only the second time in about a hundred years, the US Navy has divided itself in two. My life on the USS
Boston,
floating off the coast and on the ocean, was part of the Blue Water Navy. What a lot of people would call
the easy war.
From now on, that won’t be the case at all. I am now part of the Brown Water Navy, where life is a whole lot more complicated.
Because of the geography of Vietnam, it eventually became obvious to the people who decide such things that if we wanted to make progress there had to be a more clever approach than
one if by land, two if by sea.
There is certainly a great deal of land around here, and it sure is blessed with a good long coastline. Butthere’s much more of what you might refer to as
other
terrain for fighting.
There is a lot of jungle in Vietnam. There is a
lot
of jungle. And it is cut up, north-south, east-west, and every possible combination of all that, with rivers. Thousands of miles of rivers. If you are going to move effectively around here, if you are going to find the enemy, engage the enemy, deliver troops, equip them, move them from place to place, and above all cover them with the Navy’s special brand of protection, you are simply going to have to use a good bit of boat power to do it.
And where that jungle and those waterways come right up close and personal to each other? Well, that is about the most dangerous place on planet Earth.
Welcome to my new home. Welcome to the Mekong Delta.
They are called river monitors, because of their resemblance to the
Monitor,
one of the first two armored warships, from the Civil War. I studied that bit, the
Merrimac
and the
Monitor,
bouncing cannonballs off each other like it was nothing more than a game of dodgeball.
One look at my new place of work, and I know things are going to get a lot more interesting than that.There will be only eleven of us on board, which means much more responsibility, and much more risk.
Moses was right: This is a floating tank we are looking at as we stand waiting on the barge to be welcomed aboard. But what even Moses didn’t realize was this is also a beast. A growling, snarling, howling, grinning, booming, fire-breathing sea monster.
It’s known as the battleship of the river force because it’s designed to provide heavy-duty support to our Army brothers in the thickest of battles along the banks and some ways inland. We’re so armored, and so armed, it looks like movement was just an afterthought for the craft. This creature looks to me as if it could defeat any and all comers up and down the river all by itself. The forward turret has a 40-mm cannon and an M-60 machine gun. Halfway up ship, dug in as if they were in foxholes on land, are an 81-mm mortar and two .50-caliber machine guns. The rear carries two 20-mm cannons, another two .50-caliber machine guns, and four more M-60 machine guns.
Mounted up front and center at the nose of the operation are two smaller turrets, each with one more machine gun mounted side by side with …
“Moses,” I ask, having not seen these bits of kit before, “what is that?”
Moses can barely speak. “We’re on a Zippo, man. I didn’t know we were gonna be on a Zippo!”
“A Zippo?”
He turns to me and grabs me by the shoulders in an almost teary embrace. “Zippo. Like the lighter. Those ain’t cannons, Mo. Those are flamethrowers.”
We both turn in silence back to the hugeness we’ve been assigned to. Like Moses, I am now entranced, looking again over every inch of this ugly, mighty
thing
floating here under the ungodly Vietnamese sun. It ain’t pretty, that’s for certain. It’s got tires strapped here and there as bumpers, it’s got steel caging around the turrets, sandbags packed within the caging. The turrets themselves look like they were copied straight out of some medieval book of castles and pounded out of metal — and then, while they were at it, they roped in an honest-to-goodness dragon for laughs. It’s got crazy eyes
Boston,
floating off the coast and on the ocean, was part of the Blue Water Navy. What a lot of people would call
the easy war.
From now on, that won’t be the case at all. I am now part of the Brown Water Navy, where life is a whole lot more complicated.
Because of the geography of Vietnam, it eventually became obvious to the people who decide such things that if we wanted to make progress there had to be a more clever approach than
one if by land, two if by sea.
There is certainly a great deal of land around here, and it sure is blessed with a good long coastline. Butthere’s much more of what you might refer to as
other
terrain for fighting.
There is a lot of jungle in Vietnam. There is a
lot
of jungle. And it is cut up, north-south, east-west, and every possible combination of all that, with rivers. Thousands of miles of rivers. If you are going to move effectively around here, if you are going to find the enemy, engage the enemy, deliver troops, equip them, move them from place to place, and above all cover them with the Navy’s special brand of protection, you are simply going to have to use a good bit of boat power to do it.
And where that jungle and those waterways come right up close and personal to each other? Well, that is about the most dangerous place on planet Earth.
Welcome to my new home. Welcome to the Mekong Delta.
They are called river monitors, because of their resemblance to the
Monitor,
one of the first two armored warships, from the Civil War. I studied that bit, the
Merrimac
and the
Monitor,
bouncing cannonballs off each other like it was nothing more than a game of dodgeball.
One look at my new place of work, and I know things are going to get a lot more interesting than that.There will be only eleven of us on board, which means much more responsibility, and much more risk.
Moses was right: This is a floating tank we are looking at as we stand waiting on the barge to be welcomed aboard. But what even Moses didn’t realize was this is also a beast. A growling, snarling, howling, grinning, booming, fire-breathing sea monster.
It’s known as the battleship of the river force because it’s designed to provide heavy-duty support to our Army brothers in the thickest of battles along the banks and some ways inland. We’re so armored, and so armed, it looks like movement was just an afterthought for the craft. This creature looks to me as if it could defeat any and all comers up and down the river all by itself. The forward turret has a 40-mm cannon and an M-60 machine gun. Halfway up ship, dug in as if they were in foxholes on land, are an 81-mm mortar and two .50-caliber machine guns. The rear carries two 20-mm cannons, another two .50-caliber machine guns, and four more M-60 machine guns.
Mounted up front and center at the nose of the operation are two smaller turrets, each with one more machine gun mounted side by side with …
“Moses,” I ask, having not seen these bits of kit before, “what is that?”
Moses can barely speak. “We’re on a Zippo, man. I didn’t know we were gonna be on a Zippo!”
“A Zippo?”
He turns to me and grabs me by the shoulders in an almost teary embrace. “Zippo. Like the lighter. Those ain’t cannons, Mo. Those are flamethrowers.”
We both turn in silence back to the hugeness we’ve been assigned to. Like Moses, I am now entranced, looking again over every inch of this ugly, mighty
thing
floating here under the ungodly Vietnamese sun. It ain’t pretty, that’s for certain. It’s got tires strapped here and there as bumpers, it’s got steel caging around the turrets, sandbags packed within the caging. The turrets themselves look like they were copied straight out of some medieval book of castles and pounded out of metal — and then, while they were at it, they roped in an honest-to-goodness dragon for laughs. It’s got crazy eyes
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