Abandoned in Hell _The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate

by William Albracht

  Ahearn had refueled at Gia Nghia and was back in the air. “A FAC pilot radioed me to position myself north of Kate, circle, and await a B-52 strike,” he recalls. This put him over Cambodia, but he didn’t regard that as a problem, because nearly every 155 AHC pilot who flew from Bu Prang to BMT took a direct route that took them over a part of Cambodia’s supposedly neutral territory, a salient jutting into South Vietnam.

  But the prospect of circling over territory that he knew was crawling with PAVN troops made Ahearn cautious. “Because I was going to be in a relatively fixed position, I climbed to a higher altitude,” Ahearn recalls. “We flew race tracks and figure eights for twenty or thirty minutes.”

  I never saw the B-52s. I never heard their engines. At 1011 local time, thirty-six seconds after the first bomb was released, as it reached a velocity of just over 800 miles per hour, it slammed into the ground and detonated. It was followed by 323 more bombs. Ninety tons of high explosives packed in steel landed half a kilometer or less from Kate.

  Not knowing what was coming in, I glanced eastward and beheld the first few massive explosions—for a fleeting moment, I thought they were the back blasts from some indirect-fire weapon. Recoiling, shocked, I thought, Oh my God! If that’s the back blast, how in God’s name will we ever survive the impact? Then the incredible shock waves and deafening sounds rolled over me and my nose went in the dirt.

  From his perch over Cambodia, Ahearn had the catbird seat: “I’m looking south at Kate from around 6,000 feet and all of sudden, my God in heaven, an ugly brown zipper opens in the green jungle right along the narrow, east/west ridgeline just south of Kate,” reports Ahearn. “The entire hillside erupts from east to west on a continuous line westward, toward Bu Prang.”

  On Kate, it was like being camped out on the road between Sodom and Gomorrah while fire and brimstone rained from the heavens. An unearthly roar assaulted our ears. The earth bucked and dipped and shook for a minute that seemed like an eternity.

  Although they slept on clean sheets, showered daily with hot water, ate in an air-conditioned mess hall, and nobody was shooting at them, I’ve got to applaud those airmen for putting their bombs just where I wanted them. If any one of those 500-pounders had landed on Kate, I’m certain that it would have killed me and everyone else on our hill. As it was, one bomb landed in the gully to our east, close enough for shrapnel to kill one of my strikers and wound two others.

  Immediately after the strike, Air Force FAC Will Platt—Mike 82—swooped down in his Bird Dog to do a bomb damage assessment. “There was nothing left. Nothing moving. Nothing standing,” he recalls.

  When the explosions stopped, I went outside. An enormous cloud of dust and smoke hovered over the ridge to our east. I was pretty sure that not many PAVN could have survived something like that.

  Unless, as we would later learn, they had been warned. As early as 1967, Russian trawlers bristling with antennas had been spotted off the north end of Guam, exactly beneath the flight path of B-52s taking off from Anderson AFB and headed to Vietnam. Ditto for the waters near Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. In May of that same year, recently declassified documents revealed that US intelligence knew that the VC had some kind of early-warning system that broadcast alerts from twenty-four to four hours before B-52 strikes. The rest of the mystery was explained in 1985: Truong Nhu Tang, a French-educated lawyer who served as a high-ranking Viet Cong political functionary, published his memoirs, which includes this passage: “B-52s flying out of Okinawa and Guam would be picked up by Soviet intelligence trawlers plying the South China Sea [sic]. Their headings and air speed would be computed and relayed to COSVN headquarters (Communist headquarter in South Vietnam), which would then order NLF (National Liberation Front) or Northern elements in the anticipated target zones to move away perpendicularly to the attack trajectory. Flights originating from the Thai bases were monitored both on radar and visually by our intelligence nets there, and the information similarly relayed.”

  So it was that ten minutes after the devastation of that B-52 strike, the shit storm battering Kate resumed: rockets, mortars, recoilless rifles, and small-arms fire smashed Kate from every direction. Our last functioning howitzer, the 105, took its second direct hit from a recoilless rifle and was finally knocked out.

  A little later, as I made the rounds of the perimeter with Ross, we took advantage of a lull in the action to chat about personal things. He was from a small town in Wisconsin, I grew up less than 150 miles away, in neighboring Illinois; our backgrounds were similar, although he had been to college and was a bit older.

  During our conversation, I noticed that he wore a wedding band, so I asked about his wife. Ross replied that he was due to meet her and their newborn son, John—a child that he had never seen—in Hawaii when he went on R&R.

  Ron continued to talk about his son, and how proud he was to be a father, about how he could not wait to hold the infant, about his hopes and dreams for his little family’s future.

  Then the shooting resumed. In a moment we were pinned down on the northwest side of the perimeter. We were safe for the moment, but I couldn’t run the show from there.

  When things slowed down, around 1120, and after a few minutes with only occasional incoming, I decided that we had to risk moving. We were high on the military crest; as soon as we stood and moved to the top, we’d be silhouetted against the sky.

  I pointed out the sandbagged command bunker and told Ross that was where we were headed. I described its L-shaped entrance and blast wall in front to protect it from the near misses of flying explosives. I told Ross, “We’re going to run to that bunker. When you get there, enter from that side.”

  Ross nodded his head to show that he understood.

  “There is no point in giving them two targets,” I continued. “I’ll go first. Let me get to cover behind the blast wall before you follow. Understand? Got it?”

  Ross nodded again. “I’ve got it.”

  It was fifty or sixty feet to the bunker, the first part uphill, but altogether no more than a four-second sprint. I took off, running as fast as I could. The enemy was only about 125 meters away on the opposite hillside; when I was about halfway to the bunker, I heard Ross’s footsteps behind me, a few steps back and closing. Then I saw the rocket. Time seemed to slow down as I heard the B-40’s distinctive scream. From the corner of my eye, I saw its fiery red tail heading right at me. I hit the entrance behind the blast wall and the exploding warhead’s shock wave blew me inside the bunker to safety.

  Behind me, Ross lay crumpled in the doorway. One more step, and he would be telling this story. Instead, a jagged hole in his neck pulsed a fountain of blood. I slapped my hand over the wound. Someone from inside the bunker moved up behind me to help—I have no earthly idea who that was—but despite my hand clamped over his throat, Ross was still squirting blood. In half a minute, the fountain slowed to a trickle. Deathly pale, Ross was not breathing, and I realized that he would never see his new son.

  I had told him to wait until I was in the bunker.

  He said that he understood.

  Why the hell didn’t he wait?

  I felt rotten. Empty. I needed time to come to terms with his death—but I didn’t have even a few minutes. I tucked the thought away and returned to the urgent work of getting more air support and preparing for yet another ground attack.

  An hour later, as I zipped Ross into a body bag, I noticed that he’d neglected to button the top of his flak vest, leaving his throat exposed. Had it been closed, would that few inches of layered Kevlar have saved him? It’s very hard to know.

  You may talk o’ gin an’ beer

  When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,

  An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;

  But if it comes to slaughter

  You will do your work on water,

  An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.

  —Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din”

  FOURTEEN<
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  We needed more men to plug the gaps in our perimeter. We needed ammunition. I needed to lie down and sleep for a week. I needed a cold beer. Most of all, we needed water. By the afternoon of October 31, we were out. Every canteen was dry. Even the canteens of the dead had been drained. Forty-eight hours of fighting under the sun and moon, and no water since the previous night. I was learning the hard way that when you’re out of water, when you can no longer sweat, when peeing is out of the question because there’s no fluid left in your kidneys, when you grow lethargic and there’s nothing left in your body core to draw energy from, when even standing up and walking around is hard—then you’re literally starting to die from dehydration. The only thing that you can think about is water. God, I wish I had some water. And this was where I was, and where pretty much everyone on Kate was.

  I had been on the radio asking for water several times, and none came. I had prayed for rain. Yes, prayed to God to send us water. It was that horrible.

  You don’t forget that kind of thirst. It’s been more than forty-six years, and I haven’t.

  I radioed yet again, and told Bu Prang that we must have some water.

  Staff Sergeant DeNote, the communications honcho for Team A-236 and my constant companion over the FM radio lifeline, told me not to worry.

  Late in the afternoon, low on the horizon to the west, I saw two Chinooks, call sign “Freight Train,” escorted by a couple of Falcon gunships. A pair of Cobra gunships, call sign “Undertaker,” were already on station, and they gave the ridge and hillside a good going-over; the first drop was completed without incident.

  Warrant Officer Les Davison was ramrodding the Falcon gunship team: “When we arrived, two Undertaker Cobras happened to be on station, and together we covered the first CH-47 in and out without incident. But that had expended the Snakes [ammunition], and our two Charlies just couldn’t put out enough firepower to cover the second Hook as well. He made it out OK—but not without taking several hits. The area was definitely HOT!”

  The first load was our water.

  The second was our ammunition. As the Chinook closed on us, it was taking heavy ground fire from several directions. The Falcon gunships deployed on either side of Kate, moving around and firing at what I can only describe as a highly target-rich environment. It didn’t seem to help much—there were just too damn many enemy guns. As the Chinook approached, it descended until it was perhaps fifty feet above Kate’s summit, closing on our south end doing maybe thirty-five or forty knots. The pilot released his load and the Chinook leapt into the air, turning left as it clawed for altitude.

  The big rope basket with our ammo dropped a few meters short of our foxholes. It tumbled down the slope, crashed through the treetops, and then disappeared into the jungle below.

  It took me a few seconds to realize that I had might have witnessed the first successful PAVN aerial resupply of the war. Down in the jungle, the boys in pith helmets would soon be celebrating. There was nothing to do but hope that we could hold off another ground attack until we could get more ammo. Until then we would have to make do with what little we had. And then I realized that we might yet see some of our lost ammo, but not until the neighbors fired it at us.

  At least we had water. Four hundred gallons in an M-149 water trailer, the venerable steel “Buffalo.” Five thousand pounds of water and trailer, dropped from twenty feet off the deck, the impact breaking two wheels and both axles.

  But the tank held.

  Water! Safely on Kate, and ours for the taking.

  Oh, shit.

  Dozens of strikers left their holes and rushed the trailer. Ran for their water. Ran for their lives. Danny and I ran after them, screaming at them to stay away, dragging them away from the trailer, throwing them back, trying to stop the riot. Too late: Attracted by the crowd, the nasty neighbors began walking their mortars the length of Kate. Mortar bombs exploded all around the trailer. Mirabile dictu, by God’s grace, no shard of shrapnel pierced that rotund steel trailer. Our precious and holy water was saved.

  Not so my strikers, several of whom were hit, a few seriously. Also hit was Sergeant Mike Caldwell, a tall, thin, bespectacled 22-year-old draftee from West Sacramento, California, universally known as “Red” for his flaming red hair and freckles. When the first mortars landed, Koon and Tiranti jumped into his sandbagged hooch. “We sat down on a cot, me and Bernie on either side of Red, and then a mortar round landed right inside the doorway,” recalls Koon.

  “We were getting hit pretty hard, and I had just put both hands over my helmet,” Caldwell recalls. His forearms were peppered with shrapnel; he bled profusely. Koon was unhurt. And for the second time in three days, Tiranti was miraculously unscathed.

  Meanwhile, Danny and I drove the thirsty strikers back to their holes. Then we dragged or carried the wounded to our makeshift aid station. When everyone had calmed down, we had an orderly distribution of water, one man from a squad at a time.

  • • •

  AT 1520 that day, while I was in my bunker talking to Major Lattin on the radio, I heard a door slam. And then two more, one after the other.

  There were no doors on Kate.

  A series of tremendous explosions rocked the hilltop—large-caliber artillery shells landing nearby. The earth shook as several rounds slammed right into Kate. A few bunkers partially caved in. One round landed near the corner of the FDC. Three feet closer and it would have blown the roof off.

  When the explosions stopped, I popped out of my hole. Kate was high enough that we could see the muzzle flash of big guns firing from a few miles to the northwest.

  I got back in my hole just before the shell buried itself in Kate’s side and the hilltop rocked from the impact. Evidently, PAVN had obtained conventional artillery pieces—perhaps they had taken a few of their big guns apart and hauled them piecemeal down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, then reassembled them at Cambodian Army Camp La Rolland, a base used, I am told, to train PAVN replacements. Or maybe they’d captured some ARVN 105s.

  “The North Vietnamese had 130 mm guns and 105 mm howitzers, probably captured from the French,” explains Reg Brockwell. “So they had the same artillery capacity as we did—except that we operated under rules of engagement that said we couldn’t attack [across the Cambodian border] unless it was under exceptional conditions.”

  The PAVN respected no rules of engagement.

  It made no difference where they came from or if it was 105 mm or bigger. Another round landed near Kate. Another. Two more, almost together.

  If this didn’t stop soon, we would all die. Our defenses simply could not take a direct hit from that kind of artillery and survive. I called—screamed, actually—for Major Lattin to call in the fast movers to silence those guns.

  He flew northwest, circling low over the Vietnam side of the international border. After a few minutes, he called back.

  “Can’t do it, Hawk,” he said. “They’re on the other side of the fence.”

  I got back on the radio and told Lattin in no uncertain words that I didn’t care where they were. I wanted them hit.

  “The only way I can do that is if the ground commander declares a tactical emergency.”

  No sooner had these words caressed my ears than I said, “I declare a tactical emergency,” in the same tone of voice that I might have used to order a cold Tiger Beer at the officers’ club.

  “Roger,” returned Lattin. The next thing I knew, the fast movers were screaming eastward to bomb the bollocks out of Camp La Rolland. A week later there was a blurb in Newsweek to the effect that US Air Force planes had bombed a neutral Cambodian Army base. John Kerry mentioned it in his Winter Soldier rants. So let me set the record straight for all time: That was me. I did that. If I hadn’t, my bones, and those of everyone else on Kate, would probably be rotting in the bottom of a big ravine below Kate’s ghost.

  The cross-border strike triggered formal protests of outrage from Phnom Penh and all the rest of that bull. I still chuckle when I reali
ze that my name was probably on President Nixon’s desk the next morning, the rogue officer who had created an international incident by directing a “neutral” country to be bombed.

  But as soon as that heavy incoming artillery was stopped, PAVN attacked from four sides, hundreds of enemy soldiers running, walking, or crawling up at us, firing. Thanks to Major Lattin and the fast movers he brought in, we held our hilltop. A little later, however, when I got the casualty reports and ammo status, it was clear that we were losing this battle. The next time PAVN attacked in force might be the last.

  Later, as I did every night, I radioed a casualty report to Rocco at Bu Prang. When I had concluded, Rocco asked if that was it.

  “One more thing,” I said, thinking about the big bag of M&M’s peanut candy that I had stashed in my rucksack. Shrapnel from the PAVN artillery had holed my rucksack and pierced the half-empty bag.

  “I took a direct hit in my M&M’s,” I added, going for the laugh.

  “Do you want a medevac?” he replied, concern in his voice.

  “Nope. That’s it,” I said, and signed off.

  Not until days later did I learn that Rocco, and the rest of our team at Bu Prang, had mistakenly understood my reference to M&M’s as code for testicles.

  • • •

  BETWIXT and between all my other chores, I’d been back and forth to Bu Prang on the radio and, reading between the lines, I was given to understand that there would be no help coming from the 23rd ARVN or the US 4th. The former, I am now certain, because I challenge anyone to show me ten ARVN officers who would have given a rabid rodent’s rectum for the life of one Montagnard, let alone a hundred or so who knew how to fight and didn’t much care for their kind either. The latter, I am now equally certain, because the Pentagon was crooning “Vietnamization,” music by Richard M. Nixon, lyrics by Department of the Army, arrangement by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.