27/05/2024
Today is Memorial Day, a day to remember those who died in the line of duty. Although my late friend, Winston “Cabby” “Joe” Carbonneau of Derby did not die in the line of duty, he, as a two-tour combat veteran of the Vietnam War, understood the true meaning of Memorial Day better than most Americans. As a platoon sergeant he led men into combat, some who lost their lives. Losing men was a heavy burden on Winston’s heart and soul. For decades, he struggled to come to terms with the horrors he experienced at war.
The following is a segment of a 10-part series I wrote about Winston. The series is titled, “Finding Peace: From Newport to Vietnam and Back”. This post isn’t so much to spotlight Winston, but to show the brutality and cruelty of war and to remind people of the real meaning of Memorial Day.
Although Winston was proud of his service, he hated how too many people – particularly people who have never seen combat, including many in Hollywood – romanticize war. He said even when war is necessary, there is nothing glamorous about it. Winston died hating war but loving his country – despite its flaws - and the men he served with.
The Battle of Ia Drang in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in November 1966 was the first major battle of the Vietnam War in which U.S. forces fought a major force of soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam “PAVN,” also known as the North Vietnamese Army “NVA.” The battle had been horribly deadly for the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), including for Company A, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, which the late Winston “Joe” “Cabby” Carbonneau of Derby, was a platoon sergeant in, leading a 27-member platoon. However, the battle had been far deadlier for the NVA.
“I was scared to death,” Carbonneau said, whose radio call sign used in combat was Tiger 2-5, “but it was also an adrenaline rush. I know most people who have never been to war can’t understand it, but it’s amazing what adrenaline can make you do that you’d never be able to do without it. It helps you overcome fear and allows you to give them hell. But I’ll tell you, once the fighting was done, and you realize what you have been through, you go back to being scared to death about what you had just been through. Of course, most of us hid it behind big talk, but in our minds, we were all scared. We’d watched our friends die, and we knew the next time that dead soldier in a body bag might be us.”
Not all wounds of war are physical, Carbonneau said. Some are mental, including some who develop what he called a “1000-yard stare”—a blank, vacant look, the result that horrors of combat can have on the brain. In previous wars, this phenomenon was often called shell shock. Some combatants soon recover, but for others the effects linger for days, weeks, or years. Others never fully recover.
“Watching a buddy shot or blown to pieces really affects you,” Carbonneau said. “I saw way too many people die that way. I didn’t even recognize some of them.”
Cavalry soldiers of an earlier time rode into combat on horses, but members of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), rode into combat in helicopters. In Carbonneau’s case, and in the case of many other American soldiers, they flew aboard Huey helicopters.
“Helicopters were our lives in Vietnam,” he said. “Every time we had to go on a mission we had to get in those choppers. We’d fly to where the enemy was. Once we flew into where they were at, I’d tell each one of my men ‘when you jump out of the chopper they know you are coming, I want each one of you to fire one magazine.’ The door gunners also raked the jungles. Sometimes the LZ [landing zone] was hot, and we’d come under immediate attack.”
Fear of taking a bullet was one thing, but Carbonneau said that wasn’t the only fear they had. When on land, there was the constant fear of b***y traps.
“There were primitive b***y traps, including punji sticks. They’d dig a hole, often only a shallow one, just big enough for one foot to go in, on a path they thought we might use, and they’d place sharpened sticks, punji sticks, in the hole, some of them with human crap on them. Then when we’d come along, and if we didn’t see the hole, which was often covered with leaves, one of us might stick a foot in it, and if one of the sticks speared through our boot into our foot, the wound might get infected, and we wouldn’t be able to fight until the infection was cleared up. Then there were the explosive b***y traps, some of them triggered by trip wires, others triggered when somebody stepped on them. Oh, God, they killed and injured a lot of people. A lot of people went home missing legs, arms, and eyes. Some people even had their privates blown off.”
When on the move, one job Carbonneau said everybody dreaded was “walking point,” the person who leads the way.
“If you are the point man, you have to be watching for trip wires [that, if tripped, would detonate an explosive b***y trap],” he said. “You have the lives of the rest of the men behind you in your hands. The point man has to be good.” Because of the stressful nature of the job, and the importance of staying alert, he said different members of the platoon were rotated in and out of the position.”
“There were people not capable of walking point,” Carbonneau said, “including new men. They didn’t know what the hell they were looking for, and some of them were so gung ho they didn’t pay close enough attention and they’d blow themselves up. It took time before they walked point. Not only were we trying to protect them from themselves, we were trying to protect the rest of us.” Then there were soldiers, no matter how long in Vietnam, who were not mentally equipped for such an important and stressful job.
“When it’s too quiet, you know something is going to happen,” he said. “Either a sniper, maybe in a tree, is going to take a shot at you or one of the men is going to trip a b***y trap. When the shooting begins, at least we know our target.”
Unlike most combat in other wars where battles were fought between soldiers wearing uniforms, and often in the open, in Vietnam, not only did the enemy seldom wear uniforms, but they didn’t fight like soldiers in most past wars. Instead of fighting in the open, they fought guerrilla combat style—hide, attack, kill—then melted back into the countryside to kill another day.
The Battle of Ia Drang was a learning experience for the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). These learning experiences helped them in their next major battle of B**g Son. That battle stretched from January 28 to February 12, 1966. B**g Son is in Binh Dinh province, which at the time was a stronghold for Viet Cong forces. U.S. forces were joined in the fight with members of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).
“Oh, it was a bloody fight,” Carbonneau said. “We lost some really good men there. “There was a big gully near a cemetery where we kept all of our dead men.”
Whenever Carbonneau talked about the war, he seldom talked about himself. Instead, he focused on his men. When it was mentioned he’d been awarded the Bronze Star for heroism as the result of his action on January 28, 1966, he said he’d just been doing his job, nothing more, nothing less than any of his men would have done.
“I just did what I had to do,” he said. “That’s all there was to it.”
The following are the events of that day as he recalled them:
“At B**g Son we were in a graveyard dug in, and we had snipers firing at us all the time, and we were running out of ammo. Of course my job as a platoon sergeant was to go back to the rear where the company commander was. I told my men to keep firing and keep me covered. I went to get the ammo off the dead bodies we had back there. I started zig zagging, running back. I didn’t think about it. I just did what I was trained. When I got back there … there were about 70 of our men, so I took off all the bandoliers and the ammo I could carry and I started back toward the graveyard. The first fox hole I got to happened to be a preacher [in the hole]. He said, ‘Don’t you go there, don’t you go there. They’ll shoot you’. I said, ‘You listen, I have to resupply our men, and if I don’t, what do you think is going to happen with no ammo if I chicken out?’ I went hole to hole.” Not only did Carbonneau actions save his men, but in time they were able to beat back the enemy. The following is a description of his heroic actions as documented in his military records:
For heroism in connection with military operations against a hostile force. When serving as Second Platoon Sergeant, Platoon Sergeant Carbonneau distinguished himself by conspicuous valor when, with complete disregard for his own personal safety, he exposed himself to intense and accurate enemy automatic weapons and mortar fire in order to maneuver his platoon into a defensive perimeter. Undaunted by the heavy hostile fire which was coming from well-fortified and concealed enemy positions, Platoon Sergeant Carbonneau moved freely about the perimeter shouting orders and directions to his men, redistributing ammunition among them and pointing out enemy targets. During the height of the battle, a critical shortage of small arms ammunition developed and many weapons became jammed by the sand in the open field. Without hesitation, he immediately made his way back to the company command post to secure additional ammunition and to replace the inoperable weapons. Although directly exposed to enemy fire and observation all the while, he succeeded in resupplying his platoon with the much needed ammunition and weapons. Platoon Sergeant Carbonneau’s outstanding demonstration of courage was a source of inspiration and encouraging to every soldier in his platoon. His acts of conspicuous valor under enemy fire are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
The horrors and heroics of the war were also captured in newspapers and on newsreels. The following is an article from the January 31, 1966, issue of the Burlington Free Press. It was written by Associated Press correspondent Bob Poos, assisted by photographer Henri Huet. They accompanied the U.S. 1st Calvary, Airmobile, Division troops, including Carbonneau, into action in South Vietnam’s central coast at An Thi.
Mud, Blood, Bravery Mark Battle of 1st Cavalry, Airmobile, at An Thi
An Thi, South Viet Nam — Out in a shell-pocked no-man’s land, a thick blob of mud moved toward our trench, formerly Communist real estate but now our haven — and our hospital and mortuary.
The muddy blob was a U.S. infantryman, wounded minutes earlier as his platoon made another attempt to reach a clump of palm trees 100 yards away and rout out the Communists.
Neither he nor the platoon made it. Now he was crawling back, bullets spattering around him.
He flopped into the trench wounded in the hip. A medic foundered across American dead and wounded in the trench, a trench of misery with the rain falling, bullets cracking and the wounded piling up.
It had been the Communists’ first line of defense around this tiny village on the central lowlands that the 1st Cavalry had chosen to visit Friday.
The Reds had built it deep into the sand. The cavalrymen wrested it from them in charges across an open rice paddy under withering sniper fire that cut down several of the cavalrymen.
Medic Carries On
Medic Thomas L. Cole, from Richmond, Va., himself wounded in the head, helped tend the wounded, sprawled in the mud of the trench. He was nearly blinded by the bandage wrapped around his head.
But Cole kept on going, answering the cry of a wounded man here, a dying man there. Cole spent an hour in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation trying to revive one terribly wounded soldier. The man died.
In late afternoon, Cole had civilian casualties to tend to, a whole civilian family.
They had been hiding in a house in the tiny village nearby and had suffered from the battle. A baby barely a year old had been hit by shrapnel in the abdomen, arms and legs.
The company commander, Joel Sugdinis of Cornwall Bridge, Conn., cried out to the father as he carried the baby near the American position, “Come, get in this trench.”
Baby Dies
The man came over as enemy fire snapped around him. His wounded wife, blood all over her face, followed. There was little that Cole or any of the other medics could do for the wounded child. As the day passed into night, and as the rain grew stronger in its intensity, the baby began whimpering, then died.
The wailing of the grieving family, lying fearful in the muddy trench, shattered the nerves of some of the solders.
“Tell them to shut up,” one wounded man called.
The battleground at An Thi looked like photographs of the beachhead at Iwo Jima in World War II.
The command post of the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Regiment was in a deep trench and the main force of the Communists fought from dug-in positions behind the line of palm trees. Enemy snipers with automatic weapons perched in the trees on each side of the command post.
Cavalrymen dashing across the open ground took refuge behind raised graves of an old cemetery. Some of them made the trip time and time again until the enemy fled Saturday afternoon under air assaults that rained down bombs and na**lm.
The abandoned Viet Cong trench line was oval shaped — about 150 yards long by 100 wide. An open space in the middle became “landing zone four” Saturday after the cavalrymen cleared away snipers so helicopters could land to take out the wounded and dead and bring in desperately needed supplies of ammunition, food, and medical stores.
Ignores Broken Leg
Pfc.Michael A. Smith, 19, of Richard City, Tenn., broke his right leg jumping from one of the choppers, but he fought for several hours and even dragged in a wounded man before he realized his leg was broken.
As the battle progressed and sniper machine-gun fire raked the area, Spec. 4 Dennis Wilson of Watertown, N.Y., remarked: “Looks like this is going to be LZ X-Ray all over again.”
Landing Zone X-Ray was the scene of a bloody battle between the 1st Cavalry, including the 2nd Battalion, and North Vietnamese regulars in the battle of the Ia Drang Valley last November.
Wilson picked up his second Purple Heart at An Thi. In another campaign he had suffered a punji stick — a sharpened stick treated to cause infection — wound. This time a bullet cut the sleeve of his rubber rain jacket and left a bloody welt on his arm about two inches long.
There were examples of outstanding bravery at An Thi.
Rescues Wounded
Sgt. Reid Pike of Albuquerque, New Mexico, pulled three wounded from under enemy machine-gun fire and organized a party of men to drag out two more.
One of these wounded, Spec. 4 John Veltry, 21, of Pittsburgh, Pa., said: “Man, he really got things organized. I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. I was hit in five places and I owe him plenty.”
Platoon Sgt. Winston Carbonneau of A Company — a veteran of 14 years in the Army and his son recently enlisted — seemed to be everywhere. He organized charges, regrouped the men, scrounged up ammunition, cleaned jammed weapons and encouraged the troops with a wide grin that never left his face.
He would shout to a trooper: “Garry Owen, to you, my boy. You’re doing great. Let’s go” Garry Owen is the 7th Regiment’s battle yell.
Spec. 4 Paul Schellhouse of Americus, Ga., and Sgt. Arsenio Rodriquez, 30, of Sand Juan, Puerto Rico, together with several other men, labored for almost two hours giving manual and mouth-to-mouth artificial respiration to a wounded soldier. But the solder did not respond.
Spec. 4 Jesus Garcia of Las Animas, Colo., was one of the first wounded in a company. He suffered a jagged hole in his right thigh and hip. His buddies covered him from the chilling rain with a blanket and poncho and one asked: “You okay, Garcia?”
He replied: “I’ll make it.”
The next day they carried Garcia, grinning and smoking a cigarette, to a medical evacuation helicopter. He had made it okay.
A drenching rain fell throughout Friday night and in the predawn hours of Saturday then slacked off about dawn.
The light of dawn exposed a picture of bloody battle — the dead and wounded in the muddied trenches, the empty cartridge clips and ration boxes scattered about, the shell holes.
In the village a rooster crowed and hens pecked in the mud. A pig rooted through empty C-ration cans.
The following is an excerpt from another segment of the series:
It was during the Battle of Ia Drang that Carbonneau said he first experienced losing one of his men.
“Oh, it hurt when I lost a man,” he said. “It hurt bad. Sometimes I’d have to walk away and cry. I couldn’t allow my men to see me cry, but I couldn’t help crying. Those were my boys. For that matter, some of them were my son’s age, but their deaths also made me fight like hell and kill as many of the enemy as I could—without regret. I got pretty good at it.”
It was bad enough to lose men, but he said as a platoon sergeant he took their deaths personally, and to a degree, he blamed their loss on himself, that he’d led them to their deaths. They relied on him for his leadership in hopes of getting them out of their alive.
