expended tube into the ground and urinate into it. A well thought out system. That unit was transitioning onto the Stinger system as I finished my stint in the reserves. I found overall air defense to be the most fascinating chess game in the world.                     

I have lots of stories about my time in the Marines. Vietnam was only that time in combat if you want to call it that. I really don't talk about combat per say. I like telling stories like how my buddy put Loud Mouth Lime sugarless KoolAid in my last canteen of six that I carried while in combat. How I tried and what I did to protect myself from the tiger at LZ Alpine before it managed to eat somebody and it did eat somebody in the end. Or checking in at Balikashir Turkey with a group of reservists and the officer asked how we got there. My reply was we caught a hop from NAS Andrews AFB on a Marine VIP DC-4 with an E-9 cooking and feeding us grommet food all the way over. The officer said that an order of our cancellation in the operation was sent six weeks before. He said to start catching hops back to where we came from. You see there are a lot moor stories to tell. GOD has smiled upon Me!           

Regards Mike Robinson             Golf Btry. 3rd. Bn. 12th Marines            Vietnam 68-69


The following was sent in November of 2002 to add to Mike's story:

LZ Neville was a horrible operating position. It was solid rock. To simply make it flat enough to get the howitzers on its ridge we used tons of explosives. We would use forty pound shape charges to create a dished out spot then place forty percent dynamite in that dish and place rocks back on top of the dynamite to fracture the hill. We had one accidental secondary explosion that was absolutely amazing. A coiled line shot of C-4 was brought up to be used. It was the line that mine clearing amphibious tractors use to blow a path across mine fields. It was C-4 on a rope in five pound links. We were only about a hundred feet away when the line blew. All I saw was like a gray curtain in front of me. It even had dark lines in it vertically like a pleated curtain. The only thing that saved us was a small drop off cliff that the line was behind. The blast went up. we all went flying ass over tea kettle backwards. The treeline that separated us from the explosion was striped of all foliage.                     

After the guns were brought up from LZ Alpine we had lots of trouble with downed aiming stakes from rotor wash from supply choppers. In a 360 degree war that position was bad news. For example one trail mite unhook from the rock and the gun would start hopping sideways until one tire bounced into the high angle pit. My gun went out of action from a bent trail once. My gun at one time had a five foot long lanyard and still I can remember getting bopped around sometimes.                     

I learned a little bit about geology on that hill. I was whaling away on a rock with a pick when one of the experienced guys stopped me and pointed out the stress lines in it and showed me how to pick the rock apart. You can save yourself a lot of labor by looking a rock over before you go to work on it.                     

The bottom line was tube pointing was vary difficult on that hill. Although far from perfect that was the place a battery was needed.                   

In the weeks prior to the attack we were often probed by the NVA. I have all the letters I wrote home. In my last letter home before the attack I mentioned that "It is getting weird around here. The gooks cone up to our wire almost every night and then do nothing." Our enemy was training us. We were being acclimated to there presents by them. I think we lacked imagination in dealing with them. We needed to kill the NVA probing our position by setting ambushes close to our lines in the areas they repeatedly came to.                     

A few day before the attack Bravo Battery was sent OPCON to 3/12 to LZ Alpine. Along with it an accompanying grunt company form the 3rd Marines was sent for security that was OPCON to 1/4. General Davis in doing that out flanked the NVA and by turning the end almost ninety degrees obtained the perfect angle to support LZ Neville.                      A couple of days after Bravo Battery was placed on LZ Alpine Golf Battery was split. Three guns went to LZ Cates. I was on one of the guns that left LZ Neville. As it has turned out thirty years after the fact. That movement was in preparation for the attack. Earlier that in the day that we went to LZ Cates the 155's that were there were sent to Vandigrift CSB. That had to be in preparation for supporting LZ Russell. also India Battery had taken up position on LZ Fuller.                     

It's obvious now that our command knew quite a bit about that attack before it happened. The supporting batteries were placed properly. There may be something that wasn't properly understood. It may possibly be something like the difference between defending a position in Elephant grass rather than jungle. It may be harder defending on a jungle hilltop. A well planed and properly executed assault is hard to stop. Especially when the enemy is given a freebie to the positions wire. The NVA were inside the danger close artillery peramiters on both hills before the alert was sounded. Artillery is like a big fly swatter. It kills everything in its radius.                     

The attack on LZ Neville was the key to the NVA's mass approach to the wire at LZ Russell. It worked perfectly. Had Hotel Battery not fired in support of LZ Neville that would have stopped the enemy from getting next to the wire at LZ Russell. Remember the speeches given at Kha Sahn earlier in this story. Positions like LZ Russell became vulnerable. At the enemies convenience LZ Russell was probed for soft spots. Every detail was worked out by the enemy. That position was hit from across a border we couldn't cross to preempt that attack even though our command knew it was coming. There is the axiom that fortresses are monuments to the stupidity of man. In this world of political boundaries and gerrymandering a fortress is not such a bad idea. A hundred years before LZ Russell or even a hundred years before that a military engineer would have been dispatched to that hill. One of the first things that engineer would have said was to get rid of that wrinkle in the topography that was the trash dump. That jump off point and the