Mine Sweeper

I was in one of the squads of 'C' Company, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion 4th Infantry Division. I was a combat demolition specialist, MOS 12B30. The photo is our team following a minesweeping mission. 

It was May 9, 1968, in Vietnam. We were on the road between the village of Polei Kleng and the bridge over the Kontum River, sweeping for anti-vehicle mines.

As we crossed the stream outside the village, I saw a small ring-neck snake. I picked it up, and it bit me. I took this as a warning, for snakes usually didn't bite me, and I used to keep them as pets. My 'pets' would bite other people, though.

I told the Sergeant, but he said it was crazy. Then the mine detectors started breaking down. We carried four; two were metal detectors, and the other two were for detecting plastic mines. After considerable repair efforts, we had only two working detectors, one of each type.

The other mine sweep team, who swept from Kontum City to the bridge, had already finished, and a colonel radioed us saying to hurry up. The Sergeant ordered us to have one detector for each side of the road, and to "take big steps." This was dangerous, and I told him so. He ordered me to the back of the line in the last probe position (we followed the sweepers and probed the ground if they got a reading), so he didn't have to hear me complain. 

After some distance doing this, I looked down at the road's edge and just "knew" a mine was there, although the detectors missed it, and there was no obvious sign. I told everyone to hold up, and the Sergeant came back, saying "What is it now?" I scraped my bayonet over the covering soil and uncovered a gray plastic Russian-made anti-vehicle mine. The Sergeant halted the following convoy, and called back the mine detectors and started a more careful sweep while I dug out the Russian mine. They found nothing, so the mine I found turned out to be the first in a series of nine mines. Some were found with mine detectors, the rest I found by 'knowing' they were there.

We found eight other mines that day. A truck coming from Kontum didn't know the road wasn't clear and was driving toward us; I had been switched to point position (we took turns to avoid fatigue) and ran up to get the truck to stop; it had barely missed a buried mine. 

At a dip in the road, a puddle of water had collected from the rain. Looking at the puddle, I felt a mine was there, underwater. I asked the mine detectors to check it a second time, but they found nothing. I asked a prober to probe the puddle carefully, and he also found nothing. The two soldiers in the truck were anxious to continue on, and they were let go. As they drove over the puddle, it exploded, and the two men were badly injured as their 3/4 ton pick-up was tossed into the air to land upside-down on the side of the road. I don't know if they survived.

I had wanted to check the puddle personally, but regulations required me to stay on point and watch for an ambush. I felt that if I checked it, I would have found it, and have felt guilt for the past 46 years.