by Robin Moore
He was silent for some moments. “End of story. To be continued next time the Agency gets instructions to reactivate clandestine operations with the tribesmen in Laos. Pay Dang could sure do a job on the VC coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail.”
8
Fourteen VC POWs
The hardest thing to do in Vietnam is to get yourself transported from one place to another. Almost always the last fifty miles are the hardest. It wasn’t too hard to hop a milk run for Da Nang about four hundred miles north of Saigon, but I had to wait two and a half days for a flight across the fifty miles of mountainous jungle to the Special Forces camp at Lua Vuc.
The layover at the Special Forces B team in Da Nang was most interesting, thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Tex Quentin. A lean, white-haired veteran civic affairs administrator, Colonel Tex, as he was known to everyone, was in charge of the Special Forces civic action programs in I Corps.
Colonel Tex introduced me to Dr. Portland Francis, a medical missionary active in this part of Vietnam since his graduation from medical school ten years earlier. Special Forces had contributed engineering talent, materials and funds to help Dr. Francis and his mission build a leprosarium and an orphanage. When he heard I was heading out to Lua Vuc, Dr. Francis gave me a full briefing on the montagnard problems in this part of Vietnam, whose largest single tribe was the Bru.
Great animosity exists between the Vietnamese who inhabit the lowlands and the mountain tribesmen, he told me. The Vietnamese consider the montagnards a low and despised social order calling them “mois,” which means dirty savage. According to legend the mountain tribesmen once owned all of what is now central Vietnam, with their capital at the coastal city of Nha Trang. The beginning of the end came for the tribesmen when their king fell in love with and married a princess from the southern flatlands. She plotted his murder, and the now-leaderless montagnards were driven back into the mountains by the low-landers and contained there ever since. The montagnards have never forgiven the Vietnamese for this incursion.
Doctor Francis and his mission were training Vietnamese missionaries to carry the Gospel to the mountain people. Because they were Vietnamese these missionaries had been able to make some progress toward mediating the disputes between montagnards and Vietnamese. But, Doctor Francis warned, I would still see many tragic examples of this unreasoning hatred. He looked at Colonel Tex to see if he had spoken out of turn.
“He’ll find out for himself, anyway,” the civic action officer said. “Wait till he sees the Vietnamese Air Force bomb a non-government-controlled montagnard hamlet.”
“You can’t mean that!” I exclaimed.
“I’m afraid I do. They’ve got a perfect excuse—if a montagnard refuses to live in a government-built and -patrolled village he must be Viet Cong.”
“So why don’t they stay in the government hamlets?” I asked. “The ones I’ve seen are well supplied and even offer good medical aid.”
“They hate the regimentation of the Vietnamese who. despise them; and besides, the ARVN troops aren’t much protection against the Viet Cong. The Communists come in after dark, when the Vietnamese hate to fight, and kidnap the most intelligent montagnard leaders and send them north to be brainwashed. And what pitifully few supplies the tribesmen get from the government, USOM, and Americans like the Special Forces, are taken away by the VC.”
“No matter what the poor tribesmen do, they lose,” Doctor Francis said sadly. “The VC terrorize them because they’re in government hamlets and not out helping the Communists. If they try to escape from both the Vietnamese and the VC and build villages on their own, the Air Force bombs them.”
“Just because they’re unsanctioned by the government?” I asked in disbelief.
“Ostensibly yes,” Colonel Tex said. “All pilots returning from missions with unexpended ordnance have standing orders from Vietnamese high command to pick non-government montagnard villages as targets of opportunity. And feeling the way they do about the mois, they go to it whenever they get the chance. Yes, I’m afraid you will be coming across a lot of newly made Communist montagnards out around Lua Vuc.”
“I understand you have missionaries out there with the tribes,” I said. “They must be some help counteracting Communism.”
“They were.” Doctor Francis shook his head. “But I had to call them back after the Taggerts’ home was bombed by the Viet Cong. Reverend Taggert, his wife, and small daughter lived with the Bru people for almost two years. They did fine work bringing God to the tribesmen and keeping the Bru from Communist influence. Now, three months later, the Taggerts are still hospitalized back in the States.”
I was taken to the leprosarium and the orphanage the missionary had built with the help of Special Forces engineering talent and, of course, funds. It was here I learned the shocking fact—to an American, at least—that what amounts to virtual child slavery was not uncommon in Vietnam. A Vietnamese or montagnard child who lost or became separated from his parents had no problem finding a new home. Many a foster parent would bind the child into a long period of near-slavery, even going so far as selling him to other parents for labor. As a result, the pleasant, airy orphan asylum on its beautiful beach was a source of particular pride to Doctor Francis and the Special Forces—many of whom chipped in for its upkeep out of their own monthly paychecks.
The constructive work of the missionaries and Special Forces civic action teams was a happy revelation in this war of unrelieved misery. I tried to see as much of it as possible before Colonel Tex saw me off for Lua Vuc on the workhorse Marine helicopter. It was loaded with supplies and personnel for several of the remote outposts and accompanied by two equally burdened H34’s and two armed HU21b choppers flying escort.
In spite of the gun ships flying above us, three VC bullets tore through the chopper as it settled into the pad at Lua Vuc. I alternately sat on my flak jacket and wrapped the armored vest about me, trying to decide which way would give me the most protection.
Captain Vic Locke, in his third year of jungle warfare, was the American CO at Lua Vuc. Locke had a formidable reputation as a Special Forces captain; he had no qualms when it came to getting an assignment accomplished. More than once he had boldly crossed the border into Laos to kill or capture a Viet Cong leader comfortably camped in privileged sanctuary.
Captain Locke and two of his sergeants were at the landing zone to meet the chopper. All during the time the green-bereted enlisted men unloaded their supplies, Locke was having an obviously heated argument with the pilot, who just as determinedly kept shaking his head. The moment the last of the supplies had been unloaded, the pilot shot the chopper into the air, the gun ships practically on the deck to discourage any more VC small-arms fire.
Captain Locke, wearing the thin montagnard brass bracelet on his left wrist that showed he’d been made an honorary tribesman, led me to the truck he had driven out to meet the flight. A squad of stumpy montagnards had just finished loading it. We all piled in and drove back to the camp. The montagnards kept their weapons at the ready, pointed out of the truck in all directions.
“Do the VC get in this close to the camp?” I asked.
“You never know where they are in this kind of territory,” Locke answered. “They sneak up and plant a mine in this road once in a while.”
The floor of the truck was heavily sandbagged. More than a few Special Forces men had saved their legs, if not their lives, by having their feet squarely over the sandbags when their truck hit a Communist mine.
The camp was a triangle of sandbags and mud walls, surrounded by barbed wire. At each of the three points was a large, high bunker. Several smaller machine-gun bunkers were built up along each of the walls.
The montagnard guards at the gate saluted and let us by the barricades. We pulled up in front of the teamhouse and Locke suggested we go in for some chow. Locke’s XO, Lieutenant Grannum, stood when we walked in.
“Hey, Chopsticks!” he yelled toward the kitchen. “Bring the captain and his guest s
ome chow. Hot god-damned chow,” he added.
Grinning and bowing, the Chinese cook shuffled into the teamroom. “OK! OK! Chopstick bling. On dlubble!” The cook’s eyes crinkled, apparently with pure joy at dispensing more of his food.
Locke watched him go. “We got to keep on old Chop’s ass. He gets lazy and makes his girl, Tillie, do all the work. He’s owned her for ten years.”
A broad-faced, smiling girl, who looked to be a mixture of every ethnic culture that had ever passed through Vietnam, walked in gracefully and put a steaming bowl of rice and meat in front of us.
“She’s nice, she’s round, and she’s all Chop’s,” one of the sergeants said and whistled. Tillie beamed at him, switched her long black hair and walked back to the kitchen.
“Where’s the tea?” another sergeant roared.
“Tea come. Joe bring in tea,” Chopsticks cried, and a short, incredibly walleyed little montagnard, dressed in a cutdown camouflage uniform, came in with the pitcher of iced tea. His wide smile looked as though it had been sewed on at birth. Turning his head sideways so he could keep one eye focused on where he was going, Joe filled all the glasses.
“Looks like Joe’s got the ass,” Locke remarked. “Chops must be making him do too much work. Joe doesn’t speak much English. Watch: Hey, Joe, you a leg?”
Joe contorted with laughter at the old joke. “Joe no leg. Chopstick fucking leg.” Everybody laughed, except a young, very preoccupied sergeant who hadn’t said a word since we came in.
Locke’s smile faded. “Sergeant Binney’s our chief medic.” He stood up and went over to the man. “Still nothing you can do?”
“No, sir. You’ve got to get her to the hospital in Da Nang or she’ll die. I can’t mess with the thing. Manelli is with her now.”
“Come on,” Locke said to me, “might as well have a look at the kind of problems we have.”
I followed Locke across the mud parade square and into another building. “This is our dispensary and field hospital,” he explained.
To the right as we walked in was the pharmacy in which two LLDB medics were working. To the left was a waiting room, and seated on benches were a number of montagnard women, most of them holding babies. A dozen or so men in camouflage fatigues also were waiting to see a medic.
We walked in past examining rooms, through a ward in which a dozen men were lying, many in casts with arms or legs raised ceilingwards.
“Those are some of the casualties from our most recent patrol. We got hit hard by a company of VC that rushed us from across the border in Laos.”
The last room was a small ward for female dependents of the strike force. An American sergeant was tending to an emaciated, feverish montagnard woman, who lay moaning on a cot, covered up to her shoulders with a white sheet. Her skin was yellowish and stretched tight over her face bones, the eyes deeply sunken in her head.
“No good, eh Manelli?” Locke asked.
The medic shook his head. “No, sir. You can’t get her back to Da Nang?”
“No luck yet. Sorry.” The captain leaned over the woman, who looked up at him with glazed eyes.
Locke took me aside. “Her baby died yesterday morning while she was giving birth. For some damned reason—maybe she’s too small—it got stuck in some manner, and the medics don’t have the facilities to get it free without risking an infection they can’t take care of here. I’ve been trying to get a medical evacuation for her, but the Vietnamese Air Force have a rule in this corps area against evacuating civilians. Of course, she’s a montagnard, and that makes it even worse, the way the Viets and the Brus get along. Her husband is in the strike force and knows she could be saved by a med evac. How are we supposed to win over these people for this government when its representatives treat them this way?”
“You couldn’t have put her on the chopper that brought me in?”
“That’s what I was arguing with the pilot about. But he had a tough schedule ahead of him, and besides, he didn’t want to get his group’s ass in a sling with their Vietnamese counterparts.” Locke stared at the mortally suffering mother. “Some war. Is it like this all over Vietnam?”
“One way or another.”
“I have a wife and three children on Okinawa,” Locke said. “I don’t think this woman means any less to her Bru husband than my wife does to me. I know how I’d feel if the country I was fighting for wouldn’t help my wife.”’
“How about the Vietnamese Special Forces camp commander? Can’t he do something through Vietnamese channels?”
“Captain Nim?” Locke hooted. “He told me he’d be put in jail if he so much as requested evacuation for a sick montagnard civilian. I know he believes it. Of course, any time we pick up Viet Cong prisoners VNAF will get choppers out here practically on an emergency basis. They rush the POW’s to Da Nang so that Vietnamese Intelligence can torture them—for information and recreation, as we say.” Locke laughed bitterly. “But this poor woman—you’d never know it, she’s only nineteen.”
I let out a surprised gasp. “She must be thirty-five or forty!”
“You should see what she’s been through the last couple of days. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve got a man trying to locate a sampan to take her by river from here to Da Nang. I don’t think she has much chance of living through the two-day boat trip, but it’s better than letting her die here.”
Outside the infirmary Locke led me back across the parade ground and into his operations room. A map covered with camouflage cloth dominated one wall. In red letters on the cloth was written KIN, the Vietnamese word for secret.
“OK,” Locke said, “I’ll give you a rundown on the situation and what we hope to accomplish on the patrol going out tomorrow.” He pulled the cover cloth off the map and pointed to a red square. “Here’s Lua Vuc as you can see, only about five thousand meters from the Laos border.”
His finger ran south from Lua Vuc about fifteen kilometers to a point that looked to be almost in Laos. “Here, there’s a village with perhaps two hundred Bru men, women, and children. The VC are exploiting them, making them farm and work for them. Our Intelligence indicates that the Communists are planning to take the men across the border, train them, and send them back to attack this camp, along with a VC hard-core battalion.
“Our mission is to get down there, surround the village, and bring those montagnards back here. Later we’ll help the Brus build their own village and give them pigs and supplies. That way we get more Bru tribesmen for our own strike force and keep them from the Communists.”
“What makes you think they’ll come back with you?”
“Some of my Bru strikers have been to the village and spoken to the chief. He’s agreed to come out himself and bring as many of his people as possible with him. We have guaranteed their safety in the new village. But it won’t be easy. Some of the Brus in that village are strong Communist sympathizers. We’ll try to neutralize them while the chief brings the willing ones in.”
“Neutralize them?”
“Surround them with superior strength. Then we’ll march them back here behind the others.”
Locke dropped the cover over the map and sat down at a table. “We may have some real trouble, it’s hard to tell. The only reason the Bru have agreed to come out is because they’ll be living in an American camp. I’ve tried to convince our camp commander that it would be best if no LLDB were along, on this mission. Just the sight of them giving orders or looking as though they were in command could blow the whole mission.”
“Any luck?”
“Hell no. Captain Nim says he’s going to lead this patrol personally. He’s bringing two sergeants with him. Christ, why can’t they learn in Saigon that the only way these montagnards will fight for the government is to let them have montagnard leaders as counterparts to us? There are plenty of good montagnard officers in the Army loyal to Saigon, in spite of the way they’re discriminated against. If they make captain they’re lucky, and they’ll never see a field-grade commi
ssion.” He sighed. “Well, enough of that. Let’s get you fixed up with a weapon. We leave tomorrow at daybreak. If all goes well, we can surround the village before dawn.”
Captain Locke, Sergeant Binney and the team sergeant, a big blond man whose name was Svenson, made up the American advisory team. Not surprisingly, the patrol didn’t start until 9:00 in the morning. The LLDB captain wasn’t ready until 8:00, and it took him another hour to get all the Bru platoon leaders and their men together and ready to move out.
We started south along the Laotian border with a company of about 130 montagnards. One American sergeant accompanied the Point Platoon, the other the third and last platoon. Captain Nim, Captain Locke and I walked at the head of the middle platoon, the two LLDB sergeants staying close to their commander.
It was difficult up-and-down terrain through the mountainous jungle region, but this was home territory for the wiry little tribesmen; they carried their weapons and packs with ease as they picked their way through dense foliage, slashing with machetes at the clinging thorn vines.
When finally Captain Locke, consulting his map frequently and taking compass bearings, advised Captain Nim that we were within four thousand meters of the montagnard village, I for one was on the verge of collapse. He advised Nim to put a watch on the village, and a squad of Brus munching on rice and dried fish set out. The rest of us, he said, should take a few hours’ sleep.
It was chilly when Locke roused me with a hand on my shoulder, a finger to his lips. Seeing silent activity all around me, I strapped on my pack and slung the folding-stock carbine. The luminous dial of my wrist watch told me it was 1:00 A.M. That meant we would have to travel only a thousand meters an hour to get in position around the village before sunrise.