Combat Swimmer (19 page)

Chuck and Ken McDonald had killed three guys running from the last hootch in line, one of whom had had his AK-47, on full automatic, firing over his shoulder as he ran. Then they took some fire from the tree line behind the hootches. Apparently there had been a sentry, but he had been stationed to the rear of the complex.

The cop said an old woman they found in one of the other hootches told him the meeting had been held late the night before, but that all participants had spent the night in the complex. The cadre I was after had been sleeping in the hootch Dick and I entered. She didn't know where he was now. He had probably gotten up early and left; maybe he was the guy who'd almost dumped on me. The woman also told the cop that there was a large group of soldiers in a hamlet about 500 meters to our rear. The cop was scared and said we ought to pull out.

I told Chuck to continue the search, then called Clay over, got on the radio, and told the boat officer on the LCPL to scramble our Seawolves. They'd have been pissed if I hadn't gotten them overhead, and if the woman had told the truth, we might need them.

I also told the boat officer to send the LSSC downriver and position it well northeast of our extraction point—closer but not so close it would give away my intentions to any VC force on the small island. Then I sent Ed and Doc back to the canal to establish security on our intended line of withdrawal. Doc said he was okay, though he had a huge welt on his left cheek, and the left side of his face was so swollen he looked as if he'd just gone a few rounds with Muhammad Ali. Chuck told me the grenade that hit Doc was a dud. The pin had been pulled, but it didn't detonate—luck. They'd found four dead VC, the three he and Ken had greased and the one Ed had nailed. The hootch search had revealed two weapons, some M-26 grenades, several containers full of 7.62 short ammo, and various documents. The cop took a quick look at those and found that they were lists of supplies, weapons, and people. He thought they might also reveal the location of the matériel. Stuffing the documents in his butt pack, Chuck allowed as how we'd been in the complex for about thirty minutes and it might be time to move out. Clay told me the Seawolf leader had checked in on our net; the helos were about ten minutes away. I gave the word to move out.

Dick and I went up to the canal, while Chuck went back to get Ken. It was now daylight; we crossed the small canal running north beside the complex and turned left toward the main river. There was no trail, but moving just inside the canal bank proved easy and it gave us cover. When the Seawolves came overhead, I called them to ask what they saw behind us. The team leader said it was all clear, but they'd keep looking. I told them to stay over the hootch complex. I didn't want them over us because we couldn't hear a thing through the noise of their rotating blades.

I heard the swoosh of rockets leaving one of the birds, and the Seawolf team leader came up on the radio to tell us they had spotted movement in the trees about 300 meters behind the hootch complex. So the old woman had probably been telling the truth about the proximity of the enemy troops. With the helos around, though, I wasn't worried.

We were about 200 meters from the river when Dick stopped us. There were some irrigation ditches ahead, and he wanted to take a look before we crossed. I told him to go ahead, but I kept the patrol moving slowly forward. When Dick gave me the all-clear, we picked up the pace.

We'd crossed three ditches and were about fifty meters from the river when I heard an M-16 fire just behind me. I turned to see the cop pointing excitedly down at the dike by the last ditch. A bloody foot poked out from under the dike: one of our guys had shot a VC hiding in a concealed bunker. I told Clay to get the Seawolves overhead, and Chuck dragged the guy out of the bunker, pulling him to his feet in front of us. The VC never uttered a sound. His left foot had been nearly blown away, but he was in shock.

Doc threw him on the ground and started doing corpsman magic. Our corpsmen never ceased to amaze me. When someone got wounded, they seemed to go into overdrive. Doc had the guy patched up in thirty seconds, gave him a shot of morphine, and pronounced him fit for travel. Chuck held the VC's arms in front of him, cuffed him with plastic “tieties,” then handed his CAR-15 to Doc and threw the VC over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. We found three more males hiding in the bunker, took them into custody, and headed for the river.

We reached the extraction point five minutes later. I set a perimeter and told Clay to get the LSSC over to pick us up. We sat there looking at our prisoners, and I wondered if the rest of the VC nearby would be stupid enough to follow us with a Seawolf fire team overhead and our little battleship now about 200 meters offshore. They weren't.

I was the last to board the LSSC, just after Ken. I always boarded after everyone else, probably out of some misplaced macho desire to be the last off the beach.

The wounded prisoner, accompanied by Chuck, the cop, and one more man, went by LSSC to the Vietnamese hospital in Can Tho. I told Chuck not to turn the guy over to the National Police until after we'd had a chance to interrogate him back in Binh Thuy.

Next order of business: I called Ed over. “What were you thinking when you cut loose on that guy?”

“Protecting your ass, boss.” He had simply reacted—he'd seen the guy throw a grenade and hit Doc, and he figured the best thing to do was kill him before he got to me. I wasn't about to argue with that logic.

“Good job, Ed, but next time try to shoot a little sooner.”

I reflected on what we'd accomplished. We'd done well, reaching the objective without being detected. The men had been aggressive and decisive. We'd killed four VC, captured eight, policed up a few weapons and some documents, and not gotten anyone seriously hurt. Doc O'Bryan's pride hurt more than his face, although we later learned the grenade had fractured his left cheekbone. I expected we'd get some useful intelligence from the prisoners. The troops were feeling good, and that was very important to me. All in all, a satisfying operation.

T
oward the end of June 1968 I started picking up reports that the enemy was planning another large operation near Saigon. There seemed to be an increase in troop traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Since the Tet Offensive had depleted the VC of anything larger than company-sized units, they needed to bring regular NVA troops from the North in order to launch a large operation. We'd been picking off VC along the coastal “Secret Zones,” and I figured we ought to do something to welcome the NVA to our part of the delta.

I flew southeast from Binh Thuy to Bac Lieu, where the PRU adviser was Gary Gallagher, a West Coast SEAL I had met on my way over in May. Gary met me at the helo pad and took me to his headquarters for a situation brief.

When he finished, I said, “Gary, I want to go someplace and do something that'll really screw the VC.”

Bac Lieu Province, being situated just north of the U Minh Forest, was a major assembly area for units and logistics that had infiltrated from North Vietnam. There were large rest camps containing hospitals where troops recovered from their long journey and got ready to fight in the Saigon area.

“No problem,” Gary replied. “I've got plenty of targets. In fact, I've got a perfect place for you guys, but you're going to need slicks.”

He pointed out the area on his map. The only way to reach it was by helicopter, because the bad guys had a lock on all land and water communication.

I went back to Binh Thuy and started the ball rolling. My plan was for an extended reconnaissance-ambush. We'd lay up on the large canal that serviced the biggest camp in Bac Lieu, survey the situation for a day, pick a target of opportunity, hit it, and get out. I'd insert by helo at last light (the Army couldn't fly too well at night without using landing lights).

We moved to the LST at the mouth of the Bassac River and prepared to go the following day. I wanted the guys to get a good “shipboard” meal before we left because it might be the last time they'd eat well for a few days. Two Army helicopters arrived early in the morning, and I went over the plan with the pilots. For fire support, I would use the Seawolf Light Helo Fire Team stationed on the LST. I hadn't worked with them before, but they had a good reputation. One helo, I was told, was flown by John Abrams, the nephew of General Creighton Abrams, who had recently relieved General William Westmoreland as Commander, U.S. Forces Vietnam. John Abrams's copilot was a Cuban expatriate, a Bay of Pigs veteran who liked to fight.

We launched the helos from the LST in time to land at last light. The Seawolves accompanied us in case we got into a fight as soon as we touched down. Helo insertions were as hairy as boat insertions, particularly since we'd be landing in an open rice paddy. The two Seawolf gunships flying low over the area would keep enemy heads down, I hoped, long enough for us to get out of the slicks and go to ground near a dike. To confuse the enemy, I had the slicks and the Seawolves do dummy landings in two other rice paddies, a thousand or two meters away. This sort of deception had worked in the past.

Our destination was easy to recognize from the air—or so I'd thought, on the basis of an air recon on the way back from Bac Lieu. The target area was at the confluence of the major canal and a smaller canal running from the east, five canals in from the Bassac. All we had to do was count canals and land between the fifth and sixth. Both I and the lead pilot miscounted, though: we got out between the sixth and seventh canals. Fortunately, this turned out not to matter. It was a really target-rich environment.

With the helos hovering about three feet over the rice paddy, we jumped out, raced to a dike, and set security, waiting for possible fire from the tree line a thousand meters to our rear. I sent two of the men crawling to the edge of the small tree line next to the canal. I needed them forward in case the VC sent someone to investigate from the base camp across the canal. I thought we'd gotten in undetected, but you never knew.

Just after we hit the ground, darkness descended like a curtain. Here in the middle of the Mekong Delta, there were no lights, and the moon had not yet risen. I kept the rest of the platoon by the dike while Clay Grady got on the radio to Gary at Bac Lieu and the TOC on the LST. Once we got good communications with both locations, I moved the platoon to the main canal and formed a perimeter. Dick Cyrus and I headed north along the canal, looking for a good place to stay for the next thirty-six hours.

We found a small, apparently abandoned hootch about ten meters from the canal, partially hidden in a grove of low trees and brush. Alert for any sign of enemy activity, we entered it and looked around. There was no sign of habitation, so I sent Dick back to get the rest of the patrol. I'd be rotating the guys on ambush; the hootch offered good concealment and a place to catch a few winks. We moved in and set up, expecting to be there for a while.

I deployed the platoon by squad in two locations about fifty meters apart on either side of the hootch. The squads would handle their own rotations. We set a perimeter of Claymore mines to our rear, toward the rice paddies.

At first light, I was in the hootch with Clay Grady, Andy Hayden, and Dick Cyrus. Andy manned the doorway, looking through binoculars at the tree line a thousand meters away. Suddenly he said, “Hey, boss, look at this.” He handed me the binoculars. “Look at that tall tree in the tree line behind us.” It was twenty-five meters taller than any tree around it. “Do you see it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

He told me to look at the top. I moved the binoculars slowly up the trunk. In the foliage at the very top of the tree was a guy perched precariously on a branch. He had a set of binoculars to his eyes, and he was looking right at us. I had to resist the impulse to wave. He stayed in the tree another fifteen minutes, then disappeared. I was troubled, but did nothing more than pass the word to stay alert. There had been absolutely no traffic on the canal all night. I was beginning to wonder if we'd drawn a blank.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than Chuck Newell ran into the hootch and said the squad on the right flank had spotted three men in khaki uniforms headed our way. Two were carrying AK-47s and one had an M-79 grenade launcher, but they didn't appear to be on alert.

Chuck asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“Shoot 'em when they get to the edge of our ambush line.” Off he went.

The men were more than likely doing a routine check of the area, but it was possible that our friend in the tree had reported seeing something strange by the canal and that these guys had been sent to check it out. We knew the VC communicated by VHF radio in this area, so we all got a little more alert.

I had gone outside the hootch for a better view when I heard the unmistakable
chung
of a round leaving an M-79 grenade launcher. A 40mm grenade exploded in the water in front of me. Another one followed. I figured the VC were reconnoitering us by fire; if, as they hoped, we returned fire, that would enable them to fix our position. I still wasn't convinced we'd been spotted—if we had been, I figured, they'd do more than just recon by fire. No mortar rounds were exploding in our midst. I told the men to hold their fire until the enemy got closer. This might be part of an NVA battalion. I got on the radio and told the LST to send the helos our way.

The next sound I heard was an M-16 on full automatic fire. Chuck had decided they were close enough and opened up. The next sight I saw was a khaki-clad figure literally running on the water toward the opposite canal bank. Rounds were hitting all around him, but he must have stayed on top of the water halfway across the canal. When he emerged on the other side he kept on running.