Category: War
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MACV-SOG: Black Market Danger!
Much has been written about the M14, most of it about the rifle’s development and surprisingly little about its use in combat. The select-fire M14’s time in action was relatively short, but those who fired it in anger during the Vietnam War will never forget the last American military rifle constructed of walnut and steel.
The M14 Concept
At the end of World War II, the U.S. Military had an unusually high number of small arms types, using a wide range of ammunition: the M1911 pistol (.45 ACP), the Thompson and M3A1 submachine guns (.45 ACP), the M1 Carbine (.30 Carbine), the M1903 Springfield and M1 Garand rifles (.30-06), the Browning Automatic Rifle (.30-06), and the Browning M1917 (water-cooled) and M1919 (air-cooled) machine guns (.30-06). All of these were fine weapons, but U.S. small arms logistics had become unduly complex.
During 1944, U.S. Ordnance began development of a new cartridge—the 7.62mm T65. This would later be slightly modified (during 1954) to become the standard 7.62×51 NATO round. To fire it, a new M14 rifle would update the proven M1 rifle, leveraging the new NATO round to specifically replace the Garand and the squad-automatic BAR—while it was also believed that the selective-fire M14 eliminated the need for submachine guns.
The M14 concept represented practical thinking: a single rifle filling multiple roles while using the same ammunition. From a logistical standpoint, it all makes sense. However, in actual practice no military has ever been able to make it work across the board. Specialized troops with special weapons exist for a reason. But, on its own, the M14 and its powerful cartridge had much to offer.
Changing Times, Evolving Enemies
Behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s, the Soviets slowly developed the SKS rifle and AK-47 rifle (both chambered in 7.62x39mm). When the AK-47 finally entered service in 1956, U.S. Ordnance described the new weapon as a “submachine gun”, and the Kalashnikov design was not given much credence—U.S. Ordnance particularly disdained the Soviet intermediate cartridge. Meanwhile, the M14 was adopted as the U.S. Military’s standard rifle in 1957.
By the early 1960s, the U.S. mindset about battle rifles was challenged by a growing number of insurgent actions around the world. The light weight and high firepower of the communist AK-47 made guerrilla forces more competitive on the battlefield than ever before.
In response, U.S. Ordnance quickly placed its focus on the AR-15 rifle, and by 1963 more than a thousand of the 5.56mm rifles had been tested in Vietnam. U.S. Special Forces adopted the AR-15 during 1963, and with favorable reports on the new rifle and its ammunition coming from Southeast Asia, momentum was quickly building for a change in battle rifles. In March 1964, the M16 rifle entered large-scale production, and by 1969 it had become the U.S. Military’s standard service rifle.
The M14 in Vietnam
Modern evaluations of the M14’s combat performance seem to quickly devolve into shouting matches between fans of the M14 and the M16. Suffice it to say that they are both excellent rifles, and no shooter is “wrong” if they have a preference. Also, it is important to remember that given a choice, an infantryman will choose everything. He wants light weight coupled with great firepower. He wants reliability and accuracy. He wants tremendous shoot-through-coverand man-stopping knock-down power. Coupled with that he wants all the magazine capacity he can get.
And while no one begrudges the infantryman his many wants in a battle rifle, there has never been a firearm that gives him everything he desires in just one gun. Ultimately, the American fighting man uses what he is issued, and he has an irrefutable history of using his service arms well.
Could the U.S. Military have performed just as well on the battlefields of Vietnam if the M16 had not replaced the M14 as the primary rifle? I believe the battlefield results would have been similar, as the combat qualities of the American rifleman have always been paramount. Advanced training in marksmanship and fire control could overcome the M14’s less-than manageable qualities when used as a full-auto weapon, and it was also more than capable in semi-auto mode.
Modifications to the M14 were certainly necessary, beginning with a fiberglass stock to replace the original walnut and birch types that tended to swell in the jungle environment. Meanwhile, every infantryman tends to find his rifle to be too heavy at some point. At 10.5 lbs. loaded, the M14 was about 2 lbs. heavier than the AK-47 or the M16, and comments from the troops often reflect this. U.S. troops in WWII complained that the M1 rifle was too heavy as well—but the large amount of deceased Axis troops suggest that the Garand rifle’s performance was just fine.
As a counterpoint to the weight issue, the M14’s 7.62x51mm cartridge was powerful enough to muscle through jungle foliage. Marines describe that, in the absence of an M60 machine gun, the M14 offered the next strongest alternative. In Vietnam, the tactical conditions could vary greatly between one firefight and the next, and the M14 rifle could deliver a high level of firepower, with good accuracy at longer range, whenever called upon. And it certainly earned a legion of fans in the jungles of Vietnam.
From the Source
I recently spoke to an old friend who had considerable experience “in country,” and with a wide variety of U.S. infantry weapons. Captain Dale Dye enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in January 1964. He served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1967 through 1970, surviving 31 major combat operations. He emerged from Southeast Asia with numerous decorations, including a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Heart medals for wounds suffered in combat.
He spent 13 years as an enlisted Marine, rising to the rank of master sergeant. He was chosen to attend officer candidate school and was appointed a warrant officer in 1976. He later converted his commission and was a captain when he was sent to Beirut with the multinational peacekeeping force in 1982-83.
When I asked him about the M14, Captain Dye commented: “The M14 was a rifleman’s rifle and most Marines carried it with enthusiasm early in the Vietnam War. I can distinctly remember guys trying to hide their favorite M14 when the word came down that we were going to be issued the M16.
Despite the best efforts by some commands, many Marines continued to carry an M14 for quite some time after the switch-over was ordered. There was just a certain factor of trust in that rifle. Or maybe it was some kind of Marine Corps ‘mojo’ but it seemed reassuring to carry a weapon that looked, felt and shot like a ‘real’ rifle.”
It’s All Relative
Taste, and trust in rifles is clearly a generational issue. My father was an infantry sergeant in World War II. When he looked at an M16, he thought they were not “proper” rifles. My grandfather, a World War I infantryman, would likely have looked at the M1 Garand with suspicion, considering it inelegant and brutish compared to his M1903 Springfield rifle. My brothers and I considered rifles like the M16 to be completely normal, and truly appreciate the semi-auto AR-15 variants designed for the civilian market.
Combat seems to have an “evening-out effect” about the opinions of small arms. In that light, many of the combat lessons learned in Vietnam about the capabilities of the M14 were overlooked. Since the turn of the millennium, our military has been “rediscovering” the rugged M14’s powerful capability, much to the dismay of America’s enemies.
Alongside the select-fire M4 Carbines and M16 rifles serving on the battlefield, the U.S. Military M14 also serves. Elements of the U.S. Special Operations Command use the Mk14 Enhanced Battle Rifle (the EBR) as a designated marksman rifle, and in Afghanistan the U.S. Army assigns two M14 EBR-RI rifles per infantry platoon.
Civilian-Legal Sibling
While the M14 is still serving as a U.S. Military rifle, civilian shooters can thank Springfield Armory of Geneseo, Illinois, for offering a semi-automatic, civilian-legal version of this rifle in its M1A. Proven on the competition fields and exhibiting the timeless beauty of wood and steel (although you can get it with a black composite stock if you so desire), the M1A is a wonderful opportunity to own the civilian sibling of a proven American service rifle.
Proud to present you my new protest-inducing, near-warcrime trench cleaner. Also comes with half a meter worth of longsword at the end but that was still considered a bayonet back then…
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Focused on pushing my wear, damage and overall texture quality as well as implementing the dynamesh workflow here ‘n there for the first time. As per usual I had some fun fooling around and making some animations (even though 60% of the time put in those was for making muzzle smoke but hey…)
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Massive thanks to the Wardog community for their continuous love, support and memes
Even bigger thanks to https://www.artstation.com/simon_mercuzot for his priceless feedback
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Arms rig used: CoD MW2
Sounds are from dasbutcher84, DICE, Infinity Ward, Rift
Background and cardboard box are Megascans
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You read to the end? Absolute madlad, have a wonderful day!
Max Hastings’s excellent history, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, discusses one revealing engagement that took place between American and North Vietnamese forces in late March of 1971. This action—a ferocious assault on a remote firebase named Mary Ann—merits further reflection, I think, and we will give it its due here.
After the 1968 Tet Offensive, it became clear to any objective observer that the American military campaign in Vietnam was not showing the kind of forward progress that might lead to a face-saving settlement. By 1971, the situation had worsened. Many units became infected with crippling morale problems, chiefly revolving around drug abuse, systemic indiscipline, and seething racial tensions.
A more honest era would have called such conditions mutinous; but this was a word that American officials would have done nearly anything to avoid using. No one wanted to be among the last to be crippled or killed in a cause that appeared locked into a trajectory of failure.
Some soldiers and Marines openly refused to beyond the wire to conduct patrols or set ambushes; officers and non-commissioned officers were forced to walk a fine line between following orders from their own higher-ups, and avoiding the appearance of being too enthusiastic in enforcing military discipline.
No one wanted to ask too much from the men, for fear of retribution. It was a terrible situation for a small unit leader to be in. Incidents of “fragging” (the murder of a leader by disgruntled troops) multiplied, and it was a rare officer indeed to failed to consider the consequences of becoming too alienated from those he was supposed to be leading.
Firebase Mary Ann (pathetically named after the commanding officer’s sister) was an outpost located at the top of a ridge in Quang Tin province, close to the border of Laos. It was manned by soldiers of the 1/46th Infantry, C Company, which was part of the Americal Division. The firebase was the standard assortment of bunkers and small structures ringed by barbed wire and observation posts. In March of 1971, very few who were there wanted to be there. The prevailing sentiment among both officers and men was to look after one’s own hide, while counting down the days until one could catch a “freedom bird” back to the States.
It was not uncommon for men sent out on ambush to avoid engaging with enemy patrols, and to report they had seen nothing when the opposite was true. Some patrols would openly refuse to enter certain areas where contact with the NVA seemed likely.
Within the wire, indiscipline was the rule. Hastings reports that one of the battalion’s men died after eating a piece of plastic explosive taken from a Claymore mine; he believed that consuming it would give him a narcotic high. One company commander, a Capt. Paul Spilberg, wrote in a letter home:
This company really is a mess…the troops sit around reading newspapers, playing cards…most of the time they don’t even carry their weapons.
In such situations, the posture of the commanding officer is determinative, for it is he who sets the tone for his unit. At Fire Base Mary Ann, the man in charge was Lt. Col. Bill Doyle, a thirty-nine-year-old veteran with a reputation for fighting and partying hard. But even he knew there was a limit to what he could do. One of his companies—D Company—even refused to leave the wire unless supplied with scout dogs, air support, and a medevac helicopter.
Men posted to guard duty at night would drift off into sleep and escape punishment. Yet beyond the wire, the NVA was probing the firebase and sighting every inch of its perimeter—which was five hundred yards in length by two hundred in width—with small arms.
Its twenty-two bunkers, made from metal shipping containers called “conexes,” were identified and marked on maps. Steadily and surely, it drew up its plan of attack, and waited for the right moment to hit the indolent Americans with a coordinated assault. It was later revealed that the firebase had been under enemy observation for two months. Mary Ann housed, in all, 231 soldiers and 21 South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) personnel, and it had never been attacked before.
On the night of March 27, base security was in the hands of Capt. Richard Knight, a twenty-four-year-old college dropout. 
The record indicates that Knight was either unwilling, or unable, to convince his men to post security at their bunkers or to set Claymores and trip flares; there are reports of drunkenness (and possible drug abuse) that night, although how much is difficult to determine.
Nearly everyone was either asleep or occupied in routine. Searchlights activated at two o’clock in the morning on March 28 revealed no movement outside the wire. This would very shortly change, however.
At 02:40, around fifty men from the NVA’s 409th Sapper Battalion slipped through Mary Ann’s outer perimeter, their bodies coated with grease and charcoal dust for concealment. Wearing only shorts, and crawling on their bellies, they cut four passages through the razor wire and brought in satchel charges, grenades, and small arms.
Lacking food supplies, they had been forced to dine on wild roots in preparation for the operation. The signal to launch the all-out attack on the sleeping Americans was a mortar barrage. And then the attack was launched in force.
Instantly panic engulfed the base; visibility was difficult in the pitch darkness, adding to the terror and confusion. Men caught sleeping in their bunkers were killed by grenades and explosives before they could process what was happening.
Those who were able to rouse themselves crept outside their hooches, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Yet no orders came. Capt. Knight never left his bunker; he was killed when a sapper flung a bomb into it. Lt. Col. Doyle’s command center absorbed a huge blast from a satchel charge, but he himself survived.
It soon became clear that the attack had been carefully planned; the sappers roamed through the firebase, knowing exactly where to go and what to hit. Most of the Americans remained in their bunkers, either from a belief that the base was under mortar attack, or because they had been provided with no other guidance.
Some who tried to get outside were gunned down by bursts from AK-47 rifles; some were immobilized by the clouds of CS gas that were everywhere; and still others were concussed or ripped apart by improvised Coke-can grenades. One soldier thought his best chance of survival was to feign death in the open; as he held his breath, he could feel an NVA sapper rifling through his pockets, and felt him strip off his wristwatch. Some men did fight back.
There are reports of hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness between attackers and defenders. One West Point lieutenant named Barry McGee killed an NVA soldier with his bare hands before being cut down by rifle fire. 
No coordinated effort to defense the base was ever made, because no such plans existed. Doyle’s command post discovered that communications had gone down, and that, with smoke shrouding the base, illumination flares adding nothing to the battlefield picture.
The ARVN troops either did nothing or ran for shelter. A Night Hawk Huey helicopter appeared over the base at around 0325, and fired on some sappers exfiltrating through the wire, but by that time the attack had largely subsided.
Doyle was evacuated soon after with a leg wound; he was replaced by a new commanding officer and never returned to Mary Ann. The official casualty count among the defenders was 33 dead and 83 wounded; the NVA’s casualties are unknown, but probably were comparable.
A later investigation into the matter did not paint a flattering picture–to say the least–of the American army’s behavior before or during the attack. The official report devastatingly concluded that the NVA had simply outperformed their opponents; that leadership at Mary Anne had been slipshod and unprofessional; and that most American casualties could have been avoided, had soldiers behaved like soldiers.
The deceased Capt. Knight was found guilty of dereliction of duty. Doyle was shipped off to a desk position, his reputation permanently tarnished.
That the base’s leadership could have allowed such laxity and indiscipline to prevail is shocking in itself; but if so, Doyle and Knight were far from alone. The event has come to be seen as a kind of microcosm for everything that was wrong in Vietnam.
Even if the war’s ultimate futility was common knowledge, nothing can excuse the abandonment of fundamental security preparations. At some point, military leaders must set aside fears of retribution, and show some degree of courage and professionalism in enforcing standards of discipline.
This did not happen at Firebase Mary Ann, and the consequences were death and destruction. We may extend this lesson, I think, outside the realm of military affairs to civilian matters as well. When “leaders” care more about their privileges than their responsibilities, the result is peril that leads inevitably to ruin.