Master Chief (29 page)

Once the ambush was set, everyone waited for the “coyote,” or alien guide, to guide his group across the line. When the aliens entered the “capture zone,” the OIC initiated the ambush by firing a pop flare over them and opening fire with his CAR-15 (XM-177E2) for a few seconds. Yelling “Cease fire!” the SEALs jumped up and chased the aliens on foot. No doubt, the aliens understood that we were taking their trespass seriously. During one particular night, a platoon had set its ambush on the side of a hill above a deep ravine that was used by illegal aliens to enter the U.S. After the initial weapons barrage and pop flares deployment, the coyote about-faced and started returning for the border with uncommon speed. To the chagrin of the guide, PO2 Mike Thornton (Medal of Honor recipient) caught him from behind by the fellow’s shirt collar. Because the ravine was steep, Mike was unable to stop, but managed to guide the coyote directly into a tree, which abruptly ended the footrace. Interestingly, the guide had a loaded pistol on his body. Nevertheless, the Border Patrol was later forced to cease utilizing SEAL platoons to interdict illegal aliens.

The lieutenant (jg) and I returned to the Silver Strand after an interesting but tiring trip. With a sense of urgency, I spent that evening, Saturday, and Sunday writing a nineteen-day training course that was to begin that following Monday.

Except for the first day and the FTX (Final Training Exercise) phase of the course each morning began with an easy PT and a run-walk-run. The CPOs received training in first aid, instinctive, live firing with M-16s, M-203 40mm grenade launchers, the CPOs’ personal sidearms, night vision equipment, map and compass orientation, hand and arm signals, camouflage and concealment, stealth and night movement, patrol organization, planning and leadership, small unit tactics, surveillance methods, direct action tactics, prisoner handling, communications security, improvised booby traps, and sensors. The last five days and nights were called the FTX phase and were used to grade the effectiveness (professional and tactical) of the CPOs and the course curriculum. Through the Mission Directives, the CPOs were to apply all of the course objectives during the FTX. It was a butt buster, but morale for the students and Alfa Platoon was always high in spite of the incredibly long hours and seven-day-a-week schedule.

On the last evening at Camp Kerrey, I told the CPO class that they could sleep in that following morning. What I didn’t tell them was how late they could sleep in. At 0700 hours sharp, Russ Brownyer and I went around to the southeastern end of the H-shaped building and peeked through one of the windows. No one was stirring, not even a mouse. I tossed a grenade simulator under the floor space, plugged my ears with my fingers, and watched the unsuspecting occupants as they snoozed quietly in their deck-gray-colored, double-deck bunks.

When the grenade simulator detonated, I was amazed at the results. The room instantly filled with fine desert
dust from deck to overhead. The rack that had been directly over the grenade blast leaned to the right and came to rest on the adjacent bunk, dumping its occupants onto the filthy, littered floor. The blast of the grenade simulator had pushed the three-eighth-inch plywood floor upward with such force that the bottom bunk’s starboard legs were driven through the plywood. I was rendered helpless with mirth and was unable to recover for several minutes. However, the students weren’t nearly as incapacitated as I and, as soon as they heard my laughter, they swarmed out of the barracks in a spirit of playful revenge and, in disrespect for my position, dragged me over the bank and into the Coachella Canal for a good underwater cleansing. They were a great class with a good sense of humor.

On September 2, 1974, Alfa Platoon arrived at the Elmendorf AFB just outside Anchorage. From there we were bused to Fort Richardson’s Camp Carrol to participate in exercise “Ember Dawn” with the Army and Air Force. Our first week was spent in preparation for our operations.

Just prior to our first operation, during our two-day isolation, RM3 Dave Smith and I spent much of our time familiarizing ourselves with a code-burster radio that transmitted tape-recorded Morse code messages within a couple of seconds. The purpose of the rapid transmission was to avoid effective enemy DF (Direction Finding) equipment that could determine our exact location of transmission. We also used carefully measured field expedient antennas for receiving CW (Continuous Wave) messages at specifically assigned times. Because of our closeness to the magnetic north pole, our compasses and radio communications became temperamental, and at times nonexistent.

On the night of September twelfth, a portion of Alfa Platoon flew aboard an Air Force Combat Talon C-130
aircraft to the Alaskan peninsula. Our mission was to destroy an enemy fuel tank farm that was located on the north side of the Naknek River near the small fishing village of King Salmon. The first leg of our mission was a jump into the tundra approximately seven miles north of King Salmon. The second leg would be traveling for two nights and hiding in tundra thickets during the following two days. The third and final leg would be the destruction of our target on the third night.

It was a beautiful evening, with the sun’s reflections coming from just below the horizon, leaving a faint golden glow upon the many lakes and streams passing below us. All seven of us—Lt. (jg) Robert Baird, myself, Doc Moore, Coutts, Brownyer, Dave Smith, and Wagner—were suited up with our combat equipment, weapons, communications gear, food, water, and main and reserve parachutes. Dave Smith and I were the first two jumpers to exit the starboard door because of our extra heavy loads of radio communications equipment—over one hundred pounds each.

While I was standing in the door waiting for the green light, the lakes and rivers below worried me. I knew that the aircraft’s computer exit point—determined by eight-digit coordinates—needed to be accurate. If we inadvertently landed in a lake or swift stream, we probably wouldn’t survive long because of the thirty-two-degree water and our heavy equipment. Our bodies would start freezing up within two or three minutes after water entry, rendering us helpless. In 1968, “Friendly” Frederickson and a crew of Marine Force recon mates overturned their boat in the Potomac River during a winter training exercise. Freddie was last seen trying to rescue one of his mates. Because of the extremely cold water and because Frederickson and his mate weren’t wearing life jackets,
they soon disappeared underwater. However, in our case I needn’t have worried.

When the green light flashed on, I immediately exited the plane, and 125 knots of wind and prop blast turned me aft as I plunged toward the tundra with my heavy load. Once I felt my canopy opening, I released my equipment bag, made one partial oscillation, and landed on the softest DZ of my naval career—an incredibly soft, spongy tundra. Later, we were told that we had jumped from an altitude of 250 feet. Normally, all military training static-line jumps were restricted to a minimum altitude of 1,250 feet. However combat jumps were normally at 250 to 300 feet altitude to reduce air time and the jumper’s vulnerability to enemy ground fire, and to defeat enemy coastal radar systems. Because we were a Special Warfare unit working with Combat Talon and the Army, the altitude restrictions were lifted. With that in mind, there was no reason for us to have had our reserve parachutes snapped to the front of our harnesses—if our main parachutes had failed to open, we wouldn’t have had time to deploy them before we hit the ground anyway. Regardless, all of us landed safely and quickly mustered for head count. U.S. Army Special Forces personnel were on the DZ waiting for us. Within a matter of minutes we moved from the drop zone and started on our three-night-and-two day trek across the treacherous but interesting tundra.

Because we were in some of the best brown bear hunting grounds in Alaska, I had gotten permission to jump with my old 8×57mm M-98 military Mauser carbine rifle with 180-grain soft-point ammo for bear protection. It wasn’t much, but it was better than an M-16 with its small fifty-five grain, full-metal-jacketed (nonexpanding) bullet. However, as much as I had wanted to, we never saw a solitary bear.

Our first night’s travel across the starlit tundra turned
out to be surprising in a variety of ways. One of the first things we learned was that not all tiny pools of water were shallow. In some ways they reminded me of some innocuous puddles that Dai Uy Fletcher and I had encountered in Vietnam. Because of the northern permafrost—a permanently frozen layer that was five or six feet below the surface—the tundra potholes were no more than chest deep and incredibly cold.

Our dark patrols were wet and cold and my Chippewa boots filled with water, but each night we were entertained by the heavens’ aurora borealis, which was brilliantly and mysteriously displayed. During our difficult and punishing march across the thousands of uneven tundra hummocks, I would momentarily watch the heavens as through a darkened window—it was seemingly covered with slow-moving curtains. My next glance revealed that the curtains had been strangely removed as if from an opera stage. The phenomenon continued for several hours until it suddenly ceased. I also learned that the tundra was far more difficult to travel across during the black of night than a freshly plowed field, not to mention the bog holes into which I continually fell. During the day, while we were hiding in brushy thickets, we found many wild blueberries to snack on and to supplement our LRRPs. Russ Brownyer found a large wolf skull in one of the thickets the day before our final night.

During our last night, we finally reached our target—the fuel tank farm. After a reconnoiter of the tanks and their immediate area, everyone set security while Brownyer and I prepared the explosive charges for placement. Once we were ready, the two of us quickly moved to each tank and set the dual-primed, magnetic incendiary dummy charges at the level of the fuel. Keeping our “time on target” to a minimum, we quickly returned to our squad and
all seven of us rapidly departed for our extraction point. Our mission had been successfully completed.

Four days later, during the night of September sixteenth, Alfa Platoon parachute-jumped into Dillingham’s small airport, seventy statute miles northwest of King Salmon at the mouth of Wood River. We were successful in our mission to carry a timed special munition—carried by EN1 Mike Thornton—to destroy the entire airport and the surrounding countryside.

Later, during our patrol across the tundra to our extraction point, the Northern Lights were incredible, a light similar to the Milky Way—but much brighter—that went from one end of the horizon to the other. The lights disappeared within a couple of hours.

By October 18, 1974, all fourteen members of Alfa Platoon were aboard the USS
DuBuque
, LPH-8, and steaming toward Subic Bay, Philippines, at a leisurely rate of twelve knots. Lieutenant B. and Lieutenant (jg) Baird were the OIC and AOIC, with me as the platoon chief. The remainder of the platoon consisted of PT1 Charles Chaldekas, HM1 Walter Moore, RM2 Donald Beem, PN2 Michael Anderson, RM2 Tipton Ammen, EM3 Frank Richard, RM3 David Smith, EN3 Russell Brownyer, PH3 William Hoppes, GMG3 Dodd Coutts, and AN Robert Wagner. Our daily activities centered on intensive PT and running. Platoon training classes covered refreshers on advanced demolitions, intelligence, first aid, tactics, weapons, air and diving operations, diving tables, and working in our rates with the shipboard personnel.

On November fourteenth at 0800 hours, the
DuBuque
pulled into Subic Bay and docked at one of the piers. Everyone was chomping at the bit to set foot on terra firma for a while. During our stay aboard the USS
DuBuque
, all of us had been reminded of how fortunate
we were to be members of Special Warfare versus crewmen aboard a Gray Ghost. One of the consequences of increasing the level of women in the Navy was that they took many of the shore-duty billets that might have been available for the seagoing male sailors. The result was that more and more male sailors were forced to spend most of their careers at sea with little time left to be with their families. The new policies were accompanied by a high divorce rate and lower reenlistment of the more desirable ratings—similar to the Army’s MOS.

Within a few days after our arrival, EN3 Russ Brownyer, HM1 Moore, and I were tasked to train a group of Cambodian naval personnel of the Lon Noe government in the use of demolitions and weapons. The Khmer personnel had just arrived from Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Fortunately, the Cambodian naval warrant officer (Officer in Charge) could speak fairly good English and excellent French. I could speak fair English and worse French. Between the two of us and with the teaching principle of “show and tell,” we managed to communicate well enough to accomplish the training objectives. As usually happens during times of war, we grew close to the Khmer trainees, realizing that their days in this life were probably short.

During the first part of January, I managed to win first place in my age group in the All Services eight-mile marathon. Lieutenant (jg) Baird took second in his age group, outdistanced by a Navy pilot who ran an average of four minutes and forty seconds a mile over a difficult course during the heat of the day—over 100 degrees, with high humidity.

January 20, 1975, began a four-week training exercise in riverine warfare called Lumba-Lumba, with a large class of thirty Philippine coast guard commandos. Because of Special Warfare’s overcommitment and shortage
of manpower, I was given only Tipton Ammen to assist me in the daily training classes and nightly exercises and missions.

The Philippine coast guardsmen were an excellent class. Some of them had been on raids against the Muslim Communist insurrectionists on the southern island of Mindanao the previous year. Each morning began with me leading PT and the run. I remember that one of the Filipinos was a very good runner and always had an infectious grin. Most members of the class were excellent in the bush when it came to cover and concealment, fire and movement, fire and maneuver. Tipton and I instructed them in small-unit tactics, weapons training, basic demolitions, booby traps, rappeling, and other areas of special and conventional warfare. Because of the long hours, Ammen and I seldom got to bed before midnight. However, there was never a complaint from anyone. The Filipino personnel were always professional and highly motivated. As all military instructors know, when the students are motivated, the instructor’s task is half done.