Master Chief (16 page)

Yessir, I thought, I love where I am and I love my profession with SEAL Team 1. I’m serving my country and I have a true cause, with a sense of urgency. I’d rather die serving my country and living life to its fullest than live to be an old man who had done nothing more than wrench sucker rods, only dreaming of something more. I finally went to sleep knowing that I
was
living my dream every day.

Reveille was shortly after 0200. Because the moon was exceptionally bright, we decided not to go until later that evening. Everyone hit the sack until 0730, at which time we hurriedly dressed and sprinted to the Navy chow hall just prior to its closing.

After breakfast, Dai Uy, Trung Uy, and I drove to My Tho and continued our collection of information from NILO John on a target in Tanh Phu district, Kien Hoa province. From there we went to 525 and asked Larry if he would develop a target analysis on the VC POW camp in Cai Be district. Larry and his crew had always been good at supporting us in any way they could.

At 1900 Dai Uy gave his PLO again, and at 2230 hours our seven-man squad was speeding west by MSSC up the My Tho River toward the Ham Long district in Kien Hoa province. It was a great night for an op—it was almost pitch-black.

After Lieutenant (jg) Washburn and his crew had inserted us approximately ten klicks upstream of the ferry crossing between Dinh Tuong and Kien Hoa provinces, we set security and listened for a while before beginning
our patrol. Tam and Knepper, who were the points, soon led the patrol south toward the Bai Lai stream that was about two and a half klicks inland.

We encountered what proved to be an immense system of irrigation canals that were the remnants of an old French plantation system. The canals were spaced approximately four yards apart. Each one was about five feet deep and six feet wide, with steep banks. The canals were lined with thick brush, trees, and jungle undergrowth, which also added to our enjoyable patrol.

After I had managed to pull myself out of one canal and was in the process of moving on my hands and knees to the next one, my left hand—my M-16/XM-148 was in my right hand—suddenly dropped down into space. I had only moved four to five feet instead of the expected four yards when I almost fell headfirst into another Communist canal. That night reminded me of another pitch-black night that I had spent in Panama while going through Jungle Warfare School in ’67 I began wishing that we had some of the previous night’s moonlight. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of our trek. We must have crossed a couple hundred of those damn canals prior to 0600, when we finally moved to within fifty meters of the Ba Lai stream. All of us had had enough of irrigation canals for a while.

Dai Uy sent Knepper and Tam forward to recon the immediate area on our side of the stream while we set security and listened. After Knepper and Tam returned, they reported a small campfire directly across the stream. With that new information, just before false dawn Dai Uy had us move closer to the bank of the Bai Lai for surveillance, being careful to conceal ourselves in the brush.

As the light increased, a twenty-by-twenty-foot rock building gradually appeared approximately one hundred meters directly across the stream from our position. A
small campfire was lazily blazing and crackling in front of the structure, and cords of wood were stacked next to it. We could hear subdued voices, but hadn’t seen anyone. We didn’t see any radio antennas anywhere either.

Knepper, followed by Dai Uy and Tam, decided to cross the stream, knowing that the rest of us would take care of our side. They were moving into the brush on the opposite bank when a motorized sampan came from upstream, west to east, between our positions. I didn’t want to open fire because Dai Uy, Knepper, and Tam were directly across the stream, but I aimed my combo weapon at the occupant of the sampan until I saw that it was a beautiful woman. If she had been a man, I would have taken him out with a single round from my M-16. I should have shot her, but for some reason I hesitated.

The woman hadn’t seen Eberle, Chambo, Quear, or me, but she did see Dai Uy and Tam standing near the stream. For whatever reasons, Dai Uy and Tam didn’t call or signal her over to their position. The pretty lady killed her engine and drifted downstream until she disappeared around a bend. It was to be expected that she would beach her sampan and sound the alarm. Sure enough, within two minutes we heard two VC warning shots approximately two hundred meters to our left flank. We were now compromised—there was no chance for tactical surprise. With that, Dai Uy decided that he, Knepper, and Tam had best recross the stream and get back to us.

Fletcher immediately had us head toward the My Tho River. We knew then that if there was a VC company nearby, it was likely we would have a running battle to the My Tho River. With that in mind, we headed northeast for our new objective and hopefully a rendezvous with Trung Uy Washburn and MST’s MSSC.

Oh shit! I thought, we’ll have to cross all of those damn Communist canals again. I looked at Chambo, wondering
how he was coming along with his twenty-pound-plus M-60 machine gun and five hundred rounds. He saw me look back at him, frowned, shook his head and slipped into the next canal with his arm reaching up toward me. I winked at him, grinned and pulled him up and out of the muck. With two more paces I slid into the next canal. I knew that as tired as we were, if we got into a serious firefight, we would be in trouble. We couldn’t move any faster than our slowest man.

After several hours spent climbing in and out of all those canals again, we finally made it to the My Tho River. After we set security, Dai Uy radioed MST and requested extraction. Trung Uy Washburn and his crew were screaming downstream in the middle of the My Tho River when we gave them a “Mark, 090” on our radio for a right flank turn toward our position. Within ten minutes we were safely aboard the MSSC and headed for home.

After our return to Dong Tam, we spent the remainder of the day cleaning up. I, for one, hit the sack early.

Yessir, those canals sure took the starch out of us, I thought after I had buried my head in my musty pillow. We were one tuckered bunch of squids that day.

September twelfth was a good day to catch up on some of my admin duties, like updating our enemy OB overlays and card files, agent report filing and dossiers, SEAL intelligence reports, constructing aerial mosaics of future targets, and other mundane tasks. Later that day we had PT and a three-mile run.

On the morning of September thirteenth all hands scattered to the four winds. Dai Uy, Trung Uy, Knepper, and Chambo dropped me off in My Tho at Sector TOC while they went on to Ben Tre in Kien Hoa province to coordinate another op. I tried to catch the sector slick to Vinh Long to do some coordinating work—not available, I was told. I tried to bum a ride with the Shotgun 15 FAC pilot
to Vinh Long—too late, I was told. I visited Larry at 525 for a while and inquired about their target analysis for us on the VC POW camp in Cai Be—it’s not completed yet, I was told. Apparently, it was one of those days—either I was out of sync with the world or the world was out of sync with me. I finally decided to get my butt back to Dong Tam before something did happen. I radioed our MST buddies at Dong Tam and asked them to come and get me—we’ll be right there, I was told. Larry volunteered to give me a ride down to the river, where I was to rendezvous with the MSSC. I knew then that I had made the right decision. After lunch I spent the afternoon working on intel files, and we had tae kwon do practice with Captain Kim at 1630 hours.

At 2030 Dai Uy gave a combined warning order and PLO—everyone was always ready to go on emergency ops within five minutes. We were to go on a combined op with the Ben Tre Kit Carson scouts in Kien Hoa province. There would be a total of twenty-three of us—thirteen SEALs, Son, our interpreter, eight scouts, and one Hoi Chanh guide. Our target was a VC POW camp for ARVNs (no Americans) that was located a few klicks southeast of the Mo Cay subsector in very dense jungle (of course) near the Ham Long River. A VC company of the 560th VC Local Force Battalion and their Rear Services unit was reported to be in the immediate vicinity of the POW camp as security. MST’s LSSC and MSSC would act as blocking elements on the river and be used for emergency extraction and fire support if needed. Doc Holmes was to ride with our MST mates because of his leg cast. The HAL-3/VAL-4 folks would also be on standby at Binh Thuy for emergency extraction and fire support. We were to carry extra two- and 2½-pound M-5A1 C-4 blocks for contingency purposes. All thirteen of us would be carrying a very heavy load.

By 0700 hours the next morning, September fourteenth, we had loaded our two jeeps and driven to My Tho, where we caught a ferry to Kien Hoa province and Road 6A to Ben Tre.

The ride was a lot of fun. We had two guys on each jeep ride forward for security: one guy on each fender. We got some strange looks from a few of our Navy and Army folks, apparently because both of our jeeps were slightly overloaded and we were driving very fast. Hayden teasingly said, “It can’t be because the tires are too low, Chief. I aired them up to sixty psi yesterday.”

Barron demonstrated our attitude best: “Hey, man, if we don’t mind, it don’t matter. Up yours, buddy.” We were on our home turf and they knew it. Our attitude was: we know what our job is and we’re good at it—now let us do it and get the hell out of our way. Actually, we knew what we were doing because some of us had paid for our mistakes with our own blood.

We arrived safely at the Kit Carson scout camp where we climbed aboard a five-ton truck with our KCS comrades and headed for Mo Cay district on Road 6A. After we crossed the Ham Long River by ferry, we continued south until 6A forked. We turned left and drove for a few meters to a convenient point, where we parked the truck and left with two guards (Objective A). From that point we patrolled half a klick or so until we arrived at an ARVN outpost (Objective B).

I was amazed that such a small PF outpost could survive in this area. There were several known VC/NVA main and local force units in the general area that could have easily overrun the small ARVN contingent. Later, however, we began to suspect that the friendly outpost wasn’t so friendly after all and was probably being used to monitor U.S. and ARVN activities covertly as part of a VC early warning network.

From Point B we turned east into a thick growth of nipa palm, tall coconut palm trees, some type of bamboo thickets, wild banana plants, and other lush delta marshland vegetation on the jungle trail that we were traveling. It reminded me of the Rung Sat Special Zone’s T-10 area—it had an eerie darkness to it. It was also full of VC/NVA, centipedes of up to twelve inches, huge sun spiders with leg spans of up to six inches, poisonous snakes, and the source of fungus or jungle rot that created red patches on our skin—one of my fungus patches remained on my back for several years after the Vietnam War. The jungle bramble threatened to choke those foolish enough to pass that way. However, the scouts never hesitated, and continued to move forward at a good pace. I sure hope they know what they’re doing, I thought.

We continued the patrol, following the scouts for three to four klicks, when we encountered a large VC/NVA stronghold. Fortunately, it wasn’t occupied at that time. The reinforced bunker complex was interlaced with L-shaped fighting trenches that had punji stakes in strategic locations. The bunkers were cleverly concealed with natural growth and were arranged so there was always interlocking defensive and supportive fire from all avenues of approach.

We were fortunate that we had the scouts with us. If the SEALs had gone in without them, and a VC 560th Local Force Battalion unit had been awaiting our approach, we would have been ambushed and shot to pieces. That would have been a classic case of tactical surprise, and a superb example of cover and concealment. It would have taken a large combined operation of infantry, air, and artillery to box in the enemy force and destroy them in place. Our Army and Marine buddies had been dealing with this type of warfare for years in the central highlands and the Parrot’s Beak/Iron Triangle area. There were several cases in
’67 in which companies of Army or Marine troops had patrolled into well-concealed, brigade-sized VC/NVA forces that were in combination bunker and intricate tunnel complexes. The end result was that U.S. units were annihilated. The enemy strongholds had been located on high ridgelines or outcroppings with a commanding view of all avenues of approach from below. They were generally concealed and somewhat protected from the air by triple canopy forest. The NVA’s bunkers were positioned with forethought and were extremely well-camouflaged. They usually had 61mm, 82mm, 107mm mortars, 57mm and 75mm recoilless rifles, 7.62×39mm RPD and 12.7mm machine guns, small arms and sniper fire, and shoulder-fired RPG-2s and RPG-7s with their HEAT rounds (High Explosive Anti-Tank) on nearby ridges or fingers and other points of advantage to ensure that all defensive fields of fire were interlocked with each other.

It was no wonder that those Army and Marine companies were wiped out—the weapons and ammo supply that they had were carried by hand or on their backs. When U.S. reinforcements were sent in by helicopter, they sometimes suffered terrible loss of life and equipment and were forced to turn back.

I had nothing but the greatest respect for our Army and Marine mates who spent weeks and sometimes months in the field chasing their elusive and very capable VC/NVA regular army adversaries through some of the most difficult terrain in the world. They were the true heroes of the Vietnam War because they sometimes had to stand fast and face their enemy until one side had destroyed the other.

After we had passed through the unoccupied enemy bunker complex, we quietly continued the search for our target—the POW camp (Objective C). We hadn’t traveled much more than five or six hundred meters when we came
to a hootch. After November Platoon set security, the scouts went into the hootch and searched it. They found a small clay cooking stove in the corner that had warm charcoal and ashes still in it. We wondered if we hadn’t already been compromised, but only time would tell.