Master Chief (23 page)

Same, Compton, and I spent the next few days working on intel matters, situation maps and overlays, while Senior Chief Bassett kept the remainder of the hell-raising rabble busy building November Platoon and MST a screened-in lounge between our barracks for evening flicks. The new lounge was also conveniently located next to our large bunker, for the occasions when our VC/NVA Communist adversaries rudely interrupted our movies with their 82mm HE mortar rounds.

On the evening of October twenty-seventh Captain Kim presented Same, Hayden, Waneous, and me with the fifth-degree blue belts. Our next belt to earn would be the fourth-degree brown. Knepper, Compton, and Barron received the sixth-degree blue belts. After Captain Kim presented us with our blue belts, he had us free-sparing, one-step sparing, and doing rapid executions of our patterns to sweat out any false sense of tae kwon do expertise. By the time he was done with us, we only had enough strength to drag our sweat-drenched, smelly bodies to our bar. It was fortunate for us that Captain Kim had departed—after several
repetitions of our two-and-one medicine, everyone was ready to take on the VC Dong Thap One regiment barehanded. Such were the pitfalls of SpecWar youth during those last Vietnam War days.

Little Bear “Guano” was acting especially gloatful and insolent. He slithered over to Senior Chief Bassett, placed his smelly armpit around Bassett’s shoulders and commented, “Senior Chief, you should start working out with us tae kwon do warriors for a change—it might give you a little backbone.”

The omniscient Bassett instinctively knew what Seaman Little Bear was leading to. Instead of becoming defensive, the senior chief went along with Bear’s game and replied with an easygoing question. “Why is that, Guano?”

“Well, you’re so swaybacked that every time you do push-ups, you get grass burns on your belly,” answered Little Bear in a spirit of effrontery, swagger, and superiority. My tae kwon do brothers and I were aghast at Guano’s first-degree felony attempt at character assassination, and quickly collared him with the intention of disciplining our own and protecting him from the certain wrath of our senior chief.

After we had received our blue belts, Captain Kim sternly warned us to maintain discipline within our ranks and to demonstrate a humble attitude toward those who didn’t believe in or understand the Korean doctrine and methodology of tae kwon do. Captain Kim summarized his admonition by saying, “I will personally hold all of you accountable to the code.”

“Guano” had self-righteously violated the code within a couple of hours of Captain Kim’s warning. Bear’s flippant disrespect toward our platoon chief not only dishonored our chief, but his irreverence also cast a shadow on Captain Kim and ourselves. His disobedience of our strict code required the immediate application of “the letter of
the law.” A little blood wouldn’t do any harm, either. The tae kwon do clan quickly appointed me the trial judge to charge “Guano” with his crime. This procedure was one of the techniques peculiar to November Platoon.

I gave Little Bear a stern look in the spirit of Judge Roy Bean of the Pecos and accordingly judged, “What you say is true, Guano. For by your words you shall be judged, and by your words you shall be condemned. First, you must always
outwardly
demonstrate respect and submissiveness for our rotund senior chief in spite of the obscene ‘spray-tube’ that bulges over his belt buckle.” Known as Dunlap’s disease: my belly dun’ lapped over my belt buckle. “Second, what is
inside
your deceitful heart must be kept secret at all costs. You not only revealed that your motive was to murder Senior Chief’s character, but, more important, you exposed the tae kwon do clan for what we are—a brood of vipers. To summarize, control of the latter—
inside
—is the means by which the former—
outside
—is achieved.”

Because combat missions weren’t always available, our platoon desperately needed a substitute, and soon. If we took out our frustrations about the war and the U.S. political situation on our U.S. Navy neighbors and gave them a sound drubbing, they would eventually throw us into the brig with the Marine “turnkeys,” assuming they could catch us. If we took out our frustrations on our South Vietnamese brothers on a Friday, they would probably wait until Monday and sentence us to steal a couple of U.S. vehicles and an air conditioner or two for them and their homes. However, we had more respect for our South Vietnamese comrades than we did for our liberal politicians, media, and long-haired college hippies.

The only option was to take out our frustrations on each other. November Platoon’s justification was: (1) we had to honor our own code—“the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war”; (2) certain SpecWar
admin’ers couldn’t care less what we did to each other as long as we didn’t embarrass them; and (3) a good knockdown, drag-out was simply a lot of fun and good for cleansing the heart. Because we were somewhere between war and peace, we thought, almost anything goes. As always, it was understood that no one was to be killed or seriously maimed.

With that in mind, I continued with assurance from below and with fearlessness from within and went on to say, “Your penalties are as follows: first, you must demonstrate your repentance with confession—that means you must
outwardly
be sorry for what you’ve done, and that you will become more deceitful and smooth-tongued in the way you exalt yourself in the chiefs presence. You must get down on your knees and prostrate yourself before your tae kwon do brothers and apologize for having exposed our self-righteousness, pride, greed, feelings of superiority, and arrogance. Second, for your act of contrition, I sentence you to move your rack above Senior Chief’s, so that he will have the convenience of instructing you in good eating habits and dieting methods. Any questions?”

Not surprisingly, Senior Chief didn’t care for the thought of getting pissed on every night, among others things.

Little Bear Guano felt that his tae kwon do brothers had betrayed him. “You’re nothing more than an apostate!” Guano yelled accurately.

Because I was a little on the small side—only 175 pounds when in ’Nam—and not overly stupid, I made a run for the door. However, it was too late—Guano tackled me at the threshold. In spite of my best efforts, he started dragging me outside of the barracks by my jungle boots. In no time at all I was involuntarily surveying the underwater
depths of November Platoon’s favorite recreational area—the benjo ditch.

The nearest we came to combat action in the next couple of days was when we received a call from Lieutenant Todd at Binh Thuy. We were ordered to get ready to go in on one of VAL-4’s OV-10 Black Ponies that had crashed on the coast of Vinh Binh province.

Everyone was ecstatic. We were at the Seawolf helo pad and ready to go within fifteen minutes. A true cause with a sense of urgency at last! I thought as I tried to tempt Guano into sucker punching Same’s left ear while he was tying his boot lace.

Shortly afterward we were notified that a HAL-3 Sea Lord slick had picked up the two downed pilots. A little while later we were told to secure for the evening, but we were to be ready to go in and destroy the Black Pony the following morning.

At 2100 hours we received another call, canceling the next morning’s mission. We were very disappointed. Everyone was looking forward to destroying something and getting into a firefight. Our frustration levels were getting bad again.

A few days later, on October thirtieth, Lieutenant (jg) Washburn and his MST men arrogantly challenged Dai Uy, Trung Uy, and the rest of November Platoon to a tournament of volleyball games. The loser was to furnish and serve food and drinks for that evening meal as tribute to the winner. In our view, the stakes were high—our image, our food, and our booze.

The battle began at 1300 hours sharp. Strangely, MST managed to soundly thrash us for the majority of the first dozen games. November Platoon was getting desperate and frustrated. All of us knew that something had to happen soon. November Platoon hated losers—especially
when
we
were the losers. Someone once said, “You show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a
loser.”

With that in mind, Dai Uy called for muster just outside of hearing range of the gloating Mr. Washburn and his rabble as they continued trumpeting their premature victory. Recognizing that the MST guys were becoming too much like ourselves, Dai Uy offered a plan. “All right men, there’s only one way that we might be able to win the tournament. We’ve got to distract them.”

“Yeah! Tell us, Dai Uy! Tell us!” Chambo begged excitedly.

“I’ve got it! Let’s get Senior Chief to take off his blue and gold so that his spray tube hangs over the front of his swim trunks,” Little Bear Guano suggested.

Lieutenant Fletcher started grinning, reached down and pulled his UDT swim trunks off and thundered, “We’ll razzle and dazzle them like this! Let’s go get ’em!”

“Onward to victory!” whooped Lieutenant (jg) Kleehammer as he cast his swim trunks at the feet of the unimpressed “Bad Medicine.”

Within three seconds November Platoon was stripped stark naked. Everyone started shouting gutter-tongued threats, cheering and yelling insults as we danced madly to our positions before the volleyball net.

Incredibly, Washburn and mob didn’t seem to pay much attention to our nudity, threats, or insults, but within a couple of hours the volleyball scores put us neck and neck with the MST team. Even Bad Medicine Doc was stumping for us from the sidelines. However, the Vietnamese navy commander of the 21/33 compound robbed us of our victory by sending one of his subordinates to tell Lieutenant Fletcher to report to his CO ASAP.

Dai Uy shook his head sadly and said, “All right, men, put your swim trunks back on.” Naturally, everyone
bitched and complained about our Vietnamese brothers not having a sense of humor.

Before Fletcher could get into a suitable uniform, one of our U.S. Navy admin’ers, Lieutenant Pliss, came over and, while laughing, told Dai Uy, “Now that you’re dressed, everything is okay. The commander didn’t want his men and their visiting families exposed to your depraved traits.”

Later that evening, one of the U.S. Navy corpsmen came over and asked Bad Medicine Holmes if we were running a nudist colony. After Doc assured him that we weren’t supporting any form of a nudist colony and that we were only being creative in trying to win the volleyball tournament, he was told the following story by the visiting corpsman: “I was taking my newly arrived doctor for a familiarization walk around our and the Vietnam navy’s compounds. While we were on our way to the PX, I began telling the doctor all about the mad SEALs that live with the Vietnamese. As we reached the 21/33 compound and I was pointing out exactly where you guys lived, we came upon your unique volleyball game. It was hilarious! You guys were running, jumping, yelling, and screaming as if mad. ’Yep, that’s the SEALs all right!’ I told the doctor. We laughed all the way back to the dispensary.”

Later, Senior Chief went to our freezer, dug out a case of steaks, and prepared a great meal for all of the volleyball tournament participants. Naturally, the refreshments were on the house. We were one, big, happy family. And best of all, no one was a loser.

During the next week, I spent a couple of days preparing for Tam’s polygraph test. Because I had assigned him as our agent handler for most of our intelligence information nets, I wanted to confirm my suspicions that Tam was in fact working for PSB. Dai Uy agreed and told me to do
as I saw fit. I contacted First Lieutenant Larry at 525, where he briefed me as to basic preparations and made an appointment for me with a Mr. Brantley at 170/5 Mai Khai Street, behind the old Annapolis BEQ on Plantation Road in Saigon.

My next step was to meet with Brantley for specific guidance and direction. I arrived at the building, with the usual terrorist grenade screen and carefully stacked sandbags before its entrance, reported to two U.S. Army security personnel and requested to see Mr. Brantley.

Within a couple of minutes Brantley arrived at the lobby and introduced himself by saying, “I’ve been expecting you.” I presented him with my memorandum, formatted questions, dossiers, and organization charts of November Platoon’s/Tam’s agent nets. He referred me to an examiner named Archie S. I had heard about Archie from various intel community sources. He was a legend in his own time, and had a reputation of being one of the all-time best in his field.

After the initial amenities, Archie and I sat down and began discussing November Platoon’s agent nets and specifically Tam, our agent handler. Archie had a masters degree in psychology, was very intelligent, and had a magnetic personality. He instructed me to carefully debrief Tam relative to each question about specific agent/informant intel reports and patterns. Archie cautioned me to carefully and tactfully strive for a sense of complete trust between us—which I had been doing. I had much administrative work ahead of me, and began to feel like an admin’er.

Two days later, on November tenth, I discovered by surreptitious methods that Tam was developing, at our expense, a very desirable agent net through Phu for PSB within the Tan Hoi village of Cai Lay district. I knew that in ’69 the PRU/Company and 525 had spent years and
beaucoup money attempting to establish unilateral agent nets in that specific area. That was one of the reasons why November Platoon always notified 525 and OSA in advance of the exact location of our next operation. That gave them time to make arrangements for the safety of their agents or to convince us to cancel the op.

Interestingly, during the early summer of 1969, Randy Sheridan, myself, and approximately thirty PRUs spent one night patrolling into the Tan Hoi village where Sao Lam set a klick-long string of five-man groups as blocking elements between the VC/VCIs nighttime homes and their daytime offices/bunker complexes. Their civil and military complexes were generally located within a nearby tree line, carefully camouflaged and reinforced by man-made and naturally thick jungle, nipa palm, brush, and other types of secondary growth.

At first light the VC/VCI began their early walk on a beautiful and peaceful morning to their office in the local tree line. Randy and land several PRUs were hiding inside a hootch where we had the inhabitants tied, gagged, and guarded in one of its corners. Once we began hearing AK-47 fire from several of the other PRU blocking elements that were a kilometer to the north, the peaceful morning changed rapidly. Within a couple of minutes a male VCI came by our hootch, in a hurry to get to the tree line and safety. One of the PRU hailed the fellow to “come here.” The look of terror on the VCI’s face would have fit in any horror movie. For a second I felt sorry for him, but he took off running. At a range of only ten yards, one of us shot a fifty-five grain 5.56mm bullet at 3,200 feet per second through his head, probably by accident. The intent was to shoot over his head and capture him, because he was worth more to us alive than dead. The VCI was instantly knocked down in the middle of the path. The projectile entered his left temple and exited just
above his right temple. Other than the two small holes, there was no other visible damage.