A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  On the ground the Hatchet Force, reasonably well protected in their bomb craters, managed to keep the enemy at bay, although they were pinned down by steady volleys of small arms fire. The Nungs possessed too much internal firepower for the NVA to mount a frontal assault, but neither did the Hatchet Force have the ability to counter attack against the large enemy contingent. The situation spelled stalemate. The only hope for the stranded troops was close air support and helicopter extraction. In the middle of the melee, two F-4 Phantoms attempted to come to the rescue by dropping their loads of “snake and nape”—slang for snake-eye retarded fin high-drag bombs and napalm—along the horseshoe shaped ridge. As the Phantoms executed their low-level passes, a barrage of flak greeted both birds, and according to several witnesses one of the jets received a hit in the right wing, nosed over, and crashed in a huge orange fire ball.10

  By that time a rescue fleet consisting of Marine CH-46s from HMM-165 Squadron and H-34 Kingbees from VNAF Squadron 219 had launched from the Khe Sanh FOB. A Kingbee was the first to approach the hot LZ but burst into flames when raked by the heavy ground fire before crashing on Route 922. Another H-34 rescued that crew. Next, a Sea Knight ran the gauntlet of fire and although hit multiple times, it managed to land near the bomb craters and lift out almost an entire platoon. The second CH-46 was not so lucky. Shark 03, piloted by Captain Steven P. Hanson, landed on the LZ under fire, ultimately lifting out 24 Nungs and 3 SOG sergeants: Billy R. Laney, Ronald J. Dexter, and Charles F. Wilklow. While lifting off, the pilot was wounded, lost control, and hit the trees in a violent crash about 350 meters from the LZ. Many aboard were killed or severely injured.11

  As SFC Charlie Wilklow attempted to climb out of the wreckage, he saw SFC Billy Laney on the floor with a massive chest wound, a broken ankle, and probably dead. SFC Ron Dexter appeared uninjured and was helping wounded Nungs out of the twisted wreckage. The wounded pilot, Capt Hanson, crawled outside the helicopter but climbed back in to get his carbine. He was never seen again. Throughout the ordeal the enemy continued to fire on the crash survivors and even tossed grenades toward the downed chopper, apparently with no intention of capturing the personnel inside. As Wilklow dodged the small arms fire ripping into the fuselage, he saw the Marine door gunner, Lance Corporal Frank E. Cius, receive a wound to the head and slump over his gun. Seconds later Charlie Wilklow took a slug in the right leg as he rolled out of the helicopter.12

  Unable to walk, SFC Wilklow began crawling away from the wreck, unaware that SFC Dexter, wounded Lance Corporal Frank Cius, and 12 Nungs had set up a defensive perimeter 200 meters away and were fending off assaults by the enemy. Weak from loss of blood, Wilklow finally passed out. When he came to, he looked up to see an NVA soldier sitting on a wooden platform beside a .51 cal machine gun, watching him from 60 feet above. Similar platforms were in the trees all around him. At that point he realized that he had crawled into the middle of an enemy base camp. Wilklow expected to be captured or more likely shot, but NVA soldiers simply walked over, saw his condition, and left him there. At some point he passed out again. When he woke up, enemy soldiers had moved him into a clearing and placed an orange signal panel beside him in an obvious attempt to use him as bait to lure other helicopters into a flak trap. They left him there all day.13

  Wilklow came to on the second day weak and terribly thirsty. When he tried to lap water from a muddy puddle, enemy soldiers strolled over and urinated in the puddle. Lying in the scorching sun during the day and shivering from the cold rain at night, Charlie Wilklow knew he was dying. The following night, with no one bothering to watch him anymore, the valiant SF trooper mustered what little remaining strength he had and slowly, painfully, began to crawl. He slid face-first down a muddy hillside, passing out occasionally, but he somehow found the willpower to keep going. By sunrise he had dragged himself about two miles. He crawled into a small clearing on the western edge of the A Shau and placed the signal panel beside himself before passing out yet again. When he next came to, he was looking into the face of SOG Staff Sergeant Lester Pace. SSgt Pace dragged the nearly dead Wilklow to a nearby clearing where a Kingbee lifted them both to safety. General Westmoreland personally flew to the hospital at Da Nang to present the Purple Heart to SFC Wilklow.14

  For SOG, the raid on Oscar Eight had been unimaginably costly, with 23 Americans killed or missing, about 50 Nung raiders lost, and 7 aircraft shot down. After the fierce battle, Lance Corporal Frank Cius was listed as MIA, but in actuality he had been captured. When he was released in 1973, Cius told debriefers that SOG SFC Ronald Dexter had also been captured but died in captivity on July 29, 1967. The pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief of Shark 03 were initially listed as MIA, but that status was later changed to presumed dead.15

  At home, the American public knew nothing of these costly raids into Oscar Eight, a blessing for the military since the tempo of anti-war protests had already escalated considerably; had protesters known about SOG battles in Laos, a national mob scene might well have been set in motion. As it was, on October 21, 1967, a huge throng of 50,000 protesters marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the front steps of the Pentagon where the predominately young, college-educated marchers achieved worldwide press coverage of their planned civil disobedience activities. Among the 650 protesters arrested during the march on the Pentagon were such social activist notables as Normal Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin. The march on the Pentagon was only the beginning. Two years later the Vietnam Moratorium Committee staged what is believed to be the largest anti-war protest in United States history when as many as half a million people attended a mostly peaceful demonstration in Washington. The New York Times described the crowd as “predominantly youthful” and a “mass gathering of the moderate and radical Left … old-style liberals; Communists and pacifists and a sprinkling of the violent New Left.” The Times went on to characterize the demonstration by saying, “The predominant event of the day was that of a great and peaceful army of dissent moving through the city.”16 After the Washington demonstrations, everyone, whether hawk or dove, young or old, could better relate to Bob Dylan’s 1964 classic song, “The Times They Are A-Changin.”

  Against the backdrop of anti-war protests and despite the costly Hatchet Force debacle in June, SOG could not resist the lure of another mission into Oscar Eight—in spite of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s 2,500-year-old dire warning about “armies which must not be attacked.” On the afternoon of November 8, 1967, a VNAF Kingbee flew across the A Shau and inserted RT Utah on a grass-covered hilltop in the sinister target area. The team consisted of Master Sergeant Bruce R. Baxter, Staff Sergeant Homer Wilson, Specialist 4 Joseph G. Kusick, and five Montagnards.

  Approximately two hours after inserting, while moving through dense jungle shortly before nightfall, RT Utah was cornered by hundreds of enemy troops. MSgt Baxter quickly directed the fire of his men on the hostile forces, disrupting the large but ragged attack. He was seriously wounded by a blitz of enemy grenades during the firefight that followed, but he refused aid and led his men to a landing zone for extraction. The team was about to be overrun when Huey gunships and Kingbees arrived for the extraction, and under murderous fire the first H-34 made it into the LZ. MSgt Baxter refused to be evacuated, directing instead that SSgt Wilson and half of the team board the aircraft while he remained on the ground. A second Kingbee was downed after being riddled by the devastating ground fire, but Bruce Baxter completely disregarded his own safety by rushing through the hail of bullets to rescue the crew. Next he requested a hoist extraction for the rest of his team, and as soon as the Air Force HH-3 came in, Baxter placed three of his men aboard before the ship abruptly took off under heavy small arms fire. When a second HH-3 helicopter elected to land in near-darkness despite the heavy salvos, MSgt Baxter attempted to climb in only after he was sure that the rest of his team was aboard. Peppered by a barrage of AK-47 fire, both Baxter and Joe Kusick were mortally wounded just as the helicopter was lifting off; it was s
hot down in an attempt to fly out of the area. For his extraordinary heroism, Master Sergeant Bruce R. Baxter was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.17

  As night fell, the surviving crewmembers huddled together not far from the crash site while a lone Huey gunship flown by Warrant Officers Kent Woolridge and William Zanow made one final pass to help, but in a hail of antiaircraft fire it too was shot down. In the darkness the forlorn survivors waited, but the enemy did not move in for the kill. “Instead of finishing off the survivors,” an Air Force debrief noted, “the communists used them for bait to bag more rescue choppers.”18

  In 1967, night vision goggles had not been perfected, so SOG team extractions during darkness rarely occurred. But just after midnight on November 9, 1967, two “Jolly Green Giant” Search and Rescue (SAR) helicopters from the Da Nang-based 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron (ARRS) agreed to give it a shot. Supported by an orbiting Covey FAC, two Army gunships, and a Blind Bat (a C-130 flare ship), Jolly Green 29 moved into position for the pickup. Fully aware that three other helicopters had already been shot down, Captain John B. McTasney nevertheless flew his big HH-3 chopper through a curtain of small arms fire, and with complete disregard for his personal safety, set his left landing gear against the steep mountain slope. Illuminated by the flares from the C-130, he maintained this position and picked up three survivors before hostile fire severely damaged his helicopter. As Jolly Green 29 staggered out of the area, enemy ground fire knocked out both generators and the intercom system, cut two fuel lines, and caused the cargo compartment to flood with fuel. Warning lights flashed in the cockpit, sparks lit the bird’s interior, and the engine instruments fluctuated wildly. Capt McTasney, demonstrating a remarkable degree of coolness and professional skill, flew the crippled HH-3 to Khe Sanh and landed safely in the dark despite the loss of one engine during descent and 30 bullet holes in his aircraft. For his extraordinary heroism Capt John McTasney received the Air Force Cross.19

  A few minutes behind Jolly Green 29 and en route to Oscar Eight, Captain Gerald O. Young unhesitatingly piloted Jolly Green 26 into the fray. Even though McTasney advised him not to try it, Young decided to attempt the rescue of the remaining team members when he replied simply, “Hell, we’re airborne and hot to trot.”20 Under the eerie, wavering yellow illumination from the parachute flares, and bracketed by streams of green tracers, Capt Young eased his big bird into the steep mountain slope and went into a hover with his right landing gear resting on the ground and his rotor blades barely clearing the bank above him. Enemy troops brazenly moved into the open and sprayed Jolly Green 26 with automatic weapons fire as several Montagnards, all wounded, attempted to climb aboard with the bodies of Baxter and Kusick. Only seconds after Young lifted off, an RPG streaked out of the tree line and exploded against the left engine, setting it on fire. CWO Kent Woolridge, whose Huey gunship had been shot down earlier, witnessed the terrifying crash of Jolly Green 26. According to Woolridge, “He came off the ground, dropped the nose and rose about 60 feet into his departure path. Suddenly the nose pitched up and J.G. 26 slipped aft. It descended tail first until the aircraft contacted the ground and exploded in flames.”21

  What Kent Woolridge observed from the ground was the force of the RPG explosion flipping the HH-3 inverted, causing it to fall on its back, slam into the steep slope, and careen down the hillside. At that point the engine fire engulfed the entire aircraft. Hanging upside down in his harness, his flight suit on fire, Capt Young finally escaped through the broken windshield and rolled down hill about a 100 yards to extinguish the flames. He received second and third-degree burns on his legs, back, arms, and neck. Spotting a Montagnard lying nearby who had been tossed clear of the crash, Young crawled over and with his bare hands extinguished the flames on the young soldier’s clothing. Young, fearing that others might be trapped in the burning wreckage, crawled back up the slope only to be driven away by intense enemy fire and unbearable heat from the blazing wreckage.

  At first light, a flight of A-1 aircraft, call sign Sandy, arrived over Oscar Eight to soften up enemy defenses so Jolly Green rescue choppers could hopefully lift the survivors to safety. The badly burned Young realized that the NVA intended to use him as bait for a flak trap, so he hid the unconscious soldier, and in a display of amazing courage, yelled and shouted at enemy troops he could see setting up machine gun positions. Fully aware that his actions meant almost certain capture or death, Capt Gerald Young took off into the jungle leading his pursuers away from the crash site. With all enemy troops in pursuit of Young, an HH-3 slipped in to rescue the Army and VNAF survivors, also permitting the insertion of a small SOG Hatchet Force. While Young led the NVA farther and farther away, the Hatchet Force quickly searched the crash site and found the charred remains of Bruce Baxter and Joe Kusick. Capt Young, in the meantime, stumbled and crawled a distance of six miles. Only when he was sure he had eluded his pursuers did he use his survival radio to call in a rescue helicopter for himself—17 hours after the crash.22 Unfortunately, before they could retrieve the bodies from Jolly Green 26 for evacuation, the Hatchet Force engaged in a running gun battle with a large NVA unit; the SOG force was not extracted until November 11 and none of the dead from the crash was ever recovered.

  The gutsy pilot of Jolly Green 26 spent six months in the hospital recovering from his burns. In May 1968, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in Oscar Eight, Captain Gerald O. Young attended a White House ceremony to receive the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon Johnson.23

  In retrospect, on its 1967 ventures into Oscar Eight, SOG failed to achieve any of its goals, and although there has been considerable post mortem debate as to the root cause of the failure, it most certainly was not because of a lack of effort, determination, or valor on the part of the brave warriors who fought and died west of the A Shau. At the time, however, SOG viewed its missions into Oscar Eight—disastrous though they were—as beneficial. The SOG command history for 1967 even justified the raids by noting that “Of particular interest, the A Shau salient continually evidences intense enemy activity and is known to harbor enemy base areas.”24

  The real issue, however, was in effect left hanging. SOG teams could well have served as both scouts and the vanguard for major attacks on Oscar Eight by larger conventional forces, forces that could have wiped out a major NVA supply area; however, because of rigid political restrictions imposed by Ambassador William H. Sullivan in Vientiane, no such large-scale cross border attacks were ever going to happen. Instead, the A Shau remained a major enemy stronghold and transshipment point, virtually ignored by MACV except for pinprick attacks by SOG’s daring teams.

  chapter

  5

  ANNUS HORRIBILIS: 1968

  Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two

  do not make six.—LEO TOLSTOY

  In early 1968, deep in the shadows of the A Shau, as was indeed true throughout Vietnam and the United States, a discordant, ill-omened wind blew. Even the American troops in Vietnam sensed it, although evidently MACV did not. Recuperating in a hospital near Saigon from a nasty punji stick wound, a young infantry officer, Lieutenant Mike Sprayberry, had time to reflect on the war, arriving at a conclusion that many other soldiers shared. In a letter home he prophetically wrote, “This war will not be won on the battlefield within the next five years unless something happens politically. It’s going to be worse before it’s better.” Mike Sprayberry’s intuition was correct; it did get worse—much worse. Three months later he found himself fighting for his life in the A Shau.

  Coincidentally, in Saigon the soothsayers for the Chinese astrological calendar predicted a less than auspicious phase. In the Year of the Monkey, the powers that be were forecast to be lethargic, concentrating on marginal matters while ignoring more important issues. They would close their eyes to complications, finding them beneath their consideration.

  One day after the beginning of th
e Lunar New Year, the price of ignoring important issues or concentrating on small matters reverberated through the country with catastrophic results. On January 31, VC and NVA forces launched one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, a coordinated series of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. Approximately 80,000 communist troops simultaneously struck more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of 44 provincial capitals, 72 of 245 district towns, and the crown jewel itself, Saigon. Perhaps Hanoi’s greatest military success occurred at Hue when an entire NVA/VC division infiltrated through the nearby A Shau Valley to capture the old imperial capital and hold it for over three weeks, committing unspeakable atrocities against the civilian population in the process. Enemy forces there and throughout the country, however, paid an extremely high price for this bold adventure. An estimated 45,000 had died by the end of February, substantiating MACV’s contention that by any standard what came to known as the Tet Offensive represented a massive military defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.1