Abandoned in Hell : The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate (9780698144262) (20 page)

“General Abrams eventually blamed Special Forces for all firebase failures in this campaign,” explains Brockwell, forty years after the fact. “I have no idea why. I heard that the tactical zone commander of the 23rd ARVN refused to support [the firebases]. He said, ‘We're not going to risk any Vietnamese troops. They're Americans; it's your problem.' Plus there were Montagnard tribesmen out there, whom the Vietnamese detested and called savages, so basically, they had no skin in the game.”

So I was greatly cheered when I got an encrypted message from my “B” Team commander indicating that a rescue/reinforcement operation was in the works.

“The overall Special Forces commander for the Bu Prang operation was Lieutenant Colonel Collins, sharp as a needle, a really, really, really good man,” recalls DeNote. “Simmons probably could've stayed in BMT, if he wanted, but he chose to come right into the camp. He's the guy who called in the relief Mike Force.”

DeNote is dead right about Collins. I would have followed him through the gates of hell, and that sentiment was shared by everyone else in B-23.

“The plans for Kate's rescue were drawn up in our TOC,” DeNote continues. “Collins stayed inside it and operated off our map. The Mike Force had their own radios, so [for the duration of the operation] we had two sets; if one [failed], the Mike Force radios would still be operational.”

While I was on the radio, Hopkins had wandered into the FDC, and he sat on one of the desks, listening. For as long as we'd been under fire, he'd been one of our best fighters. He was good with his bloop gun, the M79, and with an M16. Sometimes he paired with Koon on the M60. And always, even under the heaviest incoming, he was moving around the perimeter, helping out in a dozen ways, from bucking somebody up, helping a wounded man, to jumping in a hole to fight alongside a striker. But just then, at that moment, he looked different. Somehow not quite right.

“I went in [to the FDC] primarily to see what was going on because I can't be outside anymore. That artillery fire is going to kill me. So I went in there to
get
information instead of to
give
information,” Hopkins recalls. “Doc was there, and Albracht was talking to somebody about needing more support, because they were beating us up. And whoever he was talking to, they came back and said something that amounted to ‘We're not sending any more helicopters in because it's too risky; we've lost too many.'

“I looked at Albracht and I said, ‘You mean they're not going to help us anymore?'

“Albracht said, ‘For all intents and purposes, we're on our own right now.'

“And I said, ‘Bullshit! What do you mean these people aren't going to come and protect us? We don't have guns, we have only small arms, and they say that they're not going to do anything? We're on our own now?'”

We
were
kind of on our own. But, as I tried to explain to Hopkins, the Mike Force was putting something together. If we could hold just one more night, they'd be here. I said that I didn't know, just at that moment, exactly what was planned.

Hopkins lost it. He is a very brave man. A good soldier. He had done as much as any man to defend our little corner of hell. The fact is, however, that under prolonged combat, every man can be broken, and there is no shame in it. Hopkins had reached his breaking point and couldn't take any more. He began screaming at me: “I said, this is bullshit! You get me the fuck out of here! This is bullshit. If my country's not willing to protect me, get me the hell out of here!”

Our medic, Doc, had been in a corner watching and listening. He moved over to Hopkins, repeating his name in a soothing voice. He gave him an injection of some kind, something to calm him, and in a few minutes Hopkins was asleep.

I called for a medevac; I still had to get Red Caldwell out as well. But it would be a long time before anything that didn't explode or ricochet could land on Kate.

Not every artilleryman in our small garrison was actively involved in
our defense. A couple of the more senior noncoms, I am reliably told, remained under cover during every firefight. One PFC—he should be very glad that I never got his name—was sent to load wounded men on a chopper. When the medevac took off, he was on it.

I pulled my other go-to guys, including Koon and Geromin, and a few other artillerymen who had been active in our defense, into the FDC. As I told them what was going on and shared my assessment of our situation, I also explained my very real hope that the Mike Force would get us out. As I spoke, I looked around the dim, crowded room, peering at their dirty, stubbled faces—there was hardly water enough to drink, let alone wash or shave. I told them, as if they didn't already know, that PAVN had hit us with almost every goddamn thing they had for more than three days. We had bled and we had died, but we held our hilltop still.

Like Hopkins, these were all good soldiers, first-rate guys, a little volunteer squad who'd individually and collectively moved around Kate to wherever they were most needed, wherever that day's enemy assault was coming from. Even under the heaviest attack, Koon was out on the perimeter manning an M60 machine gun, meeting the tip of the PAVN assault spear and pouring heavy lead into it. I realize now that he and I were not so different: We were both from small Midwestern towns. Both with tough, unyielding fathers. We'd both enlisted right out of high school, looking for adventure, looking for a good fight—and we had sure as hell found one.

As I spoke, updating our situation, I studied their faces. One man—if I ever knew it, I can no longer recall his name—was hunched over, cradling his jaw, looking very much like the famous Rodin sculpture, almost a living
The Thinker
. I looked into their bloodshot eyes, and I said, “Listen, we're all under some heavy-duty pressure here, boys, and we've got to watch out for each other.”

Just then I saw “the Thinker” tremble—a tiny movement. In seconds he was shaking violently. Then he broke down, muttering, “I'm sorry; I just can't take this anymore.” He began to weep, and I could see how strongly this affected all of us—how it created an even more intense bond between
us. I told him, “Hey, it's all right, man, it's all right.” After a little while, Doc came in and sedated him as well.

In 1969 I had yet to start college. I didn't know how much was then known about what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. In Vietnam we called it combat fatigue or battle fatigue; our fathers' generation called it shell shock. All the same thing. I didn't need a degree in psychology to understand what had happened to these men. Lord have mercy, I knew what we had been through, what we were still going through. I never, ever felt anything but sympathy and brotherhood for these guys.

And even though we were now desperately shorthanded, they had to be evacuated. I'd rather go into battle with five men that I can depend on with my life than with a hundred that I can't be sure of.

So I had no problem sending these men back to BMT, where they would be safe and could get medical attention. They had served their country and their buddies as well as they could, and they simply had no more to give.

It was quite a while before we had a medevac pilot willing to risk flying in and out of Kate. When that brave soul was finally en route, Zollner asked him to take Ross's body as well. The pilot refused, and I got on the horn and, like Zollner, demanded that he take Ross. The pilot was wiser than both of us. He knew that lingering to take someone already beyond help would increase the risk to our wounded. He took the living, but left the dead. Later, when we finally got some of our dead evacuated, I personally carried Ross's body and stowed him on the chopper. Even in the bulky body bag, he seemed as light as a child.

As it got dark, as our ammo dwindled again to only one or two magazines per man, and to only a few boxes of linked 7.62 rounds for all our M60 machine guns, Spooky came on station. The small-arms fire stopped as PAVN infantry pulled back. The incoming mortars and rockets halted. Pierelli should have been in the sack, catching a few z's before spelling me on the radio so I could catch a few of my own. But on Kate he had trouble sleeping, so he went back into the mortar pit, spreading a little 81 mm HE love around the ridges and tree lines.

I, too, couldn't sleep. I was pretty sure that if the neighbors attacked at first light, as they usually did, we wouldn't be able to stop them. We just didn't have enough bullets. Not nearly enough. One big push and they'd be all over us.

•   •   •

MEANWHILE,
at Bu Prang, the wheels were turning. Captain Charles Childers was the Pleiku Mike Force adjutant. We would later become good friends, but just then we had yet to meet. He was in on the rescue operation planning.

“We had two Mike Force battalions [near] Camp Bu Prang,” Childers recalls, “and by the night of 31 October, both were in active contact with the enemy.” Both were commanded by an Australian, Major William J. “Bill” Brydon, a seventeen-year veteran of the Australian Army who had seen combat against guerrillas in Malaya and Borneo.

“Brydon was one of those wonderful, larger-than-life Australian characters who never went anywhere without a very large can of Foster's Lager,” says Childers. “He always rode helicopters with his feet on the outside skids. His combat kit was a torn T-shirt, an M16, and a Foster's; that's how he went in, and that's how we brought him out. He was much beloved by everyone—and, boy, he was a mean sonofabitch!

“Brydon had his headquarters at Camp Bu Prang. One battalion was to the south and west, and one just outside the camp. When Kate had deteriorated to the point that Hawk was going to lead them out, Brydon's mission was to set up a corridor on each side of the escape route that Bill would use, so that he wouldn't be overrun en route. Hawk had no idea about this. It was happening at night, and most of the time nobody knew where anybody else
was.”

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.

Where never lark, or even eagle flew—

And while with silent lifting mind I have trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

—Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr.,
“
High Flight”

K
en Donovan is tall and trim. He radiates self-confidence from his heartbreaker's face, he has unusually small hands for a man his size, and he sometimes refers to himself in the third person. “I graduated from high school in '66, when either you had enough money to go to college and keep your student deferment or you went to the Big Green Machine,” he says. “I was shoveling sand in a Buick foundry, trying to earn enough money for junior college in Flint, Michigan.”

After his first semester, he cut a political science class to visit the Army recruiter. “One of those life-defining points,” he says. “One sergeant said, ‘How would you like to work on helicopters?' and I said that it sounded pretty cool.

“Then his buddy said, ‘What are you doing right now?' and when I explained that I was in junior college, he says, ‘Do you wear glasses?' and when I said no, he asked if I'd like to fly. I said, ‘Where do I sign on the dotted line?'”

A little over a year after he enlisted, Donovan, age 20, flew his first combat mission for the 155th AHC. After learning to fly helicopters on the flat, dry Texas plains and then the flat, low farmland around Fort Stewart,
Georgia, he had to learn on the job about the joys of mountain aviation in Vietnam's Central Highlands: “Our airfield at BMT was at about 2,000 feet,” Donovan explains. “The hotter the air gets and the higher you go, the thinner the air becomes. That impacts the amount of lift that your rotor system can generate. Most of our landings could be best described as controlled crashes. In a Huey, normal-operating-engine RPM was 6,600. Going into an assault landing at around 6,200 engine RPM, the low RPM alarm begins beeping in your ear. The controls start to get a little mushy. Sometimes, when we'd break the trees, the leader would call, ‘Pick your spots,' and that meant we had permission to move a little out of formation and pick a spot—some LZs were burned-off bamboo with stumps sticking three or four feet out of the ground. At such a low RPM, we often didn't have enough power to hover. Our own rotor wash caused the bird to run out of what we called ‘left pedal'—the nose would start to turn to the right. It would get pretty interesting.”

It got even more interesting when flying into and out of Duc Lap; the Special Forces airfield there was more than a mile high.

After a few months of ash-and-trash missions and flying air assaults for the US 4th and the ARVN 23rd, Donovan and his platoon were “volunteered” to fly for the legendary Special Operations Group. These were hush-hush missions, “black” operations that usually involved either inserting small groups of men into Cambodia to run intelligence and assassination operations, or retrieving them.

“If you flew slicks, which Donovan did, you'd fly one week supporting the missions going across into Cambodia, typically carrying two or three Americans and five or six of what we called Sioux Indians—South Vietnamese or Chinese mercenaries,” Donovan remembers. “They were all dressed in North Vietnamese Army uniforms and basically wore nothing that would identify them with the US Army. So we'd spend a week flying SOG missions about seventy-five miles on the wrong side of the fence; and then the first platoon would take over that mission from us, and we'd fly regular air assaults, and log missions in-country.”

As October 1969 and the end of his yearlong tour approached, Donovan decided to extend his tour. The choice seemed simple: “A bunch of us
were scheduled to go home in October, and as crazy as it sounds, we said, ‘Do we want to go home, take a leave, report to our new unit, and then come back to duty at Christmastime?'”

Instead, they all agreed to extend their tours for a few months, go home before Christmas, and then either start a new assignment after Christmas or get out of the Army a little earlier than expected.

“I think that contributed to our success during LZ Kate and the larger battle of Bu Prang,” Donovan opines. “We had very experienced aircraft commanders. A combat unit is almost a mythical thing. This is hard to explain to civilians, but [most combat unit members believe] it's better to get killed than to look bad in front of your buddies. And I'm not saying this because I was in one, but I think all aviation units are elite units. I've said this on a number of occasions:
Ken Donovan is alive today because of the guys he flew with.
But every Army unit, to a certain extent, is about the luck of the draw. We had an exceptional group of pilots, crew chiefs, and door gunners.”

From what I saw of the 155th AHC birds landing on or flying over Kate, it certainly was an elite unit. A few minutes before the end of Halloween, Ken Donovan and Les Davison were among a small group of determined 155th pilots who set out to bring in our desperately needed ammo and supplies.

“I was flying missions all around Kate,” Donovan recalls. He had helped evacuate other firebases, but this was to be his first time landing on Kate.

Because of our situation, and to a lesser extent because of what was going on around Bu Prang, Duc Lap, and their remaining firebases, the 155th had been reinforced with slicks and gunships from other helicopter companies. BMT's local VC celebrated the new arrivals by lobbing mortar rounds at the 155th base at BMT's North Field. Donovan and a few other pilots began moving aircraft to East Field to disperse them.

“As I was moving an aircraft, I got a call to report to Operations, ASAP,” Donovan recalls. “There were already some very senior aircraft commanders there, to include Les Davison and my roommate, J. C. Cole. The Old Man came out, Major Dean Owen, and he said, ‘Okay, guys, we're
going to resupply Kate tonight. You guys are the aircraft commanders; I'll have a more detailed brief for you in about an hour or so. You have the pick of the unit on who you want to fly with tonight.'

“Somebody had a really stupid idea to go in with sling loads, from which Dean Owen saved us,” Donovan continues. “It was a pretty straightforward deal—we had four slicks to do the resupply, we had a fifth aircraft for command, control, and recovery of aircraft if needed, and we had four gunships, a team on either side, to escort us in.”

I was not aware of any of this at the time, of course. But keep in mind that a normal daylight resupply usually involved only one or two slicks, with one or two gunships escorting if they were available. By now, however, everyone flying in the highlands knew that the ground fire around Kate was ferocious. That night, Shadow had the early over-watch mission, so before midnight, when I learned that a resupply was imminent, I got on the radio and kind of double-talked the situation. Shadow fired all around us, keeping our nasty neighbors' noses dirty. Or so I hoped.

While the pilots were being briefed, SP5 Mike Wilcox, Donovan's crew chief and among the unit's most senior crewmen, was drinking beer. “The First and Second platoons' crew chiefs and door gunners were well into a drink-a-thon in the enlisted barracks area,” he recalls. “This was not an unusual activity once the aircraft maintenance had been completed and guards posted on the perimeter. We gathered in the Second Platoon hooch, where we had built a bar a few months earlier. Although we had all been very active flying missions around Bu Prang and the firebase areas, we assumed the war was over for the day, and the Schlitz and Falstaff tasted pretty good.

“Missions into the Bu Prang area were guaranteed to pass the day quickly, as there were a very large number of bad guys around. The gunfights in the LZ Kate area were at the level where you could actually see large numbers of dead [PAVN] laying in the open. Being young and bulletproof, I found it was an exciting way to pass the day.

“Well after dark, I was summoned to Operations, which was unusual. As I entered, I could sense a buzz of urgency. Something extraordinary was about to happen,” Wilcox continues. He soon learned what was planned.
“Plan A was sling loads. Plan B was to load ammo and supplies in the doorways of the ships; two Special Forces guys would kick them out as we hovered over Kate,” he explains. “I was told to ask for volunteers to fly this mission, that things would probably become very ugly, in terms of possible aircraft loss.

“None of the platoon guys in the 155th knew any of the guys on Kate, but upon requesting volunteers, I was amazed to see that every crewman was ready and willing to go—more than enough to fly a second mission if it was needed,” Wilcox concludes.

Because the only Falcon gunship pilot senior to him was on R&R in Bangkok, Warrant Officer 1 Les Davison, with less than a year of flying experience, was senior Falcon gunship team leader. “Along with several other Falcon and Stagecoach pilots, I made my way to the Operations hooch in the darkness of the blacked-out airfield,” he recalls. “As we entered, the clock showed 0010 hours; the CO and platoon leaders were poring over tactical maps, and the Operations officer was on the field phone. Obviously, all had been busy since the mission alert came down. The eyes of the pilots in the audience were mostly bloodshot—and a little scared. We had an idea what was coming.

“When all were present, Major Owen led the briefing. We had all flown into or near Kate during the fighting, and were familiar with the tactical situation. The firebase was holding out, but the defenders were low on ammunition and weren't sure they could wait until first light for resupply. We were tasked with delivering four slick loads of M16, carbine, and M60 ammo. Mission planning called for five slicks and four guns.

“If we weren't alert before, we certainly were now. I'd never been on a mission where we took an empty rescue ship. GULP! The best, most experienced pilots had been picked to fly this one, with two senior aircraft commanders in each slick. And credit to Major Owen: He knew it was a tough mission, but he didn't just send others out to accomplish it. He would be copilot in the lead ship. As the company commander, he didn't fly enough to be one of our best pilots, so he could not have been as sharp as guys who flew every day. But he knew where he needed to be for that particular mission, and he was there. Not every CO would have flown that mission.

“In a similar vein, Colonel B. R. Wright, commander of the 17th Aviation Group, appointed himself copilot of the fifth slick, the command and control, and chase aircraft.

“Our briefing covered the weather, the enemy situation, radio frequencies, and formations. Then Major Owen looked to me (the gunship lead) and asked, ‘Are the Falcons going to go in hot?'

“Pete Cosmos, brand-new as an aircraft commander but never at a loss for words, piped up, ‘Damn straight we will!' Major Owen said nothing, but turned his head to look at me.

“I've often wondered whether Pete's outburst affected my response—and I just don't know. I said that I'd rather wait to see if Charlie will let us do it without shooting. ‘We'll be on both sides of you, ready to bring smoke—and if they do start up, we can pinpoint the source and be right on it. But you slick guys are the ones hanging out, so we'll do whatever you want.'

“Major Owen didn't hesitate. ‘Okay, we'll go in cold unless Chuck starts something. They're still loading the birds. Start time will be 0110, crank on me. Good luck.'”

Donovan picks up the story: “We were to take off after midnight, so I went over to the gunners' hooch, and while they were playing cards, Jim Abbott, who had been flying all day, lay down on a bunk and went to sleep. After a while we walked out to the aircraft revetments. I strapped in, and we started going through the checklist.”

Davison goes on: “[After the briefing] everybody got their gear and headed to the ships, to find the crews already there. After making sure everything was set, most of us wandered back to the platoon hooches for coffee, smokes, a few quick hands of poker, and probably to write a letter or two home. Even the pilots who weren't flying joined in, and the Dustoff guys too. As they say, you could have cut the tension with a knife.

“Although it was still too early, the Falcon card game broke up and we headed slowly toward the revetments. The slick pilots were doing the same. There were quite a few flight crewmen and others around, but it was unusually quiet. We all knew this one was different. We rechecked the
ships, again—and then waited. There was little of the usual happy-go-lucky banter between and among the crews; instead, lots of nervous chatter and forced laughter. Time dragged.

“Finally it was 0110,” Davison continues. “We'd been strapped in for a good five minutes listening for the telltale whine of the CO's ship starting up, but heard only silence. At 0115, more nervous chatter, but still no crank. What's the problem? Nobody knows. I sent the door gunner over to the major's ship to find out. At 0118, still quiet. Then the blare of the public address system covers the compound. ‘Will Mr. Abbott please report to his aircraft.' The gunner came back, telling us what we already knew: ‘Can't find Mr. Abbott.' Jim is one of the coolest heads around—that's why he's the lead aircraft commander. This is
not
like him.”

Donovan: “I heard somebody in flight operations over the PA system: ‘Will Mr. Abbott report to his aircraft
immediately
!'

“He's flying with the Old Man, but nobody woke him up! In a couple of minutes he comes running out, still zipping up his flight suit.”

The mission began with Donovan and the other slicks flying to the East Field to be loaded with ammunition boxes. “Two Special Forces guys . . . volunteered as kickers,” Donovan recalls. “They hopped in, and then we launched. I had my crew chief and door gunner give their helmets to the kickers, and I briefed them about what to expect and what would happen in the event that we were shot up. Or shot down.

“The scariest part of the mission was in the first five minutes. There were some weather issues around BMT; when we were climbing out, we flew into the clouds in formation. J.C. was flying number three and I was chalk four, the last aircraft. He was kind of strobing in and out of the clouds in front of me as we were climbing out. Jim Abbott made a [radio] call, ‘Climbing out at 69 knots at 500 feet,' so that we didn't overrun the aircraft in front of us. A good call.