Ed Stewart Interview Clip #2

Dublin Core

Title

Ed Stewart Interview Clip #2

Subject

Ed's Tank being attacked.

Description

Ed remembers when his tank and his men came under fire from the enemy.

Creator

Ian Little and Austin Bryant

Publisher

Wabash College

Date

April 3rd, 2020

Sound Item Type Metadata

Original Format

MP3

Duration

0:04:00.98

Transcription

So, he heard a round go off, like a mortar round and I do believe that it actually hit him directly. Just as soon as I was virtually blown off the tank and I was hanging on to the back doors over the engine and I went underneath and checked on my guys. I said “are you guys okay?” and they said “yeah” so i got back on the tank and my loader wasn’t moving. I never actually looked at him, we had small lights in the tank but i didn't want to see him. I knew i didn't because he was lifeless, and i moved him over out of the way so i could get to the controls and i started loading up all the canister rounds that we had. A canister round is very much like a shotgun shell, it has particles that go out and it covers about 50 meters. Virtually everything that's in front of it is gone, and we didn't have all that kind of round on there it would’ve been nice.

I suppose there was about 8 or 10 rounds i was able to fire, after i ran out of them i went back underneath and got those and i asked those guys “where’s the M16 at?” One of em had it in his hand I and i reached over and grabbed it and i pointed in between the road wheels and i fired. This M16 would fire automatically and I clicked it, I didn't really fire and they were telling me all this time that we didn't really have any shells for it, we were out. But once they got my attention, we hovered on the ground as deep as we could. The enemy came up between the road wheels where i tried to fire at and the guys had fired at and they fire in and i have no idea how they missed us but they did. The 3 of us made it back, i got wounded but the loader he was gone. He was young and as we started to learn more about him, we were told that he probably lied about his age and he was 17 years old when he went through AIT and basic so he might have been barely 18 when we got him. His training was quick and he didn’t have to go through the armored training. To me he was a big guy, he might have been little but i hope i had something to do with him growing up that quick. It’s just really hard to say, i think the nicknames did us more good than anything and i was always called stew, Sgt. Stew. We had nicknames everywhere and for the most part they were all clean but that was the roughest thing i had in Vietnam.

Files

Collection

Reference

Ian Little and Austin Bryant, Ed Stewart Interview Clip #2, Wabash College, April 3rd, 2020

Cite As

Ian Little and Austin Bryant, “Ed Stewart Interview Clip #2,” Vietnam Veterans, accessed March 28, 2024, https://his240sp20.omeka.net/items/show/19.