Joe Todd: An interview with Roger Weil, Part 3

Oklahoma historian Joe L. Todd interviewed Roger Weil on Dec. 17, 2018 in Copan. This is the third installment of that interview.

T: What did you do in Vietnam?

W: I was there four or five days in the first platoon, the driver of the Personnel Carrier I was assigned to, went out, picked up a rifle and blew hit toe off. He we medevacked and we didn’t have any more drivers. I said I could drive it, but I was told I hadn’t been there long enough. The PC needed to be moved, so I moved it. The lieutenant asked who move the PC and I said I did and said I could start driving anytime. The lieutenant asked if I had ever driven one before and I said no. He asked why I thought I could drive it and I told him On the Job Training. I drove it five or six days and hit a land mine. The commander and the lieutenant checked the tracks and they said I was in the track, the proper place when I hit the land mine.

T: Is the Personnel Carrier a tracked vehicle?

W: Yes. I drove the PC for about one month and a guy on the Sheridan had to come home and they moved me to the Sheridan, because they had other guys coming in that could drive the PC. I went to the Sheridan and started out as a loader for several weeks then started driving. I drove for several months then became tank commander. I was on the platoon sergeant’s tank. I went to another unit and drove for a while and then I started training drivers. During Operation Lon Son, I went back to driving. It was the last major operation we were on. We were on a mine sweep that day and I was driving and a friend of mine got out and we were ambushed. We fired and we had to go through, we couldn’t go back. The tank commander was wounded and we went through to a creek and up a hill.

I couldn’t get up the hill with the guys on the tank and they got off and went up the hill. I think that is when the tank commander was hit. I made two attempts to get up the hill and the third attempt is when I took a direct hit with an RPG. It picked me up and blew me over and I blacked out. When I came to, I was at the top of the hill and the guys were diving out of the way. The helicopter gunships came in from the First Air Cavalry. I got behind a fifty-caliber machine gun and was there for seven or eight hours. Our new troop commander came in and our old troop commander was with him on a helicopter. He was on the radio and asked how many were left on the tank and I said it was only me, I was the only one left., the rest were gone. They had been taken away on the dust-off helicopter. Two PCs were knocked out. They were to get us bottled up but we sprung the ambush. We were told not to turn and fight but keep going. If we had turned to fight, we would probably would have lost a lot more than we did. The gun ships were still there and our artillery was coming in. Our artillery had my position and they were landing all around me but never hit me. The only time they stopped firing is when the gun ships came in. I was there until six o’clock in the morning and some guys from another platoon came in.

T: Where was operation Lon Son?

W: That was the Yellow Brick Road from the Rock Pile to Khe San.

T: When did that happen?

W: That was February or March of 1971. After that night, we got more people in. I’ll never forget Sergeant Hudson. He was an E-7 and one of the best platoon sergeants I ever had. That was his third or fourth tour. He never asked you to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. I was the tank commander on his tank.

T: Where was your base camp?

W: Our base camp was Dong Ha, way up north. They talked about going to Camp Evans, but we never went to Camp Evans. We stayed in the back yard mostly, Charley 2, Alpha 4, then we went up to Operation Lon Son.

T: Were you at Quang Tri?

W: Quang Tri Province.

T: Did you fire the beehive round?

W: I never fired the beehive round, but my commander did when he got ambushed. They said two Sheridan’s and one PC held off a battalion of NVA, two hundred and fifty men. The 101st went in and said not many got away. We held them long enough for the gunships to get there and the F16s.

T: This happened on the Yellow Brick Road?

W: yes.

T: Did you get to Khe San?

W: Yes, we got to Khe San. I led a patrol in and area and did everything we were supposed to and didn’t see anything. Four or five days later, Alpha Troop took their tanks in the same area and got massacred. They found an underground hospital and we walked all over the top of it.

We had a new guy in country and he was going to shoot a snake. I told him not to because that snake was not bothering us. If he had shot that snake, we might have been massacred.

T: Did you have any contact with the local people?

W: I didn’t. They had some that worked around Dong Ha.

Read Part 4 next Sunday.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Joe Todd: An interview with Roger Weil, Part 3