started to occur. Some of the Officers
and NCO's were being targeted. Fragging means tossing a fragmentation grenade with the intent to wound or kill officers.
It is actually murder or attempted murder. I know of at least two fraggings that took place on base while I was there.
One was right in our own Company B headquarters.

These were difficult dark times on base.

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