The Green Berets: The Amazing Story of the U. S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit

by Robin Moore

  We walked at the head of the security platoon for a few minutes and then Kornie said to me, “You are friend of Colonel Train. How much of what happened today can I tell him? If the VC attack us tonight we might not be able to hold. But they won’t hit us now.”

  “I guess he’d understand that, Steve. Wouldn’t look good for him to lose a camp. But he’s still not really an unconventional warfare man.”

  Kornie nodded in dour agreement.

  “Too bad he couldn’t spend a week with you,” I went on. “That would make a Sneaky Pete out of him if anything ever could.”

  “He would court-martial me out of the Army after a week with me,” Kornie declared. I tended to agree.

  2

  It startled me to look at my watch as we marched into Phan Chau and see it was not quite 9:00 A.M. With all the action I thought it must be later. Kornie went into the operations room in the long house to prepare an after-action report. About noon, Falk completed his assessment of the interrogations at Chau Lu and the account Bergholtz had given him. Kornie called a meeting to which he invited me.

  It was the considered opinion of the Americans that there was little danger of the VC attacking Phan Chau for a few days at least. Kornie called for Sergeant Rodriguez. I was surprised to see the olive-complected Rodriguez in this camp of Viking types. Kornie’s booming laugh when I stared at the Latin showed he had read my mind.

  “Let me tell you, there is nothing more important than a good demolitions man in the kind of work we do. It takes a special devious mind to be a great demo man in the guerrilla game.” Kornie gave Rodriguez a fond hug. “My Teutonic knights miss that Latin demon in the spirit for explosives and detonating systems that makes Rodriguez the best demo man I know in ten years at this business.” Without further explanation Kornie led the short, slight and swarthy sergeant, almost invisible in his commander’s bear hug, toward a corner machine-gun bunker.

  I considered taking a nap, but if Kornie, five years older than I, could look fresh and combat-ready, then I resolved not to sleep either. Instead I walked into the combined chow and recreation room, pulled up a chair and started making notes on what I’d seen that day.

  About 3:30 there was a great commotion on the parade ground. I ran out at once. Lieutenant Cau, his pistol in the back of the neck of a striker, was herding a Vietnamese irregular toward the cage. This is a wire-mesh structure for punishment confinement common to all camps I had visited. It was impossible either to sit down or stand up in it, and during the day the sun broiled the occupant. Captured VC usually talked after two days without water in the cage.

  A Vietnamese Special Forces sergeant opened the cage and the striker was crammed inside, the wire-mesh door locked behind him. Kornie and Rodriguez, who had been somewhere deep inside one of the fortress-camp’s bunkers, crossed the parade ground and arrived at the cage as Lieutenant Cau finished a savage dressing-down of the prisoner.

  “What’s the flap, Cau?” Kornie asked.

  “We discover this man cutting some barbed wire his work detail placing along west walk.”

  Kornie’s face became grave. He turned to Rodriguez. “Finish that job even if you have to work all night.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rodriguez left on the double.

  Kornie stared thoughtfully at the prisoner. “Have you questioned him yet?”

  “No, sir,” Lieutenant Cau answered. “But I have put my best men along the walls and given orders that nobody leave Phan Chau. No man from here give VC any new information.”

  “Very good, Cau. So we do have VC infiltrators in the strike force. I expect it. I advise you and the camp commander to start interrogating this one now.”

  “Sir, Captain Lan took a convoy into town this afternoon.” The lieutenant winked openly. “He may not be back until late tonight.”

  “That makes you acting camp commander, Cau. What are you going to do?”

  Instantly Cau barked orders and two Vietnamese sergeants dragged the squirming striker out of the cage. “You should take this in,” Kornie suggested to me, as the prisoner was hustled off. “Sergeant Ngoc, our Vietnamese Special Forces intelligence sergeant is an expert interrogator. He learned the trade with the Viet Minh before deciding he was not a Communist. I will introduce you to him, then I go back to work. I am worrying how much time we really did buy with our little operation this morning.”

  Kornie led me to the Vietnamese headquarters building. Newly constructed out of concrete with a wood roof, it already had the unkempt look and moldering smell of Vietnamese military quarters.

  Kornie led me along the dank corridor to a square cement room at the rear of the building. Slits at the top of the walls served as windows. A naked, glowing bulb hanging from the ceiling supplemented the light that seeped through the slits. A sallow-complexioned, almost cross-eyed Vietnamese NCO stood behind a crude wooden table surveying the trembling striker who had been brought in. I was introduced to Sergeant Ngoc and after he had milked my hand I rubbed it hard on my fatigue pants.

  I stood in a far corner of the room and watched the proceedings. Ngoc ambled around the table toward the prisoner, seemingly paying him no attention. Suddenly Ngoc’s right hand, palm cupped, swung out and with a hollow pop walloped the right ear of the captive, whose face contorted as he let out a whining yelp. Almost instantly Ngoc repeated the blow with his left hand to the left ear. The VC suspect desperately massaged under his ears and behind his jaw line. Ngoc asked him a question, but the answer did not satisfy him. A chop at the neck dropped the striker sagging to his knees. Ngoc gestured toward the table and two Vietnamese Special Forces enlisted men, acting as guards, dumped their charge into the chair.

  Ngoc snatched at his victim’s left hand and drew it toward him, turning it fingers up, forcing the wrist down on a leather strap nailed to the table. One of the guards fastened the strap tightly around the prisoner’s wrist. Ngoc drew a bayonet from his belt and stabbed it into the table beside him. The prisoner flinched. From under the lapel of his camouflage uniform Ngoc pulled a long heavy pin with a purple globe for a head. In one swift movement he grabbed the striker’s thumb with his left hand and with his right forced the pin under the thumbnail deep into the quick.

  The suspect screamed. Ngoc pushed his face across the table and asked a question. The answer was unsatisfactory. Slowly, staring impassively at his victim, Ngoc worked the bayonet out of the table. Conversationally, he asked the prisoner a few questions and then, with emphasis, another. He waited. No answer. With the flat of the bayonet blade he tapped the head of the pin. The VC suspect let out another scream. Perspiration flowed from his face. One of the guards held the prisoner’s right arm in a painful hammerlock.

  Calmly, Ngoc replaced the bayonet on the table, reached into an inner pocket, and pulled out a notebook and ball-point pen. He laid them near at hand. Then he took up the ball-point pen in his right hand and poised it above the notebook while he quietly asked questions. The suspect blurted out words. Ngoc shook his head chidingly and carefully placed the pen back on the table. He picked up the bayonet and with a click tapped the needle almost to the depth of the quick. A tortured shriek was torn from the prisoner and tears rolled from his eyes.

  Patiently, Ngoc exchanged the bayonet for the pen and waited expectantly. The prisoner was shaking and mumbling, but still he refused to divulge the information Ngoc was seeking. Ngoc waited for half a minute in silence, sighed, put down the pen and picked up the bayonet again. The prisoner’s eyes followed each move Ngoc made. Ngoc held the flat of the blade above the purple pinhead, looked questioningly at the prisoner, and with slow, measured taps drove the needle down into the thumb-joint itself. The screeches extracted with each tap seemed to come not from conscious vocal mechanisms but from the suspect’s inner being. Ngoc dropped his pose of patience and cried out savagely. The prisoner was obviously weakening, his brown face now red and sweat-soaked, his wet eyes glittering hysterically as he watched the flat of the bayonet hover above the head of the pin and t
hen descend with a sharp clack which drove the needle all the way through the bent thumb-joint.

  Lungs busily sucking in the dank air feeding the suspect’s nerve-shattering screams, his whole body twitched and shuddered. It seemed that Ngoc had succeeded in breaking his man. When the echoes subsided, Ngoc began asking questions again. Perhaps the suspect regained control again or maybe the excruciating pain had parched his vocal cords. At any rate, a moment’s relapse into apparent defiance angered Ngoc, who grabbed the head of the imbedded pin and shook it.

  It took all the strength of the two guards to hold the screeching, thrashing body. Finally the prisoner slumped in exhaustion, gasping “Nuc,” the Vietnamese word for water. Ngoc took up his pen again as the prisoner tried to talk, but the words whistled dryly from his throat. At a wave of Ngoc’s hand a guard picked up a bucket of water and dashed it into the suspect’s openmouthed face

  The water revived him sufficiently to talk. At once Ngoc began making notes. Whenever the prisoner seemed on the verge of cutting off the flow of information, Ngoc needed only to move a thumb and forefinger toward the head of the pin protruding from under the victim’s thumbnail and his speech picked up speed.

  After ten minutes of questioning Ngoc was satisfied. He said a few, almost gentle words to the prisoner—and then, a fast, deft move, and suddenly the needle, dripping blood, was in his fingers. The VC, for such he had finally admitted to being, moaned and slumped semi-conscious onto the table. Ngoc wiped the needle off in his victim’s hair and thrust it back into the underside of his lapel. He turned to me with a satisfied look. Picking up his notebook and pen he motioned me to follow him.

  Moments later we were out in the bright sunlight. I stood a moment breathing deeply but Ngoc hurried to Kornie’s operations room.

  An interpreter translated as Naoc, consulting his notebook, delivered to Kornie, Bergholtz, Schmelzer, Falk and Lieutenant Cau the information he had extorted from the VC who had infiltrated the ranks of the Phan Chau strike force.

  Ngoc now had the names of five other VC in the camp. It was possible there were more, but the five on Naoc’s list were the only ones the captured VC knew for sure. Furthermore, Ngoc reported, the attack had indeed been planned for tonight. The prisoner of course had no way of knowing how long it might be delayed now. He hadn’t been among the strikers that raided Chau Lu.

  Lieutenant Cau left to arrest the five men. Kornie looked at his wrist watch. “Too late now for the B-team intelligence boys with a polygraph crew to get here and question them” He shrugged. “Ngoc’s methods work on some of these people, but I do not like torture. We do not even know if the five men our VC infiltrator named are really Communists. With Ngoc I find his victims say anything they think he wants to hear. The lie detector is the best.”

  Kornie turned to Bergholtz. “Tell Borst to radio a report of this to the B team and ask for the polygraph crew tomorrow.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Kornie looked at me. “What do you think of our interrogation procedure?”

  “It’s always grim,” I answered. “But I’ve been around some damned crude sessions. Ngoc is more refined than most.”

  Kornie nodded. “We have had a long, hard day. What say a little schnapps before supper. Hey? Schmelzer? Falk?” Kornie yelled down to the kitchen for ice, went to a cabinet, and took out a bottle of vodka. “Not like the schnapps we drink at my house in Fayetteville, eh?”

  “That old aqua vitae was it, Steve.”

  “Yeah. It is too bad. The PX in Saigon don’t carry schnapps.” The ice arrived and Kornie poured us all a slug of vodka on the rocks. He held his glass up. “Well, even if we only buy another twenty-four hours, the operation was a success.”

  Kornie downed the rest of his drink. “Schmelzer, we keep 50 per cent alert tonight. Now I am going out to the corner bunkers.”

  Before he could leave, Bergholtz returned. “Borst got through to the B detachment,” the team sergeant reported. “Captain Farnham and Sergeant Stitch will be out with the polygraph tomorrow afternoon at 1330 hours. Colonel Train is coming with them.”

  3

  The following morning, there was feverish activity in camp. The concertina, barbed wire so named because it was put out in big cylindrical rolls shaped like an extended squeeze-box, had been anchored to metal pickets around the entire outer perimeter of the camp. Beyond the concertina, tangle-foot barbed wire had been stretched out in the high grass. The inner perimeter was lined with sandbagged heavy log walls, with more barbed wire at their base and sharp bamboo pungi stakes pointing outwards. There was a third innermost defense position, the heavily sandbagged command bunker which could withstand even direct hits by mortar shells. On top of it was a protected observation post. The camp was pockmarked with round, sandbagged mortar emplacements. Phan Chau seemed all but impregnable to me, but Kornie, an experienced man at both assault and defense, was obviously concerned.

  At noon I saw him inspecting the inner defenses and the bunkers for the fourth time that morning. I walked over to him. “Looks like it would take a Panzer division to move you out of here.”

  Kornie shook his head. “We don’t even put out mines and booby traps yet. If they throw two battalions at us they might overrun the camp. It depends on how good the strike force fights. By God damn those politicians in Saigon should not have taken away my Hoa Hao troops.” He studied the outer defense perimeter, a worried look on his ordinarily jovial face. “My Cambodes will stand up good. But when the attack comes the VC ultimately get through the outer barbed wire and we must fight them hand to hand between the perimeters.”

  “You’re pretty sure it will come?”

  “They got to attack. The VC been telling the people in all the hamlets around here they will take Phan Chau and then destroy every hamlet loyal to Saigon. They lose face they don’t hit us. The VC know we get stronger every day.”

  Kornie strode toward the team-house. “I am going to tell Colonel Train the whole story,” he said decisively. “Special Forces is going to have him for three years, maybe even six if he extends. He needs bad the education you don’t get at the School. He may relieve me from command but before he goes from Vietnam he will know I am right.”

  Right on schedule at 1:30 P.M. the Huey landed outside camp. Kornie, Schmelzer, Captain Lan, who had returned from town, and Lieutenant Cau were out to meet Lieutenant Colonel Train and his men from the B team. The colonel alighted from the helicopter and shook hands all around. He asked me if I was finding things interesting enough. Following the colonel out of the chopper came Captain Farnham, the intelligence officer, and his sergeant carrying a large black case.

  We walked through the two crates into camp and Kornie asked if anyone wanted a cold drink. Train shook his head. “Let’s get on with the job.”

  “Right,” agreed Kornie. “Sergeant Ngoc and Sergeant Falk are the intelligence NCO’s here. They’ll show Captain Farnham to the interrogation room and he can run the whole show from there.”

  Train nodded. “Now, Kornie, you and I have to talk someplace secure. High command and the embassy have been asking some very strange questions about your operations out here.”

  “We can go to the operations room, sir.”

  Train took the cigar out of his mouth and gave me an apologetic smile. “You’ll have to excuse us for an hour. Take a look at the polygraph in operation.”

  Sergeant Stitch had set up his machine on the table. With its dials, electrodes, and batteries it was a formidable-looking instrument. The interpreter, Ngoc, and Lieutenant Cau stared at the lie detector with great interest.

  “OK,” Captain Farnham said, “bring in the prisoners one by one.” He asked Falk what he wanted to get out of them.

  “Sir, we want to know if they are VC infiltrators. If they are we want to know the names of other VC sympathizers in the camp. We’d like to know more about the attack on Phan Chau. We think it was planned for last night. Fortunately, we headed it off temporarily.”

  Far
nham gave the intelligence sergeant a sharp look. “That’s what Colonel Train wants to find out about. What the hell did you do? Go right into Cambodia after them?”

  “Sir, I guess Captain Kornie will be discussing that with the colonel.”

  “Good enough.” Farnham turned to his sergeant. “Stitch here is an expert with the polygraph. If anybody can find the answers for you he’s the man.”

  Lieutenant Cau opened the door and three guards shoved a tiger-suited striker into the room. He looked around fearfully and then saw the ominous-looking equipment on the table and recoiled. He was shoved roughly into the chair.

  Stitch walked over to the frightened striker and said a few words in Vietnamese. The prisoner looked up, swallowed, and nodded. Farnham leaned toward me. “The only Vietnamese Stitch knows is how to say, ‘We want to ask you some questions. If you tell the truth you won’t be hurt.’ ”

  The intelligence officer chuckled. “But the Vietnamese think he understands every word they say even though he uses an interpreter.”

  The reassuring words did little to erase the fear written on the suspect’s face, and when Stitch started attaching the electrodes to the striker’s wrists and then wrapped the blood-pressure tubes around his biceps and started to inflate them, terror shone from the prisoner’s eyes.

  Stitch flicked a switch and made some adjustments on the machine. A needle began to oscillate. Then, through the interpreter, Stitch began to ask questions. Ngoc was fascinated with the machine and stared at the needle. It quivered as the interrogation proceeded, and then even before the translator put the question into Vietnamese it vibrated noticeably. Stitch had said “VC.”

  The prisoner denied he was a VC. The needle jumped.

  Ngoc grasped the significance of the box at once and in an instant was on the prisoner, cuffing him sharply on the ears. The prisoner let out a startled yelp and gave Stitch a betrayed look.