Horrors of War Echo On 52 Years Later

"My very first fire fight, we were lucky," Felice "Phil" Wilson, a Vietnam War Army veteran who served as a tanker in country during 1969, told The Courier last week. "We went out the gate at Long Bihn into a rice paddy and we got ambushed. We fought for like 45 minutes straight, which was a real small engagement. We killed about 140 and we didn't take any hits, any injuries or anything like that. You get sort of a false sense of security, thinking 'well, I am inside of this tank, I can't be hurt.' Then, you see the aftermath of a couple of tanks that did get hit, and I did see a couple."

Wilson was a spry 18-years-old at the time. He had joined the army right out of high school, following a family tradition. His father, James Wilson, had served in the "Big Red One" First Infantry Division in both North Africa and Italy during World War Two.

"All I heard was military," Phil said. "My dad wanted to be career, but during World War Two he was taken as a prisoner of war for about two years. He escaped twice and got recaptured twice. One of the times he escaped, he injured his back. He was captured in North Africa (in about 1942), and then they shuttled him up to Italy and then he spent almost two years in an Italian Prisoner of War camp until Italy decided they didn't want anymore of it. They just walked in one day, opened the cells, and said 'go.' Suddenly, he was out there in the wilderness of northern Italy trying to figure out how to get back to the friendly lines."

James enjoyed watching war movies, especially if they starred John Wayne. That had a definite impact on Phil, especially 1965's "Battle of the Bulge," starring Robert Shaw as "Colonel "Hessler," a German tank commander. After seeing it, Phil decided he wanted to be a tanker.

"When I turned 18, I decided 'I am going to do it,'" Phil said. "I wasn't really looking forward to going to Vietnam. The recruiter, of course, telling all the 'truth' and everything, he said not to worry about armor. 'You won't go to Vietnam. There are no tanks over there. What few tanks that are there, they just sit on perimeters around air bases. You don't have to worry anything about it.'"

After boot camp, Phil arrived in South Vietnam at Long Binh Post, the U.S. Army's largest base located between Bien Hoa -- the location of a large American airbase -- and Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, according to The Library of Congress.

While Phil had training on the Army's new M551 "Sheridan" AR/AAV (Armored Reconnaissance/Airborne Assault Vehicle) light tank, his orders were to join the Big Red One as his father had done before him. Then, his superiors learned of his specialized tank training.

"A couple of days later, orders came down from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment ('Blackhorse Regiment')'" Phil said. "They were about to get brand new Sheridan tanks. I went there. As it turns out, the regimental commander at that time was George S. Patton (IV), the Old Man's son. When he took over the 11th Cav, he said, 'tanks can work in the jungle. Tanks will work in the jungle. I am going to take them in there.' So, we went in the jungle and never came back out again."

Phil and the 11th Cav "would bust jungle all day long. We had the bigger tanks up front busting the jungle. We followed through, and about 5 o'clock at night, we made this great big circle with all our tanks. It was a lot like watching the westerns. We would turn the vehicles out facing the jungle and then we would drive in until the gun tubes went into the jungle, and that was where we sat all night."

Knowing the unit was in the middle of enemy territory likely surrounded on all sides by Viet Cong "was weird," Phil said. "Each tank had to put a guard up, so generally we would start our guard at about 10 or 11 o'clock each night. Each crew member would do about two hours and you would just sit up in the cupola, which is a small hatch in the very top of the turret. We had a .50 caliber [machine gun] and would sit there all night staring into the jungle. It was almost black out there."

The unit did use one six pound passive starlight night vision scope, considered state of the art at the time. While it was cumbersome and heavy, it did allow the tankers an advantage their infantry brethren likely did not enjoy.

"Wherever a vehicle needed one, for whatever reason, they'd bring it up and mount it on," Phil said. "It was about two-foot-long. It wasn't something you put on a rifle."

Down in a cubby hole

When Phil was assigned to his tank, later named "Aretha," his first job was gunner.

"I would sit way down in the turret, way down in the bottom underneath everybody. I had my own little cubby hole," he said. "On my right shoulder, I had a turret sight, and on my left shoulder was the blast deflector for the main gun. I was sitting there in my little seat and had little controllers. I could turn the turret back and forth and could fire the main gun. I had a periscope, so I could see what was going on out there. My world was about a 5 inch circle."

Phil only went down into his cubby hole during combat situations.

"The rest of the time, we sat on top," he said. "Right next to the commanders hatch -- there is the loader's hatch and right next was the commander's hatch. There was a little small section of steel from the turret there, and usually they stacked up four or five .50 caliber [ammunition] cans. That was where I would sit and dangle my feet down into the turret, because whenever we would get ambushed, the first thing they would do was fire rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) at the turret. If the tank survived the first volley, and you survived the first volley, then it was down behind the gun tube, around underneath the commander's feet down into my little hole. Then, I would go about business."

Even in a tank, the position was far from safe, Phil said.

"The Sheridan was known to explode into flames inside if it got hit. The Sheridan had what they call 'combustible cartridges.' Most tanks, you would have the big brass shell. You would fire that and [the shell] would be ejected back into the turret. We didn't. Everything would burn up."

In a combat situation, the gunner usually would have several rounds ready to load outside of the storage compartment.

"So now, you've got this exposed round here. A little bit of fire, a piece of hot shrapnel -- boom! It would set that one off and all the other ones. The inside of that tank basically became a crematory. If you were the gunner way down in your hole there, if anything happened, you couldn't really get out in time."

War Machine

The Sheridan was designed to destroy the enemy. Despite some drawbacks with its design, it fulfilled its purpose.

"The main gun is big," Phil said. "It is 152 millimeter cannon. During World War Two, most of our tanks were 75 millimeter. Our bigger tanks, the [M48 Patton main battle tanks] that ran in front of us, they had 90 mms. Then we would come up behind them with these 152s. We fired what they call Flechette rounds. They fired little nails. Each round we fired had 10,000 nails in it. It was a huge shotgun. If you were out in front of the tank, it would literally turn you into hamburger, literally. And, I saw it way too many times. Way too many times."

During combat, Phil didn't have time to think about those he was killing.

"It didn't bother me when I was doing it," he said. "Generally, when we got hit, something sort of turned off in your brain and something else turned on. You had a job and sort of through caution to the wind. I climbed down into my position. I am ready to go and ready to rock 'n' roll. You don't think about it at the time. Afterwards, when everything is all done, then you sit up on top of the turret and you start shaking, and you are hungry, but know if you eat something you are going to throw it up. It is hard to explain to people who haven't been through something like that, what all the feelings and the thoughts that go on. You sit there and realize you just killed a bunch of people. You are playing God, in a way. You see friends get hit, other vehicles that get RPG'd..."

Purple Heart

On May 29, 1969, Phil was wounded in combat.

"We were working in an area outside our main base camp down by Xuan Loc," he said. "We were on a three day mission. We got hit all three days. The third day was the worst. We found a weapons cash in a tree at 9 o'clock in the morning. We pulled all the weapons and ammunition, loaded them up on the vehicles, and started back on our move. We didn't go a couple of hundred yards and all of a sudden the lead vehicle gets hit. They open up on us, and it turns out we had run into a regimental base camp. We were outnumbered 10 to 1. They hit us with RPGs, they hit us with recoilless rifles, they had sappers running up with satchel charges trying to throw them up on our tanks to blow 'em up. We had ten M-48 tanks, which are 50-ton tanks, on line. They are good sized tanks. When I got dusted off that night, eight of them were on fire."

On that day, Phil was not in Aretha, which had been left back at base camp because of a mechanical malfunction. Instead, he was the left rear deck gunner in an armored personnel carrier (APC), manning an M60 machine gun.

"When I was on that vehicle, one of the tanks fired a round and hit a tree," Phil said. "The tree came down and landed on us. The platoon sergeant was on the back of the vehicle. He got hit and had a broken back. The right deck gunner got hit with a limb and had a concussion. He was bleeding from the nose and ears. I am up there trying to get the vehicle back out. The tree was on us. My gun disappears off the side. The other gun, the barrel gets knocked off [and] the .50 caliber is all jammed up. We don't have anything. I am out of the hatch trying to see what is going on with people down there ... and something happened and I was lying on the bottom of the vehicle. I don't know how I go there."

Standing up, Phil noticed a little hole in the sleeve of his shirt.

"I pulled it up and blood starts pouring out," he said. "It was exactly like the movies. You yell 'Medic!' The medic came running up and said 'I am really busy.' He tosses me a wrap and says 'can you possibly wrap that up yourself? I will get to you later on.' I wrapped my arm up. It is hilarious now."

Phil was "dusted-off," or evacuated via medical helicopter, at about 7 p.m. He was taken to a field hospital.

"I went in and right inside the door there was a guy lying on the stretcher with a sucking chest wound," Phil said. "There were three or four other guys on gurneys getting pieces of shrapnel pulled out of them. There was one guy who had a piece of shrapnel inside his leg, and they had run out of any painkillers, [but] they were going in with tweezers, digging round. I am looking at my arm" as if it is nothing.

A doctor told Phil any attempt to remove the shrapnel in his arm likely would cause unnecessary additional injury, and that it would eventually work its way out.

"It is still in there," Phil said with a big smile. "In 1992, I fell and broke my left elbow. I went in for X-rays and the doctor comes out and says, what is that? It was a big glowing spot about mid-way down the arm. I had completely forgotten about it."

The doctor offered to remove the shrapnel.

"I said, 'no,'" Phil said. "'It has been there all this time. It is doing just fine. It is my little souvenir.' They left it there."

A landmine saves Phil's life

On one particular morning in early July 1969, Phil finished breakfast and prepared to move out with his unit. His tank was almost always in the lead position, he said.

"We went to our tanks and jumped in, and the tank wouldn't start. We tried it and, nothing. They moved out and put the other vehicles up front. They called for maintenance to come up and take a look at it. The unit, we watched them disappear in a cloud of dust. The maintenance guy comes up, jumps down in the drivers hatch, hits the button and 'vroom,' it fires right up. He turns it off and tries again, and it fires right up."

Aretha later caught up with the column, but was directed to the flank position on the right side instead of taking lead, as per usual.

Then, Aretha hit a landmine.

"It jarred me pretty good," Phil said. "Blew my eardrums out. The funny thing is, I never heard the explosion. It was like the brain shut everything down, instantly. Everything went into slow motion, and the next thing I knew, I was down on the ground in front of the tank running away from it because my mind was saying it was going to blow-up."

Phil ran about 20 or 30 yards before realizing he was likely in the middle of an active mine field.

"My brain, finally kicking in, said 'there may be other landmines out here. You need to turn around and go back to the tank. Look for footprints.'"

In addition to landmines, Phil was now completely exposed to any enemy fire.

"When a tank would hit a landmine, it was generally followed almost instantly by a ground attack because of all the confusion," Phil said. "People tried to figure out what happened to the tank. And people are running over to see if they could help anybody injured. You had medics on the ground. They would hit and catch us off our vehicles. But, it didn't happen that day, for whatever reason. Fortunately, there was no ground attack. Apparently, it was a mine that was left behind. They buried so many mines over there they are still trying to recover."

Aretha was "toast," Phil said.

"It looked like a giant had taken the track off it and turned it into a pretzel. There was a big hole in the ground and we were sitting at a 45-degree angle into it. They had to call out a recovery vehicle to pull it in to the local base camp so we could strip it down and order a new tank."

The next day, with Aretha out of commission, Phil and his crew remained at base camp while the rest of the unit headed out into the jungle and into an ambush.

"We were listening to it on the radio," Phil said. "Somebody came on and said, 'we are in contact.' So, we ran over to one of our command APCs. They had all the radios so they could listen to everything. I am sitting there listening to this firefight go down. You are sitting there and you listening to that and you can't do anything. You just have to sit there and listen."

When the ambushed started, the lead Sheridan tank -- which otherwise likely would have been Aretha -- took several RPG hits to the turret.

"I would have been in the lead vehicle," Phil said. "Practically everybody in the tank was injured, one way or another. The gunner, who sat in the same exact position as I did, had an RPG [go] off underneath him. It blew him off the tank. He survived that because he was a big guy. We called him 'Fat Daddy.' He was off the tank. Nobody could get to him. He was injured quite badly and tried to crawl to a crater so he could get out of the line of fire. They finally got things secured so they could go out and bring him back in. He died on a helicopter going back to the hospital because his whole right side had been blown up and it was just too much damage. He was a lot bigger than me. I probably wouldn't have survived even that long."

Listening to the ambush unfold over the radio, "you could here the shooting, the explosions," Phil said. "You just knew those guys were going through hell out there. In your mind, you are saying 'I want to be with them, but I am glad I am not with them.' It is kind of hard to process, even at this late of a date."

In addition to Fat Daddy, another soldier who was with Phil when he was wounded in May was killed after taking three bullets across his "steel pot" helmet. Many others were injured.

Cracking under pressure

With the tremendous trauma experienced in war, some of Phil's fellow soldiers lost their minds.

"We had one guy in our unit, he was on his third tour over there -- three years straight," Phil recalled. "He was a lunatic. He was a track commander. Everybody on his crew was crazy. One of the guys had a skull. They found a skull on a tree. He kept the skull and took it back to the barracks. He called it 'Oscar.' He had a boonie hat for it. He had a pair of sunglasses that he put on it. When we go back out into the field, he would leave comic books and potato chips so Oscar would have something to read and to eat while we were gone. He would talk to Oscar in the field, even though Oscar wasn't there. He would tell Oscar that he was going to get eyes for him to see who killed him. The first firefight, he came back with two medicine bottles with eyeballs."

Phil has no idea what kept him from cracking, especially after experiencing about 50 engagements himself throughout 1969.

"I wish I knew," he said. "I really do. I got up every morning and did my job. Every evening I would do my guard duty. I went through the firefights, almost one a week."

It is the smells and sounds which still transport Phil back to the battleground to this day.

"The smell of rotting vegetation," he said. "The smell of the mud that gets up in the road wheels. It would heat up and you would have that dirt smell. Mix that in with diesel exhaust. And, we didn't take showers in our tanks, so you throw body odor in on that. And, to top the whole thing off, is the smell of the dead. In our situation, we had a lot of dead on the battlefield we would go through and in that kind of country with those kind of temperatures, the bodies bloat and explode fast. A lot of the bodies were burnt. You are just assaulted by this all the time. Constant smells."

For the sounds, diesel engines still make Phil uneasy at times.

"Sometimes trucks going by my on the road -- I will tense up a little bit inside."

The crack of Ak-47 bullets are another sound Phil does not miss.

"You get to the point where you can identify the good guy bullets from the bad guy bullets from the sounds," he said. "Ak-47 has a distinct pop when you hear it from a distance, almost like popcorn popping."

The final addition to all of this chaos is the blaring radios, Phil said.

"When a firefight starts, communications go to s***. Everybody is on there all at the same time. 'I need help over here.' 'I need ammunition.' 'I need this.' 'I've got a guy down.' When you start screaming, the communications go garbled. Nobody can understand anybody, but you are scared and you start screaming into the radios. All these sounds, smells hit you all at once. After a while, it drives you crazy. Some guys couldn't take it. Some guys cracked."

Survivor's Guilt

Phil, surviving the war, said he has dealt with survivor's guilt ever since, for both Fat Daddy and all the others who never came home alive.

"Why did I come back?" Phil asked. "What fantastic things am I accomplishing that warrant my coming back and not him or some of the other guys that got killed? You could say it was just a coincidence, just the way things sort of go. It is weird to think about."

Looking back at the war some 52 years later, Phil is still coming to grips with what happened.

"There is still a tremendous amount of pride in me, but there is also a lot of confusion," Phil said. "Why did we do that? Why did we do 10 years in Vietnam and just walk away, the same as they are doing in Afghanistan? I feel bad for the guys in now that went through that because I know what it feels like. There is a lot of bad feelings inside for our government. I am not in favor of overthrowing the government, so don't take it that way. I just watched over the years to how the politicians handled this kind of stuff, and it doesn't bother them to take a bunch of 18- and 19-year-old kids and throw them out there in the field and let 'em get shot up, and then just turn around and walk away from these things."

On Memorial and Veterans Days, such thoughts are never far from Phil's mind.

"Why? Is this stuff ever going to stop? It seems since we became a nation we have been at almost constant war of one type or another. I can see why our country and our government is falling apart now. We have taken enough. We can't be the policeman of the world, but the world is too small nowadays. You can't pull out [entirely], but you can't just constantly take the young men and throw them into meat grinders, which we have been doing, and expect people are just going to continue with the 'rah-rah.' 'You are doing great out there,' 'we are happy to see you.' It is not there. A lot of us guys are sick and tired of these politicians."

Phil, born in New York State, spent most of his life in California. He re-enlisted in the Army in the 1970s and did a stint with the California National Guard in the 1980s. He also worked for Lockheed-Martin. He moved to Glasgow about 10 years ago and has been a member of VFW Fort Peck Post 3107 since about 2012. He currently serves with the honor guard.