Remembering Vietnam – Mike Berzinsky

During the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War

May of 1969.  I was near Dak To in Vietnam. Up until then, except for a few rockets and mortars, everything was pretty calm. But then things changed. We started getting ground assaults. Seemed like almost every night many times it would probe the perimeter.

Then they got inside, I don’t know how many times, but they started bringing heavy stuff. 122 millimeter rockets. These things were six feet long and huge in diameter. All they did was prop them up in a tripod somewhere in the jungle and fire them like a giant bottle rocket. You would hear the whoosh when it was fired. Then thump, thump. 

If you are on guard duty in the main tower looking out into the jungle, you could see a puff of smoke. Then you would see them coming in. In fact, there were times when I’d get my camera ready and follow them in hoping to get a picture just when they hit.

We dug holes, little foxholes, to jump into and take cover when you heard them coming. But after a few weeks and you didn’t worry about it anymore. What was the point? They weren’t aiming at you. They just fired the damn things. So if you were going to get hit and you were really going to get hit. That was my attitude, which I realize now was really stupid, but that’s just the way it was. I don’t know why I did it, but instead of jumping into a hole, I walked around with my camera hoping to get a great picture.

When Sappers got into the perimeter, they would have explosive charges and satchel charges on them. A few were suicide attacks with everything strapped to their bodies. They tried to kill as many guys as they could. It seemed like that was their main mission.

One night they blew up the mess hall. Another night they hit the motor pool and tried to blow up all the trucks. They set charges were on the guard tower at least once. It didn’t seem like they had one specific target really, they just wanted to destroy and kill anybody they could. 

There was one night we were up at the tower firing and I saw a B40 rocket heading towards us. I could see the sparks trailing. I was firing in that direction and thinking, “okay, I’m dead. I’m dead.” There are three of us up there firing, and I expected all of us to be killed. We kept firing and nothing happened. 

The next day we did an inspection and there’s that rocket embedded in the sandbags below us. It could have taken off the top of the bunker and killed us like nothing. They were that powerful. We were standing about 15 feet up and that thing hit it about 12 feet. I close my eyes today and I still see it coming towards us like it was yesterday. 

One day we started heading back to Dok To with some wounded guys in the truck, and the company commander said to stop the convoy. He said, “where are the bodies?” We had two guys killed and they’d been left lying back there. That can’t happen. So the captain said, “we need some guys to go back and get them.” I’m thinking, I hope it’s not me. And sure enough, he says, “Berzinsky, come with me. We’re going back to pick up the bodies.”

And I’m like, “Captain, what do you mean? Can’t we take the truck?”

He said “No, ’cause they would just blow it up and we can’t afford to lose that truck.”

I took my helmet and flack jacket off. I could never run in those things, although I knew one well-placed bullet could kill me and we started running back to the bodies. 

We started getting shot at. So we’re running and shooting and diving into the ditches and getting up and running some more. We get to the bodies and it dawns on me. How in the hell are we supposed to carry them back? The captain says, “gimme your rifles.” So we picked them up and started carrying them back. We were scared out of our minds.

They were still shooting at us. How they missed, I do not know. They must have thought we were nuts. We got about a quarter mile back and somebody had decided to hell with it. “Let’s go back there and get the truck and pick them up.” That was a bad day. I was so scared going back there and trying to carry them. I couldn’t even think about what was going on.

Mike Berzinsky
299th Battalion, 18th Engineer Brigade
US Army, Vietnam War