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By Root 976 0

out of the big five-hundred-gallon blivets. They were filled under pressure, and you had to get it up high to use gravity to get it back out, which was not always practical. So, Sergeant Childs took a one-one-three bilge pump and he fixed it up so that you could plug it into the slave receptacle, and it would, with a hose system that he had, pump fuel out of the bladder into the APC or Sheridan. I've never seen that kind of thing in the Regular Army, but it was very simple and it certainly worked, and it was the only alternative to a transfer pump, which was hand operated and inefficient. Another thing about Sergeant Childs was never to refer to him as Sergeant Childs unless you were talking about him to somebody from the squadron or higher. Sergeant Childs was known as John. He was John to the privates and John to the lieutenants, and that was what he liked. So I called him John like everybody else. He was just one of those unique individuals. He was thoroughly dedicated to his job and his men, and he had a tremen-dous skill and a feel for things mechanical. He just made a whole bunch of things so much easier.

C Troop was on Route 7 near a stone marker inscribed MEMUT, heading toward the CP with several disabled vehicles in tow, when they rolled through a mini-ambush. Reaching the squadron laager without pausing to fight–no one had wanted to jeopardize their only two recovery vehicles–Childs approached Schulcz: “I was ready for an assault!” Schulcz replied that he didn't want to risk losing him since he was the most valuable piece of equipment in the troop.

Staff Sergeant Childs was one type of trooper, but another, Lieutenant Riley, the forward observer, was more typical. There was the day, for example, back when they were with the 4th of the 9th Manchus and were rushing down a trail to reinforce a contact, when the command track hit a mine and a platoon leader incorrectly shouted over the radio, “Six Track got hit with an RPG!” Schulcz had been bounced inside the vehicle by the explosion. When he turned his head there was old Riley with his steel pot over his eyes, holding part of his M16, which had been broken in the blast, letting loose with a panicked cry, “RPG!?” In the next instant, Riley was behind a tree on the side of the road, and Schulcz thought he was so scared he must have flown. Riley was scared and didn't want to be there, but the point was that he did his job and did it well. He had a good sense of humor, a good rapport with the troops, and he executed his duties with precision.

A day or two after the mini-ambush on Route 7, they were approaching the MEMUT marker again when Schulcz ordered the lead platoon to pull off the road and sweep into the flank of the rubber trees. The platoon leader misunderstood and swept right into the face of the rubber tree line, and right into another ambush. The command track went forward, and an RPG hit the turret of a nearby Sheridan at an angle that funneled the blast into the command track. Riley, sitting up top beside Schulcz, had his arm smashed (Schulcz later noticed that shrapnel had torn holes where the cloth hung loose in one armpit area of his fatigues), but the NVA faded away in the face of their return fire, which as always was overwhelmingly loud and destructive. Despite his wounds, Riley had continued calling in arty.

And there was another type of trooper, most of whom were concentrated in a single of Schulcz's platoons–the one with the newest lieutenant. When the new lieutenant was medevacked with some jungle flu that was beginning to affect the entire troop, Schulcz finally had a talk with the platoon sergeant and cautioned that he would be relieved unless things were squared away. When a new platoon sergeant arrived on normal rotation after Cambodia, the situation was scarcely improved. When the new sergeant asked for volunteers for a night ambush, he got only two or three, and when he referred to the platoon as a bunch of cowards, he had something of a sit-down strike on his hands. Called to the scene, Schulcz had to threaten the men with court-martial