Friday, June 2, 1972

Teacher Shows How - Blasts Red Tank

By Spec. 4 Ken Schultz

HUE, Vietnam --An American soldier who had been reassigned to teach South Vietnamese troops to operate electronically-guided antitank missiles became the first ground combat soldier to destroy a North Vietnamese tank with the weapon.

Sgt. Bill Tillman, 24, of Ridgway, Colo. had never fired the tube launched, optically sighted, wire guided missile (TOW) before the morning of the tank attack, not even during training.

He had previously been a gate guard with the 196th Inf. Brigade at Da Nang.

"I was drunk and boisterous and got into an argument with the sergeant major. The next day I was reassigned," he said, with no hint of regret.

He was sent to the American Army installation at Phu Bai, five miles south of Hue, for four days of training but was never allowed to fire the TOW.

After the brief training period, he linked up with the South Vietnamese 369th Marine Brigade on the northern battlefront about 20 miles northeast of Hue.

He had been with the marines only three days when the command post came under fire from heavy NVA 130mm guns early in the afternoon.

That night Communist tanks could be heard clanking in the bush around the post.

"They woke me up and said I might get the chance to use the TOW because there were tanks in the immediate area," Tillman said.

The Communists attacked in early morning fog on May 21 with Soviet-built PT76 amphibious tanks and infantry.

The South Vietnamese marines dropped the barrels of their 105mm howitzers to their lowest elevation and began firing directly into the ranks of the NVA attackers who had moved within 200 yards of the perimeter.

The artillery destroyed some of the Communist tanks and two were halted by hand-held light antitank weapons.

Meanwhile, Tillman saw yet another tank speeding for a treeline 1,000 yards away where it was attempting to join a second wave of troops who were waiting there.

Tillman fired the 54-pound missile. The backblast knocked down two thatched huts behind him.

The missile glanced off a radio antenna and was deflected off course. The sandy-haired GI electronically corrected the missile's path and blew the turret off the tank.

The two remaining tanks slithered off and the NVA infantrymen slunk back into the scrub and deep ravines. The attack had been beaten off.

"Yessir, that sergeant major did me a favor. I enjoy it a lot more up here than in Da Nang pulling gate guard," Tillman said as he posed for a photograph.






"Teacher Shows How - Blasts Red Tank", by Spec. 4 Ken Schultz, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Friday, June 2, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.
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