Master Chief (17 page)

The Kit Carson scouts continued past the hootch and toward the elusive POW camp, keeping a close watch for any signs of the 560th VC LF Battalion or their Rear Services unit. They soon found one VC serrated grenade that was being used as an antipersonnel mine. It had an instantaneous type fuse and was anchored with twine to a small tree trunk next to the trail. Monofilament line was tied to the safety pin. The almost transparent fishing line was strung across the trail at ankle level and was secured to a sturdy bush. Now I know we’re compromised, I thought.

I found out later from Son, our interpreter, that one of the scouts told him that the VC had left a marker of three sticks on the trail as a warning to other VC that there were booby traps ahead. All Kit Carson scouts were ex-VC, and they had no trouble finding two more of the same type booby traps within another one hundred meters.

We hadn’t gotten fifty meters past the last booby trap when the scouts spotted a VC lookout that was set up ahead of us and reported that the VC Rear Services unit was just beyond the lookout. For unknown reasons, neither the scouts nor the VC fired upon each other. Maybe the VC were more confused than we were. It was obvious that we were compromised. There would be no chance of liberating any ARVN POWs that day. Dai Uy, Son, and the senior scouts debated the situation for at least ten seconds—the decision was to abandon our search for the POW camp, leave the immediate area, and return to the truck by another route as quickly and safely as possible.

Because all of November Platoon was heavily laden
with extra demolitions and ammo, it was a long, hot, and humid patrol back to the outpost. For the first hour of our return trek, we didn’t even stop for a water break, and a couple of the guys were beginning to show signs of advanced dehydration. However, we did come upon a friendly old woman and a younger woman who were cooking hot rice cakes that were mixed with banana and shredded coconut and wrapped in banana leaves. Everyone was famished because we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. After we set security, Dai Uy had Son tell the two women that we would gladly pay them for the rice cakes. Our only request was for them to make as many of the cakes as quickly as they could. As I recall, we all got to eat two delicious, steaming cakes apiece. The ladies were very happy when they were given 500 piasters for their kindness. That was probably more money than they earned in several months.

After our fortuitous meal, we returned to the scouts’ truck a little before suppertime. All hands were in a hurry to get back to Dong Tam for a hot meal. Those rice cakes had only whetted our appetites.

The scouts drove the truck to the ferry that crossed the Ham Long River, where we rendezvoused with Doc and our MST mates and boarded their MSSC. We waved good-bye to the scouts, and entered the dangerous Giao Hoa canal, which would take us northeast to Ben Tre and eventually to the My Tho River. Lieutenant (jg) Washburn had the coxswain pour the coals to the MSSC until we were skipping along the surface at sixty miles per hour. It didn’t take us long to reach Ben Tre.

At Ben Tre, eight of the guys off-loaded and drove our two jeeps back to Dong Tam via the ferry that crossed the My Tho River. The rest of us rode the MSSC through four corners (sometimes called crossroads), where the Giao Hoa canal crosses the Bai Lai River. This was a very dangerous
route and was near the spot where my very good friend Chief Frank Bomar (X-ray Platoon) was killed in December of ’70 Once we zipped through the crossroads, we continued down the Giao Hoa canal until it entered the My Tho River. Dong Tam was almost directly across the river from that point. We finally made it back at about 1900 and headed straight for the mess hall.

After I cleaned my weapon, gear, and body, I lay down, as did the other guys, until debriefing at 2230. Our debriefing was mostly a matter of formality—we all knew that we had given it our best. Even Eberle was too tired to complain about anything. At least we hadn’t made any major mistakes, nor had we suffered any casualties.

The next three days were filled with our normal activities, including tae kwon do practice, a run to NavForV in Saigon for supplies, and continued preparation for our next mission. Mr. Kleehammer and Senior Chief Bassett departed for Camp Alfa at Tan Son Nhut on their first leg of the trip to their R&Rs in Hawaii. Our op in northern Cai Be district that had been scheduled for the afternoon of the seventeenth was delayed for twenty-four hours because there were no available HAL-3 helos.

On the morning of September eighteenth Dai Uy gave the warning order for our operation that afternoon. Afterward, Fletcher, Hayden, and I drove to the Embassy House in My Tho and picked up Mr. Bai, the OSA interpreter. From there we drove to Cai Be and met with our good friend Chief Muoi concerning a 525 report of a POW camp in the northern part of his district. According to Muoi’s information, the 525 agent had fabricated a very general report on the POW camp. That was only one of the many dead ends that we encountered while trying to cross-check—through separate sources when permissible—such an important target as a POW camp.

After we returned to My Tho and dropped off Mr. Bai
at the Embassy House, we drove straight to the Navy mess hall at Dong Tam for lunch.

At 1430 Dai Uy gave us the patrol order. Our targets were the security chief of the Y-4 (VC Saigon/Gia Dinh Sub Region VI Political Office) training unit and ten to fifteen Rear Services cadre. Our adversaries were reported to be residing within a specific group of hootches. We intended to kill or capture the whole brood of vipers.

The northwestern area of Dinh Tuong province was at the southern edge of the Plain of Reeds and was sparsely settled. There were company-sized VC/NVA units of the VC Dong Thap 1st Regiment and a few units of the NVA 9th Infantry Division located in large bunker complexes that were generally hidden in tree lines. I had been consistently plotting COMINT Green Hornet fixes—Communications Intelligence of VC/NVA radio transmissions—on one of our situation map overlays as another method of cross-checking our sources of intelligence information. Our plottings, which we got daily from ARVN 7th G-2 adviser Major Scott, indicated that there was a VC radio station in the vicinity of our target.

The personnel assignments were as follows:

After we test-fired our weapons and rehearsed our SOPs, we loaded our two Sea Lord slicks at 1815 and headed for the wagon wheel in Giao Duc district, where we rendezvoused with the Seawolf gunships. Our Sea
Lord slicks and our two Seawolves dropped down to approximately seventy-five feet and set a northeasterly, low silhouetted course for our target, located on the northern border between Cai Lay and Cai Be districts, just south of the Kinh Thuong Mai Di Song My Tho (Route 66).

Dai Uy decided that we should insert first and then have the Seawolves pound the surrounding area with miniguns, M-60s, and rockets if needed. Our insertion was outstanding. Both slicks went in abreast and flared thirty meters from the main target hootch. We all jumped from the skids at about ten feet and hit the deck running toward the edge of a small canal between us and the hootch. There we kneeled for a lower silhouette, keeping watch for VC running away from us and toward other hootches.

As rehearsed, I yelled,
“Lai dai, mau len!”
(“Come here, hurry up!”) several times with no response. Dai Uy had us wait for about one minute before he told me to throw a CS grenade inside the hootch. The rest of the platoon covered me while I jumped the canal and threw the grenade through the door of the hootch. After I returned to our skirmish line, we waited.

Within two minutes three women and five children came out of their bunker and out the door of the hootch, crying and vomiting. One of the women kept crying,
“Choi Oi!”
(“Oh, my God!) in between fits of vomiting.

While Tam and Phu instructed the women and kids to cross the canal and move behind our skirmish line, Dai Uy motioned for me to go inside the hootch and throw another CS grenade into the bunker, then return. I donned my small riot control gas mask and did as ordered, with no results.

Fletcher told Tam and Phu to quickly interrogate the women and find out where the VC security chief of Y-4, his training unit, and Rear Services cadre had gone. In the
meantime Dai Uy and several of the guys searched another nearby hootch and the surrounding area on our left flank before it got too dark. There were no VC there either.

The results of Tam and Phu’s interrogation of the three women only told us what we already knew: “No good! VC go fast tree line before helo come.”

After Tam warned the women and kids to remain in front of their hootch until after we had extracted, the four of us quickly patrolled to two hootches that were approximately one hundred meters to our right flank, and we found nothing there. We scoured the areas around the hootches—nothing.

As we were headed toward Lieutenant Fletcher’s squad, I looked at Roger and commented, “Damn, it looks like we’re gonna get skunked again.”

Roger only shook his head without comment and spit a long stream of Copenhagen tobacco juice onto the back of Phu’s right boot heel.

I looked at Roger and quipped, “Good shot, mate. My sentiments exactly.”

After we linked back up with Dai Uy, it was 2000 and almost pitch-black. Fletcher had us move south of the hootches about seventy-five meters, where we formed two H formations for extraction. The Sea Lord pilots soon radioed Lieutenant Fletcher, saying that they couldn’t spot our eight uncovered strobe lights and requested that we use a pop flare to illuminate our position. Not eager to spend the night with our Communist enemies, we fired a para flare directly overhead so that our HAL-3 buddies could see us and extract us.

The Sea Lord pilots later told us that they couldn’t see our strobe lights until they were within seventy-five meters of our position. One of the problems with night insertion and extraction was that the pilots had trouble with their depth perception and had a tendency to crash into
objects or the ground, catching the nearby troops in the helo’s main rotor. Understanding that risk and knowing we didn’t have a hot LZ, our Sea Lord pilots came in slow and easy and landed without incident.

Our return to Dong Tam was uneventful and unusually quiet. We were generally a happy lot. However, all of us were frustrated that night because of our inability to change the tactical situations. We knew that every time we cleared our AOs with TOC, our missions were generally compromised before our departure from Dong Tam. We used all of the tricks of the trade, including getting several U.S. Army district senior advisers to clear our multiple AOs at the last moment or for the longest period of time that the ARVN 7th Division and the Vietnamese district chiefs would allow. We knew that the VC had informants in the ARVN’s sector and subsector TOCs. We also knew that the only way we could catch our enemies unaware would be to operate without telling anyone when and where we were going. The solution was very tempting. The only problem was that if we were to unilaterally take the initiative, some of our staffer/admin’er buddies would ensure that the consequences would be severe, and by the time they got done with us, we would have felt and looked worse than a gutted warthog. Even if the results were spectacular, we would be condemned if certain staff members couldn’t claim the glory. None of us were willing to pay that price. Whatever happened to our military objective of finding and destroying our enemy? I asked myself as I looked out the starboard helo side door into total darkness.

After the Sea Lord slicks dropped us off at Dong Tam, we headed directly for the chow hall. While we were eating, Same felt something biting his calf muscle. He pulled his Levi’s pants leg up and found a huge leech attached to his calf. The bloodsucking parasite was six inches long
and bloated with an estimated eight to ten cc’s of Same’s blood. Everyone gulped down their dinner and hurried to our barracks, where we stripped off our clothes and carefully searched ourselves for leeches. That was one time that we cleaned our bodies before our weapons and gear.

Same and Waneous found several more leeches on their legs. The leeches’ bites left triangular marks that were approximately three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. Because of the anticoagulant that the leeches injected into the wound, the bleeding didn’t stop for approximately an hour.

Waneous looked at Doc Holmes and said, “Hey, Doc, can you do anything to stop the bleeding?”

Doc was always known to be compassionate, and demonstrated his concern by replying, “There’s nothing wrong with your leg, you wimp. It’s all in your head. Take two salt tablets and drink a glass of water.”

“And what in the hell are the salt tablets going to do?” Waneous asked in frustration.

“The salt will stop the bleeding from the inside,” quipped our loving corpsman.

Same and Waneous also found a few leeches that were on the outside of their pant legs. Those blood-starved leeches were only three inches in length. I didn’t have any leeches on me because I had tied my cammi leg-bottom laces securely around the tops of my jungle boots. However, none of us had rubbed mosquito repellent on our uniforms before the operation. We had paid a heavy price for that error in judgment. From that time forward, all of us were very careful to squirt repellent all over ourselves and especially on our boot tops and our cammi bottoms.

The next day was spent working on OB maps and overlays, filing systems and trips to Ben Luc, Vinh Long, Saigon, etcetera.

On the morning of September twentieth Dai Uy, Trung
Uy, Chief Thompson, Staff Sergeant Mai, and I went to Sector in My Tho where the province chief, Colonel Dao, presented us our awards and letters of appreciation. Later that afternoon, we practiced tae kwon do under Captain Kim.