15 Months in SOG

by Thom Nicholson

  “You certain?” I asked. I hated to crap out on the S-3. After all, it was my job, not his. I sure did want some of that turkey though.

  “No problem.” He smiled conspiratorially. “Just don’t say anything to the CO. I’ll be back inside an hour.” He turned back to his office, and came out momentarily, putting on his web gear. “Here,” he said to me, handing me his nifty 7.65mm Beretta automatic. “Hold this for me until I return. I don’t want to leave it in my office, and I’m not going to take it to the BOQ, so the old man doesn’t see me and nix my going.”

  The burly major ran out to the chopper pad where a black H-34 Kingbee chopper flown by an SVN pilot assigned to the SOG program was waiting, its big, three-blade rotor slowly spinning. I could see the other six members of the insert team loading the boxes of sabotaged 82mm mortar ammunition into the ship. Major Toomey jumped on board, and the Vietnamese crew chief slammed the door shut.

  With a mighty roar of its engine, the twenty-year-old helicopter left the pad and soon was out of sight, flying west toward the border. I clipped Major Toomey’s little pistol on my belt and walked over to the mess hall.

  I was just finishing the pumpkin pie when one of the tactical operation center duty NCOs ran into the mess hall and whispered in the CO’s ear. He quickly pushed aside his plate and got up, motioning me to follow him. “What’s up, sir?” I asked as we hurried toward the TOC.

  Lieutenant Colonel Warren tersely answered: “The IG insert chopper was shot down en route to the target. Just got the word. Everything’s on fire, and the escort choppers don’t see any sign of survivors. Who’s the team leader?”

  With a heavy heart, I told him. His glance would have melted snow, and he started to ream my butt for letting the S-3 go out, but after I explained that Major Toomey had asked to go, he quieted down. I explained what had happened, and he mellowed a little.

  “You’re one lucky boy, son. Just be grateful you weren’t killed instead of Sam Toomey.”

  I’ve lived for years with the knowledge that because of my desire for turkey, another man died. It’s a grim burden, and one I’ll never shake.

  I treasured Major Toomey’s nifty little pistol, safeguarding it as the major requested. But we never were able to get into the crash site because of the high concentration of antiaircraft guns in the area. Major Toomey and the team were carried as missing in action for years afterward.

  One night about a week later, while getting ready to go on guard duty, one of the young sergeants just arrived from the States saw me with my new rifle, new binoculars, new knife, packet of golf-ball grenades clipped to my belt, little automatic pistol, and the 9mm Browning automatic that I’d brought from home. That gave me a big pistol at my belt and a little one under my arm.

  “Boy, Dai Uy,” he remarked enviously. “You sure do have a lot of nice toys.”

  “Yeah,” I answered with only partially veiled sarcasm, as I knew what the true price in lives and misery had been. “Didn’t cost me hardly a thing, either.”

  3

  Christmas Visits

  or

  A Season of Joy and Tragedy

  Time passed, everyday activities consumed our thoughts, new things happened, memories were gradually softened by daily reality, and suddenly, it was December. I stayed pretty busy. For one thing, I had to assume the S-3 duties until a new major arrived from the replacement pool in Nha Trang. That suited me just fine: It was good experience, and I did not want to stray too far from my desk inside the TOC just then. It was probably just my imagination, but I had sensed an unspoken rebuke from Lieutenant Colonel Warren when I explained why Major Toomey was on the downed chopper instead of me.

  The Old Man couldn’t come right out and say, “Why weren’t you killed instead of my operations officer?” But the belief that he thought it nagged at me. It was unfair to the Old Man, but I couldn’t shake the tension whenever I was around him. To the day he left the unit, I tried to avoid being alone with him any more than my duty made absolutely necessary.

  Our new S-3, Major Skelton, flew in from Nha Trang a couple of weeks before Christmas. He was an old-time Special Forces officer, his weather-beaten face lean and bronzed with the years of outdoor activities any good SF soldier longs to live. He had been working over in Thailand with the 46th Company, and was elated to be back in the action. I spent the next few days bringing him up to speed on TOC operations. He caught on fast and soon had the TOC humming productively. The month was going by quickly, and operations across the border continued at a heavy pace. We lost a Montagnard, or Yard, soldier now and then, but American losses for the month were zero. Maybe the gods of war were giving us a breather from the shocks of August through November.

  The middle of the month, my brother Bill, a platoon leader in the 1st Air Cavalry Division, got a five-day in-country R & R (rest and recuperation). He wrote that he was flying up from Saigon, where his unit was stationed, to pay me a visit.

  On the day of his arrival, I proudly drove my new jeep to the Da Nang airfield to pick him up. I’d just won it in a poker game from a reckless captain in the recon company who had tried to bluff into my full house, aces high. The jeep had originally belonged to some Army Advisory Command NCO, who had sold it to an officer in CCN when he rotated back to the States. The officer had in turn sold it to my card-playing friend when he rotated. Now, it was mine. The jeep had been repainted and renumbered by one of the easily bribed maintenance soldiers over at the vehicle depot. It had new papers, and wouldn’t be confiscated unless I was involved in some traffic accident, when the serial number on the frame would be checked and found to be different than the one on the papers I carried. So I drove more carefully in Vietnam than I do in the States; I dared not be stopped for any traffic violations.

  In terms of support equipment, CCN was a lean organization. The TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) called for six jeeps, a couple of 2½-ton trucks for the S-4 shop, and a single ¾-ton for the S-2 and S-3 to share. Just those vehicles for a camp that was home for two hundred of the most resourceful and larcenous Special Forces soldiers ever assembled in one place.

  The last time I counted, there were over a hundred personal-use jeeps, stolen, without prejudice, from every branch of the service, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, the Germans, civilian contractors, the Red Cross, and any other organization that had vehicles. We also had four 2½-ton trucks, a half dozen ¾-tons, the old school bus that we used to pick up replacements, and a staff car for the CO that had been stolen from an air force motor park in Saigon then smuggled up to Da Nang, over five hundred miles to the north. The story was that we had used the air force to ship the stolen car to us. It made us all very proud to be so devilishly clever.

  All the vehicles were painted flat black rather than the standard army olive drab. When everyone was in camp, our parking lots were a wondrous thing to behold. Whenever big brass was due in to attend briefings or such, the stream of vehicles headed out the gate to preselected hiding spots created traffic that looked like quitting time on an LA freeway.

  Bill was a sight for homesick eyes to see. He had been in country six months by then, stationed with the 1st Air Cavalry Division outside Saigon. He was lean as rawhide and brown as a berry. We looked like brothers, except that I had dark hair, and he had fair; the hot Vietnamese sun had bleached his blond hair even lighter. Since we were both average height, and built like the former football players we were, we stood out in the crowd of newly arriving Marines and Vietnamese soldiers deplaning with him. At least I thought so. As we walked out of the terminal together, I couldn’t help but think there wasn’t a better looking pair of studs outside Hollywood. He showed a strained nonchalance when he saw my jeep. “I’m in the field so much I don’t need one,” he casually informed me. Still, he was envious, I just knew it. Besides, I still had lots more goodies to impress him with back at camp.

  Bill’s eyes really bugged out when he saw my home. He had come out of the brush, where a hot beer was a treat. I had a single
room, clean linen, and a hootch gal to clean my room, wash and iron my jungle fatigues, and polish my boots. The mess hall was air-conditioned, and movies were shown there every night. My office in the TOC was cooled as well. On a normal day, the hottest I got was walking from the TOC to the mess hall for chow.

  I still had to work my twelve-hour shift that day while Bill slept late in the VIP room I got for him, next door to my hootch. After weeks in the brush with his unit, the soft bed and clean sheets must have been a welcome luxury. Every day, he’d eat and swim at the beach until I got off duty. Then, I took him around Da Nang and to the numerous officers’ clubs, where he downed many a cool brew and ogled the nurses. I almost had to hog-tie and throw him on the plane when it was time for him to return to his unit. He was definitely ready to become a CCN volunteer. I watched his plane rise off the hot concrete and disappear into the deepening dusk of early evening. The dark thought that we might not see each other again, back home at the end of our tours, flitted across my mind. Shaking the unwelcome image away like a pesky fly, I drove back alone, deep in rumination.

  As it happened, Bill arrived back at 1st Air Cavalry too late at night to be choppered out to his unit, so he stayed over at division HQ. Early the next morning, an NVA rocket hit the bunker where some of his unit were sleeping, and a dozen men were killed or wounded. If it hadn’t been for his visit to me, he might have been with them. It made the guilt I was carrying over Major Toomey’s death a little more tolerable.

  The Christmas season was fast approaching. Following custom, we anticipated that the idiots running the war would order a holiday stand-down, and we’d be restricted from operations for a few days. That would give the NVA and the VC a chance to rest and refit so they would be harder to handle afterward. But the cease-fire made good headlines back home for the politicians.

  I tempered my natural loneliness during that special season with the memories of happier times surrounded by my family at other Christmas celebrations.

  Just before I had left the States, my wife, sons, and I visited my folks. The last night, while we were out seeing friends, my mom and dad put up a Christmas tree and decorated their home just as if it were Christmas. We walked in to songs of the season and presents all around.

  “We’ll just celebrate a little earlier this year,” my mother said, tears glistening in her warm, brown eyes. It was so sad, but so thoughtful and loving. I knew that reliving that joyous evening would help me get through the difficult time away from home and family. Most of the presents they gave me were for use after I returned, not to take with me to Vietnam. It was meant to be that way, a good omen, and was their way of giving me confidence that I would survive the tour.

  My time overseas was immensely more bearable because of the love and concern of my family. It made the hard times easier and the lonely times bearable. I pity those who faced the agonizing separation and loneliness of the war without the love of a family to sustain them. My wife wrote me nearly every day, and the rest of my extended family wrote regularly. Except for the insignificant bit of time involved in trying to answer all the letters, it was a great morale booster.

  The day before Christmas, the S-1 stood up in the morning briefing and asked for volunteers to guard church services for the local Vietnamese at midnight Mass. I was quick to add my hand to the many going up. The VC had put out the word not to have services in the village church, or it would be attacked. The old priest, a crusty Vietnamese named Father Hoa, wasn’t having any of that crap. He was plowing ahead full steam with his plans. All he wanted from us was enough armed men to keep the bad guys away. One of the things I hated most about the VC was their cruelty to their own people. It was bad enough that we Americans were killing Vietnamese; after all, that was what we were there for, to bomb them in groups or to shoot them one at a time. But it sure frosted my ass that they did it to each other in the name of freedom, Communist style.

  Christmas Eve, I was posted just outside the door of the simple church, along with a bunch of my buddies, armed to the teeth, just hoping some overzealous VC would show his face. The opinionated old priest wouldn’t let any of us inside if we were armed, but from where I was, I had an unobstructed view of the services.

  I’ll never forget the sweet little girls, dressed in their best clothing, usually white ao dais (a combination of long pants worn beneath a long shirt, slit to the waist) singing “Silent Night” in Vietnamese as they marched into the church. The candles held by the adults cast a warm, yellow glow on their smiling, innocent faces. They hadn’t been corrupted yet by the war, and I hoped that they hadn’t experienced too much horror and filth so early in their lives. My thoughts returned to my family and my little boys, and the familiar old lump worked its way back up into my throat.

  The service went off without a hitch, and while we kept a close watch on the old priest and his church, we never saw any attempt to mess with him by the VC. Good thing, too; he was a very popular man.

  Lt. Col. Martha Raye, the movie star, showed up right after Christmas. Colonel Maggie, as we called her, was touring Vietnam for the USO, and stopped by the compound while she was in the area. Maggie Raye was as wonderful, brave, and compassionate a human being as I’ve ever met. She was down-home, a square shooter, in spite of being a famous Hollywood comedienne. She was also a qualified nurse and pitched in more than once when visiting a unit that had casualties. The Special Forces had fallen in love with her and her way of showing up at the out-of-the-way places where SF troopers worked. We never were hesitant about showering her with affection, and Colonel Maggie returned our good feeling in kind with every bit of her great big heart. She actually was a reserve lieutenant colonel in the Army Nurse Corps. But she had the heart of a four-star general.

  Maggie always knew several of us from earlier USO tours or from visits to her home in LA because she had extended an open invitation to SF guys passing through the West Coast to stay awhile. So we rolled out the red carpet and welcomed her as an old friend to visit with us. She was supposed to visit for just a couple of days, but as circumstances would have it, she stayed even longer.

  Colonel Maggie drank vodka straight, and by gosh, could she do it right. She drank many a big rugged SF trooper under the table and called out in her raucous and hearty voice for the next victim to step up. Her presence made the upcoming New Year’s celebration one to anticipate.

  The day before New Year’s, we were tasked by HQ MAC-SOG to put out a reaction force at a key intersection of the Ho Chi Minh trail to be ready to strike in case the NVA started moving supplies the minute the holiday cease-fire ended. B Company, the reaction standby unit, packed up and was choppered out by noon.

  They were back by four, shot to hell and back. I debriefed the senior surviving American, Lt. Will Turin. “They were all over us as soon as we landed,” he said as he struggled to maintain his composure. “Captain Jones was hit almost as soon as he dropped off the chopper. Lieutenant Jefferson and Sergeant Proudlock dragged him to a pile of brush next to the LZ (landing zone). The NVA had the LZ completely covered by fire.”

  Lieutenant Turin paused to take a deep breath. He was streaked with sweat, and he kept licking his dry lips. His young face was drained of blood and pinched tight in nervous reaction to the events he’d just experienced. His hands twitched, and his voice was higher pitched than usual. “My chopper touched down only long enough to pick up three of the men from the first lift. There’s six still out there. Captain Jones, Jefferson, Proudlock, and Lieutenant Nham of the VNSF, and two Yards.”

  He paused and wiped the sweat from his camouflaged brow, smearing the black and green grease all over his hand. “We circled and called for twenty minutes, but never got a reply. Finally, we ran low on fuel and returned to base.” He looked up with anguish all over his face. “Jesus, Captain, we’ve got to go back. They may still be alive. We’ve gotta get ’em.”

  “Don’t worry, Will. The CO is sending out a scout team right now. They’ll drop in a few klicks (kilometers) from
the LZ and work their way in close. If they find anything, we’ll send in a strike force ASAP.”

  Just before dark, the word came over the radio. The relief team had sneaked up to the hot LZ. No sign of NVA, but the six dead CCN troopers were still where they fell. The NVA hadn’t yet stripped or mutilated the bodies, which was really weird. Their usual tactic was to behead dead SF soldiers so they could show the grisly trophies to local villagers. They also took anything of value from the bodies. I suppose the constant air cover over the ambush site had scared them off. The team brought the dead soldiers back with them on the extraction chopper.

  Colonel Warren had the entire command out at the tarmac when the Huey arrived. Two hundred saddened American soldiers stood at solemn attention as the six limp bodies were lifted off the chopper, which then hammered aloft and, dipping its nose into the wind like a bow of respect, roared away. For a moment, the living stood in silence. Colonel Warren gave an impassioned speech about danger, bravery, and sacrifice, and we then slowly filed by our dead comrades and returned to our duties, soberly reflecting on what we saw. The still faces and sightless eyes of our dead comrades watched us as we filed past. They were beyond our understanding now, taking one last look at the living before going into the dark confines of their metal caskets for the long trip home and the final, sad good-bye from their loves ones.

  Captain Jones and Sergeant Proudlock had been very popular with everyone. They had a lot of friends mourning them that evening. Colonel Maggie stayed an extra day, being there to talk, drinking with those who wanted company, consoling saddened friends. She was just great. I am privileged to have had her for a friend.

  That night, I sat at my desk, writing a letter home to my wife. I was as sorrowful as any of the others, but I also was carefully containing excited feelings. The CO had given me command of the late Captain Jones’s company. I was now the commanding officer of B Company, the raider company for CCN. The tragedy brought with it a gift for me. The command of a combat unit in the best and fightin’est organization that crummy war had. I would gratefully give it up to have Jones and the others back, but we were at war, and such things happened. As foolish and, yes, as callous as it may seem, I felt a rush of excitement as I viewed the coming new year.