Liberty in a War Zone
by Steve Lash

Aboard the USS VEGA off the coast 1966 or 67, the Captain, Alderton, I think, allowed the crew to have swim call. So the Vega drops anchor, puts out a few small boats from their divots, arms the boat crew with M1 Garand rifles and sends them off to form a square area off the starboard side of the ship. When the small boats were in place, we all dove or jumped over the side of the Vega. Look closely at the side of the Vega. It’s a tall ship when not fully loaded with foodstuff in the holds. It’s long way down and once you are committed to going over, there’s no way back.

There are two different but related situations here. First of all, we are swimming in the South China Sea right off the coast of N. Vietnam and there is a war going on just behind us. Most of have experienced the effects of that situation – the war - (see short stories by Erich Feigel) so the effect was not so apparent as it is more than 40 years later. In Clint Eastwood’s movie, "Flags of Our Fathers", the last scene shows the soldiers and sailors on Iwo Jima taking off their uniforms and running on the beach and jumping into the water with someone mentioning that there was a terrible battle just behind us and now we are like a bunch kids having a good time as if nothing had happened. I thought the similarity here is amazing.

Secondly, we were in a combat zone – hostile fire area of the coast of N. Vietnam where if someone were able, he or she could have hit us with a bb gun. Take out the supply ships and the other, more devastating ships like carriers launching jets to bomb the north and destroyers and cruisers shelling the villages, would not be able to operate in that capacity. We were armed with 3" 50cal guns both fore and aft and just fore when the helicopter deck was installed. We were also armed with WW2 M1 Garand rifles and 1911A1 Colt .45 automatic pistols. I thought it was very strange to be in a combat zone and be armed with outdated small arms. Although it was later, in about ‘67 or ‘68 that the M16 rifle was being used exclusively, we could at least have had M14’s on board. A lot of us would carry the large Case folding knife just for our own piece of mind. What if the ship had to be abandoned – I would want something for personal protection –although not much protection in the combat zone.

I can remember qualifying with the small arms. The ship would trail a 50 gal. drum behind the ship and we would line up to shoot several rounds from the M1 and 3 shots from the .45. You did not have to hit the drum – just pull the trigger and shoot in the general direction. Again, we were in a combat zone with a war going on very close to us.

In 1966 or ‘67, the Vega was sailing out of Hawaii after loading foodstuff into our cargo holds. It was time for target practice with the 3" 50 cal. guns on the ship. There would be a small plane (I can remember it being a prop plane – but I might be mistaken) that would trail a large black sock and the gunner’s mates would try to hit it or come close.

Being on a supply ship, I often wondered how effective the gunner’s mates were. It turned out that we almost hit a passenger liner departing Honolulu airport. It’s a good thing that the gunner’s mates were good (or bad) shots.

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