Big 8 Conference 880 1964 last turn
Left to Right- Tonnie Coane, Kansas, Dave Perry, Oklahoma State, John Perry, Oklahoma State, Walt Mizell, U. of Oklahoma, fifth runner unidentified.
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A month or so ago, John Perry sent me this photo of 5 runners going into the last turn of the Big 8 Conference 880 in 1964. Years later two of them, John and Walt would be doing their tours in Viet Nam. John was a Marine Fighter pilot in the last days of American forces involvement (1972-73). Walt was a US Army intelligence officer in (1967-68). Ironic in the photo John is in the air and Walt is on the ground. Here is a brief youtube link of that race taken with my 8 mm camera, very amateur. You will also see some action from the pole vault as well. Big 8 880 1964
My Veterans Day Story: John Perry
I received orders to flight school two weeks after placing 5th in the 800m at the 1968 Olympic Trials at Lake Tahoe.
Fast forward 4 years: The Olympics are in Germany. My track running is over forever (achilles injury) and I’m in Vietnam flying A-4 Attack Jets as a Marine Corps Naval Aviator.
The United States has pulled out all of the ground troops. American advisors are imbedded with most of the ARVN units and there are only two jet fixed wing American squadrons in Vietnam, VMA 311 and VMA 211 of Marine Air group 12, 1st Marine Air Wing. We are based at Bien Hoa Airbase. A detachment of the First Air Calvary is also at Bien Hoa. The Air Force FACs that we work with everyday are based at Ton San Knut Airbase near Saigon. There are also FACs from other bases but I think it’s supposed to be secret.
I don’t know the exact numbers of Americans in Vietnam but it’s getting pretty lonely. We have around 40 pilots in our two squadrons and 200 enlisted and we are getting no new reinforcements.
Our mission was to provide Close Air Support to any friendly troops fighting the NVA or other “hostile” forces. There is an American advisor with the friendly troops, he talks with the FAC’s, they talk to us and we deliver the ordnance by “dive bombing”, no “smart bombs” then.
Anyway, I guess we were successful in keeping the NVA out of Saigon for a while. The Vietnam Peace Treaty was signed and became effective on January 27, 1973 and we flew our airplanes and equipment out that morning.
This is the short version. Many, many contractors, equipment and supplies were still in Vietnam when we flew out.
Saigon fell two years later on April 30, 1975!
I was a 28 year old Captain and one of the oldest pilots in the squadron. The enlisted guys servicing our airplanes were 19-20 years old. It’s amazing how mature a young Marine becomes when he’s on duty in a war zone or flight line. Off duty, they can let off a little steam!
Here is the last page of my log book from Vietnam. Red Ink means Combat. As I recall, we had a good “happy hour” in Okinawa that day.
Semper Fi, John
John's Flight Log
John,
I love the vintage 8mm filming of iconic races back in the 50's and 60's. I'd love to know the placing and times of the top 4 guys. I was always astonished at how my old 49er TC club mates from Oklahoma could run each qualifying heat faster and faster while I was a one and done runner. Incredible to read about those guys. Love the footage, John. How about a brief summary of your training and the aircraft you flew while in the service of our country. I'm looking forward to the up coming movie "DEVOTION" about Korean War pilots flying F4U Corsairs and the ultimate sacrifice of America's best in that conflict. Thank You for your service. Darryl Taylor
The second story is a long one (30 pages) but one worth reading. In it Walt Mizell refers to photos and numbers, but unfortunately we were not able to download them. I've also added arbitrary numbers to the pages to help you find your way back to where you leave off reading. I've left out the section on Walt's training stateside, apart from a brief sojourn back onto the track while in the army, then the story takes up when he arrives in country.
George,
Walt should publish a book. He did a great job of describing our dilemma in Vietnam.
My experience was not that cerebral. Flying a combat mission was kind of like running a race in a dual meet with OCU or OCC where you don’t really know the runners. We just went to an intelligence briefing, then had our one on one briefing and went out and took off. We were always a flight of two, one pilot in each aircraft.
We took off and then checked in with the “tactical air command” and they assigned us our mission, the call sign of the FAC, the frequency and rendezvous point and off we went!
We usually went West to Cambodia but not always, sometimes it was South to the Mekong Delta or as far North as Laos. Sometimes it was the “shooting gallery” at An Loc. The NVA had pushed all the way to An Loc and they had plenty of 23MM and 37 MM AAA.
We took off, coordinated with the FAC who was talking to an American “advisor”, even in Cambodia where we had no “uniformed troops”. Then we dive bombed, shot Zuni Rockets and 20mm cannon and went back to Bien Hoa. There were no i phones or internet, so we never got much feedback on the destruction. I remember, looking back in my mirrors after a mission in the “parrots Beak” and it looked like a scene from Apocalypse Now. The NVA had just taken over a bunch of estates and buildings and my wingman and I just obliterated them. You could see the smoke from 100 miles away. Never heard a word about that when we returned to Bien Hoa. Just went to happy hour and got ready for the next day!
John
Walt Mizell's Story
Back in 1964, my last year of competition
in track at OU, we had a pretty good sprint medley relay team. A sprint medley team had two 220- yard guys, a 440-yd guy, and an 880-yard guy (me). Our track team, including that relay team, made the circuit on the Midwest relay meets (Texas, Kansas, and Drake Relays). At Drake, we were in position to win the race with me anchoring as the half-miler, but a half-miler from Ohio University, Barry Sugden, sprinted out at the end and won for his team, with me (OU) coming in second. It turned out that I ran my fastest time ever in the half mile that day only to watch as he won going away. It wasn’t even close. As things turned out, when the Holabird team went down to Ft. Belvoir, Va., for the 1st Army regional track meet, I look on the board to see who else had signed up for the half-mile, and here’s Lt. Barry Sugden’s name. This is the guy who had beat me handily on the best day of my life, back at Drake! Not surprisingly, he did it again. Thus ended my track career in the US Army.
1.
On July 26, 1967, we landed in Pleiku, an event I will never forget. As we got off the plane, a
long line of soldiers was at the foot of the ramp waiting to get on and fly back home. Their tours of duty
were over. They were going home. The looks they gave us were a mixture of pity and disdain, even
disgust. Not sympathy or anything like that. I remember watching one guy taking off his jungle boots
and placing them in a trash can, then putting on a clean new pair of boots to wear home. I thought to
myself that throwing the old boots away was a waste (they looked perfectly good). But a year later
almost to the day I found myself throwing away my jungle boots, just like he had done.
Pleiku is in the western part of the Central Highlands of what was then South Viet Nam. It was
rainy and cold, and looked like it had been that way a long time. I could not get a flight to An Khe until
the next day and when I did get to An Khe, the weather looked just as bad as it had been in Pleiku. Soggy
and wet and cold and it looked like it would be that way a while. But An Khe had better facilities. I made
it to my new unit, the 191st Military Intelligence Detachment, attached to the 1st Air Cavalry Division, and
signed in and began the wait for my specific assignment within the unit. About an hour after I got there,
they brought in a Montagnard (pr. “mountain-yard”) woman for interrogation, which was my first
opportunity to see a wounded person and an interrogation. For more information about Montagnards,
look them up on Wikipedia. Montagnards are an interesting but very primitive people, indigenous to the
mountainous regions of both South and North Viet Nam. Left alone, they lived a very primitive
existence, including hunting in the jungle with crossbows. We interrogated them frequently because we
thought they might know something about what was going on in the mountains.
This woman may have
been a suspected VC but her status wasn’t entirely clear. The interrogation was not particularly
enlightening, as I recall; the first of many such events to come. But Montagnards come into play later in
this story, so it’s good to get a little information about them now.
During the first few days days at An Khe I got settled into the unit area. We lived in wooden
barracks-type buildings, with lots of screens to allow air movement. We slept on standard army cots with
frames attached to suspend mosquito nets. The best configuration was an air mattress on top of the cot,
with a cotton mattress cover on it. We slept under “poncho liners” which were wonderful inventions and
we still use them today. Mosquitoes were a constant menace. Regulations required every soldier to take a
malaria tablet every day. They were large, bitter pills, and we were not sure they did any good, but we
took them. The mosquitoes were mostly the anopheles type, and very small compared to the ones in
Texas or Louisiana. When they bit you they stood on their heads with their tails in the air, unlike any
mosquitoes I had ever seen in the States or anywhere else. Our barracks also had a contingent of gecko
lizards, that made a sound which resulted in their receiving a colorful, and obscene, name.
The first project was to go through the 1st Cav’s orientation program. This involved a few days
of schooling about enemy forces and tactics, as well as learning about the 1st Cav’s way of doing things.
Enemy forces were of three types: North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops; Viet Cong Main Force (VCMF
or usually just VC) and VC local forces. We were primarily interested in the first two types, which were
their primary fighting forces.
As for the 1st Cav’s tactics, we learned how they conducted air assaults,
which generally used a combination of regular artillery and followed by and coordinated with on-site
helicopter artillery to “soften up” a landing zone and suppress enemy fire. The 1st Cav’s attack strategy
was developed by and for the 1st Cav, and maximized the capabilities of the attack helicopters in order to
minimize U.S. casualties when troops were being inserted into an enemy area.
My first major project was to get a “slot” which meant getting assigned to a job within the MI
Detachment. I had been trained in photo interpretation, and that kind of job was available, but I figured
out pretty quickly that I would prefer a job interrogating prisoners and “VC Suspects.” Since I knew a
smattering of Vietnamese, I thought that might be a good foundation for doing that kind of work. So I
started lobbying for that type of assignment, first with the detachment commander, but then also with
Captain Rick Hegner, who was head of the interrogation of prisoners of war (IPW)section. He was a
good guy, a California boy, and we hit it off pretty well from the start. In fact, as of this writing we still
stay in touch. We both ultimately had careers as lawyers, and both of us are now fully retired from the
law practice.
2.
The detachment commander, a major, turned out to be a real zero and most of the work in the
unit got done in spite of him, not because of him. I deliberately do not include his name in this writing,
because I do not want to memorialize him in any way. But he did at least one thing right, in that he
assigned me to work for Capt. Hegner and I didn’t have to go blind looking at photos for the entire year.
There were all kinds of guys (no females) in that MI Detachment. Most were ROTC types like
me, and most were planning to do their two years and then get out to start their civilian careers. There
were a few who planned to stay in for careers in the Army. I gradually came to the conclusion that the
most effective officers in the unit were generally the two-year in-and-outers. The career officers were too
concerned with getting good officer efficiency reports (“OER’s”) and not concerned enough with just
getting the job done the best they could.
The two-year guys didn’t have to worry about OER’s because, as
was commonly said, “What could they do to you, send you to Viet Nam?” They just seemed to do
whatever it took to get the job done. There wasn’t a lot of tension between the two groups, but I observed
that the two types of officers seemed to gravitate toward each other. Capt. Hegner, my immediate boss,
intended to get out after his tour of duty and return to California to practice law.
The detachment commander assigned me to the IPW (Interrogations of Prisoners of War) section,
to be in charge of an IPW team assigned to the Second Brigade of the 1st Air Cav. That brigade had been
operating out of the Bong Son plain, the eastern boundary of which was the coastline of the South China
Sea.
The relevant organizational background is as follows: Division headquarters was at Camp
Radcliff, adjacent to the town of An Khe, which was in what was called II Corps (pronounced “Two
Core”). I Corps (“Eye Core”) was north of us, and terminated at the DMZ. III and IV Corps were
southerly.
In II Corps, from the eastern coast inland the topography started out as essentially coastal
plains, then fairly quickly turned into mountains which extended all the way west to the border with Laos.
The mountainous area was called the “Central Highlands.” Highway 19 ran east-west from the coastal
city of Qui Nhon, over as far west as Pleiku, where I had entered the country. The city of An Khe
straddled Highway 19 and the 1st Cav’s base camp was on the north side of Highway 19, completely
encircling a mountain massif known as Hon Kong Mountain (“Nui Hon Kong”). The base camp was
protected by a barbed wire perimeter called the “Green Line,” with firing positions and lookout towers all
around the perimeter. The base camp was a big, sprawling area, which looked to me as if it were
impenetrable (wrong, as it turned out later). It had a large air field which would not only accommodate
the 1st Cav’s helicopter fleet, but also had landing strips that could serve and house fairly large fixed wing
aircraft.
The 1st Cav was a new Army concept, the Airmobile Division. It ‘s deployment to South Viet
Nam in 1965 was the first time a unit had ever been sent out for operations with enough helicopters to
make it “airmobile.” The idea was to assemble a unit with its own helicopter fleet, capable of moving
troops around quickly when the need came, in order to reinforce troops already on the ground when they
needed it, or use surprise and firepower to mount “air assaults” (attacks) where the enemy was believed to
be located. Its commanding general, Maj. Gen. John J. Tolson, had to become helicopter-qualified in
order to take command of the division. He may have been the oldest helicopter pilot trainee in Army
history.
In late 1965 the 1st Cav had fought its Ia Drang Valley campaign, later made famous by General
Hal Moore’s book, We Were Soldiers Once and Young.
The commonly stated conclusion at the end
of that battle was that in entering into that engagement, the North Vietnamese were experimenting with a
more conventional-type warfare, with larger units challenging larger American forces, as opposed to their
traditional use of purely guerilla-type tactics. While the 1st Cav suffered heavy losses in the Ia Drang
Valley, the losses imposed on the North Vietnamese were believed to have been so heavy that they more
or less ruled out the concept of conventional warfare and went back to their more tried and true guerilla
tactics.
Then in early 1966 the 1st Cav had another major engagement with the NVA/VC on the Bong Son
Plain.
As I understand it, the 1st Cav used blocking forces coupled with an attack force in a sort of
“hammer and anvil” strategy, and trapped and destroyed a large concentration of North Vietnamese forces
in that engagement. After those two big engagements, things seemed to have cooled off considerably, so
that by the time I arrived, the mood was primarily frustration. That was the result of an elusive enemy
operating in unfavorable terrain (from our standpoint) and a population that was not all that eager to help
us. So the over-arching job for the intelligence types was to find the enemy. Once the enemy was found,
the 1st Cav could deliver whatever forces were needed to fight and win; but finding them was the really
hard part. After those first two major engagements (Ia Drang and Bong Son), the Cav was having to work
harder to find and fight the enemy.
The 2nd Brigade headquarters was at a base camp, called “Landing Zone Uplift,” shortened to
“LZ Uplift.” This picture shows part of it, not a bit different from the rest of the LZ [picture no. 8] It was
about 10 miles south of the town of Bong Son and another LZ known as “LZ English.” My boss, Capt.
Hegner, and the main IPW section were located at LZ English. The Second Brigade IPW section (my
little group) worked out of LZ Uplift. When I joined the 2nd Brigade in early August, 1967, the brigade’s
mission was to find, engage, and destroy enemy NVA and VC forces anywhere in the brigade’s area of
operations (“AO”), which stretched from the coast on the east side, up into the mountains to the west. The
US 4th Division was located to the south and west of the Cav’s AO, the South China Sea was on the east,
and I think either American Marines or Korean troops were to the north of us.
3.
My job was to supervise a little group of interrogators, both American and Vietnamese. One of
my guys, Army Specialist Jeary Glenn, who was also from Oklahoma, had gone through extensive
language training at Monterey, and spoke fluent Vietnamese. The rest of us operated with Vietnamese
soldiers (interrogators themselves) who spoke English. Most of my work was with a Vietnamese of
Chinese descent, whose name was Quang Dinh. He went by his last name, pronounced “Zin,” and he was
a very intelligent and diligent soldier. [picture no. 21] We got to be pretty close friends over the 4+
months I worked in that section. Two of our Vietnamese, Dinh and another named Hau, spoke pretty
good English. Another Vietnamese, named Luom, spoke OK English, but wasn’t in the same class as
Dinh and Hau.
There were five or six other Americans in my section, four with the rank of
“Specialist” (including Glenn), two warrant officers, and one lieutenant. Our job was to support troops in
the field as best we could, and help in the always difficult job of “finding” the enemy. Here’s a shot of me
in our “hootch” which we built mostly from ammo boxes with a little additional lumber we traded for.
[photo no.6]
As far as my little unit was concerned, the principal tactic we were involved in was the “cordon
and search” operation. In a typical cordon and search operation, an American infantry company would
sneak up and surround a village, and once they had a secure perimeter set up so that no one could get in or
out of the village, a helicopter would bring in an IPW team, some medics, and a civil affairs team. In
addition, on some missions they would bring in a group of Vietnamese National Police (more about them
later).
Accompanied by a security team from the infantry company, the medics would provide such
medical help as they could to the villagers. The civil affairs team would do their part to win hearts and
minds. The job of the IPW team was to interrogate persons who might have useful information about the
location and intentions of any enemy troops in the area. At the end of the day, if we had anything
interesting to report, we would radio it back to the brigade intelligence section. Then we would round up
any persons who looked like they needed more questioning, and head back to LZ Uplift, taking them with
us. Sometimes the number of persons coming back in was far larger than those who had gone out, so in
those instances the brigade would send out a larger helicopter, a CH-47, instead of a Huey. The CH-47’s
would carry a whole lot more people, but the Huey’s were a lot faster and more fun to ride. For one
thing, you could see the countryside from a Huey, while riding in a CH-47 was more like riding in a bus
with no windows.
On the ground that part of Viet Nam was hot and dusty, or muddy, and smelly. In the
air it looked incredibly verdant and well-cared for in the cultivated areas, and in the mountains there
existed more green forest (jungle) than you could take in and absorb in your mind. The Huey pilots liked
to fly low over the treetops, and there are few things as exhilarating as a fast-flying helicopter flying at
near-treetop level. Not only that, but after a day of sweating it out down on the plains, the moving air in
the chopper was an incredible cool-down.
It didn’t take long to find some action on the Bong Son plain. About the third day I was at LZ
Uplift, the troops brought in an NVA prisoner. He was being held in a stockade under supervision of the
1st Cav’s military police, about 40 yards from where the IPW section was located. Before I got over to
see him, up comes the Deputy Brigade Commader and demands to see the prisoner.
The DBC was a
lieutenant colonel, a big guy, very imposing person and strong personality. So I grabbed one of the
Vietnamese interrogators to use as an interpreter, and the three of us go find the prisoner. The DBC
proceeds to interrogate him and insists that the interpreter translate literally. That is, when he says “I want
to know something . . .” the interpreter is to use the first person singular in addressing the prisoner,
speaking exactly as if he were the one asking the questions. Supposedly that will give the questioner a
more direct psychological contact with the prisoner. Maybe they had taught that technique in the
Command and General Staff College or somewhere but the whole approach didn’t work. The DBC spoke
to him loudly and roughly, and got absolutely no meaningful responses from the guy. I think the NVA
soldier was scared to death. It was a good show by the DBC, but for my money it was a demonstration of
how not to conduct an interrogation.
But I later developed a lot of respect for the DBC; he was an
aggressive and effective leader. That particular prisoner gave us no useful information, that day or later,
no matter who asked the questions, or how. Some did, some didn’t . . .
About two days later I went on my first cordon and search operation. We got zero results. But
the day after that things got hot. The infantry had surrounded a little coastal village named Tan
Phuong,located on the beach, right on the South China Sea. We went in with the usual team plus a
contingent of National Police. National Police is a short term for National Police Field Force, or NPFF,
which was a quasi-military force that operated throughout South Viet Nam. They were advised by US
CIA operatives and were a pretty aggressive outfit. The soil in this little beach village was entirely beachtype sand, although the village was located 30 or 40 yards from the water’s edge and was up on higher
ground. The NPFF guys came prepared for that type of terrain. They brought with them slender metal
rods, about 4 feet long, and at random, stuck them down into the sand looking for underground bunkers.
One of the NPFF soldiers actually hit something wooden when he stuck the metal rod down into the sand.
As aggressive as a rat terrier or something, he immediately got down on his hands and knees and started
scooping the sand away.
He had found one of their underground bunkers. He shortly uncovered a
wooden door. Quick as a flash he pulled it open. A pistol shot rang out and he was hit in the chest. I will
never forget the sight: he fell backward and down, with all the palm trees and the deep blue South China
Sea in the background. He didn’t die instantly, but he believed he was dying. His fellow NPFF’s tried to
reassure him and treat his wounds, but he died shortly afterward.
There were an unknown number of enemy in the bunker. Just after the NPFF guy was shot and
almost before we could all get our wits, one of the guys who had hidden in the bunker jumped up out of
the bunker and started running up the hill, away from the beach.
4.
The American infantry guys were ready,
and opened up with a machine gun and he only made it about 30 yards. Then the other NPFF guys started
throwing grenades and C-4 (a powerful explosive) into the bunker. That pretty well ended the fight.
When all the dust settled they pulled four more enemy out of the bunker, for a total of five killed in that
fight. Given the shot that killed the NPFF, and the fact that they were armed, there was little doubt that
these guys were enemy fighters. But the residents of the village were tight-lipped. We found out almost
nothing about them that we couldn’t deduce from their actions and the small weapons we found.
I felt like I could have done better in that situation. I just reacted to events and didn’t try to make
any impact on what was going on. The infantry company commander was a captain and was the one in
charge. But it would have been a great opportunity to step forward and try to get the infantry and NPFF
to try to take a prisoner or two, or even try to capture all four that were killed in the bunker. But in the
excitement of the moment it never occurred to me. I was still a new guy and still learning the job, so I
just stored it away for the next time, if there ever was a next time. In any event, it was a pretty exciting
day, and I thought it would be pretty interesting if that was a representative sample of what was to come.
Actually there was a next time at that village.
On October 31, 1967, we did another cordon and
search at Tan Phuong. This one was uneventful—found no hidden bunkers, all was quiet. It looked
different from how I remembered the place. I’d like to see it today—probably would look different from
my vague mental pictures. My impression was that it could have used a big coastal resort-type motel; it
was a beautiful spot that will always stand out in my memory.
A little more background is needed to explain the next sequence of events. The US Army and the
Army of South Viet Nam (ARVN) had a program called the chieu hoi program, in which they tried to
get enemy soldiers to desert and come over to our side. “Chieu hoi” meant something like “come over”
or “open arms” or “returnee” but the term implied a voluntary change of loyalty. (You can find out more
about the program on Wikipedia under that name.) True chieu hoi’s were not all that common. Even if
an enemy soldier wanted to come over, it would have been a dangerous and potentially deadly risk for
them to take. If caught, they would certainly have been executed by their own forces. So, most of the
ones we ultimately called “chieu hoi’s” were really captured prisoners of war who decided they would
turn against their former comrades, and cooperate with the Americans.
The next few stories include
chieu hoi’s of both types.
On August 7, 1967, about a week after I had arrived at LZ Uplift, an American rifle company
came into contact with an unknown number of enemy, again out by the coastline of the South China Sea.
The IPW section first learned about the contact when we received a prisoner who had been taken at the
scene. The troops, of course, wanted to know what they were up against and what the enemy plans were
so we were going to try to find out and get the word back to them as soon as possible. So I did my first
real interrogation of an enemy soldier that day beginning right after lunchtime and going through the
entire afternoon.
Despite the desire of the troops for quick information, I took my time and did it right. I
wanted to get the whole story on this guy and we sat under the shade of a tent flap and worked through his
personal history. He answered all my questions willingly and was actually a pretty likeable little guy.
He was about 16 years old, but looked younger. He was about 4 ft 11 inches tall and weighed
about 110 pounds. He was a Montagnard from North Viet Nam, and had been drafted into the North
Vietnamese Army. He had no education to speak of, and his Vietnamese wasn’t very good, it not being
his native language. He said he was part of a platoon that had come down the Ho Chi Minh trail and he
believed they were slated to be replacement troops for NVA units in the Bong Son plain area.
He said
there were about 30 in his platoon, but that in the area where he was captured there were other NVA
soldiers who were not part of his unit. He didn’t know anything about those others. But all in his unit
except the officers were Montagnard draftees like him. The officers were North Vietnamese, and there
were two of them, the platoon commander and the political officer.
He told us how he got captured, but we had not seen the terrain out there and could not clearly
understand his story until we actually went out to the scene. Accordingly, after we reported what he had
told us, we went with him back out to the spot near the coast where he had been captured. It was only
then that we could understand and fully report on what the rifle company had come up against.
In order to understand, you have to visualize a mountainside falling down to the coastal beach at
about a 45-degree angle. In a crease in the mountainside was a huge jumble of boulders. That seam of
boulders was several hundred yards long from top to bottom, maybe 30 or 40 yards wide, and of
completely unknown depth. There was room among the boulders for people to scramble in and out, and
they could hide completely in that huge jumble of rocks. At the bottom where the land flattened out,
maybe 40 yards from the seacoast, was a freshwater source (spring).
The story he told was that that huge rock pile was a “way station” used by the NVA and VC as an
over-nighting spot. A sort of NVA motel. Thinking about it, you could see how well it would work for
that purpose. It was easy to find right on the coast. It had fresh water available. Troops could hide in the
rocks for days and anyone coming by could not see anyone and would never be the wiser. The American
rifle company had come from above, making its way down the mountainside toward the spring at the
bottom of the rock pile. Once there, they had stopped to get water and cool off. The NVA troopers
hidden in the rock pile knew the Americans were there. So while the Americans were taking a break,
hanging around the area, the curiosity of a couple of those little North Vietnamese Montagnard soldiers
got the best of them. One said to the other, “Let’s go see what those Americans look like.” And the other,
just as curious, said, ”OK.” And so they climbed up and took a look. And one of the American soldiers
spotted them. And the battle was on.
But it wasn’t much of a battle. The Americans simply cordoned the
area and started telling them to come out. The guy I interrogated was the first one to come out. The
Americans would fire their rifles and pistols down into the spaces between the rocks, and roll grenades
down into the crevaces, but until someone came out they didn’t know the results of those actions. It
turned out that they did injure some enemy soldiers, and killed a few too, but they only learned that as
days went by and more prisoners were taken.
This “contact” with the enemy went on for about two weeks. When our guys learned that there
were a good number of enemy troops down in there, they settled on the tactic of simply starving them
out.
Several surrendered and we would take them in and question them when that happened. We went out
to the field several times during that period. At some point the infantry asked us to send the first prisoner
back out to the mountain. They wanted to get him to talk to his comrades down in the rocks, and tell
them that the Americans would treat them well if they would just put down their weapons and come out.
We had used interpreters to send that message, but the guys in the field felt that the message would be
more credible if one of their own identified himself and urged them to come out as he had done. So we
sent him out with them. A day later we were informed sorrowfully that he had been killed.
It happened
this way.
The troops first asked him to talk to his comrades using a bull horn. He did, and no one
responded. So they decided that they would send him down into the rocks so he could talk to them
“face to face.” But a sergeant expressed concern that he might just try to go back and stay with his former
comrades, so they decided to tie a rope around him to keep tabs on his progress. Thus tethered, he
actually climbed down into the holes between the rocks. Sometime after he was out of sight, a shot was
fired. They pulled on the rope and brought up his dead body. So, the first enemy combatant I ever
interrogated did not survive the experience, being killed by his own former comrades.
Another very young Montagnard soldier also surrendered early in this same encounter. We gave
him the nickname “Peanut” and he also did a lot to try to get others to come out. (But not by going down
into the rocks at the end of a rope.) Although he was actually a prisoner of war, he was granted chieu
hoi status for the things he did after he was captured. We ended up with almost all of his platoon
accounted for, either killed or captured, including the platoon leader, a 30-year old 2d Lieutenant. A few
others were rounded up who were not a part of his platoon, including an officer who had been wounded
by a grenade fragment. His capture was somewhat dramatic. He emerged from the rocks at night,
gesturing and crying “nuok” which is Vietnamese for “water.” Overwhelming thirst and his injury
overcame his resistance. He was a “senior captain,” roughly equivalent to our rank of major, and was a
political officer. Because of his potential value as an intelligence source he didn’t stay around our area
very long. We got nothing useful from him at our level anyway. He was a pretty tough cookie, even with
an injury.
5.
But Peanut was the star of the show. As a chieu hoi he got credit for the weapons that were
captured, and he even got a monetary reward for them as well as his freedom. More on that later.
To wind up the story about the rock pile . . . at one point I was out there with an interpreter and
the infantry company commander used the occasion to put some questions to the captured NVA platoon
leader. The NVA platoon leader was about 5 ft, 5 inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds. Even so, he
was heavier and taller than any of the men in his platoon. The American captain was about 6 ft, 4 inches
tall, probably weighed about 220 pounds, and was as impressive a fighting man as you would ever want
to see. The captain asked the NVA lieutenant what he thought about the American soldiers he had been
up against. The NVA replied to the effect that they were pretty impressive-looking soldiers, but loyal to
his own troops, said that his men were pretty good soldiers, too. But then in the next breath he started
talking about the fact that they were all just Montagnards, and how stupid they were, and how “you had to
just get down in their faces” to teach them anything. (It reminded me of Fort Polk, La., back the summer
before, trying to get a point across to those troopers in AIT, where our instructors “had to just get right
down in their faces” to get their attention during instruction.)
But despite the lieutenant’s disdain for his
Montagnard troopers, he displayed more loyalty to them than you might have expected under the
circumstances, being questioned by an intimidating guy holding a gun over him as a prisoner.
This enemy contact finally came to an end a couple of weeks after it started. The infantry
company had painted a replica of the 1st Cav shoulder patch on a big flat rock at the bottom of the hill.
After giving multiple warnings that they were going to napalm the entire rock pile, and giving ample time
for any remaining survivors to come out voluntarily, they did indeed call in a napalm air strike. With the
belief that any survivors would have been suffocated or roasted by the napalm attack, the infantry
company left the area. They had accounted for between 30 and 40 enemy either captured or killed, and
maybe more. They had taken no casualties. They had captured the largest store of weapons that were
brought in during the four months I was with the Brigade.
The company commander, Captain (FNU )
Pratt, reportedly received the Silver Star for the results of this contact, and the area where it all took
place came to be known as “Pratt’s Corner.” Here’s a picture of some of the weapons captured [photo no.
9], A version of this story is reported in a book by a former company commander in the First Cav, James
Estep entitled Company Commander Vietnam, published by ibooks, Inc, originally published by
Presidio Press in 1991 under the title, Comanche 6: Company Commander Vietnam. In the
paperback version I have it’s described on page 63 as an event involving Alpha Company on the Bong
Son plain. I think it’s generally accurate as described in the book.
Peanut’s story wasn’t over yet. On October 17, 1967, my Vietnamese interrogator Dinh and I
drove down by jeep to Binh Dinh city (down south of Qui Nhon on the coast) to attend a ceremony.
Peanut was to be given his financial reward as a chieu hoi for the weapons that were recovered in the
rock pile contact.
About the time we got there, in comes the Brigade Commander’s chopper with the CO
aboard. He didn’t know we were coming and we didn’t know he was coming. It was a grand occasion;
lots of local bigwigs there. There were folk dancing, and speeches, and other celebrations and then they
invited the Brigade Commander to make a speech. The Colonel was a fine officer and he rose to the
occasion. With Dinh acting as interpreter the Colonel spoke (don’t know how he would have made out if
we hadn’t shown up). But the Colonel wasn’t used to making speeches through an interpreter. He made
a long speech without breaking it up into short parts that the interpreter could translate piecemeal. It was
about the great results that could occur when Americans and Vietnamese worked together, and the
immense value of the chieu hoi program. When he finally stopped, Dinh spoke for a few minutes. The
crown applauded politely. I asked him later whether he had pretty well captured what the Colonel had
said, and he said, “Yes, I got it.” As far as I know he did, and anyway I told the Colonel that, which he
appreciated. But we’ll never know for sure if Dinh correctly transmitted the Colonel’s remarks.
Peanut ended up with a big pile of money in his hand. He was free, and (temporarily, at least)
wealthy. I had not seen him since August, and had no idea what would become of him, a Montagnard
from the North, suddenly free in South Viet Nam with more money in his hand than he had ever seen
before. He was literally standing alone in the parking area, holding it in his hand and gazing at it,
seemingly trying to take it all in, as we got in our jeep to leave. [picture no. 25] We saw a sharp-eyed
older man approaching him.
I doubt Peanuts was a rich man very long . . .
Along about this time another incident took place which was not nearly as satisfying as the rock
pile event. On August 29, 1967, a true chieu hoi came in. His name was Tham and he was an NVA
sergeant, equivalent to our rank of sergeant first class. He actually gave himself up like the chieu hoi
program was designed for. He was brought in while I was out in the field, and the brigade commander
(same one described above, but this happened earlier) ordered him to be taken to division level for a
“professional interrogation.” This order combined with his reason for giving it incensed the members of
my section, and me, too. We had been giving pretty good support to his brigade over the month of
August, and this seemed to me and my guys as a gratuitous slight to all of us, American or Vietnamese,
implying that we could not provide a “professional interrogation.” We felt we were as good as the guys at
division level. So I went and found him and asked if that was what he really felt, and that it had given my
guys a kick in the gut to hear him imply that they weren’t doing “professional” interrogations.
After
about the second sentence he had had enough, and told me in clear terms that it was his command and he
would conduct it as he saw fit. So I stood at attention, saluted smartly, and departed.
The chieu hoi Tham knew the area, and was willing to do all he could to help our cause.
Division subsequently sent him back to 2d Brigade so that we could send him out to the field with our
troops. But none of my guys wanted to have anything to do with him, and I was not about to order them
to go after they had been insulted by the Colonel, so when he went out with the troops there was a
language barrier, and when he would come back he would describe to us how opportunities were lost.
We’ll never know whether it would have made a difference if they could have communicated better. The
Colonel should have gotten an interpreter from division, where all the “professionals” were.
Tham worked with our troops for some time. He eventually became trusted enough that they
gave him a weapon. It was strange to see him carrying an M-16 through the mess hall line. The troops
commented that it sometimes made them a little nervous to see a former foe carrying a rifle in such close
conditions, but nothing ever happened. Along with Peanut, Tham was honored and received some kind of
cash award at the awards ceremony in Bihn Dihn City. After that, I don’t know what became of him, but
given the ultimate outcome of the war I doubt that he survived very long after the war ended. Here is how
the weapons were displayed at the rewards ceremony. [pictures no. 10 and 27]
6.
Once prisoners left our custody, we never saw them again. We had only the vaguest idea of what
happened to them when they were turned over to custody of the South Vietnamese. The exception to this
were the chieu hoi’s. Seeing them at the award ceremony in Bihn Dihn City was the only time we ever
saw any prisoners of war after we had turned them over to the ARVN’s.
One day in August, 1967, we had an interesting non-combat-related incident. The Vietnamese
use water buffalos for work in the fields and for food. It was not at all uncommon to see a small boy up
on the back of a water buffalo, keeping an eye on him out in a rice paddy or similar area. [picture no. 19]
The animals are very strong, and for the most part, are docile. But if you ever got one riled up, you had a
real problem.
LZ Uplift experienced one of those problems up close and personal. Our IPW area was
about a hundred yards from Highway 1, the major north-south roadway in Viet Nam. There was a little
road that came off Highway 1westerly, through a gate, and it went right behind our squad tent. One day
I heard a noise and then some guy in a jeep shouting, “Shoot it, Shoot it!” Followed by a second voice
yelling out, “Right here? Right now?” Followed by a rifle shot. We ran out and found two troopers in a
jeep stopped in the road, with a dead water buffalo right behind them. Somehow the jeep had infuriated
the water buffalo, and it started charging the jeep. They couldn’t get away from it, so they shot it right in
the middle of our LZ. Just another day in the war . . .Here’s how the unfortunate water buffalo ended up.
[picture no. 26]
I went on as many cordon and search (C & S) operations as I could. For two reasons: first, they
broke the monotony of life on LZ Uplift, and second, most of them involved helicopter flights to and
from the village being searched.
To earn the Air Medal, you had to be involved in at least 25 combat air
assaults. Each time we went on a C & S by chopper it counted toward the medal. So if there was an
opportunity to get out in the field, I took it. Eventually I had enough to qualify for the medal, and I
submitted my list and I got it. Most of the guys in the 1st Cav hoped to earn that medal, so there was
always someone ready to go out on these types of missions.
Most of the C & S operations were pretty boring. In fact none was ever as exciting as the one at
Tan Phuong when the NPFF found the underground bunker. Most of the time we would end up talking to
villagers who didn’t want to talk to us. The typical villager would try to avoid any extended
conversations, because the longer they talked to us, the more suspect they became. If they talked too long
they might be pegged as informants and that could have been deadly the next night that the enemy troops
came in. They would even tell us that that was the reason they didn’t want to be questioned.
Sometimes my response would be that if they wanted the war to end, this might be their only
chance to help make that happen, by telling us how to find the enemy. That didn’t ever work, because
they knew that even if we controlled the village in the daytime, eventually we would leave and the VC
controlled the night, and were ruthless in dealing with anyone they suspected was cooperating with the
South Vietnamese or the Americans.
Even so, being out in the villages gave those of us in the IPW Section unparalled opportunities to
get to know the Vietnamese people, especially since we were always accompanied by a highly qualified
interpreter. We learned why we never saw any military-age males in the villages. If a military-age male
stayed around when either side came in, he was taken away and put into service as a soldier.
Our side
would classify them as draft dodgers and turn them over to the ARVN’s, and the other side would just put
them in uniform as trainees. So all we ever saw were children, women, and old men. If the young men
hid out in the village and were unlucky enough to get caught by our side, they were considered VC
suspects. So mostly they would run for the jungle if they thought we were coming in, at the risk of
getting shot if they were seen trying to get out of the village. It was a tough time for military age South
Vietnamese males.
One day in early 1968 we were out in a fishing village right on the coast, I got into a conversation
with an 80-year-old man. This man had no reluctance to talk, so we had a nice little chat. He was a
fisherman, and for 60 years had been going down to the beach each day, dragging his boat into the
water, and fishing for food. Various armies had come and gone. The French, the Japanese, the
Americans, the North and South Vietnamese; it made no difference to him except that he had to keep
going out each day to fish. He couldn’t quit even at age 80 because someone had to bring in the food for
the members of his family. All the young men were gone, either drafted, killed, or gone into hiding.
In over 60 years (since approximately 1908) his life had not changed a bit. During that time there
had been two major world wars, flight had been developed, telephones and television had arrived, man
was into space, electric power was commonplace (not in his village, however), and skyscrapers had been
built. But none of that affected his life. All he had ever known was life in that little fishing village, going
out to sea in that little boat every day. He knew how the various wars had extended his work life. He
wasn’t bitter. He was more like . . . wistful. He just wanted some peace and rest.
I have thought a lot
about that old man over the years and wondered if he ever found the peace and rest that he wanted.
Operations with the NPFF were a little different from those when only American soldiers were
present. The NPFF were very aggressive. Their CIA advisors ( who, by the way, would not openly admit
that they were CIA) were ex-military, and were pretty hard-core, too.
I will tell the story about General
Loan, the national commander of the NPFF later. But suffice it for now to say that these guys meant
business. Recently the movie Zero Dark Thirty demonstrated, and has generated a lot of discussion
about, the use of the water torture. The NPFF were using that technique occasionally when they thought
it might result in useful information. It’s a simple technique; it takes no complicated or heavy equipment
(just a canteen of water and a handkerchief); and it doesn’t leave any marks on the subject. For what it’s
worth, I was and still am against it, because I never saw it to bring about any useful, accurate information.
In talking to enemy prisoners over this period, we learned how they were indoctrinated by their
political officers about what would happen if they became prisoners of the Americans. Here is how their
political officers explained it to their troops: If a fighter was captured, he would be questioned, then
tortured if necessary. Whether or not he was tortured did not affect the ultimate outcome. If you refused
to give the ARVN’s or Americans useful information, you would be killed. If you weakened and told
them what they wanted to know, you would at that point be no longer useful, and you would then be
killed. So either way you ended up dead. Therefore, it was better not to tell them anything and “die like a
good soldier.”
With that background, the actual treatment of prisoners was way better than they had expected.
We would make sure they had adequate clothing, and give them a good meal, and gradually they would
realize we were not going to kill them. From that moment, they would usually be willing to talk to us and
answer any questions that they could. In short, the carrot worked better than the stick.
7.
The problem was,
for the most part they couldn’t answer the questions to which we needed answers. They could tell us
what unit they had belonged to, and maybe the names of the officers in their unit and up the line, but
when it came to trying to describe where that unit was, or where it operated out of, or its operational
plans, things became a lot more difficult. It is a mind-numbing exercise trying to go over a topographic
map with a prisoner, trying to walk him back to the last-known location of his unit, only using a
topographic map. We had to try to do it or we would be accused of not doing a complete interrogation;
but it never, ever, worked. You could not get an answer without leading the witness, and when you led
the witness the information became useless. I always dreaded having to go through this process with a
prisoner, but it had to be done.
There were numerous tactics that we used that were counterproductive with the Vietnamese
populace.
The dilemma of military-age males (described above) was one example. Another example
related to the civilians’ food. Our troops were always looking for rice caches, based on the theory that
they were there to support the VC. If they found a big basket of rice, they were liable to confiscate it or
destroy it so the VC wouldn’t get it. So the villagers would hide their rice. If the troops found it, that was
even more reason to think it was for the VC. Taking way their rice didn’t win hearts and minds. On only
one occasion did our troops ever give back rice that was confiscated, and I think that was because the
IPW team protested that it was denying the villagers their primary food source.
Another example, which we didn’t see too often, was the havoc our tracked vehicles wreaked on
the rice farmers’ fields. Like everywhere in the orient, rice fields are separated by a complex system of
dikes and canals. They are constructed in a way that allows the movement of water into and out of the
paddies as the rice crop requires it.[Picture no. 17__] Tracked vehicles, like Armored Personnel Carriers
(APC’s) cannot operate in those areas without doing a lot of damage to the dikes and channels. That kind
of destruction did not win us many friends, either. I went on only one mechanized infantry operation,
somewhere in the Bong Son Plain, with some other unit (the 1st Cav used helicopters, not APC’s, to move
troops around). I will give the unit commander credit, he tried to minimize the damage, but if the choice
was performing the mission or preserving the integrity of the rice fields, the mission came first.
Unfortunately my pictures of the exercise that day were lost.
Sunday, September 3, 1967, was a big day in the history of South Viet Nam. It was election day
for president and vice-president. General Thieu was elected president in an election that was (to put the
best possible light on it) probably less rigged than earlier elections in South Viet Nam had been. The day
before had been my 25th birthday, and that night in LZ Uplift we were on 50% alert (that meant half of us
had to be awake at all times, not all of us half-awake) because of the threat of mortar or rocket attacks by
the enemy.
My diary entry: “People expected a big VC/NVA attempt to defeat Americans before the
election, but it didn’t come off.”
My ears are ringing now and have been for 45 years. I attribute that to the fact that on LZ Uplift
there was a battery of 8-inch guns located between our area and Highway 1. When they fired to the west
(which seemed like most of the time) the shells went out right over our heads. And the sound of the guns
was, well, deafening. It didn’t happen every day, but when it did it certainly got our attention.
Another interesting phenomenon was the “Mad Minute.” Every night around 10 o’clock every
trooper on the perimeter of the LZ would open up and fire whatever weapon he had for one minute. I
don’t think this ritual scared anyone because it was so predictable, but it was fun for the troops. LZ Uplift
also had a daylight-hours firing range you could go to during the day and practice firing your weapon(s).
So the sound of gunfire was quite common and didn’t mean anything unless an alarm went out.
There was some excitement on August 25, 1967. Miss America, also known as Miss Oklahoma,
Jane Ann Jayroe, came to LZ Uplift. We had known she was coming for some time, and on August 14 I
had written Oklahoma’s governor, Dewey Bartlett, requesting that he send us an Oklahoma flag via Miss
America. Well, she showed up, but no flag. We guessed we didn’t get the request to the governor in time
(never thought he would ignore us). Anyway, we decided (maybe some sour grapes here) she didn’t look
all that good in fatigues, rain-soaked hair, etc. (We probably didn’t look that great to her, either.) The
governor replied to my letter, which reply I received on Sept 8, and then on Sept. 17, the flag from the
governor arrived and we mounted it prominently in our little area of the LZ.[picture no. 24]
She came through at about the time the monsoon started in that part of the world. The monsoon
wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would be constant winds, horizontal and cold. Mostly it just drizzled
incessantly, and the weather was cooler. One effect was muddy roads. The other was morale.
8.
It was hard
to stay upbeat when the rain came so often. The rains made the cooler temperature seem colder, and
altogether not a pleasant experience. And that was for those of us in the comfort of an established camp.
The guys out in the field had to just hate it; I don’t see how they could ever have gotten dry.
The war for my little group was pretty much the same thing from September through November.
Our field exercises were pretty routine; not much action or excitement. On Sept 27 I got promoted to 1st
lieutenant, one year and one day from the day I went on active duty.
My notes showed a significant
increase in pay; all the way up to $505 per month. I had a goal of saving $3000 during my tour of active
duty, and the notes in the diary reflect progress, or the lack of progress, toward that goal. As a 2d
Lieutenant I didn’t make enough to save much, but with the promotion it became more reachable. By
year-end I had $1100 in the bank; not much by today’s standards but a lot to me at that stage of my life.
In November another one of the MI Detachment lieutenants went out on a field exercise with one
of the units in our brigade, and they found some action. In fact the lieutenant was wounded by an enemy
grenade. The first reports back to the 2nd brigade headquarters were that an MI lieutenant had been
killed, and everybody assumed it was me. When I turned up at HQ very much alive, they were all
surprised and I hope, not disappointed. The other lieutenant was injured, not killed, and evacuated to the
army hospital at Cam Ranh Bay. In the melee he had dropped his M-16 rifle, and it got lost or mislaid.
Army regulations required that an investigation be done to determine how the weapon was lost. The
investigation is called a “survey” and I got the assignment to do it. It meant interviewing the lieutenant
and others who were at the scene, in order to try to account for the loss. That meant I had to go to Cam
Rahn Bay and to An Khe to interview him and the others involved. So from Nov. 7 until about Nov. 16,
more than a week, I was travelling around talking to various soldiers and making my written report.
As a
result of transportation difficulties, I had to spend about three days at Cam Ranh Bay, which was, in
addition to being a military hospital, a fabulous beach resort. My work there took approximately 2 hours,
so most of the time I was able to relax on the beach or go to the Post Exchange. Tough duty . . .But it
never ceased to amaze me how much time I had to spend on that useless exercise, doing a report on a
weapon lost in a fire fight.
Later in November our little section at LZ Uplift came into some construction materials, so we
decided to build ourselves a “hooch.” Using stacked ammo boxes for walls, hinged plywood for
windows, 4 by 4’s for rafters, and a thick tarp for a roof, we created a well-ventilated “work area” about
16 ft. by 16 ft, adjacent to and connected to our squad tent. It made our life a lot more comfortable. We
also built furniture out of ammo boxes to furnish it, and stacked sandbags waist-high all around it. As
conditions on the LZ went, it was pretty nice. We got a lot more visitors dropping by for a chat than we
had had in the past. [Picture?]
Toward the end of November I began to get signals that I was going to get a new job.
After some
uncertainty, it became clear that I was going to be assigned back to An Khe to serve as “G-2 Rear.” The
1st Cav had two one-star generals (Brigadier Generals) as assistant division commanders. The junior one
of those, BG Oscar O. Davis, served as commander of the “division rear” which was located at An Khe.
He had his own staff, including an intelligence officer to serve as his “G-2.” That was to be my job. It
consisted of two parts: (1) giving him a daily briefing on what had happened around the division (enemy
contacts and other intelligence of interest to him) and (2) keeping him posted on any intelligence that
came in regarding the security of the base camp itself. It was the first time I had had any contact with
general officers, and for a while I was a bit nervous about it. But the general was patient and I got the
hang of it quickly and we got along fine.
An Khe offered an opportunity to go out on missions occasionally.
9.
Two or three times in the
month of December, 1967, I went out on helicopter missions. The first was a memorable reconnaissance
trip south of An Khe along the Song Ba River. The plan was to do a visual recon by helicopter in the
area south of An Khe, along the Song Ba river. I happened to mention it the night before at a gathering at
the MI Detachment, and one of the captains there insisted that he be included in the mission. He was
probably working on his Air Medal count, as most of us were. So, since there was space on the chopper,
he went along. The mission was ostensibly to see if we could find any enemy forces by searching from
the air. So we took off and flew down along the river to see what we could see.
It was a normal Huey
configuration, with a door gunner on each side of the aircraft armed with an M-60 machine gun. It was a
free fire zone, which meant, basically, that the gunners could shoot at anything that moved, or anything
that didn’t move, for that matter. From time to time they would just open up on a “suspicious” spot, but
for a long time we didn’t see any living persons. Here is how the river area looked from the door
gunner’s viewpoint. [picture]We went further and further south, and I began to worry that we might have
strayed into the 4th Division’s Area of Operations. Then we came upon a hill, covered with a sparse
growth of trees, and saw a number of Vietnamese soldiers under the trees.
They were making no effort to
hide, and in fact were waving at us. The obvious question was, should we open fire on them? The
captain who was with us was the senior man present, but he didn’t know what to do. The rest of us
weren’t sure either, but for my part I was certainly not about to issue any order to fire at them. So we just
circled around the hill once or twice, waved back at them, and went on. I never knew for sure who they
were or what unit they were with, but when we left they were all as healthy as they had when we came
onto the scene. After that encounter the flight back was pretty routine. All in all, when we landed I was
greatly relieved because nobody did anything that would have gotten anyone court-martialed.
Later in December, on Christmas Day in fact, I had the opportunity to go out on a “Night Hunter”
mission. These were conducted by helicopter also, except they were done in total darkness at night, with
blacked-out helicopters. Once airborne, flying over territory that was under enemy control, I was greatly
appreciative of the fact that the helicopters were blacked out. Even then, I thought we were entirely too
visible from the ground, and like everybody else, I was glad I had a flak jacket to sit on (not that it would
have done much good). I went out on two or three of these despite the tension that inevitably went along
with this type action. We used night vision glasses in the total darkness, although I didn’t think they
worked very well. Occasionally our artillery guys would light up the area with illumination rounds (a
type of flare that would hang in the air by parachute and slowly drift down) and that helped a little, but no
matter which technique we used we never saw anything on any of the missions I went on.
On one occasion, the major who commanded our MI Detachment heard that a Night Hunter
mission was imminent, and insisted that he be taken along. (Once again, working toward his Air Medal, I
assumed.) In any event, once we took off he never said a single word, never took a turn on the night
vision glasses, and just sat on his flak jacket taking up as little space as possible. He may well have held
his breath the entire mission. Oh, well, at least he didn’t get in the way. (Now a side note: lest anyone
suspect that I had problems with authority figures, I must say that there were some captains in our unit,
including my immediate boss, Captain Hegner, who were outstanding officers, any one of whom would
have done a great job as detachment commander. It just happened that this major was totally unsuited for
a command position, and everyone in the detachment felt the same way about him. It galls me to this day
that he left Viet Nam with a command assignment on his record, of which there are very few in the
Intelligence branch, and would therefore have been positioned well for further promotions and long-term
career opportunities in the Army’s Intelligence branch).
Our New Year, January 1, passed uneventfully, but on Jan. 4, 1968, the action started to pick up.
About 3 AM that morning Camp Radcliff got mortared, with most of the 80-some incoming rounds
landing in the vicinity of the “Golf Course,” which was the name for the area where the 1st Cav’s
helicopters were parked overnight. The impact area was about ½ mile from where I was quartered so I
didn’t get too excited. Later in the light of day I inspected the area (as did many others) and then went
out to the perimeter of the base camp to check on “security.” The enemy mortar unit that did the firing
was probably moving out by the time the last rounds hit, and never in any danger from our defensive
troops, but for all intents and purposes this one came out to be a scoreless tie.
Then on Jan. 5 the local action continued. A group of six VC attacked the Vietnamese police
station in downtown An Khe and destroyed it.[picture?] I spent the day trying to get an accurate story of
what happened, in order to report to the general. But the investigation was frustrating and I am not sure
that I got an accurate account.
In any event the attack destroyed the building, but my notes do not reflect
our side taking or inflicting any casualties.
My notes reflect that on Jan. 9 my general’s volleyball team, of which I was a member, won three
straight games against the “division forward” team. Volleyball was a big deal since it took up little space
and needed little equipment, and gave everybody playing a chance to take out their aggressions against
the other side. Needless to say, and appropriate for the circumstances, we played by “Jungle Rules”
which meant that any play that didn’t tear down the net was fair, for offense or defense.
On Jan. 15 we got BIG NEWS. The entire division was to move north, much nearer to the DMZ
and up into I Corps! This came in the form of an alert, not an order to move. But the alert meant that we
were to start planning and preparing for the move. The significance for me was that, since there was no
longer a “division rear” there was no need for a separate intelligence staff officer for my general. So I
would be looking for a new job within the division or within the MI Detachment. At that time I had no
idea what that might be. In any event I spent most of the next few days preparing for the move; shipping
stuff home, packing stuff to take in the move north, and getting rid of unnecessary items.
Two days later I got word that I had been approved for “Rest and Recuperation” (“R & R”) in
Sydney, Australia, for February 2—just two weeks away.
10.
About that time the Commanding General of
the Division, who had been out of the country for R & R for some time, was coming back to the unit. I
had drawn the assignment of briefing him on enemy contacts and activities over the period he had been
gone. I had had no prior face time with General Tolson, and this was a big deal for me at the time. So on
Jan 21, 1968, I gave him my summary of what had been going on. He made no comment; my own
assessment was “it went OK.” By Jan. 25 I was out of my office and one day away from being out of a
job. General Davis was to go forward on Jan 26, so that would be the end of that.
But Jan. 26 was a big day, anyway. For our part of the world, that’s when the Tet Offensive
began. If you look up Tet Offensive on Wikipedia, it tells you that it was supposed to coincide with the
Chinese New Year, which was Feb. 3. But in fact there were attacks in several areas that took place
before the official Chinese New Year’s date. Ours was one of those. At about 1 AM on Jan. 26 a unit of
NVA “Sappers” attacked the main air field at Camp Radcliff. Sappers are essentially combat engineers
who specialize in breaching the defenses of a camp, then either destroying equipment or causing
casualties, usually by use of satchel charges (explosives carried on the person and detonated at close
quarters; sometimes as a suicide mission).
This group of sappers penetrated the perimeter near the
airport, and headed for the airplanes that were parked overnight at the field. So just after 1 AM I rounded
up a Vietnamese interpreter (he wasn’t all that pleased to have his sleep interrupted) and we headed over
to the airfield to see what was going on. At that time there wasn’t much activity and not much to see, and
no prisoners to interrogate, so we decided to go back to bed and headed back to our area. But around 5
am word came in that the troops on the ground had taken a prisoner. So I rounded up the interpreter again
(he was even less enthused this time) and we headed back to the air field area. We found that there was
indeed a prisoner, and we questioned him right on the spot, before the sun even came up. He stated that
he was part of the H-15 Battalion of the 3d NVA Regiment, which regiment was a unit the 1st Cav had
been fighting off and on for months in that area.
The sappers got close enough to damage a plane or two,
but they paid for it. The local troops—clerks and maintenance guys, not line infantry—took up arms and
defended their turf and their planes, and killed a good number of the invaders. Why they took this
prisoner I never knew. But our guys acquitted themselves well. It was pretty clear that their blood was
up; several of the deceased enemy had somehow had had their ears removed as “trophies.”
I thought it was interesting that these guys, normally far removed from any combat, reverted to
their more primitive sides when the fight came to them, and wanted some sort of reminder or souvenir to
mark the occasion.
We had alerts several times over the next few days, but no more attacks through the perimeter.
We didn’t know at that time that there were offensive actions underway, or planned, by the enemy for
many different areas in South Viet Nam in late January-early February.
Some time before I arrived at the 1st Cav, the engineers in the unit had been ordered to build a
school house for the children of An Khe. No doubt this was intended to help win their hearts and minds,
but the project became a real tar baby. It was nowhere near completion when the Cav moved North, and I
suppose that it never got finished. It was a monstrosity by local standards; two stories high and numerous
classrooms. My guess is that there were numerous sighs of relief from the American engineers when the
“move out” order came and we had an excuse to stop working on it. One of my last events at An Khe was
a party at the site of the school construction project. It was hosted by the Division S-5, which is the
administrative arm responsible for winning the hearts and minds of the local people. I doubt that the
impact on their hearts and minds was commensurate with the effort, labor and materials, that went into
that unfinished project. But it was a good party and according to my notes, I even got to make a speech.
Unfortunately I don’t remember even attending the party, much less making the speech, nor do I recall
any of the undoubtedly inspirational points I would have made. Here’s a picture of the school building the
1st Cav built—pretty impressive even if unfinished. [picture]
On Feb. 2, I left An Khe to go on R & R. The first leg of the trip was the flight to to Cam Ranh
Bay, and then the next day, we left for Australia.
We landed at Darwin around 11:00 PM local time, then
waited a few hours for the departure to Sydney. The take-off time from Darwin was dictated by the
arrival time in Sydney: we couldn’t land in Sydney (and wake up the residents) before 6 AM so it was
1:30 in the morning when we left Darwin. I saw nothing of Darwin but a few lights, since our entire time
there was in darkness. We arrived Sydney at a legal time—6:10 AM. By the afternoon I was at a beach
called “Coogee Beach” which was fairly crowded. February is in the Australian summer, so it was a good
time to be there. Briefly, my stay in Sydney was pleasant but generally uneventful. I went on a tour up
north of Sydney to a town called Gosford, visited an animal park, went scuba-diving (after a brief training
session), learned how to throw a boomerang; and went to a few night spots. Later in the week I went out
to Bondi Beach where I tried (unsuccessfully ) surfing. (Next time to Bondi Beach—April, 2010—on a
visit with Ferne to Greg and family). R & R e
11.
While I was in Sydney the Tet Offensive really went into full swing. We were hardly aware of it
even though we did have access to Australian TV. The only detail I recall seeing is the famous photo of
the head of the NPFF, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, shooting a VC officer with a pistol. That photo went
around the world, but I don’t think the US troops in the field saw it. (You can Google the photo—the site
is “Images-Nguyen Ngoc Loan.” That photo became one of two major iconic photos of the Viet Nam
war (the other was a little naked girl with burns, running away from the site of a napalm attack). Those
two photos, as much as anything, helped turn public opinion away from the prosecution of the war. My
interest was the fact that I had been on several operations with the NPFF, and this was their national
commander committing a highly questionable act.
It was some time later that the scope of the Tet Offensive became known to most of the troops in
the field. For many of us it caused serious doubts about the possibility of a successful outcome in the
war.
Subsequent analysis and comment, mostly from the military, presented the overall outcome of the
Tet Offensive as a disaster for the NVA and VC, but at the time it didn’t look that way to those of us in the
field. To me, it looked like all the reports of us “winning the war” and being able to see the “light at the
end of the tunnel” didn’t ring true, when regardless of their losses the enemy could mount successful and
highly disruptive attacks anywhere and anytime they wanted to. We were intensely aware of the
difficulties that conventional troops had in combating guerrilla forces, even when our forces were as
highly mobile and well-equipped as in the 1st Cav.
When the dust settled on my personal move North, I
wrote my father a long letter expressing my thoughts and reservations about the ultimate success of the
war. Unfortunately, as far as I know he didn’t save the letter, and I never saw it after returning to the
States.
The new base camp for the 1st Cav was at a site called Camp Evans, located in the coastal plain
about 20 miles northwest of the city of Hue. This photo shows a picture of our camp area at Camp Evans
[photos 3 and 4]. The city of Quang Tri was the northernmost city in the coastal plain of South Viet Nam
(not far from the DMZ), and Camp Evans was located roughly halfway between Hue and Quang Tri.
When I got there, the first thing to do was find a new job. Eventually I was designated to be located in
Hue Phu Bai, a major airport about 10 miles south of Hue City. Our MI unit’s image interpretation
section (the II Section) was located there (logical, since they had to have access to the airplanes that took
the photos, and the planes needed an airfield to operate out of). Hue Phu Bai also was the headquarters
and base camp of a major Marine Corps unit that operated in the area south of Hue. My job was to be
liaison officer between the 1st Cav’s intelligence section and the Marine Corps’ intelligence section, and
also to interrogate (or observe interrogations) of wounded prisoners, who would be evacuated to a
hospital in Hue Phu Bai for medical care.
It looked like an interesting job and I was looking forward to
working with the Marines. My counterpart with the Marines was a Captain Brown (first name unknown,
unrecorded). I should have stayed a long distance away from him but didn’t know that at first.
I was just getting settled into my new work and living area when Captain Brown came up with an
idea for intelligence-gathering. He had learned that there was a wounded prisoner being held by Marines
in Hue City, and suggested that we go into town and see what we could get any useful intelligence from
him. To understand the meaning of that proposed plan of action requires some additional geography and
history.
Hue is an ancient city, formerly the imperial capital city of Viet Nam. It is bisected by
the Perfume River, which runs west-to-east toward the coast. Before Tet in 1968 it was a beautiful city,
whose chief feature (other than the river) was old imperial city located on the north side of the river. The
imperial city was about 2 km by 2 km, surrounded by a wall, and complete with a moat around the wall.
Water for the moat came from the Perfume River, which went by on the south side of the Imperial City.
So it was, in essence, a city within a city. Inside the wall was a fortress known as the Citadel.
Details on
the Citadel can be found at the Wikipedia site, “Imperial City, Hue.” It was an impressive structure, even
when seen after the attacks and fighting during the Tet Offensive. This is a picture of the Citadel.[picture
no. 16]
When the NVA and VC (reportedly a division-sized force) attacked Hue On Jan. 31, 1968, as part
of the Tet Offensive, they took over the Imperial City and the Citadel, and it took a long time and a lot of
heavy fighting to root them out. First the Marines tried it, but it was only after the 1st Cav came on the
scene that the Imperial City could be retaken. And that was at heavy cost in terms of casualties, and in
terms of destruction to the architecture of the City. The Wikipedia site gives details.
During February, 1968, while the fighting was going on at the Citadel, there were roving bands of
enemy troops roaming around the countryside around Hue, doing whatever damage they could do using
essentially hit and run tactics. Thus, it wasn’t all that safe to be out in the countryside during that time.
And inside Hue City there was a continuing fire fight going on, as the Americans and South Vietnamese
tried to oust the enemy from the Imperial City/Citadel.
So now we return to the Marine captain.
On Feb. 19, 1968, he came up with a plan. Captain
Brown’s idea was to go from Hue Phu Bai into Hue City, ostensibly to interrogate the NVA prisoner. But
to be honest it was really just to take a look at what was going on in Hue since we knew that fighting
around the Citadel was still going on. All we had to make the trip in was the captain’s jeep. As I write
this I can’t really believe how dumb it was, but to show that I was willing to go if he was, I agreed to
make the trip with him. So we loaded up our jeep with the two of us, and a couple of Vietnamese
interpreters, and headed out in our one-jeep convoy to go into Hue City. Once underway, the four of us
were, to put it mildly, a bit concerned about the security of our convoy.
Well, I suppose it was four
concerned people; I know at least three of us were—not sure about the captain.
The road into Hue was lightly populated, mostly rural and did not have a lot of people around
even during secure times. At this time with NVA and VC roaming around, there were almost no people
anywhere along our route. Here are my notes, with today’s comments, about that trip into Hue.
First we checked at District MACV to see if the road was clear—OK. District MACV
was an office outside Phu Bai where American military advisors worked with ARVN troops as more or
less as occupation forces. They were supposed to know about enemy conditions. They pretty much gave
us a green light, based on who-knows-what –kind of intelligence, to go on into Hue City.
Then we sped down the road for about two miles and found a road block.
12.
A
typical ambush tactic is to set up a road block, then when the vehicles stop to deal with it, hit them with
RPG’s (Rocket Propelled Grenades, still in use today in Middle East conflicts and very serious weapons
indeed) and/or machine gun fire. When I saw that road block I thought we were in for it, but it turned out
that there were actually a few ARVN troops in the area and we didn’t get ambushed. We would have been
an easy target since we were essentially alone and very lightly armed. But we got lucky.
ARVN’s said that VC were about 500 meters back down the road the way we had
come. So we turned around, raced by with the interpreter firing. Naturally, we turned
around and went back the way we had come, back in the direction the ARVN’s had told us VC supposedly
were, toward the MACV post. After a couple of hundred meters we went by a large building with a big
hole in the wall which had been made by an RPG round, and the interpreter in the back seat got so
nervous that he opened up with his M-16.
None of the rest of us knew he was going to start firing, and
we hadn’t seen anything to shoot at, but when he started shooting the rest of us just about had heart
attacks. We didn’t know if he had seen anything, or if so, what it was, and he didn’t tell us; he just
opened up firing. It took a few seconds to realize we weren’t under attack and it’s fair to say that the
three of us were greatly relieved.
Checked again at MACV—no VC. How they knew that is still a mystery.
So we tried again. Why we did that is an even greater mystery. But we started back down the
road toward Hue.
They moved the road block and we got there (to Hue City) all right. The “they” in
this entry refers to our interpreters. So actually, we got out and moved the road block and went on into
town without further stress. But on all our minds was the fact that later that day we were going to have to
come back on that same road to get back to Hue Phu Bai.
Much still going on, especially across Perfume River. We were on the South side of the
river; the NVA/VC were on the north side, inside the walls of the old city and in the Citadel. We drove
down a street that paralleled the river, and saw Vietnamese Rangers firing across the river at anything they
thought might be moving.
We stopped and talked to them. They asked us if we wanted to “zero in” our
rifles—this was an invitation to join them in shooting at any targets or supposed targets on the other side
of the river. We declined politely and went on our way. We found the prisoner, and questioned him for a
while, all the time keeping an eye on light conditions, since we had to be back in Phu Bai before dark.
We got no meaningful information—no surprise there. But by the time we left it was late afternoon, and
light conditions were deteriorating.
We sped back, hit no road blocks this time, and made it back to Phu
Bai only slightly the worse for wear. All in all it was stupid to have gone into Hue under those conditions.
My final diary entry on this outing: “It was a foolish trip to take, but we made it back OK, so
it’s allright.” That first part is an understatement.
For the next few weeks there wasn’t a lot to be done. A few wounded prisoners came through and
so some interrogations were necessary. But I had to depend on the Marines to provide me with an
interpreter, and that didn’t work very well. I kept requesting that an interpreter be sent down from
division to work in Phu Bai, but never got anywhere on that. By March 10 I was ready to change jobs.
There just wasn’t enough work at Phu Bai to keep me occupied, and I was tired of spending so much time
just reading or studying Vietnamese. So around that time the unit CO told me to come back to division at
Camp Evans and join the division IPW (interrogation of prisoners of war) section again. I was glad to get
that assignment, since I would be working with Capt. Hegner again, and others in that section.
Along about this time I had to go down to Da Nang on some kind of investigation (I think it was
another lost weapons survey) and because of air transport problems, had to stay a couple of days longer
than anticipated. While I was there, I hung around with some guys with the 101st Airborne Division, and
they were trying to talk me into putting in for a transfer to the 101st. I thought about it, but when I found
out that it would require a commitment to extend the tour in Viet Nam by six months, I didn’t pursue it. I
did think about it, though, and even wrote home that I was considering it. I don’t know how that news
went over, but it didn’t matter since eventually I decided not to extend anyway.
13.
From March through May, while I was working in the I corps area, we experienced a lot more
mortar and rocket attacks than we had while stationed further south in the II Corps area. My notes show
mortar or rocket attacks on Feb. 25, Mar. 4, Mar. 25, May 1, May 20, May 21, and May 26. On Feb. 25,
while I was doing the investigation at Da Nang, mortar rounds came in both north and south of where I
was spending the night. At about that same time both Camp Evans and the airport at Hue Phu Bai were hit
with rocket attacks but neither sustained much damage on that occasion. On March 4 at Phu Bai I
recorded that “we are getting a lot of incoming rounds here tonight.”
On March 25 I was staying overnight at Camp Evans when we received a number of incoming
mortar rounds.
Part of the area where the MI Detachment was located was hit this time. Several were
wounded and a young soldier in our Detachment, Sp4 Ross Applegate of Bergenfield, N.J was killed in
this attack, much to my sorrow. He had worked for me back at the Camp Radcliff (An Khe) base camp
and was a good soldier. Mortar rounds incoming were very imprecise weapons, and to be hit by one was
just a bad stroke of luck against all odds. But now and then they would hit something or someone, and
this time they got this poor guy. He was the only MI Detachment fatality in the year I was there.
We
spent the day after this attack reinforcing and enlarging our bunker at Camp Evans, for obvious reasons.
Also on March 25 about 85 mortar rounds hit the Phu Bai airfield, but none of them came close to
our unit’s area. On May 20 Phu Bai was again hit by mortars, this time much closer to our area than the
last time. On May 21 they hit us again, and this time they did come in close and we all bailed out for the
bunkers. It was weird listening to the mortar shells walking up (gradually exploding closer to) toward our
bunker. We were under cover and not in real danger, but it was a chilling experience notwithstanding.
The closest call came at about 2:30 am on May 26, when incoming mortar rounds actually landed in the
220th’s motor pool area, where our II van was located.
One of our warrant officers exited the van in a
hurry, and in his haste in the dark ran straight into a barbed wire fence and got cut up a little bit. I heard
later he put in for the Purple Heart, but the rest of us treated it as a joke and scoffed at the idea that such
“injuries” would qualify for the award. The closest incoming round to me personally (or to him, for that
matter) was about 100 yards away, which presented no real danger, but they were “walking them in”
toward where we were, and I will say that hearing them coming closer, even if you are in a bunker, is an
event that will focus your attention. By that time I was getting “short” (meaning, not much longer in the
war zone) and my notes indicate I was the first one out of my hooch and into the bunker that night. When
the enemy lobbed a few mortar rounds our way, usually all it did was interrupt a good night’s sleep.
I
think they knew they were doing little damage, but wanted us to know that they were out there and could
shoot at us any time they wanted to.
Speaking of being “short”—there were lots of jokes about things a “short-timer” couldn’t do. For
example, you could not start reading any long novels. Or light up any king size cigarettes. And you had
to work on your DEROS-tan. (DEROS is an acronym for “Date of Rotation OverSeas” also known as
“going back to the world.”) No one wanted to go back home looking pasty, so getting a DEROS-tan was
an important project for short-timers.
On May 21 Camp Evans received a serious mortar and rocket attack and ammunition dump was
hit and went up. The NVA got a lucky hit this time. It created explosions and a fire that went on for 8
hours while the unexpended rounds exploded or “cooked off” A couple of days later I went up there and
saw about 6 acres of “black ground” littered with expended 105 howitzer shells.
Now a few words about weaponry. The US Army brought the M-16 rifle to Viet Nam. In theory
it had a lot of advantages, but in practice it didn’t work very well in the Viet Nam environment. They
kept jamming all the time. I was issued an M-16 but found out quickly that it wasn’t worth much and I
quit carrying it.
The Marine version of the same rifle was called the AR-15, and it had modifications that
made it a far more effective and reliable weapon. Somehow back in my days interrogating prisoners I had
come into possession of an M-1 carbine. It was not as lethal as an M-16 (less range and only semiautomatic) , but it worked and I thought that reliability was more important than firepower. So for some
months I carried the M-1 carbine, which was about the weaponry equivalent of driving a ’48 Ford.
Anyway, as I was getting ready to move back to Camp Evans from Hue Phu Bai, a Marine captain saw
my carbine and wanted it. I wasn’t signed out for the carbine so I could freely trade for anything I
wanted. So he offered a Marine AR-15 and I took the deal. That was a great trade. Neither could be
taken back to the States, but I got a highly effective rifle out of the deal, and when I test-fired it, was not
disappointed at all.
My notes for April19 show that I went out and test-fired the AR-15 that day and
concluded “I am a believer in this new version of the M-16—it really shoots. May even be better than the
Rus/ChiCom AK-47.” This was another weapon I wasn’t signed out for, so I could trade it freely. I don’t
recall, however, what became of it.
While in the prisoner interrogation business I also came into possession of an old MAS-36 boltaction rifle (made by the French and a relic of the French war in “Indo-China”) and a semi-automatic
SKS rifle, a Russian-designed and built rifle, which was pretty commonly used by the NVA/VC.
14.
The
preferred enemy weapon was the AK-47, and although I saw plenty of them, I never acquired one. These
rifles were useful only for trading or for selling. Enemy weapons were commonly available in our line of
work, and useful for trades. I sold one (can’t recall what type now) for $30, which I used as part of the
$50.00 cost of a Smith & Wesson Special .38 caliber pistol. I registered the pistol and sent it home. I also
registered the MAS-36 and I think I sent it home, too, but I never saw it back in Monroe and don’t know
what happened to it. I must have sold or traded the SKS but can’t recall just how I disposed of it. They
were valuable as trade items so probably I traded for something in the last month or so.
As March wore on I realized that there wasn’t enough work at Camp Evans to keep me busy, so
once again I requested a change of duty from our illustrious major. I wanted to be sent back to Phu Bai to
work in the Image Interpretation (II) Section, which would have enabled me to use the Army specialty I
had been trained for. At first he declined but toward the end of the month he changed his mind. At the
end of March the division headquarters and the MI section moved up nearer to Khe Sahn to a place called
Ca Lu, about 8 miles east of Khe Sahn. The purpose for this move was to be positioned to give greater
support to the Marines at Khe Sahn. But at about the same time they moved, I was moving back to Phu
Bai to be in the II Section.
I was delighted to be assigned to a spot where my training could be useful ( I
thought) and by March 30 I was back at Phu Bai and getting settled into the new routine.
When the II Section had relocated to the Phu Bai airport back in February, they didn’t have any
suitable place to stay. So the then head of the section approached an Army unit stationed there and asked
if the section could just move in with them in their area adjacent to the runway, and the commander of the
flying unit gave it the OK. This unit was the 220th Reconnisance Aircraft Company (220th RAC)
commanded by a Major (FNU) Clark. They called themselves the “Cat-Killers.” This was a pretty rowdy
bunch of fliers, primarily flying O-2E observation planes (the push-me-pull-you dual propeller type of
aircraft) for reconnaissance and fire missions.
Usually two planes would go out together, one flying high
and one flying low, and if they found any targets they would call them into the artillery and see if they
could do some damage. The pilots flying low generally came back at the end of the day pretty well worn
out because they were exposed to enemy fire at low altitude. They worked hard in the daytime, and
played hard at night. They had well-constructed quarters and an excellent officers club. The II section
never had it as good as the time they were living with those guys and sharing their facilities.
We even had
maids. The one who did the maid service for our hootch was married and had a little girl. Her name was
Ba Vui, and her husband was somewhere off in the army. Here’s a picture of her and her little girl. The
best word for her was “stoic.” The war had interrupted her life but she was dealing with it as best she
could.
The II Section had two basic functions.
We developed and “interpreted” aerial photographs taken
by aircraft available to the section, and we did the same for radar and infrared images taken by the same
aircraft. Most of our surveillance missions at this time were in the area just south of the DMZ, out west
of Quang Tri as far as the Laotian border. This included the famous Marine fire base at Khe Sanh, and
others in that general vicinity. The 1st Cav’s mission was, in part, to give support to the Marines in that
area. I was given the task of writing up what the MI Detachment had done in that campaign, as part of a
division-wide effort to get the 1st Cav to be awarded a unit citation. I didn’t keep a copy of what I wrote
up, but my notes state that the 1st Cav “did all right” in the Khe Sanh action.
The Marines will probably
never admit it but we helped them out quite a bit.
In our II Section, we divided the day into three shifts and I was in charge of the 4 pm to midnight
shift. Here’s a picture of the van that the II section worked in. [photo no. 28]I liked that because it left
my days mostly free and gave me something to do to keep me out of the officers’ club at night. It soon
became apparent that the airport at Phu Bai was going to be something of a hub of activity. On April 3,
my 4th day on this new job, General William Westmoreland’s plane landed at Phu Bai and taxied over to
our area. The general got out, and from my distance about 30 yards away I threw up a snappy salute, and
he returned it. It reminded me of my dad’s story of throwing a salute at General Patton while out in the
desert on maneuvers in California back in 1941 or ’42—except that Dad said Patton did not deign to
return his salute. After getting my return salute, I raised my camera and took a picture of the general, but
later learned to my dismay that there wasn’t any film in it!
15.
A few weeks later General Creighton Abrams (a four-star general who was at that time preparing
to take over for General Westmoreland) came to Phu Bai. He was slated to meet President Thieu at the
Phu Bai airport and confer with him while in the Hue area. General Abrams arrived first and was on the
ground waiting when President Thieu’s plane arrived. Since we were located close by, a few of us hung
around the area to watch the proceedings. When Thieu stepped out of the plane, General Abrams saluted
first and then Thieu returned the salute. It was the first and only time I ever saw a four-star general salute
first. Macarthur supposedly did that when Truman called him to a meeting in Midway Island during the
Korean War, and I suppose it has happened from time to time in history, but it’s pretty unusual to find
someone senior to a four-star, and apparently General Abrams felt that this was one of those times and
that it was appropriate to defer to the President of the country we were fighting for.
General Abrams took
command of U.S. forces in Viet Nam in May, 1968.
Since my days were not filled with duty obligations, I spent a lot of time reading, including some
readings in political science, getting ready for graduate school which I anticipated to start in Sept., 1968.
My diary notes show increasing awareness that in the fall I would be entering into a new phase of life,
work toward a PhD in Government at either University of Oklahoma or University of Texas. I had
applied for graduate assistantships at both, and got favorable responses. Then on April 25 I flew back to
An Khe to take the Graduate Record Exam.
On May 8 a letter came from the University of Texas
officially offering the assistantship, and in my diary there’s a notation that I decided then and there to
accept it. Later on I got news from the University of Texas that I had been awarded a fellowship also,
which meant an additional $2400 toward graduate school, which was no small amount in those days. So
my decision to head to UT in the fall was firm.
In April and early May there was not a lot of work to be done in the II section, due to inclimate
weather. If photo or radar missions could not be run, we had nothing to develop or interpret. By May 9,
however, the weather had cleared up and we were “swamped” with work.
From time to time, entertainment groups would come to our area. Carol Channing, for example,
put on a show for the 1st Cav while I was there. While at Phu Bai, on May 14 a Korean entertainment
outfit was in town playing American rock music. It was strange to hear Koreans singing “Johnny B.
Goode” and “Mustang Sally” but it was a good show.
The II Section in Phu Bai consisted of a captain (section chief), a couple of warrant officers, me,
and 3 or 4 enlisted men. Duty in the II Section was mostly pretty hum-drum. The planes would bring in
the “images,” we would process them, and then we would pore over them trying to find something
significant. We rarely did. One time during the Marines’ heavy fighting at Khe Sanh we thought we had
identified some Russain-built T-34 tanks, but as far as I know that was never confirmed in the field so it
probably was just wishful interpreting on our part.
To liven things up, from time to time I was able to go
out on visual recon flights. These would last from 2 to 4 hours in a light plane, looking for the enemy and
occasionally taking pictures. The most exciting of these was a flight in an Army Mohawk, which was a
two-engine, high-speed, fully aerobatic reconnaissance aircraft used for photo missions and infrared radar
missions. It was a ride I will never forget—not because of enemy action but because the pilot wanted to
show me what the plane could do. Among other things he did a “split-S” where from high altitude he
turns the plane over, and from the upside-down position flies it downward in a loop to bring it back to
level flight going back the way it had come from. It created tremendous g-forces, enough to cause a
person to black out if not wearing a pressure suit (which I wasn’t). I felt the blood running from my head,
and my field of vision started to narrow until all I could see were little pinpoints of light. Then things
went black—but only briefly since we completed the half-loop. Quite an experience!
Other than those occasional flights, the only excitement came from the occasional mortar attacks,
most of which were not aimed anywhere near our location. We received “alerts” or warnings of
impending mortar attacks from time to time, but most of the time these were just false alarms, and I never
knew how our forces were supposed to get wind of these attacks before they happened. Most of the time
the first warning came when the first rounds hit inside the perimeter.
The spring of 1968 brought a lot of news from the States. In March, Richard Nixon began to look
strong for the Republican nomination with a good showing in the New Hampshire primary. On April 1,
LBJ announced he would not seek re-election as President. On April 5, Martin Luther King was shot and
killed in Memphis. Later, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. On May 2, Nelson Rockefeller,
Jr., announced for the Republican presidential nomination. We followed these events as best we could, but
had few sources of information. The Stars & Stripes, a military news publication, was our best source,
but we knew it didn’t publish stories that would have been detrimental to the troops or the war effort. The
fact is, most of the events in the U.S. seemed so far removed from our day to day existence that we found
it hard to follow them. In my mind, I recall feeling that when I got back there would be plenty of time to
catch up on what had gone on “in the world” while I had been out of it.
16.
From time to time out detachment would undergo inspections from the Inspector General, or IG.
The purpose of this, as I understood it, was to have an outside agency inspect to determine that we had the
fight equipment for a unit of our type and size. The key word was “TO & E” which meant “Table of
Organization and Equipment.” We were supposed to have the right number of everything, no more and
no less. Somehow in the fog of the war the Detachment had acquired an extra jeep. Naturally we liked
having extra transportation around, and for the first IG inspection the major just told us to hide it—keep it
out of sight. That worked. The second time around he decided it would be best to get rid of it, so he
traded it to someone in the personnel section of the Division for some extra R & R’s. I have no idea how
that all was made possible, but the ultimate effect of the trade was that some of us got to go on second R
& R’s. So Capt. Hegner and I put in for a second R & R to Hong Kong, and lo and behold, we got it. So
from June 3 through June 11, 1968, after some uncertainty about actually getting on a flight, we got to go
to Hong Kong!
By that time I was getting pretty short (less than two months to go) and he was shorter than I was.
So it was a good way to use up some of our remaining time and see a new area, not to mention getting a
chance to spend a lot of money. One of the guys in our unit knew a Chinese girl who lived in Hong
Kong, and had written to her that we were coming, and asked her to take us under her wing and show us
around. Well, she and her whole family welcomed us to Hong Kong and into their home, and made the
stay in Hong Kong quite memorable. They took us to places like the race track jockey club that we would
otherwise not have been able to see, and generally tried to help us see the Hong Kong not seen by most of
the people there on R & R.
In addition, we took full advantage of the shopping, right up to the last minute
brfore we had to leave. It probably took the big PX in Hong Kong several weeks to re-stock after we left.
Most of the stuff we shipped directly home from Hong Kong, which was convenient because on the trip
back to Viet Nam we were over the weight limit anyway. It was an interesting experience and certainly a
change of pace from what we had been accustomed to.
Back in Phu Bai things were winding down for me in the last couple of months of the tour. On
June 14, 1968, the II Section chief rotated back to the States, and I took over “command” of the Section.
We celebrated this event with about 80 man-hours of work on an incoming photo mission project.
My
leadership of the section was pretty uneventful. The major would come around from time to time to make
sure we were all awake and working (we were), and he’d usually spew out some sort of sarcastic
comments. But toward the end he seemed to lighten up a bit, maybe because his tour was also coming to
an end. On June 29 he came down unexpectedly and delivered a pleasant surprise. He called the section
together and presented me with the Bronze Star for my service in Viet Nam. It sounded good but you
have to keep in mind that there are two types of Bronze Star: one with “V” device for valor or bravery in
combat, and the other, plain one, was just rewarded for doing a good job, or not getting court-martialed or
embarrassing anyone. I got the plain one, and appreciated it; it was the usual award for officers who
served at that time. To have NOT gotten it would have been an embarrassment. Fortunately for me, he
came through.
The II Section muddled through from May on into July, the month I was slated to “DEROS.” On
May 31 my orders back to the States came through, and I found out I had been given a 4-day “drop,”
meaning that I was leaving four calendar days earlier than the date I had arrived. Actually it was only
three days, since 1968 was a leap year, but leap day had already come and gone and with a net three days’
reduction I wasn’t in a position to complain. Starting the journey back from Phu Bai, the trip first
required a stopover in An Khe, then a flight down to Cam Ranh Bay, and on July 21, 1968, my war was
over. These photos were taken while at Cam Ranh Bay awaiting the homeward flight. [photos 20 and
22]We boarded a nice shiny jet, with real American girls as Flight Attendants, with real air conditioning,
and headed out. Our flight was routed through Japan, with a short stopover in Yakota Air Force Base near
Tokyo. We happened to be coming in as the sun was setting behind Mt. Fuji. Here’s a picture.[photo no.
1]
On the way to Ft. Lewis, Washington, we flew into July 22, then back into July 21. The Army
knew we were all anxious to get home, so they out-processed us during the night, and while it was July 22
again, many hours but only one calendar day after leaving Viet Nam, I was a civilian again. From there it
was a flight back to Oklahoma, and resumption of a normal life. The flight to Oklahoma and the reunion
there were priceless, and my year in the war seemed like no more than a dream.
17.
AFTERWORD
Thus ended my tour of duty in Viet Nam and my service in the US Army. Now, 45 years after
that period, when I try to recall my feelings about the experience at the time, it’s hard to isolate those
thoughts because they can’t be separated from later events as the war effort went downhill and ground to
a close. As I think back about it now, I don’t regret or resent the time spent in that war, despite its dismal
outcome. Compared to the sacrifice others made, I really gave up nothing.
