Post

[ The Forgotten ]

October 20th,1990

| _{South Afrika & Persia International News Network} |

[ News Journalist, Elysa Dabiri: ] “Hello to those watching at home in South Afrika and Persia, and hello to those watching abroad. Today we bring you a story of forgotten heroes, men that served South Afrika during the Vietnam War, but not in the glorious roles that you would think. These men were convoy truck drivers, turned war innovators. The men of various transportation and logistics companies in Vietnam, would turn their simple convoy trucks, into what they called ‘War Trucks’. The trucks themselves would be simply armed with one machine gun, all the way up to having steel plating and multiple weapons on board. Considering the area of operations many of these men served in, along the Cambodia border all the way to the Mekong Delta. A majority of the crews survived the war, but many of their trucks did not, a well sized number of the trucks were mothballed or scrapped once the war was over, only a few of them going on to be put into museums or serving in training rolls. One truck in particular that we have a story on, ‘The War Wagon’, as the crew took to naming it. The crew named the truck after the Paramerican film, ‘The War Wagon’, staring John Wayne, who was very popular in South Afrika at the time of the Vietnam War. Armed with three MG-57’s, one .50 Cal, and various personal weapons the men brought along, mainly Paramerican weapons they ‘tactically acquired’ from weapon supply shipments, or taking them from areas that dead Paramerican troops equipment was dropped off. Said crew of the truck was six men, a driver, passenger, and four other members that were gunners or other such jobs. Main occupation for ‘The War Wagon’, was ammunition and water drop off, taking ammunition and water out to troops where helicopters couldn’t get to them, moving in convoys with other trucks for security purposes.

When taking contact the trucks would conduct ‘running gun’, where they would gun the engines of their trucks while firing as much lead down range as possible. Effectively getting out of the fighting zone, while also returning fire on the enemy. For the trucks that were stuck on ‘heavy convoy duty’, they could not do this as effectively because in ‘heavy convoy duty’ the trucks were mostly escorting heavy tanker trucks, either gas, water, or other such things. This caused many of the trucks to train in counter ambush and defensive postures even more, if a convoy was hit heavily they would bunker down and pour fire into the area that the enemy was possibly in while also calling for air support, size of enemy attack depending, they then would move out, leaving any damaged or destroyed vehicles behind with a rear guard until evac arrives. With the crew of ‘The War Wagon’, they themselves have been through numerous ambushes, and acted as rear guard on many of them. From what they told us, rear guard duty on one of the trucks was a very tense and frightening, for not only would two trucks stay behind, but during this time they would salvage what they could from the damaged trucks they were guarding alongside delivering aid to injured or bagging up the dead, they would be on constant watch for enemies. The men of ‘The War Wagon’, came out of the war with a good few scars, and breath catching stories that many of the men would not like to speak of. Out of all the trucks in their unit, the crew of ‘The War Wagon’, was one of few to not have a single member die throughout their three tours in Vietnam, being in country from 1967 all the way to 1973 before they all came home along with their beloved truck. Many of the crew of said truck have now retired from the SADF, but the truck itself is still in a training role at Fort Hertzog in Iran under a completely new crew. The crew of the ‘The War Wagon’, spoke of another truck that was apart of their sister platoon, that being ‘The Hellion’, a truck much like theirs completely painted pitch black, with red lettering of their name and a logo of an upside down cross on either side. Men of this truck were said to be the meanest out of the platoon, always going places together like a pack of hyenas, as many of their fellow soldiers said. The crew of ‘The Hellion’, were a rough and tumble group from the Boer-Natal area of the country and besides those in their platoon, did not work well with other units. Many times outright refusing to work with any other coalition force besides other South Afrikans or the South Koreans, finding they did not like working with the South Vietnamese or Paramericans. All men of ‘The Hellion’’ survived the war,out of the six, three are still in the SADF and have moved into infantry divisions instead of transport and logistics. The truck itself is entombed in the Pretorian National War Museum, all weapons decommissioned and still attached to the truck. Unfortunately we do not have any further stories of the forgotten heroes of ‘War Trucks’ today, but we hope you enjoyed and stay tuned in next time for one of our ‘Forgotten Heroes’ stories.”