| My gunners and loaders were well-trained, seasoned combat veterans, but on this
day asked to accomplish the impossible, even they struggled to stay in the
fight.
 I moved my Duster to the line and joined in
firing. Five Dusters put
out a combined thousand rounds per minute, softened the enemy position and
after what seemed an eternity, began gaining ground. I cursed the airborne
commander for his stupidity in misplacing his artillery. He must have
slept through his infantry training classes. Besides, we’d been
in contact with the enemy over an hour. Where the hell was air support? Who
the hell was running that mess?
We moved forward by inches. Finally,
I saw the infantry fall back – a
good thing, because both my 40s suddenly jammed at the same time.
Only
twenty meters from the tree line, I opened up with my .50 caliber. Then,
I heard the other Dusters crank up their .50s and figured they were jammed
or out of ammo, too. The .50 caliber machine gun is a popgun compared
to the 40mm, and I knew it was past time for us to get the hell out of there. I
gave the signal to withdraw, but I stayed to cover the others backed away. Determined
to leave nothing in the jar, I fired until I overheated the barrel of my machine
gun, and it jammed, too.
Then, a really crazy thing happened. I
can’t remember every detail
of the incident, but I can’t forget it, either. When my gun fell
silent, an NVA soldier popped out of a spider hole to my front and leveled
an RPG right at my Duster. I don’t know what fraction of a second
it took for me to draw my .45 and fire. It happened so fast, I hardly
remember doing it at all. Like a scene in a bad war movie, I pulled the
trigger, and the guy slumped dead into his hole. I say this was crazy
because in my life, I’d never been good with a pistol – I
barely qualified with it in ROTC – but at that moment, when it really
counted, I pulled it out and put a bullet square in the middle of that man’s
forehead.
- When face-to-face with instant annihilation, Lance reacted instinctively
to save his life, but this time, he chose fight over flight or freeze, and
the bullet hole in the enemy’s forehead punctuated the final blow to
Lance Johnson’s ability to cope with traumatic stress.
|
