(Left to right): David, Nugyen, and Jeff wait patiently as Titi explains to Vietnamese officials that U.S. vets have sent supplies to the Khe Sanh schoolchildren. The donations were refused because we failed to follow procedure.
Paul brought along his son, Jeff Northcutt, an Army veteran, and Navy vet David Kneiss accompanied Coach Mannion, his former high school teacher. In 1987, intrigued with Coach’s classes on the war, David had asked, “Given the opportunity, would you travel back to Vietnam?” Dennis had answered, “Only if I could stand on Hill 861 again at Khe Sanh.” Now, thirteen years and many conversations later, David shadowed Dennis with a video camera to document the journey.
It was early morning in Hue, and already a steamy hot July day. We were seven passengers piled into a van with luggage stacked into every nook and cranny. We made a stop to pick up a very likeable young Vietnamese woman who volunteered to translate for us. She told us to call her “Titi,” “That’s what my family calls me, and it means little one,” she said. She was a breath of fresh air in her floppy white hat, adorned with a decorative pin missing a few stones, and a quick, contagious smile.
Khe Sanh Marines: (left to right) Bob Arrotta, Paul Knight, Dennis Mannion, and Glenn Prentice at the “Rockpile,” July 2000.
At last, we were on Highway 9 headed towards Khe Sanh. A very different road now, only one year after my last visit the highway was now paved almost to Laos. The jungle canopy began to thicken as the mountains became steeper. All eyes remained glued to the windows of the van as we tried to take everything in at once. Suddenly the shotgun rider gave a loud hoot; we had reached an area the Marines instantly recognized, the impressive “Rockpile.” To the casual observer, it’s only a rugged mountain with steep and rocky trails to the top. If you know the history, however, the sight makes you want to stand tall and salute the men who fought there. A lone Marine sniper established a recon post atop “the Rock” during Operation Hastings in 1966. Fed by airdrops of C-rations, he controlled the karst rock outcropping the Vietnamese called Thon Khe Tri, which later became a Marine battalion command post.
The van pulled over, the four Khe Sanh vets wandered to the side of the road and stood together, silently lost in thought.
A young girl at play in the legendary Khe Sanh Combat Base, July 2000.
After we crossed the Da Krong River Bridge, the ride west was pensive, but the closer we got to Khe Sanh the more animated the Marines became. We drove straight to the combat base and the Khe Sanh vets eagerly bailed out of the van to explore their old stomping grounds. After a brief visit to the small war museum, the search was on to locate the old landing strip in the midst of what was now a sprawling coffee plantation. I wandered around with Glenn. Although we did not find the landmark he sought, we did find the huge crater where the ammo dump exploded on the morning of January 21, 1968. Fragments of cordite littered the ground. I picked up a few short pieces of the smokeless propellant and rolled them around in my hand. I was about to slip them into my pocket as a souvenir when Glenn advised me it might not be a good idea, unless I wanted to blow my shorts off.
After a few hours of tromping around in the midday heat, we were hot, tired, hungry, and I was sunburned. We returned to the center of the village and checked into the only available accommodations in Khe Sanh, the government guesthouse. I rented a Class A room for Titi and myself, gladly paying a little extra for the inside toilet and mosquito netting over the beds. The men spent the evening on the porch watching rain drip off the eaves. They shared conversation and a few cold beers with a couple of Vietnamese men who claimed to be engineers.
Donna humps up Hill 861. Photo by David Kneiss.
Early the next morning, the van dropped us off at the access road to the combat base, where we would begin our journey on foot. Loaded down with gear, we moved cautiously on the slick roadbed. The smooth clay reflected sunlight like red ice, and was just as dicey to navigate. We slogged along muddy paths to the base of Hill 861. The five-mile trail to reach the 2,825-foot hilltop was rugged. Strong winds blew in from west, a constant drizzle made the thirty-degree climb even more difficult. Along the trail there was an abundance of unforgiving live rounds. I imagined that I trudged in the same long-faded footprints American soldiers made on this hillside so many years ago, unaware they carved a niche in history with every step. I was a lot less miserable, and surely less afraid for my life, as all those who had traveled this way before. As we climbed higher and higher into the clouds, I looked down to see small communities and reservoirs nestled in the foothills below. A peaceful scene so serene it seemed almost impossible that war and death had ever touched this remote jungle valley.
Despite all my weeks of preparation, I was in no way equipped to climb miles of irregular terrain in the heat of July. I razzed myself, “Climbing a jungle mountain with this banged up body, I must be nuts.” The heavy pack on my back hurt, and already hindered my struggle to keep up with the others. Even though a steady, light rain fell on us, I consumed far too much of my water supply. Forced to stop frequently because my overstrained muscles turned to quivering jelly, I felt close to collapse several times. I didn’t complain, although the pain escalated until I was unsure I could even make it to the top of Hill 861. Eventually, excitement drove even my last hiking companion, Paul, ahead of me to join his fellow Khe Sanh vets.
Khe Sanh Valley, July 2000, twenty-eight years after final withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Left alone to make my own way, I spotted the upper half of a black leather boot on one side of the gritty red mud path, and the sole of the boot on the other side. I couldn’t help but wonder about the man who had worn that boot. How strange, I thought, that these two pieces of a combat boot had remained within a few feet of each other, undisturbed for over thirty years, a memorial of sorts. When I finally tore my eyes away from the past and looked up, I saw at the crest of the next hillside a strip of red cloth the guys had tied to a clump of elephant grass as a trail marker. Flapping in the brisk wind, it looked very much like a NVA flag. It was eerie walking alone through the head-high, razor-sharp elephant grass in heavy fog.
Boot and UXO on the trail to Hill 861.
By the time I reached the top of Hill 861, camp was already set up. Dennis enthusiastically swung a machete, slicing through thick elephant grass to chop at the soft ground around the spot where his old bunker was. He barely missed bringing his blade down on a half-buried grenade. Camp, which consisted of three tents of sorts, was perched on the edge of old bomb craters deeper than I was tall. The rain and the wind never let up. We were unaware killer one hundred mph winds poised to strike the northern Philippines, and the ensuing tailwinds of “Typhoon Kai-Tak” were set to push forceful storms across Vietnam. The blazing campfire, around which I had envisioned these soldiers gathered to set free old memories, never had a match put to it. I can’t say we didn’t laugh a lot; anticipation crackled between tents all afternoon. Crowded, leaking tents, wind, and rain—none of it mattered because we had done it. We were there, on top of Hill 861, and it was breathtaking.
By means of her painter’s palette, all of the shades, hues, and tints of green Mother Nature could create were on display. Her canvas, a magnificent canopy of jungle growth, draped with mysterious wisps of clouds. Dennis articulated the jungles reclamation of the long ago barren hilltop in David’s video documentary Khe Sanh: A Walk in the Clouds when he stated, “The plants and the trees grow back, the people don’t.”
Heavy, dark clouds moved in, rain came down in blinding sheets; the extremely strong winds tested the tent poles. Paul and Jeff shared their small tent with me. Curled up in a corner, I looked over and saw a slight movement at Paul’s feet. At first, I thought it was a tiny snake, maybe a deadly viper. I alerted Paul not to move and jumped up to move closer. I had no weapon, but I thought maybe I could stomp the snake while Paul rolled out of reach. False alarm, it wasn’t a snake, but the biggest damn leech I’d ever seen. Vets had warned me about leeches, but no one had bothered to mention
they grew to four-inches and lived on hilltops thousands of feet above water. Paul’s laughter echoed through the hills when I fetched salt from my backpack and thoroughly annihilated the enemy. As the wind gusted, the rain fell faster and harder. Our tent began to tilt at an odd angle. We heard a loud cracking sound as the wind snapped a tent pole, which punctured the light weight tent. Water gushed in. Jeff used my poncho to cover the leak and the three of us edged closer to the middle of the small shelter to stay dry.
Stuck inside three separate tents, we were all soggy and disappointed. David and Jeff, healthy young men, could stand it no longer; they were bored. They decided to go back down the hill and return at sunrise the next day. The rest of us planned to stay the night on top of Hill 861. Dennis, with the beginning of an indoor pool in his tent, considered bunking with Paul and me. Suddenly, a second pole snapped with a loud pop. It sounded like a gunshot and the sound startled Paul to his feet. Half the tent sagged with the weight of rainwater as we scrambled into the wind before the tent collapsed. “To hell with this,” Paul decided, “I’m outta here!” There was only one dry tent left. Although designed for two-people, Glenn, Bob, Titi, and Dennis crowded in together. “I’m on your heels,” I hollered back at Paul as I ran to reclaim my poncho and pull my gear back on.
“Hurry, hurry,” Paul shouted at me over his shoulder, “We’ve got to get down before it gets dark!” Night falls fast in the jungle. We had to get on a hard road before daylight was gone; if we stepped off the darkened trail in the wrong spot, we could die in an instant. UXO and landmines maim or kill a person nearly every week in Quang Tri Province. The trail turned from hard, red clay ruts into slick, treacherous furrows. The wind and the rain were stout and heavy. I tried to stay right behind Paul, but we had to step sideways to climb down. My foot turned right even when my boot went left. Focused on my balancing act, even I knew we had lost the trail when we reached a washout several feet across. Two or three times we backtracked to search out David and Jeff’s footprints and get our bearings. We scouted around until we picked up their footprints and skid marks, but we quickly lost them again in the rain trodden brush. The sun was going down fast when the trail disappeared completely in multiple spots. Screaming louder than any drill instructor I’d ever encountered, Paul barked orders against the howling wind, “Move it, move it, move your ass!” I assumed he was having a flashback of some long ago patrol where the enemy lurked behind every shrub. The last leg of the hike down was blind luck; we stumbled out of the bush onto a dirt road right at dusk.
Still raining, we sought shelter on the porch of the first house we came upon. Three men on motorbikes watched our every move from the side of the road. When Paul asked them for a ride to the guesthouse, they demanded to see our money, and acted as if they were up to no good. Paul carried no cash at all, but I’d stashed dong somewhere in my backpack in case of an emergency. As I dug around in all the tiny compartments, two more Vietnamese men rode up in the darkness on motorbikes. They immediately confronted the others, who shouted cuss words we couldn’t understand. The newcomers apparently won the argument because the other men left in a huff. Paul and I were relieved to hitch a ride back to Khe Sanh. We were very grateful to our rescuers, although they reeked of nuoc mam. A spicy fish sauce, nuoc mam is allowed to ferment for six-months prior to being eaten, and pungent enough to require us to practice controlled breathing to avoid passing out on the backseat of the bikes as the wind pushed the odor up our nostrils. Safely back at the guesthouse, we generously tipped both men.
When the rest of the crew came down from Hill 861 at daybreak and reached the guesthouse, Vietnamese officials confiscated all our passports from the hotel desk clerk without explanation. They ordered us to report to the Dong Ha police for questioning by 3:00 p.m. the next day. Although we didn’t know what might happen to us next, everyone assumed the misunderstanding would be over once we met face-to-face with officials and explained the sentimental nature of the Marines return to the hills. Under the watchful eyes of unidentified informants, I became concerned there would be no search for Anha. Terribly disappointed, I needed to think. I set out to walk to the village market. Not far from the guesthouse, I came across the road to the area the 55th JTF team searched when I was in Khe Sanh in 1999. I soon found myself alone wandering around the Old French Fort. I climbed the old guard tower, looked out over the village, and poked around inside myself for a bit of courage. I made my mind up; there was no turning back now. I had come too far to find a man and ask a question.
Back at the guesthouse, I asked the guys if anyone wanted to go with me into the jungle to seek Bru Anha. Not one angry, sad face showed even a flicker of interest. I didn’t blame them; we were all tired, angry, disappointed, and frustrated. I didn’t want to go into the jungle without them, but I would have to go alone to find Anha. He might recall rumors among the Bru of an American POW taken the day the ammo dump at the Khe Sanh Combat Base blew up. Anyone who was in Khe Sanh on January 21, 1968, always remembers the massive explosion that signaled the beginning of the seventy-seven day siege. If I was going to find Anha and talk to him, it was now or never.
The bad weather made the roads and trails dangerous, and finding a motorbike driver willing to carry a passenger to a hamlet deep in the bush wasn’t easy. Riding a motorbike in Vietnam was dangerous on paved roads, much less doubling the risk on slick, muddy roads in the rain.
With little more than faint hope and a vague idea of where I was going, I hired a driver, and we left the village to find Anha. I hung on as we traveled from the village into the jungle to look for a man neither of us knew on sight. The motorbike fishtailed down a rutted footpath to a remote village, but Anha was not to be found. The Bru at one hut told my driver Anha no longer lived there. The entire household openly stared at me as one of the men gave my driver directions to yet another village, several miles away.
After a long, bumpy ride down another slick, red-glazed trail, the driver stopped in front of a bamboo hut a few miles north of Khe Sanh and the combat base. A very friendly and hospitable Bru woman came to the door and waved us into her home. She spoke no English, and I didn’t know what the driver told her as the reason for our unexpected visit. All I knew to do was to ask if she was Mrs. Anha.
“Yes, yes,” she answered as she bobbed her head up and down.
“Mr. Anha?” I ventured, as I tried to prepare myself should sadness cross her face, which would indicate he had died. Mrs. Anha smiled and spoke to one of the children, who immediately scampered out the door and into the coffee fields. She rolled out a rice mat and gestured for me to sit beside the fire. I realized I was shivering, not so much from the damp chill as the excitement of having found Bru Anha. While Mrs. Anha made green tea over hot coals that glowed in the middle of the bamboo floor, I studied their humble home. A kitten and a tiny bird with a wing injury, played together. A few items of clothing hung on wall pegs, as did a few metal cooking utensils. The west wall was stacked with books and a picture of the Virgin Mary. I thought about what items people find important when they have so very little.
Mrs. Anha was a grand hostess, graciously serving me bitter green tea as I warmed myself by her cookfire. Several neighbors, with children in tow, joined us in the bamboo hut. We couldn’t communicate with words, only smiles and hand gestures, but I felt very comfortable and at ease. Shortly, a sun-browned man with white hair appeared in a U.S. flight jacket. His presence was understated, but bold, and it was obvious he held the respect of the community. Anha clasped my hands for a long moment. I bowed slightly, unsure of my manners. Forty pairs of eyes watched intently as we sat cross-legged on the rice mat and sipped tea. I questioned myself at this point, not completely sure if I’d really found the right man. I struggled to find common ground, and hastily hit on the idea of dropping names Anha might recognize. “Do you remember Chaplain Ray Stubbe?” I asked. A smile lit Anha’s face when I said, “He sends greetings.”
Unexpectedly, he quickly moved to the stack of books ag
ainst the wall and pulled out what I recognized to be an old military journal bound in bright green cloth. I opened the cover to the first page; it was blank, as were the next few pages. I quickly flipped through the book, eager to discover what Anha wanted me to see. It appeared that every page was empty, until I looked at the very last one. There, I found a printed page with an old photo of four men. The first man in the photo was an unidentified American soldier. The bold caption underneath the faded picture read: “BRU-PF Hom, Body guard for Capt. Nhi, Huong Hoa District Chief Capt. Nhi, Bru spokesman Anha.” I had the right man.
My driver indicated the weather was building up again, and we should leave. I pointed at my wristwatch and told Anha, “Ten o’clock, tomorrow, ten o’clock, I come back.” Anha smiled, and bobbed his head to let me know he understood. I needed a little time to figure out some way for us to communicate. I thought from what I’d read about Anha that he was fluent in English. I was completely unprepared for this situation.
Keeping the Promise: The Story of MIA Jerry Elliott, a Family Shattered by His Disappearance, and a Sister's 40-Year Search for the Truth Page 26