Permission to Fire Pete

Periodically each company in the battalion was designated to act as palace guards for the battalion forward base at LZ LARAMIE. On the way to the LZ for our tour-of-duty, another company moving just behind us got hit by a command detonated mine. I guess the VC holding the switch was sleeping when we went by and he woke up in time to hit the other unit.

LZ LARAMIE, as small as it was, also had a Cav 105 mm howitzer battery. The palace guard company FO was the designated Fire Support Coordinator (FSC) for the LZ. During our first night there a little after dark, personnel from the Quad 50 gun emplacement at one end of the LZ contacted me and requested permission to fire on some lights about 400 meters outside the wire. I went up to the gun emplacement to see what they were talking about and, even with my Bino's, was unable to determine what the lights were. Some thing just seemed to strike me wrong with this Quad 50 gun crew (they seemed to be trying to pressure me into letting them fire).

I had noticed that the Artillery Battery had one of the larger (crew-served) star-light scopes. So I went to the operator and asked him if he could observe the lights in question. He could not, so I asked him to move the scope to the Quad 50 location. The operator sort of objected to the move, but I made him do so any how. Once set up at the new location, I observed the light was coming from a family dwelling window with the family members eating their evening meal. I gave "permission denied" and got the expected smirks from the AAA gun crew (should have taken immediate action against these sh-t heads, but didn't).

The gray-haired Captain commanding the artillery battery tried to jump on my rear-end for moving "his" star-light scope. But, when I told him my reason and the results he calmed down and said "I'll take care of those bastards myself." Got along real good with this Arty CO after that. It seems he had already been passed over twice for promotion to major, but MILPERS said as long as he remained in VN he could stay on active duty.