A Troop, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry 25th ID - Vietnam

Personal Experience Narratives (War Stories)

"Ollie"
by John G. Jerdon

     To say that Ollie Sauls had a chip on his shoulder, would be like saying Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had a mild disagreement with George Custer. Ollie was twenty six years of age when he was assigned to A Troop of the ¾ Cav, around five years older than most of the rest of us, and seven years older than me. I couldn’t figure out just why Ollie treated the rest of us with the suspicion and mistrust that dropped like a veil over his eyes and manner whenever any of us tried to talk to him. Maybe it was his age as opposed to the rest of us; maybe it was a product of the racial unrest and riots of the time. Whatever it was we had to get him to forget it fast.
 
      The first time I encountered Ollie at his worst, was when we had some mine sweepers checking out a road for us near Trang Bang. The Lieutenant called for the dismounts to put about seven men out in front of the sweepers as security. I got down with six other guys, including Ollie Sauls. I had heard that he could be difficult and when I saw him with an M-60 machine gun instead of his rifle, I went over to ask about it. He angrily told me to get off his back, he was going to carry the M-60 and that was that. I told him fine, and then told him he was going to carry it for the rest of the morning. He was about half dead from exhaustion when we broke for chow. After lunch, seven other dismounts replaced us and Ollie was muttering under his breath behind the M-60, now mounted back on his track.
     
     I was wrong to think that Ollie would learn his lesson, he just seemed either ornery or stupid and I didn’t think he was dumb. About two or three weeks later, one of the dismounts came to me and he was very agitated. He told me that Ollie was using the dismounts as aiming points when they were deployed and they had tried everything, even threats but he just wouldn’t stop.

     I went over to Ollie’s track that night and before I could say anything he started yelling about how he could depend only on himself if he was to survive. He was so close, I thought he was going to swing at me and I backed off of him. He wouldn’t listen to reason; hell, there was no reasoning with him. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to have to go to the Lieutenant with what he might consider a minor problem. It bugged me all night and when we mounted up the next morning, I kept a careful eye on him. The other fellows were right; he was really laying the gun on the rest of us, making a show of it. I only had one thing I could do.

     Most of you guys will recall that the ‘fifty’, or to be more formal, the M2A1 .50 Caliber machine gun didn’t have a normal safety. There wasn’t a button to push or a little lever to shift. The fifty was usually kept at ‘half cock’. In that position, the fifty would need one more of the cocking sequence before it could be fired. Because it could be set off by a bump in the road or any other such minor disturbance, we always, always kept the guns at half cock. That was the only safety.

     As we left the laager the next morning, the scout track that Ollie was on was to be followed by my track. As Ollie gave me what I thought was a rather scornful glance, I made a great show of traversing the fifty onto Ollie, and then with another great show, I yanked the handle back and put the fifty into full cock.
 
     It was a defining moment for Ollie Sauls. He started screaming. He said lots of things while he was screaming, and believe it or not, not one of them was a threat. Most of the words that I could understand were ones that sounded like, “I’ll never do it again”, sprinkled with “I’m sorry” and there were a few pleases mixed in with the rest of it. I don’t know if that little trick worked, but it must have because Ollie dropped off of list of my worries for a while.

     Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Ollie wasn’t brought to Jesus by that little number; I believe he was just as difficult to live with as far as the other guys on his track were concerned, but he stopped being my worry after that. He must have settled down all around because the other guys in the platoon slowly stopped describing him by using words starting with the earlier letters of the alphabet.

     My next dealing with Ollie was on the ninth of May when the other three guys on his track managed to get themselves pinned down while they were nosing down an alley near Cholon. Getting those guys out of the alley was a little hairy and Ollie was instrumental in their rescue. I never really thought too much about it at the time, and it’s only recently that I started to realize that maybe Ollie was a better soldier than I gave him credit for. And maybe that’s something that I’ll have to answer for when I get to Fiddlers Green.  On the twenty-seventh of May, only eighteen days after the fight in that alley, Ollie Sauls was killed in action.

    For many years I put Ollie’s death down as something he brought on himself. All I ever remembered was how difficult and stubborn he was before May. The Lieutenant had us put down the dismounts to fight between the vehicles that day. We had moved up in reaction to an Infantry unit that had fought off repeated attacks during the previous night. I took a kid nick-named Alabama as my RTO, and we were at it for about an hour when I got a call from two-zero saying that we had a casualty on the right flank and that Doc Lick was going over there. I told Alabama to stay put and ran with Doc to check things out.

   The fellow was suffering from heat exhaustion and Doc had him sit in the rear door of his track until he felt better. We started to run back when everything got fuzzy in my memory. Doc dove on Ollie who had been hit in the chest and throat. Alabama was on his back, unwounded, but trying to dig a hole with the radio that he was carrying. To this day I can remember the bright red blood pulsing out of Ollie’s throat wound. He was already starting to spasm and I knelt down to tell him that he was going to be all right. He died almost at the same time that I tried to speak to him.

     Later that month and into the beginning of June, we tried to dissect what had happened that day. Almost everyone, including me, figured that Ollie was showboating. We figured that he had grabbed the handset of the radio and was hot-dogging, never thinking about the antenna. The antennas on those radios drew fire like a magnet. To a man we figured that Ollie brought it on himself. For most of the years since then it was easier for me to remember it that way. It’s always easier to blame a guy like Ollie, especially if you really didn’t care for him much.

   Lately I’ve been thinking back to those days, getting older like all of us; maybe getting wiser. What’s been bothering the hell out of me is my reaction to Ollie’s death. For the life of me I don’t know why I almost forgot about Ollie’s part in the rescuing of the other three GI’s on his track. For all I know, Ollie was just trying to help out like he did a few weeks before. Like I said, maybe it’s something that will count against me, maybe not, but I hope it isn’t too late to for me. Maybe I’ll go and find a small Catholic Church near here. Light a candle and kneel down and ask for forgiveness and pray for the repose of the soul of PFC Ollie Sauls, Troop “A”, Third Squadron, Fourth United States Cavalry

John G. Jerdon
Earleville, Maryland.