Master Chief (19 page)

I immediately told the guys to stand by for extraction and remain in our skirmish line behind the rice dike. I knew there would be no arguments there. Because of the sporadic enemy fire from twelve o’clock, we couldn’t set up our normal H formation in the middle of a rice paddy with no cover available.

In this situation, the Seawolves concentrated maximum firepower on the VC bunker complex, while our Sea Lord slicks landed twenty or thirty meters directly behind us with their noses facing the enemy. The sequence of loading the slicks would begin with each squad’s first fire team laying down a maximum rate of fire while falling back toward its slick. The second fire team would load the Sea Lord slick’s portside. Once second fire team was loaded, first fire team would quickly climb aboard to starboard. The squad leader/patrol leader and the radioman would be the last to load, and the door gunner or the copilot would usually give the pilot a thumbs-up when everyone was aboard.

When our Sea Lord buddies landed directly behind 1st and 2nd squads, everyone opened up for a maximum rate of fire while both second fire teams loaded, followed by first
fire teams. Within a couple of minutes all hands were loaded and continued to return fire at the VC from the helo side doors until the slicks lifted us from the flooded rice paddy.

After we had returned to Dong Tam, Dai Uy contacted Major Bigelow (DSA) at the Sam Giang subsector on secure-voice radio. Dai Uy suggested that Bigelow convince the ARVN district chief to request that Sector organize an ARVN sweep through the VC bunker complex with November Platoon, HAL-3’s Seawolves, and VAL-4’s Black Ponies on the following day, which was a Saturday. A short time later Major Bigelow called back and notified Dai Uy that the ARVNs at Sector and Subsector strongly hinted that they preferred not to operate on weekends.

Dai Uy called all hands into our little bar for our debriefing. He began by saying, “I think Mr. Kleehammer made the right decision this afternoon. I’m sorry we’ve had such poor results lately. However, there’s little we can do about it. Mr. K. and Senior Chief, I think it’s now time to attend to our wounded spirits. As soon as everyone gets his weapons and gear cleaned up, I’m buying the first round. Senior Chief, you’ll be in charge. Mr. K. and I will spend the night in My Tho. Any questions?”

The process of healing our spirits with our MST buddies turned out to be an evening odyssey. For starters, the MST OIC, Lieutenant (jg) Washburn, volunteered to grill a bunch of chicken for dinner. Senior Chief Bassett demonstrated his appreciation for Mr. Washburn’s condescension by keeping him covertly supplied with at least two triple scotches at all times while the young officer was tending the grill. The more scotch whiskey that Trung Uy Washburn drank, the happier he got and the more chicken he burned. Everyone was having a great time teasing and harassing each other. Much laughter, yelling, and occasional screams of pain echoed off the surrounding Vietnamese barracks’ bulkheads.

UDT training had taught us that, when in doubt, we
should torture the depraved until they began to love it. In other words, if your buddies love you, they’ll demonstrate it by sucker-punching you when you’re not looking, by kicking your stool out from under you, or, when you’re in great pain from an injury or the flu, by telling you it’s all in your head and giving you a salt tablet—if you want a glass of water, you have to get it yourself. That was the kind of perverted love that all SEALs preferred and understood.

I reflected back on a cold, dark night at the infamous Devil’s Elbow on the Colorado River in October ’65, when I was captured by a mob of loving instructors. As UDT trainees of Class 36, we had been frantically trying our best to evade our enemy instructors as we paddled from Davis to Parker dams in our seven-man IBS. We knew that if we ever got captured, we’d wish we were dead before they finished torturing us. That was the whole lesson—fight until you’re dead, never surrender.

After our initial capture, Brother Moore and I were elected by our enemy instructors to suffer the consequences for the entire boat crew. It didn’t take Moore and me long to realize that there was nothing we could do about it other than keep our mouths absolutely shut—except for name, rank, date of birth, and serial number—during our interrogation. And so we did, for a price.

The military principle of “fight until you’re dead” was severely reinforced during our physical and mental torture. Gradually, our minds, emotions, and wills began to understand that our enemy was ruthless, and mercy wasn’t a part of the modus operandi. For SEALs, capture meant only eventual death after unimaginable torture. I totally believed in my PRU buddies’ slogan, “It is better to die with honor than to live in dishonor.”

Once it had gotten dark, Same and I decided to ambush several columns of ARVNs that were soon to be marching in formation past our barracks. For some unknown
reason, the ARVNs had a habit of marching by every evening about 2000.

Same looked at his Rolex watch and commented, “It’s now 1950. If we’re going to do it, we had better get in position, don’t you think?”

I started chuckling and replied, “Yeah, and the slight breeze is just right. I’ll go get a CS grenade off my web gear.”

After I had retrieved the riot-gas grenade, Same and I hid in some high grass approximately ten meters south of the road. The conditions and terrain were perfect. There was a ditch that ran alongside the road that would be just right in which to throw the grenade. Also, the evening coolness provided an inversion that would prevent the gas from rising too quickly. As luck would have it, the breeze was coming from behind us and would carry the gas slowly north and directly across the road.

After we lay down in the weeds and waited for the ARVNs to arrive, Same looked at me, started laughing, and commented, “This is more fun than sitting on a real ambush. We’ll teach these guys to sabotage our missions and steal our belongings. Revenge, how sweet it is.”

I laughed and replied sarcastically, “Yeah, they’ll never know who did it. We’re at least thirty-five meters from our barracks. We can always blame it on the Vietnamese navy guys”—they lived behind our barracks—“if this gets out of hand. The main thing we must keep in mind is—don’t get caught at all costs.”

The ARVNs didn’t arrive till 2015 hours. Their tardiness only justified our plan in our minds. When the ambushees were within approximately fifty meters of our concealed position, I pulled the pin and threw the CS grenade forward into the ditch, which was no more than fifteen feet from the center of the road. The inversion had held, and the gas drifted slowly over the road. Same and I were like little kids playing hide-and-seek. It was all we
could do to refrain from bustin’ out laughin’ as the ARVNs rapidly approached our clandestine ambush.

Our Vietnamese buddies were caught completely unawares. It was a great plan and perfectly executed. The column innocently marched into the cloud and did well for at least two or three seconds until the front ranks disintegrated with loud cursing, coughing, and rapid shuffling of boots as they frantically scrambled and shoved each other around in circles. The momentum of the rear ranks kept pushing those in front farther into the CS gas and made matters worse. Many began rubbing their eyes, and some fell into the sewage ditches on both sides of the road. The almost invisible gaseous cloud was so large that no one knew where to run, or for that matter, where they were going. As far as they knew, they were surrounded. Within another few seconds the whole column was totally panic-stricken and retreated from whence they had come in total disarray.

Same and I laughed until tears were streaming down our cheeks. Once the ARVNs had backed off to a safe distance, both of us quietly belly-crawled all the way back to our barracks and went topside as if nothing had happened.

However, there just wasn’t enough action to really complete the process of our much needed mental and spiritual healing. Something simply had to be done about the burned chicken.

When Washburn had most of the chicken overly grilled, Bassett, Knepper, Chambo, and Hayden went over and stood behind him. Not a word was said. Chambo, who had an opossum-eatin’ grin on his face, began twirling a pair of nickel-plated Smith & Wesson handcuffs on his right index finger.

Trung Uy Washburn, knowing something was up, turned slightly to his left and noticed the flashy handcuffs spinning round and round. By nature he was a predator just like the rest of us—he just wasn’t aware of it at that
time. Before that day was over, he would have much better insight into his family’s atavistic roots.

Trung Uy was an unusual JO (junior officer) in that he enjoyed our rough-and-tumble attention that we delighted in sharing with him, i.e., bathing in the benjo ditch, spiking his Scotch drinks with urine, and other forms of SEAL-type humor. It may have been that his mother truly loved him and even sang lullabies to little baby Washburn every night before she slapped the thunder out of him, or maybe she demonstrated her love by torturing him and promising to beat him a week before the actual act. Whatever the truth was, Washburn was our type of guy.

Mr. Washburn looked at the four knuckle draggers with concern, even though he knew that he was soon to be part of the fun in one way or another. Not knowing what else to do, he looked nervously down at the burning coals, turned over a couple of pieces of burned chicken legs, and asked, “Anyone want some chicken hot off the grill?”

With swift execution, Senior Chief and boys stripped him of all clothing. Once the task was completed, Bassett gave the final order. “Handcuff him to that electrical pole over there for all passersby to observe what a chicken burner looks like. Hayden, you can write, can’t you?”

Hayden quickly replied, “Yeah, Chief, I think I can. I wrote my mama a half-page letter last month.”

“Good. Go make a cardboard sign that says, ‘This man is a chicken burner and heretic’ and post it above Mr. Washburn where he can’t reach it,” ordered the big chief.

Hayden initially started for the barracks but stopped, turned around, and asked, “Chief, how do you spell ‘heretic’?”

Bassett thought for a moment, then said, “H-a-i-r-a-t-i-c-k.”

After Chief and his boys had taken care of Trung Uy Washburn, all of us headed for the bar in our barracks. In
spite of Mr. Washburn’s cursing and yelling, which was occasionally heard from below, everyone was having a jolly good time topside. Later, when the mosquitoes came out in clouds just before dark, Washburn’s moaning and growning gradually increased until his piercing screams finally penetrated the walls of our crowded bar.

Finally, an hour later, Compton and Quear, being the only softhearted types in November platoon, went down and set Trung Uy loose. They returned his shirt and pants and brought him up to the bar for a hot toddy with his friends, comrades, and mates.

Trung Uy looked at me—I was barkeep that night—and said, “Smitty, give me a quadruple Scotch on the rocks and give everybody else a round on me.”

Trung Uy Washburn had passed the test. He was one of the boys. Later, he proved it by sucker punching Eberle off his stool when he wasn’t lookin’, thus proving the old adage that character is shaped by one’s own thoughts rather than by one’s circumstances.

Yes sir, Mr. Washburn is one fine officer, I thought as I poured him his second quadruple Scotch.

The next few days were filled with administrative and operational planning tasks of one sort or another. We had been assigned two new interpreters, Bay and Long, to replace the ones who had stolen from us—except Son, who was always faithful and loyal. On the morning of September twenty-sixth I had to take Bay and Long to Dong Tam’s Navy LSB (Logistical Support Base) 21/30 admin office to meet the Vietnamese navy base commander and pick up their gate passes for getting on and off Dong Tam.

Afterward, Little Bear, Bay, Long, and I left Dong Tam for Saigon. It was an unusually pretty day considering it was rainy season. While we were driving through Cholon toward downtown Saigon, we noticed that the “White Mice”—the Vietnamese National Police—and Quan Cahn
or Vietnamese Military Police had been reinforced at their checkpoints. Even the normally hectic Vietnamese traffic seemed somewhat subdued. During our meal at the small Meyer Cords café near NavForV, I overheard that the Vietnamese students were stirred up again and were on a rampage of burnin’, lootin’, and shootin’. Once we arrived at NavForV, I was ordered to drive our jeep inside the Navy’s compound and leave it there until our departure for My Tho. Apparently, the reason for the increased security was that the Vietnamese students had burned another Navy jeep just outside the NavForV compound earlier that morning.

In ’70, a U.S. Navy chief petty officer was killed by a Molotov cocktail while sitting in his jeep just outside of NavForV. It was thrown by a VC sapper who was riding by on his motorbike. The chief died a slow, terrible death. Frankly, I’d rather be shot.

There was also sporadic sniping from rooftops in the area. The situation was normal in that we didn’t know who our enemy was. I doubt that anyone else did either, except the VC. It was 1500 hours by the time I had finished taking care of a few intel-related matters. On our return trip to Dong Tam, we decided to take the fairly new Korean highway that went to Cu Chi, the location of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division, instead of driving through Cholon—the Chinese section—which was on the southwestern outskirts of Saigon. Considering the political situation, we thought it might be a safer route. It was an exceptionally pleasant and uneventful return trip to Dong Tam—we didn’t even get run off the road by an ARVN truck.