Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
or why they ended up in Tuy Hoa. One platoon leader's driver was his boss back in civilian
life. So, we just had a few interesting little things to work out.
Q:
That's an interesting challenge, I think, to bring a National Guard unit in. It was, to some
degree, done in World War II. That's interesting.
What about racial tension and racial problems? Were there any particular signs of those this
early?
A:
Not really. In the 577th we didn't have much problem with that. I wasn't cognizant of any
problem, and I was alert for any.
Q:
The other area that you mentioned earlier, one of the missions you had was combat support.
What sorts of activities were you involved in; how much did that involve?
A:
We didn't have too much of that, but it always took the priority. We dropped the other things
when it came up.
The 173d was engaged up at Landing Zone English, north of Qui Nhon, so they spent little
time down in our area. Every now and then they'd come down for a while. As I mentioned,
they sent the one company down for us to secure the land clearing for special forces out of
Cung Son. We were out mutually supporting them in that operation.
We did some mine clearing for various folks. The Koreans pretty much spent time to
themselves and used their own engineers. We did, as I said, some mine clearing and sent
teams out often with various people depending on the mission.
A typical operation came about when we were given the mission to open the road to Cung
Son for a major supply convoy that was going through to the special forces detachment there.
This was a big convoy, and they felt it would be interdicted, and they didn't want it to be
ambushed on the road.
Our mission was to clear the road in the morning and put the convoy on the road by early
afternoon so they could close at Cung Son by nightfall. The operation started slowly and was
really dragging. Our 577th team was very conservative as they moved out on their first mine-
clearing mission.
By eleven o'clock we'd gone only about 3 kilometers of 30. I was back in my command post
monitoring that operation by radio. Finally I directed that the engineer team take five-ton
dump trucks, loaded with earth in the back and sandbagged, and back them down the road.
They did that, and I flew out to visit them on the highway. We hit two mines with those five-
ton dump trucks--destroyed the trucks, but didn't hurt the operators. I think one of them had
a slight scratch, an elbow or something. We opened the road and did it quickly and pushed
the convoy through by that evening.
Q:
Was that a technique you'd heard about before, or you'd devised on your own?
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