Some time later, some big-shot Marine was flying his chopper over the camp and spotted the missing gun. The chopper landed right on the beach, and a very steamed Marine colonel was all over our colonel, wanting to know just how that gun got where it was. Colonel Isler soon had every officer in camp giving statements, but I could honestly say that I didn’t see a thing on my guard shift. Everyone swore that the gun arrived on a different day, and even the investigators from CID (Criminal Investigation Division) couldn’t pin the rap on anyone. There were a lot of dark looks invested on innocent-faced young officers and NCOs, but nobody spilled the beans, and the mystery remained unsolved.
O’Connor’s laugh was the loudest of all whenever another phase of the investigation was launched. The village across the bay remained extremely quiet for two weeks, while the cowed villagers waited, in sleepless dread we hoped, for us to fire the cannon pointed directly at them.
Poor Colonel Isler suffered through the numerous queries from the furious Marines and I Corps army officers who had to placate our Marine comrades. It was one of the best coups counted by our camp in a long time, and it was a topic of gleeful conversation for many weeks thereafter.
Not long after the gun caper, the military command in Saigon pulled a currency switch on everyone in country. On switch day, the camp was sealed up while everyone exchanged all the military scrip we used in country for a new issue. Paymasters were dispatched to every location in the entire country at the same time, and until the currency switch was completed, every camp was closed, and nobody was supposed to go into town. That was to insure that all the whores and black marketeers would end up with old, inactive scrip, which would certainly cause financial pain for those people, but satisfied the bluenoses in HQ that we were doing our best to put the hard-working Vietnamese entrepreneurs out of business. My hootch girl, who cleaned the room where I stayed, came crying to me. She would lose the money she had made selling the sewing she hawked on the side of the road on her days off. I felt sorry for her, but what could I do?
O’Connor burst into my office a short time later. “Dai Uy, I’m taking my hootch girl into town. She’s sick and needs to get to a doctor fast.”
I sighed, “Jose, you know I can’t sign you out without a TS pass signed by the colonel. Everything’s closed up tighter than a drum.” The TS pass was supposed to be used for “top-secret” travel only, and would get O’Connor past the MP checkpoint at the bridge leading into town. The MPs couldn’t even ask what the bearer was going to do. The MPs and White Mice (Vietnamese MPs) had been ordered to let anyone showing such a pass through, no questions asked.
Somehow, O’Connor had found out that the camp was about to get closed, and had rushed over to HQ and gotten the Old Man’s signature on a TS pass. I knew O’Connor had several girlfriends working at the various bars and whorehouses in town where he spent his off-duty time. “Okay, Sergeant,” I agreed. “But don’t ask me to help you convert all the money you’re gonna bring back. If you get caught, it’s your ass.”
“Dai Uy,” he answered with his happy laugh, “you don’t need to worry about this Irish chili pepper. I never get caught.” He was right again. He came back a couple of hours later, and soon had every man in camp turning in money for him. The scrip he bought from the girls downtown for fifty cents on the dollar, he converted at face value. He must have made a fortune, as well as earned the undying appreciation of all those whores. That was one debt I’m sure liquidated in full as fast as he could recover from the previous repayment.
On the last day of the month, Team Cobra was alerted for a quick-reaction insert into the 905 Base Area, almost due west of Da Nang just across the Vietnam-Laos border. I escorted Jose and the rest of his team to the chopper pad. The three Americans and four Yards were all loaded down with ammo, water, and food. Their faces were blackened, and green tape covered the metal parts of their gear.
“Take care, you little jumping bean,” I said earnestly. “Nine-oh-five is a hot spot, so keep your head down.”
“Don’t worry about me, Dai Uy.” He laughed. “I’m gonna run recon forever.” He waved good-bye as the chopper hammered its way off the ground.
Team Cobra ran into trouble from the start. According to the after-action report given by his one-one, Sergeant Spivy, who was the only American survivor, trail watchers got on them almost immediately upon insertion. As night fell, O’Connor led the team on a big loop, trying to cut behind his trackers, but stumbled onto a large unit tracking them. The initial firefight killed the third American—a new kid on his first insertion—and two of the Yard soldiers.
Spivy reported that O’Connor was hit early on in the ensuing battle. The little Mexican NCO had crawled to a fallen tree and propped himself up so he was facing the main force of enemy, and ordered Spivy and the two remaining Yards to move down a creek to some high ground. Then they were to lay low until morning. Spivy was crying when he finished telling me. He had argued to stay with O’Connor, but reluctantly obeyed his wounded sergeant’s last orders.
The last they saw, O’Connor was firing down the trail and tossing grenades. After a while they made the high ground and crawled under some bushes. Soon it became all quiet except for the shouting of NVA soldiers looking for them. The three survivors remained hidden where they were all night without being discovered.
In the morning they sneaked back to the spot where they left O’Connor, but no one was there. Often, the NVA took American bodies back with them to show off to locals. The three men looked around for signs of the two Americans and the Yard striker without success. Finally, they gave up and called in an emergency extraction helicopter. Jose O’Connor had made his last recon.
The camp was devastated when we found out the extent of the losses incurred by Team Cobra in their fight with the NVA. We held a solemn memorial for the fallen troopers and got on with the business of the war. We sure missed the little chili pepper. He had left a bunch of grieving friends, anxious to avenge him.
A week or so later, the CO called me in and told me to write O’Connor’s wife a letter explaining what I could and conveying the unit’s deep condolences at his becoming an MIA. I carefully wrote as much as possible of the circumstances surrounding his MIA status and how much we all liked the little rascal. Taking his wife’s address from the unit record, I sent it off to her in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the nearest city to Fort Bragg, home of Special Forces.
I resumed my daily routine, letting the fallen O’Connor and the grief of his loss slip away to the dark place where I stored all my unpleasant memories.
About three weeks later, I received a summons to go see the Old Man. “Nick, didn’t I tell you to write Sergeant O’Connor’s widow and to convey our condolences?”
“Yes sir,” I replied. “I did it right away. She should have had it a couple of weeks ago. I don’t mind saying that it was a tough one to write.”
“Well, I just got a letter from her today, saying that some army friends told her about his being MIA, but she hadn’t heard anything from the army. She’s asking me what’s going on. Write her again, telling her what you can, and directing her to get in touch with the nearest army base for assistance.”
He passed me the letter. I looked at the return address. “Here’s the reason,” I explained. “Mrs. O’Connor is in Fort Bliss, Texas. She must be visiting relatives. I wrote her at Fort Bragg. I’ll get on it right away.” I took her address and quickly wrote a letter similar to the earlier one. I put it in the mail sack and got back to other business.
A short time later, I received another summons to the Iceman’s office. “Captain Nicholson, what the hell’s going on? I told you to write O’Connor’s widow, not once, but twice. Now I get another letter from her, saying she’s heard from some of his family that he’s been killed, and what should she do?”
“Honest, Colonel, I did write. Let me see the letter.” I looked at the envelope. It was addressed from someplace in Mexico. I quickly scanned the ragged handwriting. “My
God,” I gulped. “This name is different. This isn’t the same name as the name on the other letter. What the hell is going on?”
The Iceman grabbed the page and looked at it, a frown on his face. “Time to get somebody higher up than us on it. Thanks, Nick. I’ll take care of it from here on.”
I saluted and got out of the office. I voiced my suspicions to First Sergeant Fischer as soon as I got back to my company HQ. “I think the little bastard had two wives, that’s what I think.” Fischer just shook his head. We had other things to get done, and my words were soon forgotten.
As usual, I was wrong. The crazy little chili bean had three. One in Fort Bragg, one in Fort Bliss, and one in Mexico. That way, no matter where he was, he had a warm bedmate to snuggle next to. Like all good gossip, the word soon got out about O’Connor’s trio of wives, and many a glass was raised to the memory of our horny little Latino friend.
Somewhere in the Valhalla for fallen warriors, I’ll bet Jose O’Connor is still laughing his last laugh, the loudest of all.
6
Who Was That Guy?
or
Mud Marine Hero
By early February, it was the middle of the rainy season for us in I Corps; the northern section of South Vietnam had a spring wetting, while the southern half had fall monsoon. Every time we had a lull and the weather abated a little, our VC friends got more active in our AO. They used the bad weather as a time to refit and rest up for the hard work ahead.
Since the logistic requirements for cross-border operations were so much more involved for a larger-size unit like mine than for the small reconnaissance teams, CCN had not inserted my men on an operation over the unmarked border into Laos or North Vietnam for some time. I was anxious to get my feet wet leading my company out in the bush. The only question was when and where.
During the first part of the month, CCN recon teams had several close scrapes with the enemy because, since the choppers were not all-weather aircraft, bad weather made it difficult to get the recon teams out. Add to that the additional negative of not having air force fighter-bombers to work over the scene of the action, and some bad-weather operations became pretty scary. The one sure way we had to break contact with the enemy was to call the fly-fly boys on them. The average NVA soldier had a real aversion to a five-hundred-pound bomb being planted right next to him. Without air support, the contacts with Mister Charlie on his home turf got a good deal hairier.
I was anxious to get my new command into the bush for some field training. I wanted to test them in the woods to see if all the training they had received had sunk in before we went out for real, on a cross-border operation. As the wet days followed one another with monotonous regularity, I became desperate. I asked the Iceman to let me take the whole company to the field in the local area for a week of training in patrolling, ambush techniques, and reconnoitering. He okayed my request, but sent me to see the Marines, to request an area close to CCN. “I want to use our own trucks for logistical support instead of depending on air assets.”
Operational control of the entire Da Nang valley belonged to the Marines, as part of their assigned mission to protect the city and its important airfield and shipyards. Early the next day, I drove over to III MAF HQ in Da Nang to coordinate the operation with their staff pukes. The Marines were concerned we would stumble on their local patrolling and interdicting operations for the Da Nang defense region. I swear, staff officers are the same no matter which branch of service they’re in. All huff and puff, and they’ll never make a decision without a conference to concur and to cover their asses.
After reviewing my training plan with what seemed to be the tenth identical staff officer, I finally got the okay to go to the woods. I would have to remain at the far southwest end of the Da Nang valley, next to the mountains, but that was acceptable to me, since the terrain was rugged there, with lots of realistic training areas available. To add spice to the stew, it was also Charlie’s land once the sun went down. That meant we might get to train for real with booby traps and snipers to liven up the lessons.
At night, we would have to set out real ambushes and, who knows, maybe get into a real firefight with a small patrol of bad guys. The local VC were certainly active enough to stumble upon us, or vice versa. I couldn’t wait, and drove my subordinates hard to get the men ready. The young fire-eaters I had assigned to B Company didn’t need much encouragement. They were as anxious as I to get in the woods and savor the excitement of some real contact with Charlie.
We moved out at dawn, almost two hundred strong. The exercise began with a forced road march of some ten miles, right to the very edge of our assigned training area. The little Yards, all loaded down with ammo, field gear, food, and water, stayed up with me and the other Americans, even though they had taken two steps to our one. I insisted that everyone carry all the ammo they could, just in case the weather prevented us from getting resupplied. My first tour, I was in a protracted firefight with a VC company near Pleiku, when we ran out of ammo. I’ll never forget the sinking feeling in my gut when that happened, the fear that the VC would find out, and stroll in and take my head for a souvenir. Fortunately, just before dark, an extrabrave chopper pilot dropped off enough bullets to carry us through the night.
I was more than a little uncomfortable with the chopper support CCN had assigned to support field operations. The powers that be in I Corps HQ had decided the SVN Air Force would become our primary source of helicopter support instead of the 101st Division Aviation Battalion at Camp Eagle, about fifty klicks north of Da Nang. Our support would be closer, but not nearly as dependable, nor as well trained. To make the situation worse, the ARVN Air Force only flew the H-34 Choctaw choppers, which were nearly twenty years old and slow, instead of the newer and faster Huey choppers of the 101st. Painted in the black colors of CCN, the old choppers were an awfully inviting target to any hotshot NVA ackack gunner.
The uncomfortable reality of the H-34’s age and condition, apparent to the passengers, who sat right under the massive transmission of the bird and were usually bombarded with hot drops of leaking oil or hydraulic fluid, didn’t improve our disposition. Any crash impact would certainly drop the hot engine right in our laps.
The gung ho SVN pilots who flew the lumbering, old war-birds were top notch, so that offset some of the negatives. Unfortunately, I believed none were as good as the fine, young American warrant officers who flew for the 101st; I trusted them above any others. They were famous for coming in for their pickups, no matter how hot the LZ was. I hoped we’d get the 101st if the going got really rough. Only later, when the poop hit the fan one day, did I learn the VN aviators were, in truth, the better choice when things got really hot.
B Company worked hard the rest of the day, training and practicing combat maneuvers until sundown. As soon as it was dark enough to hide our movements, we left the spot where we had eaten cold, long-range reconnaissance patrol rations (called LURPs) and moved to our first RON (remain overnight) site. LURPs are dehydrated glop, but filling and, I suppose, nourishing. I had chosen a great spot, I thought, to RON. It was at an intersection of two trails headed directly for Da Nang in the distant northeast. From our position, we could see the fiery red cones of exhaust as jets took off for night missions from the always busy Da Nang airfield, many miles to the east.
A rumble of thunder warned of approaching rain. It didn’t take long to reach us. We endured a vicious thunderstorm, with flashes of lightning and pelting rain. It was over by midnight but left everyone soaked to the skin and very uncomfortable. The night was cool and damp as we huddled in our ponchos and waited for the dawn.
Around two A.M., I had finally dried out enough to think of getting a couple of hours of sleep before the sunrise stand-to. I figured the storm had discouraged any Viet Cong from walking down the trail we were hidden beside, at least on this night.
I might have known that uninterrupted sleep was too much to hope for on my first night in the brush. We had called in our RON coor
dinates to the area fire control center immediately upon reaching the site. The AFCC radio operator repeated the numbers I had read him in the daily one-time cipher. Foolishly, I just supposed that made everything all right. Around three-thirty, the world came down on our heads, scaring several year’s growth out of every man on the mission, including me.
It seemed that the Marine cannon units that provided long-range fire support to the Da Nang defenders never received the message that B Company, CCN, would be bivouacking at such-and-such trail crossing. They had scheduled some H & I (harassment and interdiction) fire on said intersection for 0330, just in case some nasty Charlies were walking along at that spot at that exact moment. Just think what the odds were on catching someone at some spot on a map at the very moment we fired. But, we Americans had lots of ammo, and H & I kept the gun crews busy, so they repeated it nearly every night.
Down came about twelve 155mm rounds, all at the same instant. This was the standard artillery plan with the ominous name of TOT (time on target) fire. Luckily for us, the Marines were good shots, and all the rounds hit the intersection. Since we were thirty yards or more off the road, none landed in our midst. More importantly to our survival, the heavy rains had softened the sandy soil enough that most of the explosive impact was absorbed by the ground. However, listening to redhot shrapnel whizzing overhead at zero-dark-thirty in the morning is not the best way to start a day.
With the roar of an oncoming train and then the breath-stopping krrump! as the first impacts blasted the night, I damn near had a heart attack. It sounded like the world had come to an end, right next to my foxhole. I squatted down, getting my butt good and muddy, hoping none of the rounds landed short. Then, after the ground quit shaking, I got on the radio to the area fire control center screaming numerous insults about the radio operator’s ancestry, and giving him, in the clear, exactly where we were on the map. Lieutenant McMurray cautioned, “Sir, if any Charlies are monitoring our radio freqs, they’ll know where we are.”
15 Months in SOG Page 7