Matusic Khe Sanh
Khe Sanh ASRT
Khe Sanh shelter
Khe San
Joe Matusic Mama San Da Nang
Joe Matusic Khe Sanh ASRT
Joe Matusic Hill 200 Da Nang
Joe Matusic Hill 200
Joe Matusic Da Nang Hill 200
Bill Scotten Ted Messer Da Nang
Hi Steve and Craig,
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| Matusic Hill 200 Hooch Da Nang |
I think it was the night of the 22nd or 23rd of Feb 69. I was the duty controller (and the ASRT OIC) on watch. We had just finished controlling a flight of two F4's dropping their loads onto a target in Happy Valley and the DASC told us we didn't have another mission for at least an hour so the radar operator, technician and I went outside, up to the antenna and we were watching firefights and explosions all over the DaNang area and could also see An Hoa getting hit with incoming.
I talked to Lt Bill Scotten, friend of mine, on the ASRTs UHF radio about what he was experiencing at An Hoa. He said they had incoming so close it broke the glass plotting board inside the control shelter. I then went back up to the antenna.
We had small arms fire coming in from the brush and I think the Div CP called in a C130 to drop flares. The sensors were picking up all kinds of movements. All the bunkers were manned and everyone was awake. Small arms increased and two UHIE gun ships were overhead shooting up the area.
Eventually one of the Helos got hit and had to leave the area, the other ran out of flares or fuel and departed. An RPG knocked out a bunker that was in the turn of the road next to the TPQ Antenna. I think the Div band lost a few troops in that bunker and maybe one further out on the point just in front of the antenna. At the time, me and my operator, forget his name, were behind the sandbag wall we had built to protect the antenna. There was a metal framed maintenance tent over the antenna also. I was shot in the right arm and hit in the head and neck with shrapnel from either a grenade or an RPG which may have hit the metal frame. My operator (Sgt ???, who was in country for several back to back tours and a great guy) got hit in the shoulder.
Eventually one of the Helos got hit and had to leave the area, the other ran out of flares or fuel and departed. An RPG knocked out a bunker that was in the turn of the road next to the TPQ Antenna. I think the Div band lost a few troops in that bunker and maybe one further out on the point just in front of the antenna. At the time, me and my operator, forget his name, were behind the sandbag wall we had built to protect the antenna. There was a metal framed maintenance tent over the antenna also. I was shot in the right arm and hit in the head and neck with shrapnel from either a grenade or an RPG which may have hit the metal frame. My operator (Sgt ???, who was in country for several back to back tours and a great guy) got hit in the shoulder.
We left the antenna and went down into the bunker which housed the shelter and ops area (maps, desks, coffee pot, etc). We applied bandages to one another and I called the DASC and the hilltop CP said we had bad guys inside the wire and had been wounded and thought the bad guys were on top of the bunker. The bad guys were standing on the roof and shooting into it as well as throwing grenades onto the porch. Nothing was coming through the roof (thanks to the guys who built the bunker some time in the past), but the grenades were going off.
We had sandbags protecting the wall between the porch and the ops area which kept anything from coming through from the porch. We also had sandbags protecting the exposed wall facing down the road towards the CP. Good thing because an M60 opened up on the bad guys who were standing on the roof. The M60 was located about 50 to 100 mtrs down the road towards the CP, where the RECON guys had their radio antenna farm and we had another ASRT along with a radar maintenance hootch. The control shelter took many hits from this machine gun, right through the single layer of sandbags, actually the only damage it took all night I think. Sgt ??? , the technician, and I were laying on the bunker floor keeping our heads down. The technician gave me his helmet and flack jacket (I had left mine in the hootch that night before coming on watch).
There was a lull in all the noise, no more grenades or small arms firing so we decided to run down the road to the CP area. We were there for some time and I drove an ambulance back to the bunker site to see if anyone needed it from the bunkers where the bad guys came through the wire. They were dead, so I backed the ambulance back to the CP. At day light, I was told by the Det OIC (wish I remembered his name) to get myself and the Sgt to the Div aid station so we had someone drive us down the hill.
We had one Marine in the back of the PC with us who had been killed that night. I don't think any grunt reaction force was ever sent up to help but my recollection is tainted by the years. I think the RECON M60 coupled possibly with other MASS-3 Det folks shooting our way saved the day and kept them from getting onto the porch and then tossing a grenade or shatchel charge into the ASRT ops area and killing us. I was still there as dawn came and as I remember it, the bad guys just left the way they came, of their own accord. I did see in the Stars and Stripes later, the picture of one of our detachment guys holding the flag that the VC left on the hill.
The doctor at the aid station kept me from returning to the hilltop and I was medevaced along with Sgt ???, the same day, to the Air Force Hospital in Guam for a month, then to Bethesda for two weeks. Full recovery, still have pencil lead size pieces in my neck and head though.
Larry Smith packed up my stuff and it arrived at El Toro (MASS-5) months later after I had checked in there.
I know the ASRT was shipped stateside for rebuild and I visited it at Pt Mugu when it was accepted again from the rebuild. Saw the nice job they did patching the bullet holes.
No medals for me, in fact my fitness report for that time simply shows that I left (was evacuated from) RVN, not why, no details, etc. I was given a purple heart by some General while at Guam along with everyone else in the ward.
The actual paperwork came from HQMC and just said for combat wounds received in the Republic of Viet Nam. I had exchanged several letters with other Lts still in MASS-3 after I left to exchange "what the hell happened" messages on all our parts. They said I had been written up for an award, but had no idea what happened to the write-up. I simply chalk it all up to confusion and they way I left country. I didn't exactly "checkout" with the Major who was the Det OIC. And I wasn't able to get in touch with anyone in the unit until I was at Guam and that was via mail.
The command chronology for the time is very skimpy on any details of that night although it does mention that about that time frame several folks were awarded Bronze and Silver Stars, but not why. I assume it was for the actions they took that night. To this day I doubt the CO at the time even knew he had anyone wounded or medevaced that night. If he or the detachment OIC (or anyone else there that night) are reading this, I'd sure appreciate their versions of the events.
The actual paperwork came from HQMC and just said for combat wounds received in the Republic of Viet Nam. I had exchanged several letters with other Lts still in MASS-3 after I left to exchange "what the hell happened" messages on all our parts. They said I had been written up for an award, but had no idea what happened to the write-up. I simply chalk it all up to confusion and they way I left country. I didn't exactly "checkout" with the Major who was the Det OIC. And I wasn't able to get in touch with anyone in the unit until I was at Guam and that was via mail.
The command chronology for the time is very skimpy on any details of that night although it does mention that about that time frame several folks were awarded Bronze and Silver Stars, but not why. I assume it was for the actions they took that night. To this day I doubt the CO at the time even knew he had anyone wounded or medevaced that night. If he or the detachment OIC (or anyone else there that night) are reading this, I'd sure appreciate their versions of the events.
I can't seem to locate those command chronologies.
That's how I remember that night, now 40 years ago. I had been in country for 12 months and was on my 30 day countdown.
My tour as follows.
Went to Chu Lai to check in in Feb 68, then to DaNang for ASRT qualification, then to Khe Sanh in the ASRT till June when we all left, then to Da Nang as the OIC of one of the two ASRTs there as well as the Radar Maint Officer. Went to An Hoa with Bill Scotten to pick a site for the ASRT going in there, Bill Took the system into there later. I stayed at Da Nang. He and I worked with the AF to drop 10,000 lb daisy cutter bombs out of a C-130. I think I dropped two or three from Da Nang and he dropped six or seven from An Hoa onto hill tops to clear LZs for fire support bases which would support ground ops west of An Hoa. We had a combined CEP of 50 meters. Nice story there.
The AF installed becons in their C-130s so we could track them at low altitudes, they flew at 150 Kts with ramp open and a 50 ft chute deployed and attached to a skid pallet with the bomb strapped to it. The crew chief/load master actually released the pallet on our "mark-mark". The plane pitched down with the lost weight. They carried two of the bombs on each mission. We were not sure of the accuracy of the maps for locating the exact position of the hill tops (remember those damn maps and plotting targets for their elevation?) so we dropped a thousand pound bomb from an A6 (what we thought was the most accurate bomb and AC platform) from several different directions on each target until we had the exact position of the hill tops for the 10,000 pounder. The AF required an airborne General monitoring each mission's progress as a spotter who had to give final clearance hot on each target.
Bill and I received really nice letters of appreciation from the AF. Stars and Stripes did a nice writeup also. He and I also worked with an Army aviation unit which had a control shelter next to the Radar maintenance shop at DaNang on hill 200. They were flying low level night missions with sensors mounted on their fixed wing AC that picked up the smell of humans (forget which gas they detected they all humans give off). The AC flew a criss cross pattern over bad guy country and when they picked something up, they called in arty on where they "thought" they were based on map reading at night, assuming it wasn't a friendly recon patrol. Bill and I suggested that we track their AC with our system and when they picked something up, we'd tell them the exact coordinates they were over from our system and they could give those coordinates to the Arrty folks. Worked nicely till they deployed someplace where we didn't have ASRT coverage.
I had one very bad experience in Da Nang when we dropped 6, MK82s off target, way off target. I had the east/west switch in the wrong position.. I didn't catch the switch position wrong on the read back, as well as not seeing it when I plotted it on the plotter and moved the cursor to the map entry. All my fault. I killed several South Vietnamese villagers that night and that will haunt me till I die. I went to that village with the officer doing the investigation and returned with him when he made the restitution payments. I'll never forget it.
I don't know how many thousand missions I controlled. My log book long ago lost.
You know I had all but forgotten Viet Nam.
Joe
I was controller 51
Joe Matusic Joseph Matusic <jmatusic@yahoo.com>
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We never did get a chance to meet 40 years ago. I was always a couple months behind you. First with MASS-5 at El Toro and then in Viet Nam. Don't remember for sure, but I think I was one of the guys coming in to replace you and Larry Smith, since your tour was ending. Unfortunately, I was at the bottom of the hill watching all the shit you were going through. Showed up the next day at the radar site and you'd been med-evac'd. However, your reputation as one of the best ASRT controllers was in tact.
A couple months later, Lt. Skip Morgan and Major ??, the Det. OIC were awarded Silver Stars for repelling the attack. I guess I was mistaken, but I thought I had heard that you had been awarded one also. Just glad you made it through all that without too many problems.
Semper Fi,
Steve Helmuth
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Joseph Matusic
Craig,
Please sign me up to the Mass-3 blog.
Vietnam 68-69, DaNang and KheSanh ASRTs with Scotten, Messer, etc.
At DaNang night we got over run, inside ASRT bunker at time.
Great seeing the blog.
Joe
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Billy6:37 AMAfter 40 years and viewing this web site i am remembering more about that night on 327.I was pinned down by the NVA and i seem to remember it was Lt. Morgan that organized the counter attack to run the NVA off.I remember yelling loud as i could that i was a marine and not to shoot.Was told to come on out i then joind the attack.Pretty sure the Lt. was one of us to check the KIA to be sure he was gone.I usually cant remember what i had for supper last night but the more i think about that the more i remember.I remember when the CO was asking about what we did that night and recomending medals i was given a combat action ribbon.Im not very good at remembering names but on my 2nd tour i was back at 327 for about 3 or 4 months.I was building models of the aircraft we controlled and hanging them in the bunker if anyone remembers.Semper FiReplyDelete
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Billy7:06 AMIf anyone is interested there ar some pics of 327 showing the radar tent and guard towers on the web site Marine Band/327 Semper Fi
Joseph Matusic
Craig,
Please sign me up to the Mass-3 blog.
Vietnam 68-69, DaNang and KheSanh ASRTs with Scotten, Messer, etc.
At DaNang night we got over run, inside ASRT bunker at time.
Great seeing the blog.
Joe
