The Ether Zone: U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment B-52, Project Delta

by Morris Ray

  Moving along a narrow valley, they headed west toward their designated extraction LZ. While small, extremely steep hills and dense vegetation blanketed the area, their map indicated cover and concealment would quickly become a problem if they continued west. Jarrett was been glad their Vietnamese counterparts seemed to be a solid lot this time out, and they had a great point man. Most likely a veteran of the French-Indochina War, in his early 40s, he was a no-nonsense, tough, experienced operative. After Jarrett’s previous experiences with Vietnamese, the feeling was refreshing. He surmised they weren’t much different than new American troops; they just needed training, and the opportunity to gain knowledge and experience before becoming fully competent.

  The patrol moved along cautiously a few meters apart, everyone tense, alert, on guard. Jarrett had the responsibility of providing security for the left flank. He suddenly sensed tension; the hair stood on the back of his neck. On hyper-alert, weapons were carried tactically at shoulder level, muzzles depressed, swaying to the movement of the men’s eyes scanning the jungle. With short steps and carefully placed boots, they visually searched shadowy corners—their feelings palpable. They weren’t alone.

  Entering a canyon opening, initially they were relieved to find cover. Suddenly the point man froze, bringing his rifle to combat-ready. They all took a knee. Voices! A large group was headed directly toward them. Graves urgently motioned to reverse the formation, to head back toward the last rally point, fast! Running as swiftly as possible, Jarrett wondered if he’d get hammered in the back. After 200 meters, they tumbled into a deep stream bed, hiding beneath the lip of the cut. Graves motioned for the point man and another VN to cover the left flank, and for two others, the right. Edens and Jay Graves each took the twelve o’clock position, while Jarrett covered their six. They silently observed a large enemy force advancing in the tree line they had just left, but were relieved when they turned south past the terrain the team had just raced across. They breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  Graves signaled Jarrett to move closer to his and Edens’s position, to get more guns into the fight, if it came to that. He crawled toward them as both flanks opened up at once. Hunkering beneath the cut of the bank, Jarrett couldn’t see much, but the firing seemed to be coming from every direction. He peeked up and over the lip, detected movement in the tree line and fired off several rounds on semi-automatic. He and Edens quickly ducked, their fire instantly returned tenfold.

  He noticed Edens gazing at him, bemused. “When you fire, they’ll fire back,” he said with a grin. Jarrett carefully peeked out again. There could easily be an NVA regiment concealed just yards away and he wouldn’t be able to see them.

  Graves motioned for the patrol to move—quietly—remaining in the stream bed. After a short distance, he signaled a pause. Jarrett watched as their tough, small point man slipped silently over the bank, heading back toward the tree line they’d brought under fire. Amazed by such bravery, he pondered whether he should follow. His face must have reflected this indecision because Edens shook his head; he stayed put. A few minutes passed before Graves roused the patrol to move out again. After a few minutes of brisk travel, they halted once more. Jarrett, still covering the six o’clock portion of their security perimeter, waited, straining to see anything moving. The point man disappeared into the thick jungle where enemy activity was last seen. Jarrett wondered if they would ever see him again, then a slight movement caught his eye. He raised his weapon, waiting for a target to appear.

  “It’s our point coming back,” Edens whispered. He silently moved behind Jarrett. “Hold your fire, but cover his six until he gets inside.”

  The point man piled between the two of them, panting and excited. “Blood trails,” he said. “One dead VC. Many more wounded.”

  He had retrieved the dead man’s black wrist wrap and recovered two French Mat-36 rifles, both blood-stained. Viet Cong soldiers commonly used the wrist wraps to carry dried fish and rice balls. Conversely, the NVA tended to carry small packs. The recovery of the wrist wrap indicated they’d encountered VC. That was good. If these were NVA, they’d be in worse trouble.

  Graves again made radio contact. Bruiser told him to move to a different LZ; they’d be extracted within a couple hours. Jarrett sighed— he’d been in the hole and might even live to make it back. And he’d be Recon—that is, if the guys gave their approval.

  During the team’s debriefing at the FOB, both Graves and Eden informed Simpson that Jarrett “would do”; he was fit to go as assistant team leader the next time. Subsequently, Moose requested Jarrett’s assignment as his One One since Edens was due to rotate. Jarrett had made it; he was officially Recon.

  Although accepted, technically he was still the FNG until given a One One slot on a future patrol. So until Ken Edens rotated and gave him his slot, for the time being, Jarrett would run his second recon mission as the third man again; this time with Monroe and Jay Graves.

  During his second mission, they stopped for lunch; Graves and Monroe crouched off a short distance, eating their rice as Jarrett stood watch. Only if time permitted would the FNG also get to eat while paused, if not, he’d eat on the move. Jarrett detected movement; two armed men squatted in a nearby thicket, inching toward the Americans in a crab-walk. He moved toward Moose and Graves, softly snapping his fingers to get their attention. He whispered, “Two VC...no more than fifteen yards up the trail.”

  Without pause, Graves continued to eat. “So? Pop ‘em...let us eat.”

  Jarrett crawled back a few feet, sighted and cut the two unsuspecting enemy soldiers down. They must have been the point element for a larger force; in less than a minute, the jungle opened up in a barrage of deafening gunfire. In Jarrett’s words, “We were plain lucky just to make it out alive.” Graves grinned when he later told Jarrett that it had been a “test,” just to see if he could do it.

  Jarrett learned some of his most valuable combat lessons from his lifelong friend, Gary Stedman. They were involved in a nasty firefight and one of his recon men had been seriously wounded. Stedman, his personality calm compared to Jarrett’s “gotta-always-be-going” temperament, first took care of the wounded man in a nearby bomb crater, and then under heavy fire, ran to another crater and hunkered down. Above the din of combat he heard Stedman intone a remark he used quite frequently when things got really hot. “This shit’s just like the movies.”

  Upon their return to the FOB, Stedman uttered another original that continues to resonate with Jarrett. “Training gives you an edge, but luck will wield the sword.”

  * * * * * *

  Jarrett continued to run many missions with Monroe, Graves, Stedman and Mike Norris. Moose Monroe named him “Mr. Clean” because he didn’t drink, smoke or chase whores. He was determined to corrupt his new young assistant, and Jarrett admitted to being an able and willing student. After the war, Ken Edens and Moose both moved to New Mexico, within 300 miles of Jarrett’s home. Jarrett said, “Moose was an awesome Special Forces soldier, and one hell of a cowboy too. He lives in Clovis, not far from me, and I think the main reason he stays in the desert is because there are no leeches.”

  One summer, Jarrett and Stedman worked together on a ranch, where Stedman taught him to ride a horse. The three remain close friends.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Break Contact... Continue Mission!”

  IN SEPTEMBER 1967, DELTA AGAIN BEGAN RUNNING operations from Vietnam’s DMZ to the Central Highlands, and as the summer waned, the names of A Shau Valley, Happy Valley and An Loa would be etched forever in the memory of the men who survived them. James “Jay” Graves had been designated as team leader, the One Zero of an operation supported by the 281st; James Jarrett, his One One. Jarrett had been in the hole several times before with Graves and highly respected him as one of the best in the business—albeit a bit eccentric. Others often referred to Graves as “one crazy bastard.”

  One famous incident that aptly highlights this assessment of Graves’ “craziness,” ha
ppened after Project Delta closed in 1970 and he was assigned to the Mike Force, along with another Delta buddy, Al Schwarcbher. As the story goes, Graves seriously hit the Mike Force club—as he frequently did following an operation. It seems the Mike Force Commander had injured Graves’s sensibilities, either ostensibly, or through some real or imaginary insult. His grudge, exacerbated by hard liquor, had left him in a foul mood. Wild-eyed drunk, swaying in the middle of the compound, in one hand he waved a bottle of booze, the other, an Army-issue .45-caliber automatic. He yelled loudly for either the Mike Force Commander or any of his staff to, “...come out of your holes!”

  Weaving, he noticed the Commander’s shiny new jeep in front of the headquarters building, staggered over and shot it—several times. In fact, he’d shoot the vehicle, take a swig, circle it for a bit and then shoot it again. After several minutes of this, the Commander’s lop-sided jeep could easily have passed for metallic Swiss cheese. The scene continued as the staff and others hunkered down, their doors locked, hoping he’d soon pass out or run out of ammo. Desperate, someone thought to awaken Al Schwarcbher; maybe he could do something about the agitated Graves.

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Schwarcbher simply strode toward Graves, quietly looked the jeep over for several minutes and remarked, “It’s dead, Jay. You killed it.”

  After a ten-second interval of total silence, Graves burst out laughing and laid his pistol in Schwarcbher’s outstretched hand. Amazingly, the incident was never spoken of again and there were no repercussions. Graves recollected, “I should’ve ended up in LBJ (Long Binh Jail).” There were a lot of people who tended to agree with him.

  * * * * * *

  It was widely accepted that Graves was one of the best Recon men around, but he was known to do things on the spur of the moment that would break up his teammates. On one mission with James Jarrett, as they touched down, they were compromised by a force of unknown size. Quickly fading into the dense vegetation, they ran hard, trying to throw off the pursuers. Inserting before last light as standard operating procedure, it soon became too dark to travel—even for the enemy. The team selected a Remain Overnight (RON) position on the cusp of a deep ravine, quietly establishing a tight security perimeter. As soon as they were set up, they heard their pursuers about twenty meters above, on what they would discover the next morning to be a highly trafficked trail.

  The enemy seemed to know they were still in the area. In the darkness, they threw rocks into the ravine to see if they could draw fire from the hidden team; some landing in their midst. They suspected these were VC and not NVA regulars. If they’d been NVA, these guys would’ve tossed grenades instead, or fired, hoping to hit them. Then if they heard the slightest moan, they would’ve been all over them. Before daylight, the team roused and silently moved out.

  Graves called in with his situation report, asking to be extracted. Most of the men already knew what Bruiser would say; they had heard it so often they could easily repeat it. It was Jay Grave’s turn.

  “Break contact...continue mission!”

  For the next three days, a thick blanket of fog and intermittent-to-heavy rain made progress extremely slow and difficult. Moving quickly wasn’t an option. Despite heavy enemy concentration, they couldn’t risk a broken leg or ankle, and with the wretched weather, extraction was only a remote possibility. They were on their own. Although they saw numerous indications of the enemy, they didn’t make contact; but it was clear the VC knew they were nearby because they were constantly stalked. This notion did not bode well for the small patrol. The enemy knew they’d been inserted, and, if they got into serious trouble, the lousy weather would make an extraction doubtful. They hoped their adversaries were VC, not NVA. That would considerably improve their chances of getting out.

  For the first three days, they played hide-and-seek with the bad guys—the majority of time by staying low, hours spent crawling on their stomachs. On the fourth day, just as they had set up a security triangle for lunch, Jarrett silently signaled that he’d spotted enemy troops; they were crawling toward them, less than thirty-five meters away. Graves nodded his understanding; both laid down a magazine of suppressing fire before retreating into the jungle. As soon as they’d moved on, the enemy returned heavy fire, churning up their old position. Jarrett noticed that when the firing commenced, the Vietnamese troops disappeared. He and Graves were alone. Down to only two rifles, they were in a serious jam.

  Angered by the betrayal of their VN team members, they managed to evade the VC by taking a shortcut across several ravines, then by traversing a long ridgeline. They finally stopped to catch their breath and evaluate their situation. It didn’t look good. Clearly out-gunned now that their VN guys had cut and run, their only two options were to either lay down a base of fire and run each time discovered, continuing to evade until someone could get them out, or track down their rogue VN teammates, kick their asses and restore firepower. They opted for the later; but, before they could act, someone approached from behind.

  Jarrett sought cover behind a banyan tree, its extensive root system forming tendrils halfway up its trunk. The trees are valuable when used for defensive positions; the VC used them against U.S. gunship strikes. Jay, to his left, about five-to-seven meters away, held onto an M79 grenade launcher, as well as his shortened CAR-15. It was obvious the trackers were hot on their trail, advancing along the same finger of terrain they’d just left. As soon as the first enemy soldier came into view, Jay stepped from behind his tree and fired off an M-79 canister round. Eating up tree limbs and vines, it resembled a rotor-rooter churning through the vegetation. Jarrett opened up on full automatic, expending a complete magazine before pausing. Scattered screams and soft moaning followed, and then the jungle went deathly quiet.

  Jay got on the radio, feeling quite lucky to make contact with the FAC on his first attempt. He hastily explained their situation. So sorry, they were told, the shitty weather precluded getting anything airborne—they were still on their own. Jarrett and Graves thought they detected stealthy movements emanating from the location where they first heard moaning, and agreed it was most likely the sounds of the enemy carrying off their dead and wounded. They agreed to move fifty meters, just in case the bad guys wanted more. Jarrett said his emotions that day were “...finely-tuned, my adrenaline was in high gear...scared, yet excited.” He remembers that a ridiculous thought had crossed his mind as they were being fired on; he wished he had no shirt buttons so he could get that much closer to the ground. He continued to watch their back-trail, intent on any signs of pursuit. Then, suddenly, he smelled smoke—cigarette smoke, to be precise.

  Startled, his eyes scanned the area where he’d last seen Graves crouched behind the root system of another banyan tree. He couldn’t see him, but several smoke rings wafted from behind the cover. Unbelievably, he watched as Graves stepped from behind the tree. With his tongue, he removed the palate piece securing his two front teeth, stuck them toward Jarrett, wiggling them and grinning while he blew smoke circles through the gap in his teeth. The sight was so ridiculous that Jarrett couldn’t contain himself. He nearly rolled on the ground laughing. It was lucky they weren’t both killed.

  Once the activity settled down, they decided to continue their search for their erstwhile “allies.” Aware the VC were probably still nearby, they became convinced these guys were a rather disorganized lot. That didn’t mean they could get lax, however. For although their immediate foe lacked the discipline and tactical savvy of NVA regulars, he and Graves knew they could still kill. And if you made a mistake, you’d be just as dead. Jarrett took the point, heading off toward where they’d last seen their VN counterparts fade over a fifteen-foot ledge. He followed the cliff to their right, along the same long fingerling of land they’d traversed earlier, each short step precise, stealthy. Soon, he identified the place where the rest of the recon patrol had landed, near the bottom of a fifteen-foot drop. With no signs of blood to indicate differently, he ascertained the team had made
it over the ledge without serious injury.

  They discovered some tracks leading off and slowly followed, all the while maintaining 360 degrees of security. This was all very stressful. Then, they heard voices coming from several directions. Seems they’d stumbled into a large enemy concentration; maybe a battalion or regimental base camp. This presumption was confirmed after they crossed a highly trafficked trail, rutted with fresh vehicle tracks. Only division-sized elements had vehicles—this was not a good omen. Subtle signs indicated their VN recon guys had crossed the trail and turned toward the river—not the best of ideas, since the enemy concentrated near rivers because they were a natural travel route and provided the enemy with water and a brief respite. They had little choice—they were committed. They must go forward.

  Jarrett caught a whiff of wood smoke, momentarily stopping to see if Graves had smelled it, too. Despite traveling a good distance, they were still close to some kind of large encampment; resigned to that fact that they couldn’t avoid it. Activity was all around them. Stopping was not an option; they knew they had to hurry, but use extreme care. It was getting late and the tempo of enemy activity always increased after dark. Besides, they wanted to be extracted today. Jarrett picked up some familiar movements ahead and began to double-time toward them. It was their missing VN recon guys. He whistled softly, and the man in the rear turned, his expression one of simultaneous fear and relief. Jarrett grimaced, shaking his head. The man’s fear was warranted, but only after they all were safely back at the FOB. This was not a time for recriminations, and leaving men behind was not an option. Recon didn’t leave their men behind, regardless of how poorly they had performed.