As the meeting ended, General Giai mentioned one more thing. “He . . . told us, directly in his broken English, that he thought we were crazy and that our mission had little chance for success,” remembered Norris. The South Vietnamese, with artillery, heavy machine guns, and thousands of troops, were barely hanging on in the face of the enemy onslaught. The Americans were going to send a few lightly armed soldiers into that onslaught and try to bring out two men. To Giai, it wasn’t just foolish. It was inexplicable.
Undaunted, Norris and Andersen thanked the general and raced off to their next set of briefings, which stretched into the afternoon. Then they and their team headed to Dong Ha, where they met with the commander of the First Armor Brigade, exchanged radio frequencies, and finalized their plans.
Andersen had put the mission together with dazzling speed, but in his determination to save Hambleton, he’d left some rancor trailing in his wake. In the eyes of his superiors, the Marine was off the reservation. Perhaps fearing that he’d find a way to scuttle the mission, Andersen hadn’t notified his commanding officer that he was leaving for the Mieu Giang; in fact, he’d failed to tell anyone at all in his chain of command the first thing about this daring and perilous operation he was going to lead behind enemy lines. Instead, he “kind of disappeared,” in the words of his second-in-command, Major Gerald Bauknight. Unable to find Andersen anywhere, one Colonel Frank Zerbe summoned Bauknight to his office to express his deep displeasure at recent developments. “They didn’t know what was happening,” Bauknight remembers. “And partly out of frustration, Zerbe just gave me a really terrible dressing down. He said, ‘You goddamn son of a bitch. If anything goes wrong with that operation, you guys are gonna be hung out to dry. We’re not gonna protect you in any way.’”
The next morning, Hambleton heard a buzzing in the air; it was one of the FACs, revving his engine. Hambleton got on the radio, and the two joked about what each had had for breakfast. The FAC said he’d feasted on bacon and eggs, while Hambleton pretended to seethe about his meal of cold corn. Actually, the kernels had partially frozen overnight and the milky liquid inside was cold and refreshing. Most of all, he was happy to have an American above him again.
Around four o’clock, the FAC raised him once more on the radio. “We are going to have to do something different,” he said.
Hambleton nodded. “Roger.”
The FAC asked if Hambleton knew his exact position. Hambleton confirmed. “All right,” the FAC said, “the high command has decided that you are going to have to act like Esther Williams and Charlie the Tuna.”
Hambleton froze. What on earth was the guy talking about? He vaguely remembered the second name—it was the plummy-voiced cartoon character from the seafood commercials on TV—and clearly the FAC was employing some kind of code. But what did it mean?
He called up the FAC. “What have you been smoking?” he asked.
The FAC said again that he was to make like Esther Williams and Charlie the Tuna. Hambleton was still stumped. It was “the damnedest thing I had ever heard,” he said. Esther Williams he understood. She’d been a competitive swimmer who’d starred in a series of “aquamusicals,” where women in one-piece suits executed elaborate numbers, synchronized to perfection. She was known as “the million dollar mermaid.” Everyone knew Esther Williams.
It meant he was going to swim. Clearly. But why Charlie the Tuna? He asked the FAC to elaborate. “Because nobody ever catches Charlie the Tuna,” the man finally said.
Hambleton smiled. “I think I’ve got your message.”
“Good. What we are going to do is this . . . You’ve got to get to the Swanee.”
There was a real river, actually spelled Suwannee, in Georgia, but what the Air Force expected Hambleton to remember was the minstrel song “Old Folks at Home,” written by Stephen Foster in 1851. “Way down upon the Swanee River,” it went, “far, far away.” Many Americans of Hambleton’s generation knew the song, and the navigator recognized the reference immediately. “I’ve got it now,” he said. It was the Mieu Giang River; had to be.
The FAC, or those directing him, were clearly choosing pop culture references that would be inscrutable to the NVA intelligence officers listening in. If he’d said “the Amazon” or “the Mekong,” the meaning would have been immediately clear. Not once during the long and complex journey that faced Hambleton would the word “river” be uttered over the radio.
“This is a decision that is going to be entirely up to you,” the FAC said. “You don’t have to do this. You can stay where you are and we will make every effort to get you out of there but it will be faster if we can get you where we want to pick you up.”
Hambleton rogered that.
“Now remember what is out there on both sides of you. It is going to be very dangerous.”
“I realize that,” Hambleton said.
The FAC again repeated that this was Hambleton’s decision. The navigator asked for some time to think it over.
In Washington, President Nixon and National Security Advisor Kissinger watched the developments in Vietnam with growing alarm. The NVA were sweeping through the northern provinces toward the provincial capital of Quang Tri; firebases and towns were falling to the enemy one after the other. The president was incensed about Moscow’s role in the offensive. He knew the North Vietnamese leaders kept the Soviet leadership informed about major initiatives on the battlefield, so they must have known the attack was coming. Had they done anything to prevent it? The world press was decrying Nixon’s massive buildup, but Nixon regarded the Soviets as the true aggressors. “If this succeeds,” Kissinger told the president that morning, “Soviet arms will have overturned the balance on the Indian subcontinent and run us out of Southeast Asia.” Nixon agreed with this bleak assessment.
The afternoon of the tenth, Nixon attended a diplomatic gathering. The long-serving Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin was present in the crowd as Nixon rose to say a few words. “Every great power must follow the principle,” the president said to the assembled guests, “that it should not encourage directly or indirectly any other nation to use force or armed aggression against one of its neighbors.” It was a shot across the Soviets’ bow. Dobrynin was said to have remained “stone-faced” throughout the speech.
Events in Vietnam were threatening to destroy many months of work that the president hoped would fundamentally reset the balance of power in the world. He was worried that the massive buildup he’d ordered to stop the NVA invasion would give Brezhnev a reason to cancel their historic meeting. It was possible Nixon could lose both the Moscow summit and the war in the coming weeks. He simply didn’t know what was going on in the Kremlin. Were the Soviets ready to deepen the Cold War or were they eager for peace?
In Moscow, Dobrynin’s superiors were equally disturbed by what was happening in Vietnam. Ever since Kissinger’s trip to Beijing the year before, the Soviets had been eager for a summit. A reconciliation between China and the United States could leave the USSR isolated and weakened, and Brezhnev badly wanted the Nixon meeting to advance their own relationship with Washington and to end the nuclear arms race that was draining much-needed cash from the Soviet economy. But the North Vietnamese had thrown a wrench in the Kremlin’s plans by launching the Easter Offensive. Months before the tanks started rolling, Hanoi had sent envoys to both Beijing and Moscow to inform them of the coming attack, hoping to combine their triumph on the battlefield with a united communist front against any American counterattack. Moscow reacted badly. “The Vietnamese risk too much,” one Soviet diplomat wrote after hearing Hanoi’s plans. Soviet leaders pressed their allies to work for a solution at the negotiating table in Paris instead of launching the blitzkrieg-style attack, but the North Vietnamese were adamant. They wanted to gamble on a victory in the field.
It was a game of four-cornered chess being played out in three world capitals and one third-world capital. And neither Brezhnev, Nixon, Mao, nor Le Duan in Hanoi had a very good understanding of wha
t the others were thinking or how far their adversaries were willing to go.
In the early hours of April 10, Norris and Andersen, having made all the arrangements for the operation, rolled up Route 9 in an M113 armored personnel carrier. The North Vietnamese held the town of Cam Lo and the surrounding territory; the Americans were traveling toward the front line, just east of where the enemy units patrolled, on the south bank of the Mieu Giang River.
What Andersen’s thoughts were on that journey have remained private, but he had to know that his reputation and his military career now turned on getting Hambleton out. “If the mission had failed,” one officer later heard an Army colonel say, “I was going to be the first one in line to court-martial his ass.” But the Marine was adamant. “I want to know some success,” Andersen told fellow soldiers, “before we stand down.”
The personnel carrier rocked its way over the rugged roads toward the forward base. When it arrived, Andersen and Norris found an old circular French bunker perched on a small hill offering a clear view of the river. The bunker was squat and thick walled, and it was flanked by three South Vietnamese tanks. The tank’s crews and about twenty hungry, sleep-deprived South Vietnamese rangers manned the position. To get off on the right foot with the rangers, Andersen began handing out extra rations he’d brought along, while Norris greeted the men in Vietnamese. The rangers nodded and addressed him as Dai Yu, or “Captain.”
As he talked to the men, Norris grew concerned. The officer in charge was a young second lieutenant, and Norris could tell just by looking at the guy that he didn’t want the Americans there. Perhaps he believed the mission would draw the enemy to the bunker, endangering his men, or maybe he thought it was just a waste of time. In any case, Norris felt a dark vibe.
There were other things that bothered the SEAL as he checked out the forward base. Three tanks was a significant amount of firepower, but Norris discovered the crews had only a few shells for each main gun. Once those were expended, the soldiers would have to use the 50 caliber machine guns exclusively. The NVA were close, just across the river. If they attacked his team as they returned from the mission, the tanks would offer little protection.
The five South Vietnamese sea commandos who would go upriver with Norris were milling around the base. In Norris’s experience, some of the South Vietnamese commandos were very, very good and the rest were barely adequate. Many, for instance, couldn’t function long in cold water, especially in a heavy current. That would be a problem, as the Mieu Giang was likely to be near freezing. Norris was worried about the commandos’ fitness for water work; he was anxious to get down to the river and test the current and temperature.
Among the commandos was a short, serious-looking sailor, Petty Officer Nguyen Van Kiet, who’d had a somewhat checkered career in the sea commandos. “In the early years, I felt free,” Kiet later recalled, “and when we got our salary, we would drink and play around all night long and we didn’t care about the rules. I got thrown in the monkey house [jail] for a few days because they considered me and my friends bad guys.” Kiet was as rugged as he was wild. When a subordinate refused to obey his orders, Kiet wouldn’t report him; his leadership style was more direct than that. The two men would take off the insignia that denoted their rank, and then they would fight until Kiet prevailed. “After, we shook hands,” he said. “Man to man, you know.” Kiet had calmed down since then, but he was still a tough, disciplined sailor.
After giving out his rations, Andersen, who spoke fluent Vietnamese, gathered up the South Vietnamese rangers and explained what they were going to do. The reception to the plan was frosty. The second lieutenant refused point-blank to take part in the operation; any foray into enemy territory could only call down bad things—such as enemy artillery—on his position. Andersen countered that, if trouble developed, the South Vietnamese troops and the rescue team would have as much air power as they wanted. That didn’t seem to impress the lieutenant or the rangers, so Andersen pulled out his trump card: he announced he would shoot anyone who abandoned his post. The men listened silently. The briefing broke up with the threat still hanging in the air.
Afterward, Norris watched the rangers. They were sitting around the little base, grilling their food and joking with one another. The enemy was close, but the men seemed to feel no sense of danger. And despite Andersen’s threat, they made it clear that their dedication to the rescue was conditional. “It was understood amongst them that if we feel insecure,” he said, “we’re outta here and you guys are on your own.” Norris realized that if he was pinned down with one of the downed men a hundred yards from the base and called on the radio for help, the South Vietnamese might come, or they might not.
That afternoon, Hambleton sat in his little grove, thinking. Despite the FAC’s insistence that it was his choice what would happen next, it was clear that the Air Force wanted him to move. He knew why: the exorbitant cost of his seemingly cursed rescue. “I thought of the . . . men who had been lost trying to get me,” he said. “I thought of the many aircraft I had been tying up.” He also factored in his dwindling supplies of food and water. He knew he was growing weaker and that his deterioration was likely to accelerate.
The grove was quiet as he contemplated the FAC’s words. Birds chattered in the brush, but there were no sounds of guns or villagers calling out to one another. He had to decide quickly. The plan was not ideal; in fact, it was “goddamn grim” in his opinion. But he couldn’t think of a better one. Unaware of General Abrams’s orders forbidding any further helicopter rescues, he calculated that staying where he was would put more chopper crews and more aircraft in danger. It was also entirely possible that he could pass on the idea, remain in the grove or trees, and slowly sink into unconsciousness as his strength ran out. That would not end well.
Hambleton made his decision. He picked up the radio and called the FAC. “I’ll go with the plan,” he said. “Tell me exactly what you want me to do.”
At that moment, Mark Clark, the backseater from Bill Henderson’s plane, was still in hiding close to the river. The airman from Idaho was thoroughly miserable. He felt terrible guilt at the loss of the men who’d tried to save him, and this guilt preyed on his mind in the many empty hours of the day. He’d also found it difficult to get any rest. He could hear “tremendous numbers” of people—perhaps refugees from the American airstrikes—tramping by his hiding place. And every so often the sound of villagers moving down to the river to get water came to him through the brush. They passed within fifteen feet of him as he “scrunched himself up,” praying they didn’t stumble on his position.
After only two days on the ground, he’d started to hallucinate. “I noticed myself becoming almost schizophrenic from lack of sleep. My legs were a different person and my arms were a different person still. I was sort of going to pieces.” He felt like he was losing his mind and decided that, too if no one had come to rescue him by the tenth day, he was going to strike out on his own and try to make for the coast.
During the long hours when he couldn’t fall asleep, Clark had made himself useful by calling in airstrikes on the gun emplacements he saw around him. One airstrike, however, had come in unexpectedly close to his position. “I could hear that shell scream the whole way down,” he said. The bomb slammed into the earth and sent debris flying; some of it tore away the vegetation that concealed him. The shrapnel barely missed him. Clark had to go scouting for more leaves and branches to cover himself.
Now one of the FACs circling above him got on the radio and relayed the escape plan. Golf had provided the code for Hambleton, but Clark was a much more difficult proposition. He wasn’t a fanatic for the sport like his fellow survivor; he had no hobbies that involved distances and directions. Eventually, the planners had fallen back on geography.
As the FAC’s first message proved, it wasn’t as elegant a solution as golf. “When the moon goes over the mountain,” the man told him, “become Esther Williams, get in the Snake, and go from Boise to Twin Fall
s.” Clark didn’t know what the hell the guy was talking about. He did understand that this was a code, and the Snake referred to the Snake River in his native Idaho, but the rest was as mysterious to him as Swahili. “Shit,” he said, “I couldn’t remember if Boise was east or west of Twin Falls.” He told the FAC he had no idea what he’d just said.
The FAC consulted with base, then came back. “Go to Eglin,” he said. Eglin was Eglin Air Force Base, which was in Florida. That was about as obvious as it got. Florida was east of Idaho, so he had to get in the river and head east. The danger, of course, was that if the North Vietnamese had a map of the United States, they could figure it out too.
After waiting for nightfall, Clark emerged from his hiding place and began making his way down to the river.
Hambleton picked up his survival vest and went through it, weeding out the things he wouldn’t need on his journey. The heavy pen gun flares went first. Next went the oxygen mask. He debated over his flight helmet, then decided it was too bulky to carry with him.
What remained were his radios, .38 caliber revolver, survival knife, first-aid kit, boots, gloves, flares, and some Thai paper money. And the single remaining ear of corn. He stuffed that in one of the vest pockets.
Hambleton packed the items he was leaving behind into the flight helmet and placed it at the bottom of his hiding place. He covered it with dirt, uprooted a small plant, and stuck it in the loose soil to disguise the spot. He found a branch and backed out of the little covert, sweeping away his footprints as he went.
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