Master Chief (13 page)

After we had loaded, I sat on the outside edge of the starboard door of the slick with my boots planted firmly on a skid; I was ready for a long jump to the ground as I watched our helo’s tail rotor chip off part of the tile roof from the old pagoda. I was amazed that our pilots were taking so many chances to extract us, carefully and calmly manipulating the helos; the consequences of the most minor mistake would spell doom for us all. I’ll never be able to thank these guys and our BSU/MST mates enough for saving our asses so many times over the years.

After we had extracted, the second slick descended and extracted Dai Uy and 1st Squad. I watched the helo’s main rotor chop off the top of a nearby coconut tree as the pilot carefully climbed vertically out of the LZ.

I turned my attention to the Black Ponies and Seawolves and watched Russian .51-caliber machine-gun tracers zip toward one of the Seawolves. Whoever the gunner was, he was good; some of his rounds were hitting the helo. “It’s time to get out of Dodge, mate,” I yelled at the Seawolf’s pilot.

Everyone was relieved once we reached an altitude of approximately one thousand feet. We also began to cool off and dry out. While we were on our way back to Dong Tam, I had begun to feel the effects of the op—all of us were mentally and physically tired, ready for a few cool ones. Even the beautiful sunset failed to inspire me.

After we returned to Dong Tam, Doc was escorted to the Navy dispensary, where the medical staff put a cast on his broken leg. The rest of us sat down with our Seawolves and MST mates and our SAS cohorts—the Sea Lord and Black Pony crews had returned to their home base at Binh Thuy—for debriefing. The general consensus was that: we
were lucky we hadn’t patrolled into an ambush, and the CBU-55B Black Death bomb wasn’t what it was chalked up to be. With that we went our ways to clean weapons, gear, and filthy bods. Another good op—no one was killed.

The next morning, August sixteenth, Lieutenant Morrow and I headed for Saigon. We stopped at Ben Luc, where Lieutenant Taylor’s Quebec Platoon, Seal 1, was located, to inquire about utilizing Hien, their interpreter, to be November Platoon’s agent handler for our intel nets. Unfortunately, the platoon wasn’t there. By the time we had walked into N-2 at NavForV, everyone had gone to lunch.

Lieutenant Morrow shrugged and suggested we walk to the Cock and Bull restaurant for lunch. He was buying!

“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day, sir,” I replied.

With that, we walked around the corner to Phan Dinh Phong Street and had a meal of prawns, shark-fin soup, and a couple of Heineken beers.

After lunch, and working on charts and intelligence reports, Lieutenant (jg) Washburn and I returned to Dong Tam on the narrow two-lane highway and managed to avoid a collision with an ARVN truck driver who was trying to get around a much slower Vietnamese bus headed to the marketplace with farmers and their families. I had to quickly pull over to the edge of the road—the rice paddies frequently began within a yard or so of the pavement—to avoid him because he was coming directly toward me in my lane.

In 1969, when I was PRU adviser in My Tho, I was on that same stretch of the QL-4 highway driving a jeep between Saigon and Dinh Tuong province when an ARVN driver pulled a 2½-ton truck into my lane and started playing chicken. Strangely enough, our two vehicles were the only ones on the road at that time. The only equalizer
I had was my Smith & Wesson M-60, .38 Special revolver. With my left hand I quickly drew it from my shoulder holster and aimed it toward the driver while I guided the jeep with my right hand to the edge of the road just shy of plunging into the flooded rice paddies, which were a couple of feet below. I was about to begin shooting when the driver chickened out and pulled his truck back into his lane, narrowly avoiding a collision. It sometimes took drastic measures to alter the course of events.

It seemed, in my experience, that during the Vietnam War many indigenous folks had very little hope for the future, and for whatever reasons, had become very suicidal. In ’69 two of my PRU in Sam Giang district, very good operators, were sitting in their small one-room house drinking
ba xi de
, rice whiskey, with their girlfriend. For some reason they decided to pull the pin on an M-26 frag grenade, and placed it in front of them—they were sitting on a floor mat—and watched it until it detonated in their faces. Later that day, Al Huey and I had to go there and take care of the details of the gratuities. War has many strange and tragic faces.

On the morning of August seventeenth, Dai Uy, Lieutenant Z. (NILO), his Vietnamese navy counterpart, and I drove to Vinh Kim village, Sam Giang district subsector, to meet one of the S2 (intelligence) agents, but we were told that the agent wouldn’t be available until 1200 on the nineteenth. We visited the adviser’s hootch looking for Captain Campbell, and were told he had gone to Saigon. After I got additional Order of Battle information and the coordinates and names of all outposts within Sam Giang
district for our OB overlays and artillary fans, we returned to Dong Tam.

After lunch I was sitting on our small porch reading—the base electric generators were down at that time for several days—when Dai Uy, Trung Uy, and an Army warrant officer drove up in our jeep. As they walked to our barracks stairway, I recognized the warrant officer to be my first cousin, Eddie Dean Smith, from the little village of Brazos, Texas, which was approximately a mile from the Brazos River and ten miles south-southeast of Mineral Wells. I had spent many happy weekends in the Brazos area during my youth visiting with my numerous relatives, swimming in the river, hunting deer, wild hogs, and squirrels, and in general running wild and woolly over the countryside. Eddie Dean was six years younger than me, but his older brother, Gary Allen Smith, and I had spent most of our time together jumping off the old railroad trestle’s sandstone piling into a deep water hole. Gary Allen had joined the Navy in ’64 as a Naval Air Cadet and was commissioned an ensign. In ’65 Gary and his lovely wife Geneva, who lived in Coronado, California, occasionally invited me over to their small apartment for dinner while I was attending UDT training. It was a fun time for all of us.

I decided to get in my first licks and yelled down, “Well, look what the dogs drug in! Hey, dude, what’s happenin’? What in the world are you doing out here in the midst of this heathenous wilderness scratching around in this neck of the woods, Eddie Dean?”

Sanguine in nature and never one to be without a fast quip, Eddie Dean looked up at me, gave a salute and replied, “I’ve been reading my tea leaves, and heard you guys were having some problems, Gary! I also heard you had been shootin’ at pigeons and killin’ buzzards.”

Dai Uy was getting a bit distressed at our family banter
and interrupted, “He’s volunteered to be our FAC pilot and vector us into our future helo op targets once I’ve gotten authorization through his chain of command.”

“I’d be careful, Dai Uy. Eddie Dean has been known to hold with the hare and run with the hounds.”

Trung Uy spoke up and said, “Why, you guys not only speak what sounds like the same perverted dialect of English, you even look related.”

Eddie Dean sniggered and replied, “Well, I hope so.”

Eddie Dean’s arrival was a very pleasant surprise. Now I would get to go on combined operations with my Army cousin.

Dai Uy had met Eddie Dean by chance at the nearby Dong Tam base runway. When Lieutenant Fletcher introduced himself as the OIC of SEAL Team 1’s November Platoon, Eddie Dean mentioned that his retarded cousin Gary Roger Smith was a SEAL. Dai Uy told Eddie Dean that that same retard was in fact a member of his platoon, so Eddie Dean decided to visit us for a spell before his return to Vinh Long to change FAC planes.

After all of our handshaking and teasing, and after Eddie Dean had passed all pertinent information relative to his chain of command to Dai Uy for future coordination, Eddie Dean suggested that I accompany him to Vinh Long, hit the PX for replenishment of refreshments, and return to Dong Tam later that afternoon. Dai Uy seconded the suggestion, and off Eddie Dean and I went to Vinh Long via the northern areas of Cai Lay, Cai Be, and Giao Duc districts of Dinh Tuong province for reconnaissance. (Vinh Long provincial capital and province was south and across the My Tho River from Dinh Tuong province.) Later that afternoon, Eddie Dean dropped me off at the Dong Tam runway and returned to Vinh Long.

While Eddie Dean and I were out having fun, Senior Chief Bassett had been very busy trying to cumshaw a
five-KW generator for our barracks. One was supposed to be delivered to our barracks by the nineteenth. The eighteenth was a slow day. We still didn’t have any base electricity, and only hoped that Chief Bassett’s supply buddies in Saigon would come through with that magic generator.

Later that day, Tam and I went to the Chieu Hoi Center and interviewed a Hoi Chanh by the name of Phu, who had been the executive officer of the VC 261A Main Force Infantry Battalion until February ’71 Phu was thirty-two years of age and an average-looking Vietnamese man except for his left hand, which had been badly mangled from a helicopter rocket and minigun attack that took place in ’69 I quizzed him as to the organization and locations of units of his battalion. Phu’s answers were accurate and he seemed to be sincere. Most important, he was motivated to accompany us as a guide on operations within his old AO. I gave him two personal history statements, (PHS), with the thought that he might be very valuable as a principal agent (one who handles other agents). I briefed Phu on what I expected if I hired him. He assured me that he had ample operational information and would have his reports written within a few days.

Tam and I drove over to Sector S-2 and talked to another Hoi Chanh, named Dang. Dang’s information was so incredibly enticing that I didn’t believe him. When I quizzed him as to the identification and location of his former VC units and whom he was subordinate to, he didn’t know.

Later, while Tam and I were returning to Dong Tam, I asked him his opinion of Dang.

Tam quickly replied, “He too full beaucoup shit!” I laughed and agreed with him.

I spent the next morning reading intelligence reports on
the VC MR-2, Dong Thap One Regiment and its 261A MF Infantry Battalion.

After lunch, Doc, Eberle, Same Tam, and I headed for the Sam Giang district subsector to debrief one of the Vietnamese S-2 agents about several targets near the Route 66 canal’s first curve. We took our basic field gear and weapons with us because of recent increases in VC ambushes of vehicles throughout the province. Once we had reached the cutoff that went south for five klicks to Vinh Kim village, we turned off QL-4 and stopped. Same and his Stoner, and I with my M-16/XM-148, rode on the jeep’s front fenders with our weapons at the ready. We traveled as fast as we dared and watched carefully during the five-kilometer trip until we reached the district subsector.

While the guys went to a local Vietnamese street vendor to get a coconut or papaya crush, I went to S-2 and checked in with Staff Sergeant Pham. He told me that the agent was on an operation. I thanked him and left. That was the second time within the last two days that the Sam Giang district S-2 (Vietnamese) had previously agreed to our debriefing one of their agents, then held the agent incommunicado before our arrival.

The guys and I visited with Major Bigelow (DSA) for a few minutes before our departure. Bigelow was a very personable and likable fellow.

Because we had little else to do, I decided to drive to the Chau Thanh subsector—approximately two kilometers northwest of My Tho—and get a list of the ARVN outpost names and coordinates for our OB situation map’s overlays with artillery fans.

When we had returned to Dong Tam, Chief Bassett’s 5KW generator was sitting beside our barracks. It was in nearly new condition. All hands helped with the electrical hookup to the barracks, and the job was completed at
midnight. Everyone was jubilant once we had enough electricity for overhead lights and the bar’s refrigerator and fans.

August twentieth was a day when all hands began to understand the rewards of being slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to listen. Seaman Eberle continued to oversleep and was very slow to get up. Our omniscient senior chief decided that the only solution was to assign Eberle as the reveille petty officer and gave him a clock with a loud alarm set for 0630. Chambo bitched about the unkempt condition of our vehicles—so our omnipotent senior chief assigned Chambo as the platoon’s first lieutenant department head. Hayden complained about the platoon’s slothfulness in keeping our barracks, shower area, and Johnny clean—so our sovereign senior chief assigned Hayden as the Master at Arms. After the chief’s new assignments, he collared the rest of the guys and kept them busy improving our living conditions for the better part of that day.

Out of respect for the senior chief’s dominion, I kept my mouth shut and headed for the intel room, where I spent the next few hours updating our OB situation maps and overlays, and intel report agent dossiers.

Later, in the afternoon, Dai Uy returned from My Tho with information on the location of the VC 341X MF Engineering Battalion HQ. Cai Be district Police Special Branch Chief Muoi and his young and pretty ex-VC lass would accompany us on another helo op the following day. My cousin Eddie Dean was to be the “shotgun,” or FAC pilot, to vector us to the VC headquarters. Because Doc Holmes still had a full-length cast on his leg, he was to accompany Eddie Dean in the O-1 Cessna and familiarize Eddie Dean with our tactical SOPs. Dai Uy gave us the warning order at 1430 hours. We spent the rest of the afternoon preparing our gear for the next day’s op.