Tiger Force

by Michael Sallah

  Green was known for his temper—quick to start fights with other students at Globe High School, regardless of their age and size. Though he stood only five feet, five inches, he rarely backed down. Everyone knew to stay away from him. As a junior, Green had brutally attacked another student who was a year older and a foot taller for looking at him the wrong way in the hallway. Dozens of classmates watched in horror as he pummeled the student senseless on the floor. It took three teachers to pull him away.

  Back home, on some summer nights, Green would sneak out of the house with his .22 rifle and head for a ridge overlooking a dam on nearby Lake Roosevelt. Patiently, he would wait for Sheriff Dutch Lake to drive onto the roadway over the dam, and then Green would shoot out the lights on the road before fleeing into the darkness. The sheriff suspected it was Green but could never prove it. Nor could the sheriff prove that Green was the one who rolled a boulder onto the dirt runway at the tiny Lake Roosevelt airstrip, shutting down flights for hours. By the time authorities arrived to remove the large rock, Green and the two buddies who carried out the prank had vanished. But they left their calling card on the boulder: the words “Fuck You,” painted in black.

  His father, Melvin, was a laborer for the state highway department who also ran Carson’s Café, a diner on Lake Roosevelt. He was quick to discipline his son for misbehaving, sometimes beating him in front of his friends, but those beatings only made Green more defiant. Once, his father grounded him for coming home with alcohol on his breath, ordering him to work extra hours at the diner with his sister and older brother. Instead of washing dishes, Green stole his father’s boat, later flipping the craft in a race on the other side of the lake. The beatings that followed his pranks only seemed to make him more aggressive, and by his late teens, he was getting into fights almost weekly.

  Ybarra was angry, but for more obvious reasons: he was painfully aware of his own physical appearance and never felt accepted in the small mining community that looked down on Mexicans and Native Americans. Sam was burdened with the shame and angst of being a “half-breed,” and his longing for a father who had died when Ybarra was five was profound. (Manuel Ybarra was a truck driver for the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company when he stopped at a bar on the way home and was stabbed to death in a brawl.)

  Besides getting into fights, he was arrested three times for underage drinking and once for disorderly conduct. At sixteen, he had dropped out of high school, guzzling beer and wine behind Mark’s or Pinky’s—the two nightspots in town that catered to Native Americans. He was too young to go inside, so he would wait outside the door and ask elders from the reservation to buy him a Coors or a pint of Thunderbird.

  In Globe, Indians and whites weren’t supposed to socialize. It had been that way for generations. But by the 1960s, some of those rules began to be challenged. Though Ybarra and others from the reservation went to “Indian schools” during their grade-school years in the 1950s, they were now attending the white public schools. Whites and Indians were at this point playing on the same football and basketball teams, and even joined in school dances. Still, the older Indians would tell Ybarra to stay out of the white bar, The Huddle.

  Green and Ybarra didn’t meet until high school, where they began hanging out in the parking lot before classes. Though they came from different worlds, they found something in common: they were angry and were quick to pick fights. Ybarra was an outcast, and Green was becoming one.

  Their bond became deeper after Green began driving, and the two started skipping school and drinking. “No one knows the shit that Sam has gone through,” Green told family members who tried to discourage him from associating with Ybarra. It was them against the world, as ferocious as suns.

  And now, here they were in late May 1967, ten thousand miles from home and oblivious to the soldiers around them in the bar. They ordered Black Labels and toasted each other.

  “At least we’re both still alive,” said Green.

  The night before they had enlisted, the two friends had sat in Green’s car downing beers when they heard a radio broadcast about the war. They began talking about joining the Army. Sam had challenged his friend: “If you do it, I’ll do it.”

  Green had agreed. As a boy growing up along Lake Roosevelt, he was spellbound at the sight of the paratroopers dropping from the sky during training exercises. And when Green and Ybarra hunted deer and quail in the nature preserves near the lake, they often talked about what it would be like to be soldiers. Besides, there was nothing for them in Globe, except working in the copper mines. Ybarra knew all about that life: his relatives had toiled underground for years, and he didn’t want any part of it.

  The next day, they showed up at the local recruiting office and enlisted under the Army’s buddy system. Together they entered the 101st Airborne in January 1966 and, after jump training at Fort Benning, Georgia, were sent to Vietnam, Ybarra in July and Green a month later.

  It had been about ten months since they arrived in Vietnam, leaving behind their lives in Arizona, and for most of that period, they were assigned to different units. Green was in a mortar platoon but spent most of his time humping in the mountains in the heart of South Vietnam with heavy equipment and only sporadic contact with the enemy. Ybarra’s experiences were different—and it showed even in his uniform. Unlike the others in the lounge that night, he wasn’t wearing the traditional olive green. Instead, he was dressed in tiger-striped fatigues and a soft-brimmed jungle cap, and he carried his own sidearm and hunting knife.

  Tiger Force, the 101st Airborne’s version of Special Forces. Badass of the badass.

  Ybarra had actually been sent to a signal corps after arriving in Vietnam, but quickly grew bored and asked to be transferred to the Tigers in early 1967. He didn’t regret his move. As soon as he joined the platoon of forty-five men, he felt part of a special team of soldiers who were treated differently than the grunts in the line companies. He remembered the first time a battalion commander addressed his platoon in Phan Rang: “You’re the Tigers, men,” he reminded them before they went on a reconnaissance mission. “The Tigers always get it done, no matter how many gooks you see.” It was an exceptional group that allowed no exceptions.

  Tiger Force was founded in November 1965 by Major David Hackworth to “outguerrilla the guerrillas,” a platoon known as a “recondo unit” because it was to carry out reconnaissance and commando functions. The model for Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kilgore, Hackworth was a hell-for-leather soldier of savage brilliance who had revealed himself as a daring hero during the Korean War. In Vietnam, he had realized that conventional warfare was a dead end. Following his lead, his commanders found the best way to locate the new enemy was to blend into the jungle terrain. That meant breaking into small teams, donning camouflage, and carrying enough rations and supplies to last several weeks. They would leave themselves behind.

  Such was Hackworth’s answer to an enemy that moved in intricate underground tunnels and carried out hit-and-run tactics.

  Beyond surveillance, the Tigers were often ordered to perform impossible maneuvers, such as acting as a blocking unit for retreating guerrilla forces and often relieving much larger line companies trapped in firefights. In February 1966 at My Canh II, an area covered by rice paddies and mountains in the Central Highlands, the Tigers were trapped by a well-fortified enemy until the unit’s own commander, Lieutenant James Gardner, heroically charged three bunkers. Gardner was killed, but his actions allowed his platoon to escape, and he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. At Dak To, a city just thirty-five kilometers from Laos, eleven Tigers were killed on June 11, 1966, when they pursued a fleeing North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiment. In that case, as it would be often, they had been the first unit sent to face the enemy. Let the other guys mop up—the Tigers wanted fresh blood, even if it meant some of it might be their own.

  Only forty-five men were accepted in the Tigers, and that was only after three months of combat experience and a screening process by co
mmanders that included a battery of questions, mostly centered on the soldiers’ willingness to kill.

  Ybarra had impressed the officers. With cold, steely eyes, he said he could kill without hesitation—using a knife, M16, or even his own hands. It made no difference. Ever since jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, he had been looking for a home. He hated the structure of the line companies—the chain of command, the rules, the officers. The Tigers were different, part Green Beret, part line company. They would break into small teams, two or three men at a time, creep deep into the jungles, “and do whatever the hell you want to do,” he was fond of saying. When the commanders told him he was accepted into the platoon, he was “thrilled.”

  After several rounds of beer, Sam sank down into his chair. There was so much smoke in the lounge it was almost impossible to see across the room. Not that there was anything special worth noticing. The room was a typical makeshift military bar, with round Formica-top tables, folding chairs, and thin wood walls built on a raised bamboo platform, and filled with the stench of cigarettes and whiskey. There were hundreds of these cheap versions of nightspots in South Vietnam that were supposed to remind American soldiers of the watering holes they left behind. The only prop in the lounge was the flickering Black Label neon light dangling over the bar.

  Ybarra guzzled the last of his beer, leaned over, and began telling Green and the others about the Tigers’ most recent battle. On May 15 Ybarra and the Tigers were called to a valley west of Duc Pho in the heart of the Central Highlands—Quang Ngai province—where another Army reconnaissance unit, the Hawks, was pinned down by enemy fire. In the late morning, with a dozen Tiger Force soldiers at the bottom of the valley, the enemy launched a surprise attack. “They were fuckin’ all over the place,” Ybarra angrily recalled. Well-fortified enemy bunkers at the top of the valley suddenly opened up, and NVA soldiers began shelling the helpless Tigers below.

  Led by the Tigers’ commander, Lieutenant Gary Forbes, the platoon members charged the bunkers but were forced down by a flurry of mortars and .50-caliber machine-gun fire. For hours, the platoon was at the bottom of the basin, dodging artillery, grenades, and bullet fire. Tiger Force radioed for helicopters to evacuate the wounded, but each time a chopper tried to land, it was forced to leave because of enemy artillery. One helicopter was able to land in a rice paddy but was immediately hit by fire and destroyed.

  By early afternoon, Tiger Force was no closer to escaping and was running low on ammunition. But the platoon finally caught a break when the soldiers found a new position and were able to call in American air strikes without being hit. For two hours, U.S. jets dropped bombs on the bunkers. The combination of air strikes and the arrival of some additional American troops allowed the Tigers to escape. By the end of the day, two were dead and twenty-five wounded. For some of the injured, including Lieutenant Forbes, the war was over.

  Because of the losses, Sam admitted the Tigers “were down” and unable to go back out on maneuvers until they could find reinforcements. The battalion officers were trying to bring in new volunteers. Now Ybarra did his part. He turned to Green. “You need to come with me, Kenny. You need to be a Tiger.”

  Green always knew when Ybarra was serious; his smile would disappear and his eyes would narrow. He had seen the look many times before, and he saw it now.

  Vietnam in early 1967 was still vastly different from what it was to become at year’s end. There was still a sense of patriotism that had not yet been eroded by the bitterness of the Tet Offensive and casualties that would soon turn most Americans against the war. Until now, most of the conflict had been marked by skirmishes and, if not wild optimism, at least a sense of inevitable triumph.

  Through most of the conversation, Green’s friend Leon Fletcher was quiet. But after several minutes, he grew agitated. “You don’t want to join these guys, Kenny,” he said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  Fletcher had looked up to Green. Ken had been the one who took the time to show Leon the basics of survival, from throwing him to the ground during sniper attacks to teaching him how to avoid booby traps. And now Fletcher thought it was time to return the favor.

  Green was quiet for a moment, and then he turned to Fletcher. “At this point, I just want to kill a lot of them. My job is to kill.”

  Ed Beck joined in. After several months in South Vietnam, he was looking for real action—not just maneuvers or air strikes with no real targets. He had come to Vietnam to escape, not just from the boring western suburbs of Chicago but from a wife who was making his life miserable. “How do we get in?” he asked.

  Before Ybarra could answer, Fletcher interrupted again. “You guys are crazy. You’re supposed to be trying to stay alive. Why do you want to join a fucking recon unit?”

  Ybarra quickly cut him off. “Look, man, stay out of this,” he said, jabbing a finger at Fletcher. “Don’t be telling Kenny what he’s going to do. We go way back.” There was not a trace of friendliness in his comment.

  Ybarra’s anger may have been what Green most admired, especially when his fury involved protecting Ken’s right to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. Green turned to his friend. “I’m in, man. Tell me what I need to do.”

  “If you’re going, I’m going,” Beck said.

  For Green and Beck, it was their way of finally taking part. Like so many others in the bar that night, they had been in high school when the first U.S. fighting units arrived in Da Nang in March 1965, and had watched the television reports of a war that was supposed to stop the spread of Communism.

  Green, Beck, and Ybarra felt they were the next generation to carry on the traditions of their fathers and grandfathers who fought against evil in two world wars. Army recruiters were hawking the Vietnam War as a conflict of good versus evil, Democracy versus Communism. And to Green, Beck, and Ybarra, that was good enough. They grew up in the throes of the Cold War and recalled the hundreds of times they were told to duck under their desks at school during bomb drills. The Russians would attack without warning. The Red Chinese would swarm into all of Asia. Latin America and Mesopotamia were all on the verge of Marxist descent. To Green, it was a familiar message. He would listen to customers at his father’s diner talk endlessly about how the United States was losing the Cold War and how the nation needed to get tougher on the “Commies.” World War II veterans would come into the diner still wearing GOLDWATER FOR PRESIDENT buttons long after the 1964 election ended, complaining bitterly that if Goldwater had won the race for the White House, North Vietnam would have been bombed into the Stone Age.

  The French had learned the hard way. For nearly six decades, Vietnam had been a French colony. They introduced their language and culture, and Saigon became the Paris of the Orient, with rows of elegant storefronts and cast-iron balconies overlooking wide boulevards and roundabouts. Street-corner bistros served chardonnay and shrimp gratiné. But the Vietnamese hated the French, and they wanted their country back. They saw their chance after World War II. Led by the legendary Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese guerrillas—known as the Vietminh—battled French soldiers for nine years using weapons and ammo provided by the Chinese and Soviets, though at this point, Ho claimed only to be a nationalist.

  The Vietminh attacked French strongholds at will, forcing their occupiers from several key provinces. The cluster of tiny villages at the foothills of the mountains at Dien Bien Phu became the scene of one of the most historic battles in Vietnamese history. In 1954, with the French troops trapped in the low ground, the Vietminh pummeled them with heavy artillery for days until the French surrendered. The United Nations interceded and, in July 1954, a peace treaty was signed.

  As part of the agreement, the country was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, with two nations emerging—South Vietnam and North Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh would command the North, while the South would be led by Emperor Bao Dai, who appointed Ngo Dinh Diem as his prime minister. Ho agreed to the plan only because it called for free elections in June 1956. He wa
s confident he would win a fair vote and then be able to reunite the country.

  But in 1955, Diem, with the backing of the United States, seized power from the emperor and unilaterally rejected the treaty, canceling elections. The action infuriated Ho, who then declared war against the South and announced to the world he was a Communist. The coup revealed that the South, he declared, was simply a puppet of the United States—another in a long line of nations that had tried to divide the Vietnamese. No one, Ho swore, would ever subjugate his people again.

  In the ensuing years, armies from the North and South clashed, with the South Vietnamese losing most of the battles to Ho’s soldiers, who were now quietly backed by the Soviet Union and China.

  With his country in danger of collapsing, Diem found an ally in President John F. Kennedy, a fellow Roman Catholic and a Cold War hard-liner who sent American advisers to prop up the South Vietnam troops. The soldiers Kennedy was sending to South Vietnam were doing more than lending advice. In fact, many were fighting side by side with their new allies. Kennedy knew, as did the two presidents before him, that he would be judged by his success in the Cold War. Allowing South Vietnam to fall to the Communists would be a political disaster, especially after his criticism during the 1960 race for the White House, when he had claimed the United States was losing the arms race to the Soviets in what the Democratic candidate characterized as a “missile gap.” By 1962 there were twelve thousand American advisers in South Vietnam, but there was growing unrest in the South with Diem and the American presence. Buddhist monks began protesting in the streets—some committing suicide by lighting themselves on fire—to stop the war and end U.S. involvement.