Master Chief (28 page)

The members of Alfa Platoon who participated in those interesting exercises were: RM2 Michael Shortell, EM2 Hugh Street, GMG3 Gene Wentz, HM3 Robert Metz, SN Michael Hulama, SA Charles Buchanan, AE1 Harry Kaneakua, EN2 Kirby D. Horrell, SN Russ Brownyer, SN David Maynard, and SA Robert Wagner.

In between the SAR exercises, Alfa Platoon was kept busy training with the San Diego Mountain Rescue Team and, on weekends, participating in searches for missing day hikers. The Navy and Special Warfare admin’ers called it “Civic Action.” Alfa Platoon was also tasked to participate in SEAL/HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) airborne operations and training two groups of Cambodian navy personnel at Niland and Vallejo, San Pablo Bay, north of San Francisco. As always, we were required to maintain our diving qualifications with periodic day and night underwater ship attacks using the Emerson pure oxygen scuba system, 120-foot dives and recreational diving for lobster, abalone, fish, octopus, and moray eel, using regular scuba at Point Loma.

Occasionally on Fridays, SEAL Team 1 and UDT had a “Monster Mash” of one variety or another. All of the evolutions except for the para jumps were timed and very competitive. The worst was a 4½-mile run at Balboa Park—some of the steep hills made me think of Mount Everest—and the best were static line and freefall jumps at Rolls Farm, located at the foot of the Otay Mountains on the Mexican border. Some Fridays, for the more masochistic, we had a course that required running the obstacle course, then swimming to the rocks or to Coronado’s center beach—1½ miles—and concluding by running back to the command. It
was always great fun, and during my later years with the teams, I had Saturday to recover.

In early May, Alfa Platoon received orders to proceed to the Black Meadow campground below Lake Havasu on the Colorado River by truck. Gunner Lake took his beautiful wife and ski boat for platoon water-skiing training. During our off hours, Gunner pulled two skiers at forty knots or so until they waved that they had had enough. Then the next pair would don their skis and we would head north or south depending on our whim. It was a great week for all of us.

The last day of our stay at the campground, Gunner and his wife decided to take us all to the London Bridge, which was located approximately fifteen miles downstream where Highway 95 crossed the Colorado River. The yearnings in our hearts required that we ski downstream to the London Bridge, partake of a few refreshments, and ski back to our campground. After we had reached the London Bridge and were enjoying a few brews, Coutts suggested that we streak the bridge for a little excitement. Our approval was unanimous.

Once we finished our beers and were filled with bravado, we started across the London Bridge without a stitch of cloth on us. Some folks were obviously offended, and some looked straight ahead poker-faced. Others were laughing and pointing as Coutts ran back and forth from one side of the bridge to the other, beating his chest and yelling as if he were in the old Tarzan movies.

When we had completed our streak, we ran down to the riverbank, loaded Gunner’s speedboat—his wife modestly kept her eyes covered—and sped upstream. There was little doubt that we were rude and unpolished, but we were steadfast in a fight and had good hearts. Fortunately for Gunner’s and my careers, nothing was ever reported to the authorities of the incident.

In late May, Alfa Platoon was tasked to support COSRIVDIV 22’s two-week summer active duty training as enemy aggressors for their Naval Reserve PBR sailors. In keeping with the riverine environment, our operational area was the Honey Island Swamp near the mouth of the Pearl River located on the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi. Unfortunately, CWO3 Jim Lake had been reassigned to another duty station. Consequently, a Lieutenant (jg) B. became Alfa Platoon’s new commander. My teammates, S.Sgt. John Gebhardt (Australian SAS assigned to SEAL Team 1 on a two-year exchange program), HM3 Robert Metz, GMG3 Dodd Coutts, EN3 Russ Brownyer, and EM3 Frank Richard were a great group of guys with whom to play the role of swamp warrior for two weeks.

The home for each of us within the swamp was either a bohio made up of a mosquito net, poncho, and air mattress or a military-issue jungle hammock hung in the trees. Because of snakes, most of us lived in the trees. Our mission was to maneuver (by small boat and swimming) around the swamp, ambushing the PBR sailors and sabotaging
their radio communications. All of us greatly enjoyed our role as the bad guys. Our role as guerrillas came naturally to us. Our individual weapons were blank-adapted M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns. Our offensive ordnance was grenade simulators and pencil flares. Before and during our ambushes, I monitored the PBR radio frequencies on our PRC-77 and gradually learned the sailors’ call signs. When the sailors were frantically trying to return fire during our ambushes, I occasionally slipped in covert statements and counterorders on our PRC-77. We had a grand time luring, deceiving, and confusing the sailors until they became aware of our tricks on the radio.

On one particular morning, the swamp’s cypress trees, with their exposed knees and hanging Spanish moss and other swamp growth—similar to a tropical rain forest—were shrouded in moving layers of mist that seemed to float into one area and dissipate in another. Because Sasquatch/Big Foot was reputed to live in the swamp along with cottonmouth water moccasin snakes and alligators, it was sometimes a bit spooky.

Taking advantage of the eerie cast, low tide, and low visibility, we decided to ambush two PBRs that we heard slowly approaching our position. I had Coutts and Wagner undress, start talking loudly, and intentionally expose themselves, supposedly as they took a bath in the muddy river. In other words, the two nudists were to present the illusion of revealing everything while they exposed nothing. In short order the rest of us took our camouflaged positions among swamp trees with our grenades, blank-firing weapons, and pencil flares at the ready. Once they sighted our decoys, the PBR sailors naturally presumed that they had caught two stupid guerrillas with their pants down and poured the coals to their PBRs with their weapons blazing. They hadn’t steamed fifty meters before
pencil flares streaked over their bows and grenade simulators started exploding on the surface around their craft. Because of our nasty tactic of luring the PBRs into the ambush site—located in a narrow, dead-end inlet—the boats had a devil of a time with their fire and maneuver, fire and escape. The PBR sailors soon fled from our area of the delta swamp and marshland. I certainly couldn’t blame them—we had stacked the deck.

I was not surprised that we saw and heard a wide variety of wildlife during our stay in the Honey Island Swamp. The most prevalent were birds, mudcats, snakes, and mosquitoes. Our only encounter with a cottonmouth water moccasin viper was on a muddy tidal flat just after sunset. In the dim shadows, the viper was little more than three feet in length, but was four inches in diameter at midsection—it had probably eaten a bullfrog. He was less than ten feet from us when he started hissing and moving aggressively toward us. He exuded a wickedness that reminded me of the viper that a PRU and I had encountered on a narrow dirt road one ominous night in ’69 not long before we were ambushed. A man doesn’t forget times like that. The hair on the back of my neck was still standing at attention well after we were able to move away from the water moccasin.

Harmless water snakes were common, wild hog tracks were everywhere, but alligators were seldom seen because of their generally nocturnal habits. We did see one alligator of five feet in length swimming on the surface about midday. He may have been searching for mudcats, because during the heat of each day there were large schools of the little—four to six inches—catfish packed closely together, swimming on the surface with their whiskers and mouths just out of the water. Their strange habit was supposedly necessary because of the lack of oxygen in the stagnant swamp water, which was filled
with mosquito larvae. Some of the catfish schools must have numbered in the hundreds. White cattle egrets, bitterns, and herons were common and seemed to prefer standing on the cypress trees to wait for the mudcats to swim below them. One of the main differences between these animals and mankind was that we didn’t need the food to justify our predations.

Hoot owls’ and whippoorwills’ lonely cries and haunting calls, the drone of mosquitoes and the light of lightning bugs penetrated all levels of the swamp during the night hours. Alligator gars of up to five and six feet in length and weighing well over one hundred pounds cruised along the surface looking for one- and two-pound drum or carp. Gars could be called the freshwater barracuda because of their occasional predations upon human fingers and wrists with shiny objects on them. In 1951 a 279-pound, ninety-three inch alligator gar was caught in the Rio Grande River, Texas. Our short stay in the Honey Island Swamp gave us only a small glimpse of the primeval life that still abounds in some not-so-remote areas of this world.

Interestingly, some of the local authorities told us that folks commonly disappeared in the swamp and were never heard from again. We were warned to be on the alert for the unknown and unexplained. For emergency purposes, each of us carried one M-16 magazine of 5.56mm ball ammo. We did find several small man-made structures containing personal belongings. However, we never encountered face-to-face any of the mysterious “swamplanders” during our stay.

On our return trip to New Orleans by vehicle, we stopped at a country Cajun bar and grill for a cool one and a hamburger. The atmosphere was oppressive and unfriendly. None of the locals spoke to us, and they looked at us suspiciously—maybe it was our short haircuts. It is
my opinion that the country folk in the movie
Southern Comfort
were not portrayed out of character. Although I did acquire a taste for their chicory coffee, it was a relief to get out of that part of the country and back to the cheerful Silver Strand for a few days.

In June, Lieutenant (jg) B. and I flew to Washington, D.C., for briefings by the U.S. Customs (Treasury Department) number-two man and staff. Alfa Platoon had been tasked to develop a meaningful training course that would enable the Customs Patrol Officers (CPOs) to increase their interdiction of drugs and contraband crossing our international borders.

Two days were spent attending congressional subcommittee meetings in the Sam Rayburn Building concerning a squabble between the Border Patrol (Immigration Naturalization Service, Justice Department) and Customs Patrol Officers (Treasury Department). Fundamentally, Border Patrol wanted to change their primary mission of interdiction of illegal aliens to interdiction of drug smuggling and contraband. The Border Patrol’s motive for requesting a legislative reversal of their primary and secondary missions was to increase the seriously low morale/job satisfaction of their patrolmen. For reasons of political power, the number of Border Patrolmen on our southern border was intentionally kept low so that the illegal aliens entering our country would not be restrained. And, to make matters worse, many a pregnant illegal alien came to the U.S. to have her child, thus qualifying the child for immediate U.S. citizenship. Because the illegal alien mother had no funds to support her child, she was eligible to draw Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, and welfare payments (city, county, and state funded) because of federally mandated laws. Because Democrats had generally controlled both houses of Congress since World War II, they continually refused to legislate
funds to increase the number of Border Patrolmen on the U.S.-Mexican border. The Democrats were generating demand for their own social programs, leaving the Border Patrolmen in a powerless position with very low morale. Many of the frustrated Border Patrolmen had already transferred to U.S. Customs or DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). It was tough being a loser.

U.S. Customs was forced to get into the squabble because the Border Patrol wanted to take over the CPOs’ function at all Points of Entry along the border. Frankly, I sympathized with both of them. In the end, Congress refused to approve the Border Patrol’s request for change of priorities and business went on as usual on our borders.

After the congressional meetings, Customs determined that Lieutenant (jg) B. and I should tour the U.S.-Mexican border (accompanied by CPOs) from Brownsville, Texas, to Nogales, Arizona, by vehicles and small aircraft to gain insight into the drug and illegal alien problems.

The border tour was enlightening, to put it mildly. Aliens were crossing the border everywhere day and night because there was no one to stop them. Drugs were being brought across the border by backpackers, vehicles, and small aircraft. Every few miles along the U.S. border there were crude, secret dirt runways with fifty-five gallon drums of 115/145 octane aviation fuel camouflaged nearby, where small aircraft could quickly land, drop off drugs, refuel, and depart. Customs Patrol Officers (in 1974) were similar to the Border Patrol in that they didn’t have enough manpower, vehicles, or aircraft to stem the flow of drugs across our border. Customs estimated that they were interdicting no more than ten percent, and probably much less, of all drugs entering the U.S. However, Customs had, at that time, recently transferred many of their Sky Marshals, who had previously ridden aboard commercial airliners to deter hijackers, to the CPO program. Gradually, I began to
understand the CPOs’ mission and their weapons and tactical training needs. In many ways, all they needed were infantry trained personnel.

In 1968 SEAL Team 1 supported the Border Patrol in the interdiction of illegal aliens along the border in San Diego County for a short time during Captain Dave Schaible’s reign. It was great training for platoons prior to their departure for Vietnam, and the Border Patrol loved it. A Border Patrolman would guide the SEALs to a main crossing point at the border, then turn control over to the platoon officer. Everyone’s weapons were adapted for firing blanks, and the only ordnance utilized were grenade simulators, smoke grenades, and pop flares. All prisoner handling procedures were in effect.