<He said that after the first landing the big guys, of which he was one, always muscled themselves closer to the ramps of the boats in order to be the first off. He told me that there was a lot of action as the boats headed to the beach, the new guys trying to get back, the experienced ones moving forward. The reasoning was that the longer a boat was in one place the more likely a machine gun would be to find it and get the people coming off.

An interesting bit of trivia. Don't know if it's true, and it's certainly counter-intuitive.





Likely true. It was how we were trained in Panama for beach assaults. Trouble was, at the time we were trying something new. As gunner for the weapons platoon, my team was at the rear of the LCM, where we had our 81mm mortars set up and were actually prepping the beach from the assault boat, with our 'forward observer' standing behind us at the wheel house. The ramp drops, troops un-ass -- and my team are the only targets left sitting still on the open boat.

It seemed to work out pretty good, I mean as far as being able to fire from the bay of the LCM (gun's base-plate was resting on a stack of sandbags), but the boat-people didn't appreciate the shallow dent we left in the floor.

Dan