Abandoned in Hell : The Fight for Vietnam's Firebase Kate (9780698144262)
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Within weeks, this incident became part of the “Lessons Learned” curriculum in several Army officer schools, including the Command and General Staff School, the Army War College, and the Signal Officer Advanced Course, at which my coauthor learned this lesson in 1969.
Ignoring the fate of Major General Ware, General Corcoran, who as a boy had roamed the streets of Laredo, Texas, decreed that he would be known on the air as “Pawnee Bill,” a reference to Gordon W. Lillie, a Wild West show performer and contemporary of “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
“Pawnee Bill Alpha was Corcoran’s squeaky-voiced aide,” recalls DeNote. “Pawnee Bill Alpha called Bill Albracht—Hawk—from way high over Kate. We used several different frequencies at Bu Prang Camp, but for whatever reason, Pawnee Bill couldn’t communicate directly with Hawk,” DeNote continues. “Two or three times, Pawnee Bill came back on the air with the same fucking request—to verify the size of the force surrounding Firebase Kate.
“So I got on the frequency, identified myself by call sign, and said, ‘Pawnee Bill Alpha, if you don’t believe them, drop your fucking helicopter 10,000 feet and take a look for yourself. OUT!’
“And the voice that came back—a voice that sounded like God—said: ‘This is Pawnee Bill. Roger, copy; OUT!’
“Somebody in [the Camp Bu Prang] radio bunker said, ‘You fucked up!’
“I said, ‘What are they gonna do, relieve me and send me to Nha Trang so that I can surf and eat at the Dairy Queen?’”
Shortly after that exchange, the order was given for Firebase Kate to execute an escape and evasion. That could only have come from Corcoran, or from Lu Lan, the ARVN two-star general commanding II Corps (who was directly under I Field Force). Thanks, Rocco, for having my back when I needed it most.
When permission to withdraw came, it was accompanied by the recommendation that we leave under cover of darkness and use an Air Force gunship as covering fire. Apparently, Pawnee Bill and his Flying Wild West Show believed that my troops and I might have held off a small army for five days, but that we were also stupid enough to attempt an escape and evasion operation in daylight.
On the other hand, we were definitely foolish enough to attempt escape and evasion as an intact unit. After 1953, when the lessons of the Korean War had sunk in, every US Army basic trainee has been taught that men in a unit trapped behind enemy lines stand the best chance to evade capture by breaking into small groups of three to five men, each group leaving separately at different times and from different places on the perimeter, and taking different routes in attempting to evade the enemy while returning to the safety of their own lines. Then and now, I believed that my Montagnard strikers, left to their own devices, would have done just that, and that probably most would have survived. They had lived in this region for their entire lives. They were at home in the highland jungles, and they were superb hunters and stalkers.
If Dan and I had attempted escape together, just the two of us, I would have given us a better-than-even chance for survival: We were Special Forces, trained and comfortable in jungles and in rough terrain. Comfortable moving around at night. Not so Kate’s artillerymen. I doubted that more than a few would have any idea what to do in the jungle, and most of them already showed symptoms of battle shock.
But if there was even the slightest chance for their survival in a group, I couldn’t abandon them. We would all leave together. We would take our chances together.
As the sun set around 1720 hours on the night of November 1, the fast movers broke off their bombing runs and returned to base: They were not equipped to operate at low altitude in the dark.
They were replaced by a pair of A1H Skyraiders from the USAF’s 6th Special Operations Squadron at Pleiku Air Base. Affectionately dubbed “Spads,” after the French-built biplane famously flown by World War I ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker (and by Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz’s Snoopy), the Skyraider was an enormous, single-engine fighter-bomber. Designed for service in World War II, it could carry four tons of ordnance—more than its own weight—in bombs, rockets, and ammo for four 20 mm cannon or a minigun pod. Heavily armored, it could absorb a lot of ground fire without endangering the pilot or a vital aircraft system. Best of all, the Skyraider could fly at night and remain in the air as long as seven hours.
About 1900 hours, with Kate in total darkness, one of the Skyraiders, its ordnance expended and low on fuel, returned to base. The other, call sign Spad Zero Two, with Major Gerald R. Helmich at the controls, orbited overhead; it was supposed to remain until a Shadow gunship arrived to take its place.
Shadow was going to walk us out, firing its lethal miniguns ahead of us to sanitize a path for us to meet up with the Mike Force.
I gathered everyone—strikers and artillerymen—in the vicinity of Kate’s north end, the only slope that could easily be traversed, and the one from which we had taken the least amount of enemy fire. It was dark and the sky was clear; slightly more than a half-moon would rise about 2300 hours. By then I wanted to be long gone. We got busy with preparations to move through our own wire and then through enemy lines.
In my heart of hearts, however, I believed that we were merely dead men walking: I didn’t see how it would be possible to evade the thousands of PAVN troops roaming the hills and valleys surrounding Kate. I kept such thoughts to myself as I circulated among the artillerymen, telling them how we would join up with the Mike Force near the bottom of Ambush Hill, that everything was under control, that if we stuck together and didn’t panic, we would all be fine. Many of these guys had lain up in their bunkers for days, suffering from the effects of battle shock and hopelessness from days of almost continuous shelling and the knowledge that they were surrounded by a vastly larger enemy force known for its cruelty to prisoners. I did all that I could to instill hope in these men, and to boost their morale. It seemed, at least to my untrained eyes, that they did perk up a little.
After I’d explained our situation, I told everyone what to do to prepare to escape Kate and then evade the enemy.
“We were ordered to destroy all equipment, especially the FDC radios, destroy all papers, to leave all personal effects behind except for dog tags, so that when [sic] we were captured there would be less that they could use against us in interrogation,” Bob Johnson recalls. “We were to carry as much ammo as we could, and of course take our helmets and flak gear and weapons. We fully expected to fight our way through the slot at the bottom of the hill and across Ambush Hill. We expected that we would take heavy casualties in the exit from the firebase. We were to move at a fast walk or a slow trot, definitely not to run, which would expend our energy before we actually got into battle. But we wanted to move quickly through the area. We were in a very vulnerable situation.”
“There was another guy named Johnson, a gun bunny—we called him Peewee—and he was kind of a weird dude,” recalls Koon. “He piled up a bunch of his stuff and took some old powder bags and set it on fire—he must have had a flame twelve feet high! It lit up the whole place, and we started getting mortars and rockets. That was on Peewee.”
I had Pierelli send some of the artillery guys to finish the howitzers with thermite grenades, devices that burn white-hot, generating enough concentrated heat to melt a barrel’s hardened steel. Cannoneers call this “spiking a tube.” Apparently, this was a rarely used procedure.
“I was involved with going around to the howitzers with Sergeant McFarland,” recalls Koon. “He was so excited about getting to throw thermite grenades down the tubes of these guns that he couldn’t wait to do it!”
We also used thermite on the artillery unit’s heavy communications equipment, the useless .50-cal machine gun, the FADAC computer, the generators, and all official documents.
I had decided that it would be hard enough to get everybody off Kate in one piece, and then survive a night march of several miles, at least, through trackless, triple-canopy jungle. It would become im
possible with the added burden of carrying our dead. It was unfortunate, but I decided that the needs of the living outweighed the respect and courtesies due our departed comrades: We would have to leave the dozen or so dead strikers stacked on Kate’s helipad.
I worried over how the artillerymen would handle themselves if we had to fight our way out. Would they panic and run? Stand frozen, waiting for someone to shoot them? I hoped that a few would put up a fight, at least fire their rifles at the enemy. My strikers had shown that they could fight, and fight very well, from foxholes and other protected firing positions. Would they know what to do in an ambush? Would they assault their ambushers or take off into the jungle? It was too much to worry about, I realized, when I wouldn’t be able to do much about it.
Except for the faint buzz of the Skyraider orbiting overhead, it was eerily quiet. For the first time in five days, I was not actively involved in defending Kate, and I had a few minutes to reflect. I ran through our E&E plan again in my mind. I couldn’t see how it could possibly work—but I also couldn’t think of anything better.
A Shadow gunship had been promised for an hour after dark, and I listened to my PRC/25 radio for his call. I wanted to start the E&E now—right now. Waiting was brutal.
Thinking ahead, Pierelli had positioned his infrared strobe light in the center of Kate. Once we departed, this light would become a beacon that would serve as Shadow’s reference point.
For the first time since arriving on Kate, I was in a situation that I could not control in any way. The enemy had attacked us almost without pause for days—and I expected them to renew their assault at any moment. What was going on in the darkness beneath our summit? What was PAVN waiting for? What were they up to?
Then came word from Main Tripod—Bu Prang Camp’s new call sign. The Shadow we expected at about 1900 hours had experienced mechanical problems and returned to base. We would have to wait a little longer, until a second bird could be scrambled.
“I’d seen a Spooky in action the night before I got hit,” says Mike Smith. “Spooky 41 was the number I remembered. [That night] a Spooky was supposed to be on-site; we all watched the sun go down, then it got darker and darker and there’s no Spooky. It was like something in a movie, where at the last minute the cavalry comes riding over the hill to save the good guys. But now it’s really dark, we’re ready to go—and Jesus, where the hell is the guy? My heart sank. Maybe, I thought, the cavalry can’t make it. Maybe there’s not going to be a Spooky.”
Koon: “There was a rumor about the Montagnard leader that if any of his men were badly wounded, and had to be carried or something, he’d shoot them. He wouldn’t let that slow us down. If they couldn’t make it on their own two feet, too bad.”
About 1930 hours, with everyone nervous and antsy, Main Tripod called again: The second Shadow had also experienced a mechanical problem and had to abort the mission. We would have to wait for a Spooky to be scrambled in its place.
I got back on the radio with Spad Zero Two; Major Helmich told me that he was low on fuel. To return the hundred miles to Pleiku Air Base, he could cruise at 200 miles per hour, burning comparatively little gas. Or he could land at BMT or Nha Trang to refuel. But a strafing run meant cranking his giant Wright Duplex-Cyclone engine to turn out every one of its 2,700 horses. He’d dive at 335 miles per hour, followed by a high-speed climb back to altitude—and all that sucks up a lot of the high-octane stuff. Helmich said that he could stick around a little longer, but that he had fuel enough for only one more strafing pass.
So now it’s nut-cutting time: Do we stay and wait for Spooky, or take our chances with just the Spad and a single strafing pass? I decided to save the Spad for our walk-out, in case we were attacked.
But we couldn’t wait much longer to leave.
He brings his regiment home—
Not as they filed two years before,
But a remnant half-tattered, and battered, and worn,
Like castaway sailors, who—stunned
By the surf’s loud roar,
Their mates dragged back and seen no more—
Again and again breast the surge,
And at last crawl, spent, to shore.
—Herman Melville, “The College Colonel”
EIGHTEEN
By 1940 hours, I decided that if a Spooky gunship was coming, it ought to be within radio range. Big Tex Rogers had volunteered to carry my radio and serve as my RTO. As the artillerymen crowded around in the darkness, I took the handset and called Spooky.
No answer.
I waited an eternity—maybe two minutes—and called again.
No answer.
I tried a third time.
No answer.
Frustrated and angry, I turned to Tex. “This damn radio isn’t working!” I hissed into the gloom. Tex swallowed a smile. In his calm, amused Southern drawl, he whispered, “Sir, you need to release the push-to-talk switch.”
Those tactical radios operate on a single frequency. When I squeezed the handset “talk” button, it disabled the receiver and turned on the transmitter. I looked down at my hand: I held the push-to-talk in a death grip. My transmitter was on, my receiver off. I relaxed my hand, releasing the switch.
“All of a sudden the radio goes, ‘This is Spooky 4-1; we’re coming in,’” says Lieutenant Mike Smith. “Everybody got excited—the cavalry was riding to our rescue.”
Embarrassed, I managed to mumble thanks to Tex. Again I understood that I was just as frightened as everyone else. Panic is more contagious than the common cold. If we were to have any chance to get out alive, I needed to remain calm and focused.
Silently, cloaked by the night, I now made my peace with the Almighty. I resigned myself to the realization that I would not see another sunrise: I could not envision a scenario where this would end well. Not only did I know that I would die, I knew where it would be: as I entered the gap in the jungle leading to Ambush Hill.
So I prayed not for my own life but for the lives of those who had been entrusted to me. And then, unbidden and unexpected, I was filled with a sense of calmness and well-being. It felt like a good night to die.
“Alabama” Dykes was again Spooky’s mission commander. It would be a little while before he would be in position to fire for us.
I didn’t want to leave anyone behind, so I told the men that I was going to run back to the south end and make sure. Turning to leave, I heard gunfire—small arms—coming from that direction.
“The captain said that he was going to run back to the other end,” recalls Nelson Koon. “He said if he’s not back in five minutes, to leave without him. We all said, ‘If you don’t come back, we ain’t going anywhere,’ because we didn’t know the lay of the land like he did. So everybody was shaking hands and whispering, ‘Well, if I don’t make it out and you do, get ahold of my parents and let them know what happened here.’”
It took only seconds to reach the south end. The shooting had stopped. All our foxholes and fighting positions were empty. As I squatted on my haunches in the darkness, listening, I heard, faint but clear, the unmistakable sound of barbed wire being snipped. And the muffled clatter of sandals moving up the hillside. They were no more than fifty meters down the hill and coming! The hair on my back and neck stood up; I started back for the north end. Then I heard the soft, evil cough of a nearby mortar firing, and went prone just as the first round exploded a few meters away. Then another blast, a little farther north. A few seconds later, another—the enemy was walking fire south to north along the length of the firebase toward where everyone was massed for evacuation. When the barrage ended, I ran to the north end to find that one man had been killed. Then came a popping sound from high above—a mortar illumination flare. Then another pop, and then another.
Kate was naked to any observer on the eastern ridge. Everybody flattened on the hard ground. My heart was a kettledrum, threatening
to explode from my chest—I was certain that hundreds of enemy infantry were about to spill over the south crest and come at us, firing.
There was no time to lose. When the last flare burned out, I jumped to my feet and announced that we were leaving. But before we took more than a few steps, our point man, in the act of clearing our wire for the main body to pass through, accidentally set off a trip flare. Again, everyone hit the ground. As the shifting, unearthly orange light of the flare floated down on us, we waited for the mortars. None came. That flare seemed to burn forever before it sputtered out.
Everyone got back on their feet. For a moment, it was utterly still. Then I heard the welcome sound of the Skyraider diving low toward our hilltop, hoping to make the neighborhood bullies think that he was on a strafing run. But as he barreled over, low and fast, he didn’t fire; I knew that he was low on fuel and almost out of ammo.
I expected a Mike Force element to be waiting at the foot of Ambush Hill. I had been told that they would lead us to their main body, a few miles away. To make it easier to enter their perimeter, I put everyone into a single file.
I gave the order and we moved out—but after forty or fifty meters, the line stopped. I worked my way to the front and found the point man twenty meters from the gap leading to Ambush Hill. Frozen with fear, he was unable to move forward. Spooky was still too far to fire and clear our path. The enemy was on our heels; I must act immediately.