Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
3:20 | When Andrew Robbins stepped off the plane in Vietnam, he could barely stand the heat. It was the middle of the night. What would it be like during the day? He began to notice a lack of leadership that he had first noticed back in the States. They waited for days to organize a convoy to go twenty miles.
Keywords : Andrew Robbins Vietnam heat leadership mine field William Westmoreland Bruce Palmer Olinto M. Barsanti West Point John F. Forrest
Coming from rural Michigan, Andrew Robbins absorbed John Wayne movies and, when the time came, he opted for Army over Marines because he could go airborne in the Army. He still feels those landings in his back.
He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne but, almost immediately, Andrew Robbins was given a solo position assisting a major who was in charge of ROTC training. He wondered why he was separated like this but it was a good job because he learned a lot of officer level knowledge. He was already experiencing bad leadership in the form of a racist first sergeant who hated northerners.
Two companies were airlifted in and then withdrawn but one platoon was left behind to run an ambush. Andrew Robbins was on first watch at the end of the line when he saw a crouched figure in the dark. He and his partner pointed their M-16's. It was one of their sergeants. Checking the line, he said. No one had said this would be happening. This began a chain of events that would lead to a tragic death and affect all three men deeply. Part 1 of 5.
After a short operation to recover a tank, the unit accidentally stumbled upon a VC bunker complex. Andrew Robbins was checking it out when enemy mines exploded. They had to shoot their way out and then they found out there was a division size enemy force in the area. This action began a series of misadventures and blunders caused by inexperienced leadership which would have many repercussions. Part 2 of 5.
The inexperienced company commander led his men straight down a trail into an ambush. He was soon to be awarded the nation's highest award despite this blunder. Andrew Robbins was part of a force sent to help the pinned down unit. His own platoon leader had it in for him and ordered him to go retrieve a body and then to hold a light for a forward observer flying above, two very dangerous tasks. Robbins was starting to think he was gunning for the wrong target. Part 3 of 5.
After threatening to kill his own platoon commander, for perfectly understandable reasons, Andrew Robbins was swiftly court martialed and sent to the Long Binh stockade. This was just another step in his long ordeal that began because he knew the facts about the criminal death of another soldier. While there he would find himself in the middle of an incipient race riot and he would meet a mysterious clandestine operative he called The Contractor. Part 4 of 5.
When Andrew Robbins returned from the stockade, it was almost all new faces in his company. He managed to get transferred to a ground radar company where he was impressed by the new technology. The action in the area had been building up to the battle of Hamburger Hill, during which the bad leadership and poor decision making among the brass at the top continued. Part 5 of 5.
It took a while for Andrew Robbins to finish his degree after returning from his traumatic tour in Vietnam. He went to work for the Department of Defense and was based out of the Pentagon, where he ran into the operative he had dubbed The Contractor. He maintains that the war was winnable had the people at the top actually had the will to do what was necessary. He wrote down his story in the book The Rakkasans.
