Hometown Hero: Andrew Nelson

Andrew Nelson

U.S. Navy

Quartermaster Second Class

Vietnam War

Why did you decide to join the U.S. Navy?

            For a number of reasons. I joined the Navy because I was just going to get drafted. I got my draft notice and at that time, February of 1966, they were drafting for the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and you didn't have a choice. They just said from A to G, you're going, so we filled out paperwork. At that time, you've got your physical on Tuesday and you left on Thursday. I knew from the beginning of January that I'd be going first week of February. So I went for my physical for the Army and, due to issues with paperwork, I was told I’d have to wait 12 to 14 weeks to go.

            I thought that was ridiculous so I left the Army office and the Coast Guard was recruiting next door. I walked in and said, "I want to sign up." The guy says, "Well, we have a waiting list of six months." I said, "Any other recruiting offices?" They said, "Yeah, down at 16th or 15th and Market, there's a Navy Marine Corps recruiting office."

At that time, it was close to six o'clock and it was cold. I had to walk down that way anyhow to get the trolley. I got to the recruiting office and went up the stairs and the Marines were on one side and Navy was on the other. Well, the Marines had already left. So I said to the Navy "I want to sign up." I was filling out the paperwork and the recruiting officer asks, "You're from Darby?" I said, "Yeah." He says, "Isn't that Delaware County?" I said, "Yeah." He says, "Well you can't sign up here son, you've got to go to Upper Darby."

So that night I got home and I talked to my friend Larry had had a little bit of a deferment for going to school and he knew that was up. I said, "Listen, why don't we join the Navy?" We went over the next morning and joined the Navy. Which turned out, that was the best thing.

It was much longer period of time but my grandfather was Navy and my father was Navy. So, it was probably the right thing to do. We went through boot camp together on what was called a buddy system. That meant if one of you got sick or didn't do well and had to be held back a week, then you could force the buddy to go back with you. It just meant you'd be there longer.

What was your job in the Navy?

            I was a Quartermaster. I used celestial navigation, which meant using a sextant and shooting stars is what we call them. You need to be able to identify stars and first magnitude stars. They have to be the first ones out and the last ones we could see in the morning.

            I would have somebody taking notes with a stopwatch for me. I would get the star on my sextant and swing it and bring it down so the star was touching the horizon. You needed relatively fair skies, you needed to see the horizon, and you needed to be able to identify what stars that you're working on. That process could take maybe seven, eight minutes.

            Then I’d go down to the chart room and I would do what's called plotting the stars, using manuals and whatever. We would get a transfix where the stars cross and it gives me a position, and I can go to the skipper and say, "Skipper, here's where we were 20 minutes ago," and we may have already, in that 20 minutes, gone seven or eight miles. Now, a five-year old could sit out in the middle of the Pacific and use his GPS and be within three or four meters of where he actually is and do it instantly.

Can you describe your experience in the Vietnam War?

            The reason I wanted to do this interview is because most people, I believe, have the wrong idea of the Navy in Vietnam. Most people think of aircraft carrier and maybe river patrol boat, some refer to it as Swift Boat duty, which is really kind of a misconception. Those operating on the rivers were Riverine duty. They were shallow bottom boats so they could move up the rivers without any problem.

            Swift Boats, as we knew them, actually operated on the coast, and they were like small PT boats. Like a 36-foot Chris-Craft or something. Highly armed, 20 50-caliber machine guns and maybe something similar to a recoilless rifle and mortar. In fact, that's something that I wanted to do.

            The serviceman who refer to themselves as "in country," or "boots on the ground," they were the biggest part of the Vietnam War, no question about that. Operationally, the Army was more South in South Vietnam and the Marine Corps landed in Da Nang area in 1965, delivered by the Navy. And they pretty much operated in Northern province - Khe Sanh and Da Nang, all way up to the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone], and that's what people know. There were usually like three aircraft carriers on station in the Tonkin Gulf. And that was referred to as "Yankee Station." There's also, way down in South Vietnam, off in the ocean, the Southern Station. Now, I know nothing about Southern Station except it no doubt had a carrier force there too.

            We spent most of our time in North Vietnam. If you follow the coastline as it goes in and out, we had what's called a track that was drawn 11 nautical miles from the land. And we used that because that was the extreme end of what the North Vietnamese could fire on. We were in combat with the North Vietnamese Army.

We crossed the Pacific, stopped at Hawaii, which was nice. Matter of fact, I tried body surfing on the North Shore and almost drowned. But, it was a nice visit. We stopped in Guam on the way over not for liberty, just for refueling. And then we ended up in the Philippines, and took on fuel and ammunition there, and proceeded to meet with the cruiser USS St. Paul. We proceeded North to where we were to begin operations. Keep in mind we would do gunnery practice and that type of thing in the Caribbean. So, we were trained but not in real stuff, you know?

That night we arrived on station, North Vietnam, and at 10:00 we had our first mission. These missions were all planned by the inside guys in Da Nang or where the operations focus is, and we completed the mission. This was part of Operation Sea Dragon. We were assigned to cut off the enemy supply routes to South Vietnam.

We would have a target, and we would go, let's say 25 knots heading towards our target, well within that 11-mile area I'm talking about. And at the appropriate time, we would either go left or right, that's port or starboard, and we would fire for effect, maybe 35, 45, 8-inch projectiles. We would fire on bridges, troops, encampments, radar installations, missile sites, whatever our targets were. We would complete our targets and then we would run because we knew that most of the enemy's fire would be with 7-inch armor-piercing shells, and a cruiser is made for one purpose only, and that's combat. Guns, and guns, and guns.

            I never went below Da Nang which was about 60, 70 miles south of the DMZ, where most people thought we would be. We would arrive, transfer flag, and then that night we were going on four or five of these missions from 10:00 at night 'til morning.

            There were Vietnamese fishing boats that weren't there just to fish. They were to keep us from coming in certain points; because they knew we'd attack, and they also knew we would not plow through fishing boats. The fishing boats were exactly that, little boats. There were families who were poor who'd live in them. So, no, we wouldn't tear through them. Occasionally we had to call off a strike because there was just far too many of them.

            We had to get to a certain point in which the fire, for a number of reasons - depth of the ocean at the time, ability to hit a target from a certain area - because unlike somebody firing a gun, we were more like mortars. Our munitions went up and came down on the target. In fact, there's pictures there where you can actually see the projectiles leave the cannon. You can watch it. And that was the point that we were there all the time.

            The end of January 1968, at the beginning of the Lunar New Year, which was a Chinese New Year celebrated by the Vietnamese, there was an offensive. It was country-wide where primarily the Viet Cong in the South and the North Vietnamese Army in the North, attacked a hundred-plus villages and major cities. Where we happened to be was a tributary of the Song Huong River [crosses through Hue City] and that's where the Marines suffered tremendous casualties. It was maybe the longest and most deadly of what's known as the Tet Offensive and Hue City had worse of it.

            That was the one place I remember using a 3-inch gun. Surprisingly the easiest-on-the-ears guns were the biggest, because they were just "boom." You just couldn't be topside; you couldn't be on deck when you were firing because the percussion would blow you off, or at the least you’d end up with nose and ears bleeding. That was our main battery and we used them for when we went on strikes. We used our 5-inch guns to suppress the enemy fire when they fired on us. The 3-inch guns were used mainly if we were attacked by a PT boat, a good-sized craft, which the North Vietnamese had. I remember being at Hue City and we fired them around the clock. The big guns went “boom”, the 5-inch ones “banged”, the 3-inch ones “crack, crack”. And that's where we stayed for most of February 1968.

            We were only supposed to be there for so long because in the Army and the Marine Corps, they gave you a year or 13 months and then you went home and didn't have to go back unless they choose to. In the Navy, you had to do whatever the ship was gonna do. Ships cannot stay in action constantly, they need upkeep. We were extended, meaning that we ended up staying 45 days or 50 days longer than we should have because of the Tet Offensive. They needed us there.