'Two Million Miles of Bad Road'

‘Two Million Miles of Bad Road’ Long-Haul Trucking on Vietnam’s Treacherous Highway 19

By John Horvath

In the spring of 1966 my U.S. Army transportation truck company learned that our tractors and trailers would be leaving Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and going to Vietnam for long-haul trucking duties. We knew, of course, that we could run into the enemy, but we never imagined that we would be driving pothole-strewn roads shared with wild Vietnamese drivers. I saw accidents of all kinds when I was organizing convoys as an Army captain commanding the 64th Transpor- tation Company. In one especially tragic incident, an Army truck driver was zigzagging left and right across the road to miss potholes, and coming in the opposite direction, also zigzagging to avoid potholes, was a fast-moving small Vietnam- Hauling It A truck convoy of the ese bus. The head-on collision killed eight Vietnamese. In an- 64th Transportation other accident, one of our drivers was crushed between two Company thunders through the Central vehicles in a trailer-transfer point and killed. And threats

Highlands of South CREDIT PHOTO JOHN HORVATH COURTESY of ambush added to the dangers the convoys had to face. Vietnam.

22 VIETNAM OCTOBER 2016 23 The 64th Transportation Company departed for platoon sergeant, would be in another armed jeep as Vietnam in July 1966. We moved out with our 60 5-ton my assistant convoy commander. A typical convoy had tractors, 120 12-ton trailers, 20 headquarters vehicles about 50 18-wheelers from my company and about 25 and 186 officers and men. The advance party went by from each from the two other truck companies in our air. The vehicles were shipped via the port of Charleston, battalion. South Carolina. Our main body flew by air charter from I reported at 0230 to the battalion operations tent, Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina to McCord Air where the sergeant gave me our trailer pickup locations. Force Base near Seattle. We were then taken by bus to The drivers woke up at 0330 and ate breakfast at 0400 Tacoma, Washington, where we boarded the troopship in our company mess hall. (Drivers were issued C ra- USNS General John Pope for 19 days at sea. tions for the noon meal.) At 0430 I announced which Soon after we learned we were going to Vietnam, we drivers had to pick up trailers at various supply depots, were told that our truck tractors weren’t going with us, the Qui Nhon port or the local trailer-transfer point. We so we put their best tires on our deploying trailers. Just weren’t able to put assistant drivers on the trucks be- as we finished trading the tires, Tank-Automotive Com- cause men were needed for guard work and other duties. mand told us that we were going to take our tractors At 0630 our truck tractor drivers with loaded trailers with us. You guessed it: We returned the best tires to assembled along the right side of Highway 19, about 15 those tractors. miles west of Qui Nhon, in the Cha Rang Valley. I gave The General John Pope docked at Qui Nhon, about our outbound briefing at 0645. We departed at 0700. 300 miles south of Demilitarized Zone between North The convoy’s lead driver was someone who would keep and South Vietnam, in August, the beginning of our 12 a reasonable pace. At the tail of the convoy was a me- months in-country. We were greeted by the members of chanic driving a truck tractor without a trailer but car- our advance party, and buses took us to our company rying supplies for breakdowns. He was accompanied by area, about 10 miles inland on Highway 1, near the vil- a second tractor running without a trailer for use in pull- lage of Phu Tai. We were assigned to the 27th Transpor- ing downed vehicles. The assistant convoy commander tation Battalion, where and I drove our jeeps up we joined two other The unbelievably potholed roads, wild and down the convoy, tractor-trailer compa- civilian traffic, high mileage, oppressive with one of us always nies, a 2½-ton cargo at the trailing end. truck company and a heat, engine noise, choking dust, miserable By 0915 we arrived fuel tanker company. rain, treacherous mud and creeping fatigue at An Khe, home of the Our primary convoy caused frequent accidents 1st Cavalry Division route ran west from (Airmobile). With the Qui Nhon on Highway 19 for 110 miles to Pleiku. In the slow, first-gear grind up the steep, winding An Khe pass Pleiku area, we dropped off loads at the 4th Infantry and later another grind up Mang Yang pass, it usually Division base camp, at an Air Force base and at many took an hour for a convoy to reach the top. We would depots. We hauled flatbed trailers stacked with practi- line up the trucks just beyond An Khe to filter out stray cally anything that could be held down by steel bands, traffic, such as civilian or South Vietnamese army vehi- including ammunition, construction material, combat cles that had gotten mixed in with us over the 55 travel rations and pallets of other items needed for U.S. forces miles from Qui Nhon. The Military Police held the con- operating in the middle of Vietnam. We made the 220- voys there to create 15-minute intervals between each mile round trip to Pleiku and back every day. convoy and thus separate them by enough distance to prevent two convoys from being caught in the same am- I shared the daily convoy commander duties with bush. the company’s original three platoon leaders—later two There were 35 temporary one-way steel bridges on the and then one. My commander’s vehicle on the convoy route. The loaded outbound convoys had priority at each was an M151 jeep with mounted gun and a radio set. In bridge. At about 0945 we were released from the An Khe the fall of 1966, as a precaution in case we were hit by checkpoint. At about 1200 we had driven beyond the small-arms fire, I arranged for the installation of facto- Mang Yang pass and the Central Highlands and arrived ry-issued armor plating on my radio gun jeep, making at the Pleiku marshaling area. it the first armored escort jeep in the area. Our drivers would disperse to their designated trail- We were allowed to name our vehicles on the armor er-drop locations. Each would release his loaded trailer, plate. My jeep became the “Patmobile,” in honor of my pick up an empty trailer and return to the marshaling Bumper to bumper wife, Patricia, who, with our young daughter, was stay- area. By 1400 we departed from Pleiku on our return Besides the daily ing at her parents’ home in Cleveland. Tractors were run. If we delayed beyond that time, the Military Police runs on Highway named by their drivers. “Beautiful Dreamer” and “The held the convoy overnight because the bridges closed 19, truck convoys Tennessean” are two names that stick in my mind. just before dusk and trucks on the road at night were traveled many A typical day on convoy duty started in the middle of particularly susceptible to ambushes. other bad roads, the night. I woke up at 0200 and went to the company We didn’t face much danger from ambushes during my including this one operations tent to learn how many tractors would be deployment. But later a convoy ambush on Sept. 2, 1967,

near Hue in 1969. MERRON AP PHOTO/RICK OPPOSITE: in the convoy and which platoon sergeant, or assistant killed nine soldiers, wounded 19, destroyed 12 vehicles

24 VIETNAM OCTOBER 2016 25 Mountain view Trucks on Highway 19 crew.WW Tractors that our crews could not repair were Blocked head toward turned over to the Ordnance Battalion in Qui Nhon for An ambushed truck the An Khe Pass. repairs. is being cleared off The unbelievably potholed roads, wild civilian traffic, Highway 19 at the high mileage, oppressive heat, engine noise, choking An Khe Pass on dust, miserable rain, treacherous mud and creeping fa- April 28, 1972, while tigue caused frequent accidents. Both the An Khe and a convoy stacks up the Mang Yang passes were a series of zigzagging steep behind. climbing turns. A severe switchback in the An Khe pass became known as the “Devil’s Hairpin.” During one slow, hot and dusty climb up An Khe Pass, and damaged 18. Other ambushes followed. I spotted one of my men driving while “frozen”—sound The starting point Pleiku, a provincial capital, was of serious interest asleep behind the wheel of his truck. His transmission Army trucks shipped from to the enemy. Not too many miles away is the Ia Drang was in the lowest of the 10 manual gears, and he had the the United States dock at Qui Valley, scene of the November 1965 1st Air Cavalry Di- dashboard engine-throttle handle pulled wide open. His Nhon, shown in 1967, above, vision’s battle that was the first major confrontation be- hands, wrist and arms were stiffly locked into place. I and today. tween the U.S. Army and the North Vietnamese Army—a loosened my canteen from my belt, told my jeep driver battle that resulted from the U.S. response to an NVA what I was about to do and got out of the jeep. I ran attack on a base near Pleiku. between the jeep and the tractor and then jumped on Street Without Joy, journalist Bernard Fall’s famous to the running board. I grabbed the steering wheel and book on France’s failed war in Indochina during the splashed water into the face of driver, astonished but 1950s, was about Highway 1, the coastal road, but Fall now wide-awake. included a chapter about Highway 19 between the Mang Thanksgiving Day 1966 became known as “Black Yang Pass and Pleiku. One day, while looking around Thursday” after three tractors were wrecked in acci- after my gun jeep driver and I stopped to provide se- dents. In response, I contacted the Ohio State Highway curity for truck with a flat tire, I came across a small Patrol by mail and purchased an excellent color movie monument that memorialized the June 1954 ambush of of its big-truck safety program. I also asked our main- Dogged defense French Mobile Group 100, which suffered hundreds of tenance section to mount a smashed jeep (not one of Captain John Horvath deaths in the last major battle of the First Indochina War. ours!) onto the top of a steel Conex container at the goes one on one with company front gate as a reminder of the potential con- company mascot Huntz. During our entire year in Vietnam, there was only sequences of unsafe driving. one day when we did not make a run to Pleiku. That The biggest cause of trouble, however, was the road was the day a tracked vehicle retriever, with its towed itself. Every day the potholes sent the tractors bounc- tank, tried to cross one of the bridges. The two tracked ing high over the road, punishing vehicles and drivers. vehicles wound up as a huge V shape in the middle of Many of the holes were so wide and so deep that the the broken bridge. That night the engineers put in a by- trucks had to leave the road, make a bumpy dirt bypass pass—a temporary gravel ramp down to the gulley and and then get back on the road. We began our tour in Au- another back up to the roadway—and we were on our gust 1966 with 60 tractors, but by December 1967 the way the next morning. company was down to 36. Most of the losses resulted We generally rolled back into Phu Tai by 1830 and from cracked frames caused by the road conditions. dropped the trailers off at the Cha Rang Valley transfer Fuel filters were another problem. The diesel fuel point. Because I had arranged for my mess hall to oper- came from tanker ships in Qui Nhon harbor and was ate 24 hours every day, our drivers could eat before or pumped into storage tanks in the quartermaster fuel Naming rights after their daily vehicle maintenance. By 2200 drivers depot near the beach. Each evening, we picked up fuel Horvath christened his could enjoy a beer or a soft drink at our company club, at the depot with our own 5,000-gallon tanker trailer. commander’s jeep the watch an outdoor movie from a wooden bench, shower The fuel in our tractors eventually acquired a serious Patmobile, after his and get ready for the next day on the road. At 0230 amount of sand through some flaw in the quartermas- wife, Patricia. every day the whole operation began again. ter fuel supply operation. I remember the sad sight of To handle the daily maintenance work efficiently, we a used filter sitting on a large piece of cardboard, with organized what I called a “three-ring circuit” mainte- a mixture of raw sand and diesel fuel oozing out of the nance program. Members of 1st Platoon checked and bottom of the filter. Replacement filters were not avail- replaced tires for each driver. The 2nd Platoon cleaned able this early in the war. The only fix was to flush the the trucks with a power washer filled from a well that used filters thoroughly in our parts-cleaning machine, we had dug. And 3rd Platoon helped each driver with which been filled with clean fuel, and then put them back maintenance work and repairs. If problems could not be into each tractor. resolved by 2130, the tractor was driven to the company maintenance shop. A maintenance crew of night owls In our daily runs we passed through two types ter- then worked to return as many tractors as possible to rains that essentially put us in two climates during one the platoons for the next day’s convoy. Our maintenance trip. Quui Nho, near the beach, was hotter and more

section worked in 12-hour shifts, a night crew and a day humid. Pleiku, on the highlands plateau, was cooler and ARMY US BOTTOM: TO TOP RIGHT, OPPOSITE FAR AP PHOTO/FAAS; OPPOSITE RIGHT: JOHN HORVATH; COURTESY (2) JOHN HORVATH IN COURTESY COLLISION PHYSICS SYMPOSIUM; PHOTO;

26 VIETNAM OCTOBER 2016 27 1954 AMBUSH OF FRENCH MOBILE AN KHE less humid. Qui Nhon seemed to have the Huntz lived happily with Sam and his family GROUP PASS monsoon rains for two months when Pleiku in Fayetteville for many years before dying 14 was not getting rain. During another part of Our in 1975. 1 ENLARGED the year, Pleiku had monsoon rains for two In May, the 64th Transportation Com- AREA favorite months, and Qui Nhon was dry. When one song was pany began to gradually send drivers to of those areas was hot, with chocking dust, “We Gotta other companies for the rest of their tour PLEIKU AN KHU SOUTH the other area was cooler with drenching and bring in other companies’ soldiers who MANG VIETNAM monsoon rain. Get Out had later departure dates so that the 64th YANG In the dry periods, many drivers used of This would not have a complete change in per- The long haul PASS DEVIL’S disposable surgical masks from clinics to Place,” sonnel all at one time in August. We had Daily truck convoys ran HAIRPIN CITY NAME filter out the thick dust. We applied sand- a whole lingo dedicated to returning home. 110 miles from the port CURVE bags to the driver-side cab floors for protec- by the When a soldier had fewer than 100 days re- city of Qui Nhon to tion from land mines and put armor plating Animals maining on his one-year tour, he was a “dou- Pleiku, dropped off on the tractor doors to protect them from ble digit midget.” When he had fewer than supplies for American small-arms fire; however, the new armored plating cov- 10 days, he was a “single digit midget.” With less than bases and returned to ered much of the door’s window opening, except for a a week remaining, he was into the “no-mores,” as in no Qui Nhon for the night. small cutout window, and trapped even more heat in the more Sundays, no more Mondays. Our favorite song was cab. Add in the heavy steel helmets and the heavy, hot “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” by the Animals. flak jackets that convoy crews wore, and you get a long, Near the end of my tour in May, I noticed that my miserable, exhausting day. M151 radio gun jeep had logged 20,000 convoy escort In the monsoon period, the huge raindrops would fall miles. In the first nine months of truck operations, our hard and fast. The rain produced a red mud that left company reports showed a cumulative 2 million long- deep stain on everything. Before our truck company left haul task miles. We immediately named this total mile- Fort Bragg, we had been issued rubber galoshes, which age our “Two Million Miles of Bad Road.” were an item of wonder for us, but in Vietnam we found One of the 64th Transportation Company platoon lead- that they were invaluable in the thick monsoon mud. ers received a posthumous Silver Star Medal for actions We were also grateful for the arctic sleeping bags we’d on Jan. 31, 1968. David R. Wilson, a first lieutenant of been given, putting them to good use during some cold the Transportation Corps, was riding in a radio gun jeep nights on the highlands. as a convoy commander on a Pleiku-to-Qui Nhon run, Coming in from long road hauls and pulling mainte- when the 30-vehicle group was ambushed. Parts of con- nance duty each night, the drivers did not get much time voy traveled safely through the ambush zone, but Wil- to sleep. They napped in their truck cabs while waiting son realized that the rear section had become trapped in the lineup area near Qui Nhon or in the marshal- in the kill zone. The lieutenant and his driver turned ing area in Pleiku. If the depot crew could not unload around and sped back into intense gunfire to do what- a trailer on time, the driver had to remain overnight ever they could to rescue the stranded truck drivers. An in Pleiku and return with another convoy the following enemy mortar round landed near the jeep, and Wilson Waiting to deploy day. The stranded driver had to sleep in his cab, and eat was killed. Truck tractors are parked in C-ration meals. In another fatal incident, on Oct. 28, 1969, the four- an open field at Fort Bragg, At one Pleiku depot, the crew frequently delayed the man crew of the 64th Transportation gun truck “Mighty the home base of the 64th unloading of our trailers full of 55-gallon drums of tar. Minnie” died in a helicopter crash near Kontum in Transportation Company. I tried to reason with them, but they didn’t respond, Pleiku province. Gun truck crews and helicopter crews forcing our drivers to stay overnight. I decided to try developed a strong bond since both were charged with something more dramatic to change the depot crew’s be- endless hours of security duty in protecting the convoys. havior. I cut the tie-down bands that secured the loads to This helicopter crew was giving the gun-truck crew a A HEAVY LOAD the trailers and told the drivers to whirl around in tight familiarization ride when the helicopter failed to gain circles, which flung the loose barrels across the storage airspeed during takeoff and didn’t rise high enough to The 64th Transportation Company was one of the 12 truck Ambushes 36 companies in the 8th Transportation Group, headquartered yard. The depot crew sped up its unloading procedures, clear the barbed-wire fence at the perimeter of a camp. near Qui Nhon. In his excellent book Gun Trucks, Timothy J. Mining incidents 65 and our drivers were able to join their own convoy re- All aboard were killed. Kutta included the following 8th Group statistics on actions Sniper incidents 65 turning to Qui Nhon. Our 64th Transportation Company lost seven soldiers during an undefined period after Sept. 2, 1967. from contact with the enemy and suffered five noncom- The dedication and hard work of the long-haul truck driv- Bridges blown 18 When my truck company went to Vietnam, we were bat deaths during the five years in Vietnam before the ers and gun truck crewmen were officially recognized in 1968 Other incidents 39 able to take along our mascot, a German shepherd mix company was inactivated in April 1975. V when they were given a special privilege. The U.S. Army, Viet- named Huntz. We had given him dog tags, shots, com- nam headquarters authorized these soldiers to wear the Line U.S. killed in action 38 pany orders and a wooden kennel for the Pacific voyage. John M. Horvath served in the U.S. Army for 25 years, Haul-RVN shoulder tab on their fatigue uniforms while they U.S. wounded in action 203 Huntz was a friendly fellow, a part of home, beloved by retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He served two tours in were serving in Vietnam. —John Horvath all in our base camp near Qui Nhon. In April 1967, as Vietnam, 1966-67 as a Transportation Corps company Enemy KIA 104 JOHN HORVATH COURTESY our Vietnam tour was ending, we took up a collection to commander and 1969-70 as a Transportation Corps Enemy WIA 10 build an air-travel crate and pay for Huntz’s airfare on battalion executive officer. A Super 8 film of his truck a commercial flight from Saigon to the North Carolina tours can be found online by searching “two million Vehicles damaged or destroyed 287 PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO home of Sam Hovey, our maintenance-wrecker driver. miles of bad road.”

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