Master Chief (20 page)

The next day, most of the platoon went with the MST folks to Vung Tau by MSSC and LSSC. They were to rendezvous with Doc Holmes, Quear, and a few SAS troopers on the Australian R&R beach for an SAS party, and return with Doc and Quear to Dong Tam.

I enjoyed the rare peace and quiet, and took advantage of it by creating an aerial photo mosaic of a VC POW camp and updating intel files. However, all quiet times must come to an end.

At 1815 all of the guys returned safely from Vung Tau. As to be expected, everyone was severely sun- and wind-burned and very tired from riding the MSSC and LSSC over fairly rough seas.

Unfortunately, a freak accident happened to Dai Uy Fletcher while he was sitting on the bow of the MSSC on the way to Vung Tau. As usual, the boat was cruising at high speed when a large silver fish, two to three feet in length, leaped high out of the water forward of the bow. The MSSC was much faster than the cold-blooded vertebrate, so the fish hit Dai Uy’s leg and bounced into his face. He suffered several deep cuts in his left thigh and had a bad cut on his cheek. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the others got him to an Aussie doctor, who sewed up his wounds in no time.

Two days later, on September twenty-eighth, Lt. (jg) Jon Wright and Petty Officer Holler drove up to our barracks in their five-ton truck, loaded to the gills with Oscar Platoon 2nd Squad’s gear. They had made a long, dangerous drive from Solid Anchor all the way across the delta to Dong Tam. Lt. (jg) Nick Walsh, CE2 Gary Lawrence, ET3 Browning, RM2 Chuck Hollern, and RM3 Mark Lesher were moved to Ben Luc with Mike Platoon’s Lt. Shannon McCrary, ENS Wally Merrick, Chief Norton, and others.

Solid Anchor (previously called Sea Float) was located near the southernmost tip of Vietnam and An Xuyen province on the Cua Lan River. I had sent some time there in ’70 as a Biet Hai adviser. Oscar Platoon had been ordered to leave due to the Vietnamese navy’s pressures on NavForV in Saigon. Obviously, all was not well with our
Vietnamese navy buddies down there, I thought. Our withdrawal from South Vietnam had a lot to do with the South Vietnamese government’s and the Vietnamese people’s attitudes toward us. In many ways, I couldn’t blame them. The continuing withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from ’Nam, which was completed by the summer of ’72, made all of us feel like we were leaving our Vietnamese brothers when they needed us most. There was nothing more grievous than a friend who runs away when the going gets tough—especially when he or she is deceitful about it.

Nevertheless, it was a time of celebration for us; it was always good to rendezvous with our mates again. The remaining members of 2nd Squad would be arriving within the next few days. Trung Uy Wright, Chief Harris, Doc Jennings, RM2 Chuck Miller, GMG2 Bailey, PO2 Eddie Farmer, PO2 Mojica, and GMG1 Edwards (MST) would be staying with us for several weeks, we were told, until they received orders from SpecWar staff to depart for CONUS. Until then, Oscar Platoon was still on operational status, especially for Bright Light ops.

Later that evening, Dai Uy gave November Platoon an update on the general situation of SpecWar policies. Afterward, I gave my weekly enemy OB/intel briefing on enemy activity and potential targets for our platoons.

The next day, Senior Chief Bassett had us all frantically setting up double bunks in preparation for the arrival of Chief Harris, Miller, Bailey, and Farmer. Later that afternoon, Knepper and I worked on our operational gear in preparation for a three-day op in Ham Long district, Kien Hoa province, the following week. Tam and I were to be his point men. Knepper and I were looking forward to spending a little time in the bush sneakin’ and a-peekin’.

Lieutenant Fletcher had previously decided to allow the senior enlisted men, and eventually the junior enlisted
men, who wished to do so, to plan and execute their own operations. Dai Uy was very generous and farsighted like that; he always took good care of his men and encouraged all of us to do our very best. Because of my experience, I volunteered to be their point man and/or APL (assistant patrol leader).

I was soon to learn that attitudes like Lieutenant Fletcher’s were a rare commodity in SpecWar, especially after the last of the SEAL platoons pulled out of the Vietnam War in December 1971. From 1972 onward many of our best operating officers/combat leaders resigned rather than spend their careers butting heads with admin’er officers—basically nonoperating SEAL officers/nonhackers with a chest full of phony medals. During the seventies, politics in the teams was at its worst.

That afternoon, eight more men from Oscar Platoon arrived from Solid Anchor. That night it was my turn as the bartender. It turned out to be a rowdy evening, all right.

Oscar Platoon’s Doc “JJ” Jennings teasingly pestered me the better part of the evening and early morning by placing his face within six inches of mine. My natural reaction was to push him away to a safe distance. Having been sucker-punched at close quarters from my blind side while drinking a cool one at Shalamars—across the street from NavForV, in Saigon—in December ’66 I had a tendency to keep a safe sucker-punch distance from those I wasn’t sure of.

I knew that JJ was very intelligent and had a great personality. He was blessed with a chocolate complexion, was approximately five feet ten inches in height, medium-heavy in build, had a powerful set of shoulders, and most important, I knew he had a black belt in judo. I had first gotten to know him while he was serving with Lieutenant Todd’s Hotel Platoon in 1970 while they were working out of My Tho. I was an LDNN adviser to a Vietnamese
SEAL platoon, and participated in Hotel Platoon’s attempt at rescuing a U.S. POW in Kien Hoa province that summer.

Because I didn’t understand JJ’s persistent actions, I finally got irritated and said, “JJ, if you don’t get your ass out of my face, I won’t serve you any more scotch.” I thought it strange at the time that JJ considered my comment absolutely hilarious, then he spilled his scotch-on-the-rocks down the back of my neck and hugged me for the third time. There were very few folks that I would allow to get close to me physically in those days. In fact, JJ knew what he was doing—he was playfully exposing my insecurity, as he would let me know soon enough.

In spite of a few complaints, the bar did finally secure at 0600 sharp. Reveille was at 1200 hours.

During the next couple of days, Compton, Doc, and I worked on intel-related tasks and extended the intel room by knocking out an inner wall. Chief Bassett and Same rewired the officers’ quarters adjacent to our intel room. Lieutenant Fletcher departed for Taiwan on a five-day R&R, leaving “Killer” Trung Uy Kleehammer in charge. We were in good hands, though.

We continued to attend tae kwon do lessons with Captain Kim almost every afternoon. Most of us who took the lessons continued to bruise our bones and muscles—especially on our forearms and shins—during those two- to three-hour workouts. Some days we wrapped our hands and wrists with Ace bandages to protect our previous injuries and reduce the pain during the workout. After our workout, Hayden, Knepper, Chambo, Compton, Same, Waneous, Barron, and I would head immediately for our well-supplied bar to purchase a minimum of three ice-cold beers. We would apply one cold can of beer to our external wounds and chin-chin the other two beers for our internal ones. Our remedy sure as thunder beat Doc Holmes’s
remedy of two salt tablets or a malaria pill. By the time we went through the three-can sequence four or five times, the pain was miraculously gone. With our newfound strength, we worked each other over with our latest tae kwon do moves.

October third was the South Vietnamese election day. All U.S. personnel were restricted to their bases. U.S. intelligence reports stated that the following few days would be the most critical for the Vietnamese government. No one knew for sure what the results would be. Many truck-loads of Vietnamese left Dong Tam for My Tho that day, heading to their assigned voting booths. Same and I did not even consider any clandestine use of CS gas on our Vietnamese brothers as they drove by our barracks. There was always a better time and place for that.

For the remainder of the morning, November Platoon’s tae kwon do group worked out under Captain Kim’s careful tutelage while Killer, Lieutenant (jg) Wright, the senior chief, and the rest of the guys played volleyball. Naturally, by evening everyone was properly motivated to take care of his external and internal wounds. Because Senior Chief Bassett was barkeep for the evening, that left me free to pester JJ.

Later, after much posturing and humorous dialogue between JJ and myself, I asked him a leading question: “JJ, what would you say if I told you that I’m farsighted?”

He looked at me for a second, grinned and opined, “You don’t like me getting up close to you, do you, Smitty?” Without waiting for me to answer, he continued, “Have you ever heard of the eighteen-inch security bubble?”

“The only bubble I know about is your woolly head that’s always before me,” I teased as I playfully threw a few hooks and jabs at his ears and nose.

“You dummy, don’t you understand that I’ve been trying to penetrate your eighteen-inch bubble ever since I
got here?” JJ exclaimed prior to breaking out into his unique, hearty laughter.

I turned to Bassett, winked and said, “Chief, give JJ another double scotch-on-the-rocks. I’m buying.”

I leaned over close to JJ’s face and replied in a low tone, “Well, I think you have the right question, but the wrong answer. You see, when I was in the seventh grade, I had an English teacher who became infuriated every time she caught me gazing out the schoolroom windows, dreaming of running trap lines in Alaska’s hinterlands. She was well aware of my love for the outdoors, and hated it. The problem was simple. I wanted to learn about trapping, and she wanted to teach me about syntax and sentence diagramming. The end result was that I temporarily forgot about trapping while she beat me severely about my head and shoulders with an eighteen-inch ruler.”

I stopped talking long enough to down my Cuba libra, then continued, “Naturally for the short term, I regained a new interest in syntax and sentence diagramming. However, she loved to look hard into my eyes and get her ugly nose right up to mine for a while before she started whaling away at me. Her tactic absolutely unnerved me. Ever since then, I’ve been wary of folks who try to get up close, and especially in my face.”

Doctor JJ got a sick look on his face. I couldn’t tell if the cause was my story or his eight double and two double-double scotches.

Continuing, I went on to explain, “When someone gets real close to me, my subconscious takes over and he becomes that female English teacher. I expect her to begin pounding on me with that damn ruler. What I disliked the most was her intimidation, and my dread of that first swat—and I don’t mean a sucker punch either—it would have been much kinder,” I summarized as I wiped my eyes.

I looked sadly down at the floor, stepped on Bassett’s stogie butt with the toe of my unpolished jungle boot, then looked up and straight into JJ’s black eyes. I concluded my story by saying, “I don’t want to live in the past, I just don’t want to forget the lessons learned.”

Doc had swallowed the whole works: hook, line, and sinker. “Oh surely, you don’t think—” JJ cried incredulously.

I reached over and placed my arm around his brawny neck. “It’s okay, JJ. You don’t have to worry about me smacking you with a stick. Because you’re my buddy, I would keep my distance and tell you, in a spirit of love, what I was going to do just before I used my fists and feet on you. That way, I wouldn’t leave you wondering when I was going to discipline you. How do you like me so far?” I teased, then broke out into a gut-bustin’ hee-haw.

JJ responded by grabbing my right hand from around his neck, quickly twisting it, kicking my feet out from under me and knocking me down on my knees before I could scream “carpetbagger.”

“Never, never, ever tell a man when you’re going to work him over. I’m now going to give you your first lesson, in a spirit of love, in a basic manipulative hold to enhance your shoddy tae kwon do. How do you like me so far?”

Not being in a position to argue, I tried another tack by pleading my case. “Damn, Doc, I already know how to bite off noses and ears, poke out eyes, crush throats, and shatter kneecaps, not to mention how to shoot ’em at long and short ranges and blow up the survivors! What more do I need to know?”

Doctor JJ smiled down at me and answered, “Finesse.”

After that, JJ and I became even closer friends. Neither one of us ever mentioned the eighteen-inch-bubble thing again—there really wasn’t any need to as far as I was concerned.
I never did tell him that I made up the story either. And, oh yes, he did teach me some good judo moves and how to use a straight razor clandestinely. That was what I called finesse—slicing your Communist enemies wide open without them even knowing it until it was too late.

Over the years, I’ve often wished that I had more good, honest mates like JJ. My granddad Smith, who died in ’43 was fond of saying, “You’re a mighty lucky man if you gain a total of two or three true friends in a lifetime.” I’ve been a little luckier than that, but my grandpa knew what he was talking about.

October fourth proved to be a day of organization and preparation for that unknown operation that was sure to come. Captain Campbell called by secure voice and notified us that Ba To’s hamlet had been under heavy attack during the night by units of the VC/NVA 267B Sapper, 309F Heavy Weapons, and 261A Infantry Main Force battalions. The VC units managed to blow up Ba To’s command bunker with several 75mm recoilless rifle HE rounds, damaged the hamlet’s only half-kilowatt generator, and killed several of Ba To’s PSDF men—People’s Self-Defense Forces: government hamlet militia composed mostly of old men and boys. In general, they tried to wipe his little Hoa Hao hamlet off the map.

Captain Campbell also told us that Ba To had some good operational information for us and that he badly needed 40mm HE, 40mm para flares, and handheld pop flares. I told him that I would do my best to get the supplies that Ba To needed plus an M-60 machine gun. I immediately requested that Captain Campbell arrange for the sector Huey slick to take Doc, Mojica, and me to and from Ba To’s hamlet on the morning of October sixth.