Bruce Barney
War Wagon Crewchief/Gunner
Died May 22, 2017
The following brief biography was include in some correspondence between Bruce and the webmaster some 4 years ago.
We had been discussing the change in unit designations of D Troop.
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Hello Don,
Glad that the (Crossed Saber Cavalry) plates were well received.
You’re a stand up guy to give yours to Kent. Thanks.
Thanks also, for the detailed info.
I too, did a little research and found, in the 9th Inf Order of Battle (Vietnam) that the 3rd Bde of the 9th DID INDEED remain in ‘Nam, in I Corps, until Oct ‘70.
NOW things are beginning to make a little sense to me. WHY the switch between 3/5th and C. 17 took place has always been somewhat of a mystery. Based upon what I know now, I presume that, although it took a year or so, the 3rd/9th wanted their old Cav unit (3/5th) back and, for whatever reason (historical ?) USARV agreed.
Might have had something to do with the advanced planning for Lam Son 719? Anyway, when the 3rd Bde returned to CONUS in late ‘70 (October ?), 3/5th was again detached (again, planning for Lam Son ?) and attached (?) to the 101st, and remained so until the 101st went home in ‘72. This would account for some guys being assigned on 9th Inf orders (until Oct.’70) and then 101st orders (Oct ‘70-? ’72).
Interestingly, and aside from the above, the 3rd Bde (9th) returned to Ft. Lewis to rejoin the 2nd Brigade there, and was re-designated as the 199th Infantry Bde. and assigned to I Corps, which had been returned from Korea. CRAZY? Wonder what happened to the 199th Inf Bde that was in V.N. ?
As for me, I just don’t talk much about ANYTHING. Too many things to talk about and it all kind of blurs together. My first assignment, right out of jump school in ‘64 was with the 11th Air Assault Div. at Ft. Benning. The 11th was just transitioning from Airborne to Air Assault and we didn’t even have enough choppers for the (seemingly endless) air assault training until they were transferred from the 4th Inf. Div. I was with the 11th (187th Inf.) for just awhile (8-10 months ?) when, along with units detached from the 7th Div. and 2nd Div., it morphed into the NEW 1st Air Cav.
( Jun-Jul ‘65). My particular unit became 1/8th Cav. (Airborne). We trained at Benning as the 1st Cav. for about 2-3 months and left for ‘Nam in Aug-Sept ‘65. We went by ship, some units (mine, 1st Bde.) from Savannah, Ga. others were bused to and left from Mobile, Al. I was on a ship named “Geiger.”
Damn, life was hard (cramped below decks, clogged toilets, the smell, NO sleep, seemingly endless P.T. and M-16 (our NEW rifle) training) on those ships for 30 stinking days. Finally got to Qui Nhon in August. It took 2-3 days to off load all the ships that had arrived within a day or two of each other. I’ll NEVER forget, every one kept stopping and staring at the sky which was FULL, as far as you could see, with choppers, more than anyone had ever seen, as they came ashore from the aircraft carriers. I think there was 4 or 5 carriers FULL. We loaded almost immediately onto trucks for transport to An Khe (Camp Radcliffe) which was still under construction. The convoy route and Radcliffe was guarded by the 101st Airborne and as we passed their static security positions they would jeer and shout “Welcome to Hell!”, “Hurry up, they’re waiting for you!” and “You’ll be sorry!"
And they were right. Hell, we weren’t even in Radcliffe for one whole night before Charlie hit the wire. Turns out the 101st had been repelling nightly probes for a month already, while the advance party was starting construction. Anyway, within the second week, we were in combat in the Ia Drang Valley. It was during this time that the 7th, 12th and 2/8th were involved in the battle which is described in “We Were Soldiers Once...” It was one hell of a scary, exciting, and interesting year.
I left in ‘66 and went right to Berlin, Germany. HATED the training, running around shooting with blank adapters and pretending combat. The place was loaded with asshole NCO’s/Officers who had NO IDEA of what was real. Actually had an asshole E-6, when my blank adapted M-14 jammed, yell at me to “holler bang, bang” instead. Also got chewed out for picking up an M60 and firing while running with it. The asshole actually asked me if I thought I was John Wayne. HATED the Berlin Brigade, LOVED Berlin. Transferred to the Honor Guard just to try to get away from the assholes. Most interesting job that I had was tower #7 guard at Spandau Prison, guarding Rudolph Hess. Saw him every day, twice a day, as they allowed him to have a fresh vegetable garden, right below my tower. Put in my 1049 almost immediately and, by the end of the year was on my way back to Nam.
Got back in ‘Nam in Nov. ‘67. Was assigned to Advisory Team 96 as RTO for the Senior Advisor, IVth Vietnamese Ranger Group, in Can Tho. Traveled all over the Mekong Delta, on EVERY operation with the 42nd, 43rd & 44th Ranger Bn’s.
Left in November ‘68, back to Ft. Benning for Ranger School then Jungle Training in Panama.
Back to ‘Nam in ‘69, to Camp Enari, Pleiku, as 1st Brigade LRRP with the 4th Inf. Div. About half way through the tour, spent two (2) weeks working with SSG Ken Stumpf (SGM, ret., MOH recip.). He ran the 4th Div “Kit Carson” Academy in which they trained VC/NVA Chieu Hoi’ to work with U.S. units, and I, as the team leader, had to train with the “Kit Carson Scout” assigned to my team, to establish a “rapport.” I HATED the little SOB and damn near shot him dead on more than one occasion.
LRRP’s re-designated as K Co., 75th Rangers in mid ‘69. 4th Div. (Forward) turned Enari over to ARVN end of ‘69 and withdrew to good old Camp Radcliffe (An Khe) to begin redeploying to CONUS. I had shortly before gotten an in-country extension approved and didn’t want to leave. With the help of a sympathetic PSNCO at Radcliffe, I was able to identify D 3/5th as a unit that probably wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
Last part of ‘69 to D 3/5th. Back to CONUS end of ‘70.
With “Nam” closing down, had to use a re-enlistment option (and another sympathetic re-up NCO, who violated assignment to V.N. restrictions) to get back to 101st in Jan. ‘72. Assigned to 5 man (and a dog) 1st Bde. Combat Tracker Team. 1st bde. began redeploying to CONUS a couple of months later.
Transferred to 1/7th Cav. (Tay Ninh) which, when all Infantry troops were “officially” withdrawn returned to CONUS. Used my background as a Scout Gunner to transfer to F Trp, 9th CAV, (Bien Hoa) the LAST unit of the Cav. left in ‘Nam.
As it turned out, the Scout plt. was full of gunners from deactivated Cav units all over ‘Nam finishing off their tours, and I opted out. I was offered the Plt Sgt Position in the “Blue” platoon, which was the Troop Infantry Platoon (same as the Doughboys). Amazingly, before I could even move from one hootch to another, within a week all the “Blues” were dead, killed when the 2 slicks carrying them on an op crashed into each other and burned. Since they were the VERY LAST 11B’s in-country, and couldn’t be replaced due to the bar on Infantry replacements in country, MACV/USARV replaced them with a platoon of Vietnamese Ranger Commandos. Well, being the only 11 B left, maybe in the whole damn country, with my past experience on Team 96, and the fact that I spoke Vietnamese, that pretty much made me the Senior Advisor/Platoon Leader. Over the next few months, we filled out the Advisor Team to 6 members, with a real mix of MOS’s ( Engineer, Armor & MI). Around the end of ‘72 early ‘73, we inherited 2 1st Lt’s from the now entirely departed 101st. They both lasted about a month, maybe less, along with 2 of the NCO’s, when they sat around and watched a ChiCom parachute grenade float down and explode right in the middle of their little coffee clutch. All lived, but were gone for good. And that left me right back where we started, as the Platoon Leader of the “Brown’s,” the designation chosen to identify the VN Rangers vs. the American “Blues.”
Shortly thereafter, F Troop, 9th Cav officially left Vietnam to rejoin the Division stateside and we became “Task Force Garry Owen.”
The tour was all things...exciting, adventurous, nostalgic, sad, historic, UNBELIEVABLE). It seems like fate was letting me experience EVERYTHING that I had missed on previous tours. In addition to the basic air assault techniques, we (the Brown’s) became experts at securing, rigging and slinging out downed aircraft and there were plenty of those. We were “jumped” for a downed civilian airliner that went down and managed to rescue two burned but living passengers and a hot looking stewardess who was thrown clear in the tail section. She didn’t have a scratch but was obviously in shock. Years later, as a civilian, I was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, Korea and questioned by an intelligence officer about that incident. It turns out that there had been a CIA employee on that plane and they had never recovered what he had been carrying. They were still worried about it all that time later. The agent let me know that they had run down and interviewed every man on my team and I was the last one. While the file was classified and I never did learn what they were looking for, he was kind enough to read some of the more flattering things that they had had to say about me.
We were sent in as reinforcements in the battle of An Loc in ‘72, when the NVA/VC made a major Armor/Infantry push on Saigon. It was the largest use of enemy armor in the war. We rescued the crew of a downed C130 Gunship and, from the air, watched as the NVA captured an American jet jockey downed on a strafing run to protect another downed pilot. We were inserted into what turned out to be one of the largest supply caches ever seen in the war, just outside Tay Ninh. It went on and on for literally MILES. They had to pull us out almost immediately before we got slaughtered. We backed off to the abandoned base at Tay Ninh and watched as what seemed like every aircraft left in VN, including B-52’s bombed the place to hell. We went back a few days later and the bombs had barely touched the place due to its sheer size.
We covered ALL of III & IV Corps and it was SO SAD to put down on all of the abandoned U.S. Bases. Tay Ninh, Bear Cat, Lai Khe, Dong Tam, Vinh Long, Tan An, Vung Tau, Baria, and on & on. Ghost towns all, which sent chills up my spine over and over. I swear, you could FEEL the guys that used be there. Everywhere we went we were fired at, from tree lines, villages, rice paddies, EVERYWHERE. You’ve seen the famous picture of the villagers and a little napalm burned girl fleeing their village? That was us. We took fire just flying over the rice paddies OUTSIDE the village, one slick down, and our C&C called in that strike. Being the LAST American combat unit in ‘Nam AND with an integral Vietnamese Ranger unit assigned we got “tons” of Vietnamese decorations. It seemed like we were getting Gallantry Crosses just for waking up in the morning...and Training Medals, Life Saving Medals, Honor Medals, Civil Action Medals and on & on. It was embarrassing really. In down time we pretty much had anywhere we wanted to go all to ourselves...Bien Hoa. Vinh Long, Tan An SAIGON, VUNG TAU, Dong Tam, etc. It was INCREDIBLE, being the last Americans most of those girls would ever see. They seemed to know it but just couldn’t bring themselves to quite believe it. That tour ended in March ‘73.
I left the Army in Feb. 1975
I signed on with the Rhodesian Self Defense Forces in ‘75 and spent the next year trying to help them develop/improve air Cav tactics, esp. scout /aerial gunnery tactics. That “war” was one of the most shockingly savage and brutal things that I could ever have imagined. The “atrocities” committed by the V.C. that we so abhorred and (over)publicized in Vietnam were NOTHING compared to those committed by the Shona and the Ndebele in Rhodesia in the ‘70s. With a very few exceptions, NOTHING about Vietnam bothers me to this day. I wish I could say the same for what I saw in Rhodesia. I believe to this day that there is a no more brutal, savage, uncivilized animal on the face of this earth than the black African and that it’s a genetic, tribal thing that no amount of education/civilization will EVER be able to completely eradicate. THEN, add the backing/training of the various insurgent factions by the Russians, Chinese and the North Koreans, and you’ve got an unbelievably brutal Hell on earth. It was horrible!
After being betrayed (lied to and then abandoned) by the U.S., we had NO help except from South Africa. Betrayed and cut off from any support...that’s why Rhodesia is Zimbabwe today. I left (more like barely got out) in Feb. ‘76 (and caught Hell coming back into the U.S. It was “alright when I went but, politics changed while I was there and it was no longer acceptable to be, or have been, there.
In 1976, I tried to return to hook up with the Vietnamese Rangers, Special Forces, Montagnards and mercenaries who were prowling the Central Highlands and Cambodian border area, offering what resistance they could. I went in through Aranyapathet, Thailand and hooked up with the Khmer Resistance, fighting the Khmer Rouge. I never was able to make it back into VN, but did stay with the KR for about a year, setting up training camps and refugee security areas on the Cambodia side of the border with Thailand. I contracted Cerebral Malaria there, made a three day trek back into Thailand and was taken to a Buddhist temple for treatment. Shortly after arriving, the word of an American coming out of Cambodia having spread like wildfire, I was arrested by the Thai Border Police for entering Thailand illegally. I never even spent the first night in custody as a Filipino Dr. working with the international Rescue Committee had been alerted, arrived and convinced them that I was too sick and would die in their custody if I didn’t receive the proper treatment. He took me to his house, hooked me up to IV’s and sat a really HOT Cambodian nurse next to me all night. The CIA and the First Secretary from the Embassy in Bangkok arrived two days later and took me back to Bangkok where I spent the next two weeks in a British nursing home.
Needless to say, I got to know the agents pretty well. They sure were a curious bunch. When I was released from the nursing home the Embassy doctor and his wife were kind enough to put me up at their place for a couple of weeks so that he could keep an (medical) eye on me. While I lost touch with him when I left, the First Secretary and the Consul General, both old Vietnam hands, became friends and we kept in touch for years. I ran into the Consul General again years later in the Embassy Club bar in Seoul and, of course, he was thrilled to trot me out at his parties, etc. to reinforce his stories of the wild ole days in Southeast Asia. As a matter of fact, he introduced me to the lady who is now my wife, she having worked in the Embassy Catering Department. The nurse from IRC and I became friends and corresponded for years, even after she was granted asylum in Canada.
The old Readers Digest did a wonderful full length story about her escape from the “killing fields” of the Khmer Rouge, and how she started out into the jungle with her mother and siblings after the KR had killed her father. She made it to the Thai border with only her younger sister, whom she carried after she was wounded en route (she later died) and the rest of her family had either been shot or killed by land mines. I was repatriated by the State Department and returned to the U.S. in early 1977.
And so ends my tale of the seventies. I didn’t start out to be this long winded but, one thing kind of led to another. VERY FEW people have ever heard ALL of this (other than some older family members and a few (retired now, I’m sure) diplomats/agents, here and there). A couple of long time friends keep goading me to write a book but, I’m just not there yet.
As for you publishing or relating this, let’s kinda keep it to ourselves for now. If you publish or relate it to any of the guys, some of whom already know most of the Vietnam stuff, and MAYBE a bit more, I won’t have anything left when I finally make it to a reunion and get a few beers in me.
Otherwise, feel free to include all/parts of it in my obituary.
Again, sorry for the long wind...
Best Regards,
B
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