Bill Curwick graduated from Marshall High School in 1968 before enlisting in the Army and training as a combat engineer. He deployed to Vietnam in November 1970, serving with the 26th Engineer Battalion at Chu Lai, and extended his tour before his February 1972 reassignment further north to Danang with Engineer Company (Provisional) of the 196th Infantry Brigade.

Bill assembled a group of 16 demolition specialists who provided demolition support in three-man teams to units of the 196th Infantry Brigade. He described some of the demolition support they provided.

“You might get a call from one of the base units to go in their wire and reset the flares, booby traps, and stuff. If they sent a unit to the field to find and eliminate the enemy, you went with them because they would come across unexploded U.S. ordnance they’d want to get rid of so it couldn’t be used against us.”

The other major support Bill’s demolition teams offered was to disarm or destroy booby traps.

“One of the most common was called a punji pit. They would dig a hole and fill it with sharpened bamboo dipped in feces and covered so you’d step in it. You impaled yourself on the bamboo spikes and the feces gave you a raging infection. There were other types like deadfalls up in the trees on a lattice. If you tripped it, that lattice would fall on a cantilever and impale you. Then there were grenades in discarded rations cans. They would put a grenade in the can; pull the pin; and hook a wire to it. They usually put them in trees. You’d trip that wire, pulling that grenade out of the can and a few seconds later it would detonate. They did that with other types of ordnance, too. They would set them up and detonate them from a distance. They were skillful at camouflaging them. Then there were “toe-poppers,” which were simply an AK-47 round (or other small caliber round) mounted above a nail. When you stepped on it, the nail would hit the primer on the round, like a firing pin, and then do great damage to your foot. It was meant to wound you, so (your unit) had to take time to get you out of there.”

Bill recalled his biggest demolition mission came early in his Danang assignment.

“We found an (enemy) R&R center in the hills. It was tunneled under a solid dome of granite. They had two hospital wards, several surgical wards; a mess hall, a post office, an administration office, and an armory. It was huge! No one was there when we found it, but we confiscated lots of ammo and weapons. We needed to destroy it. I called Danang and asked them to send out any explosive item they had because we didn’t have enough. They sent me everything; artillery rounds, mortar rounds, 500 pound bombs, and all types of explosives. We had helicopters with sling loads lined up over a mile. We spent the day filling this place with explosives. I ran 2½ miles of det cord to tie everything together. We had all the cords meeting outside the tunnels. That (cord mass) was about four inches across, packed tightly together. I made a “snake” that was about an inch thick of C4 stuck in the middle of it with a blasting cap in that. I took out a fuse about a foot long.”

Bill received a message that limited his time to complete the demolition mission.

“They told us there was a brigade-sized, enemy unit coming down the ridge line. The nearest group was (closing in) and breaking off runners to go ahead because you could see all these helicopters in the air from miles away. So, I took that fuse and cut it in half. I was fast and could run a long ways in a short period. The infantry captain took his guys up the ridge and down the ridge line toward elephant grass and a pick-up point. My third guy stood at the beginning of the elephant grass. My number two guy stood on top of the ridge. When I got the OK to go, I lit the fuse and ran. My guy on the ridge had my weapon because I didn’t want to be carrying that while running. I was starting up the ridge when the concussion wave from that blast picked me off the ground and rolled me uphill. It felt like I’d been run over by a couple of trucks because it just slammed me. It picked up that dome of rock and when it fell, it shattered. That (tunnel complex) was no longer useful to anybody. Then (my guy) got word the enemy was coming down that last ridge toward us, so we ran. I’ve never run so far, so fast, in such high heat and humidity. When we got to the elephant grass there was a pile of rucksacks there and my guy who was already there had placed explosives around it. He said, ‘We’re dropping everything here and going to detonate it to make it useless. Just take weapons, water, and ammo.’ As it was starting to get dark, we were finally in an area (with the Infantry) where someone could come pick us up, but no one was coming. So, we set up a perimeter and waited. Early the next morning choppers came in to ferry us out.”

Bill and his demolition teams provided support to many other Infantry patrols, sometimes providing that support while under fire.

©2025 William D. Palmer.