Tiger Force

by Michael Sallah

  At Carentan, Harold Austin, the lean, bespectacled lieutenant colonel who had assumed command of the battalion on June 10, was pacing as he talked on the radio. He didn’t know what happened, he said, but would call his acting Tiger commander, Lieutenant Naughton, to find out.

  Within minutes, he was on the phone with Naughton, who was with his own team in the valley. “No one is supposed to be there,” he barked. General Westmoreland had made it clear: no more farming in the Central Highlands. “Get those people out of there,” said Austin.

  A former battalion executive officer who rarely left command headquarters, Austin didn’t like the Tigers and made no bones about it. He didn’t like their dress code and the fact that some platoon members didn’t salute him. He was a by-the-book, starched-shirt officer who had just taken over for Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Collins, a gung ho soldier who often jumped into his helicopter to fly over troops in the middle of firefights. That chopper had been struck by enemy fire while hovering over the men during a skirmish on April 20, 1967, but the very next day, Collins was back in the air. “He’s nuts,” said a battalion officer. Collins had made his mark and was promoted to full colonel.

  In Vietnam, commanding a battle unit was the way to move up the food chain. Austin was a soldier of a different color. The Colorado native had spent time at the Pentagon and arrived in Vietnam in August 1966 as an intelligence officer training advisers. He was about brains over brawn. But as much as Austin didn’t like the Tigers, he knew he needed a small unit that could sneak into the villages to find the people and enforce the Army’s orders.

  He had taken the time to know the Tigers by interviewing each one before sending him into the Song Ve. Yet he couldn’t control them, not like the line soldiers. The Tigers lived by their own rules. That’s the way it had been since Hackworth had put the unit together. “I want forty swinging dicks,” he once told a reporter. The less bureaucracy, the better. When you’re sneaking up on a VC encampment, you’re not supposed to radio the battalion commander for permission to piss.

  As a result, the Tigers took orders from their lieutenant or team leaders. The only officer in the rear who had contact with the Tigers was the headquarter company commander, Captain Carl James, the designated point man for the battalion commander. It was a very weak link, which is just how Hackworth, now assigned to the Pentagon, had intended. Shortly after Tiger Force was created in 1965, some officers at the MACV argued that Special Force’s units like the Tigers could be trouble. They worried that these kinds of units could get carried away and take the war into their own hands. But Westmoreland had insisted such autonomous units were needed in a guerrilla war, and that was the end of the debate.

  Nevertheless, Austin was determined to keep tabs on the Tigers. He would meet with battalion officers every morning to talk about strategies and review intelligence reports on NVA and VC movements in the operations area, which covered the Song Ve and other trouble spots in Quang Ngai province. He would always ask the whereabouts of the fighting units, especially the Tigers, and would then draw up plans and relay orders to the units in the field. If possible, the Tigers would receive the orders, but most of the time they were out of contact with the rear. And in any case, they weren’t necessarily going to listen even if they did hear the message.

  Austin was required to report to officers from the MACV overseeing Task Force Oregon—the overall campaign to win the Central Highlands. As he received calls from the MACV about the Song Ve evacuation, he said the operation was moving smoothly. On June 22, he was proud to announce that the valley was cleared.

  “Good job” was the curt response on the other line.

  But the mission was far from over.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lieutenant Stephen Naughton broke the bad news to the Tigers: instead of hopping on choppers for the ride back to Carentan, the platoon would stay in the valley. It was typical Army—after all the press releases and planning and the maneuvers to clear the valley, the villagers had returned. The whole thing felt like pushing waves back into the ocean.

  Some of the men grumbled, a few angrily and dramatically tossing down their rucksacks. Such open displays of discontent weren’t found in just Tiger Force. By the summer of 1967, American troops across Vietnam were periodically questioning orders in the field. There was already plenty of racial unrest in combat units, a reflection of the social discord back home. But there was also mounting frustration with tactics and leadership. Troops would fight for a hill, give up numerous soldiers to casualties, and then, after winning the battle, move on—leaving the hill to the enemy. A week later, the troops would return and fight over the same hill. This kind of strategy wasn’t lost on the grunts, who were bearing the burdens of battle, and throughout the Army, they were starting to speak up.

  In the end, the strategy had a deep impact on the troops. Psychologically, soldiers risking their lives in firefights need to see some tangible form of victory, some evidence that what they are doing is making a difference in the war. Winning control of a village or a piece of land—and securing it. The Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima became a powerful symbol of victory during World War II. The South Pacific island was won, boosting the morale of U.S. troops and Americans at home. But in South Vietnam, there were no such scenes.

  Naughton understood that the men wouldn’t be happy about the new assignment, but he was following orders. As he saw it, they were free to complain, but they weren’t leaving the valley until it was cleared.

  The Tigers’ mission in the Song Ve had originally been to root out VC and rice supplies. Now they were being asked to serve as an escort service for stubborn villagers. But if they didn’t have any choice about staying, they were going to do things their way. They would go hamlet to hamlet and escort the remaining people to a landing zone, where choppers would pick them up for the ride to the relocation camp. But unlike the line companies, the Tigers would not bring translators to each hamlet as they made the rounds. There was a universal language, and it was all they felt they needed: if the people insisted on staying, they would be removed by force. And as a show of force, the soldiers would take one more measure: they would burn the villages to the ground. If you torched the huts, the logic went, the people couldn’t come back. Problem solved.

  This tactic wasn’t new but was part of a broader search-and-destroy strategy embraced by General Westmoreland as the only real way of bringing the country under control. By June 1967, it was common practice among the troops in South Vietnam “to break out the Zippos.” It was the U.S. military’s method of tearing down the will of the people. If the Vietnamese were going to defy the Americans, they would see there were irrevocable consequences. If they were assisting the enemy, their villages would be incinerated. If they refused to leave their land, their huts would be destroyed. Westmoreland’s goal was to make it impossible for rural people to live anywhere but relocation camps—especially for the Vietnamese of the Central Highlands. They were “too independent,” according to military strategists—always a problem if one demands agreement. President Ngo Dinh Diem had warned American military leaders years earlier that if rebellions were going to take place, they would be in those trouble spots: the Quang Ngai, Quang Tin, and Binh Dinh provinces. Concentrated into relocation camps, residents of these hot spots could be observed, influenced, and constricted.

  Ironically, search and destroy would directly conflict with another strategy that was used by President Johnson to sell the war to the American people. During a speech, he declared that “ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there.” That meant treating the people with enough respect that they would support Saigon—and ultimately American ideologies—rather than succumbing to the pressure of Ho Chi Minh and Communism. But the policies of search and destroy were already having the opposite effect. The people deeply resented being forced off their land, and they began hating the Americans. It was hard to love the country that sent soldiers to yank you from
your home, burn your village down, force you into a squalid refugee camp, and compel fathers and sons into the army of a visibly corrupt regime.

  After carefully going over the details of the operation, the Tiger team leaders began talking to their men, and within a few minutes, the platoon broke into four groups.

  Wood’s unit headed to the cluster of huts closest to the river, about five hundred meters away. After reaching the entrance, the soldiers found close to a dozen people, including children, standing nearby. Some were locals whom the Army missed during the first sweep; others were villagers who hid from the soldiers.

  Carpenter looked around the hamlet and shook his head. “These people just didn’t get it,” he recalled. “We dropped leaflets, we brought in translators. We did everything we could do, and they still didn’t leave.” Now, because these farmers couldn’t follow simple instructions, he and the rest of Tiger Force had to be here doing this kind of shit work instead of getting hot showers back at the base—not to mention a beer and a good time at Mama San’s, the brothel at the end of the dirt roadway in Duc Pho. The whorehouse was sandwiched between thatched huts, one of those wonders from the war with a bamboo frame and walls made from crushed beer cans, scented candles in every room, and beads hanging in the doorways. The smell was distinct: whiskey, cigarettes, and fish oil from the back room where the women were always cooking. For five dollars, the men could pick out a young girl and get laid on a bamboo cot and forget about the war.

  Before Wood had finished explaining to the villagers the evacuation orders by holding up a leaflet, several Tigers walked to the first row of huts, removed their Zippos, and began lighting the dry thatch. With flames running up the sides of the huts, people bolted from their homes, some screaming. One elderly woman grabbed a bucket of water and threw it on the fire engulfing the door to her hut, but it was futile. As the other huts caught fire, some of the soldiers began laughing. One soldier even fired his M16 in the air, adding to the festive chaos.

  Wood didn’t like what he was seeing. He knew his men were frustrated, but he didn’t expect them to act like desperadoes. He quickly ordered them to begin rounding up the villagers. Amid the flame and smoke, they complied.

  Just two kilometers away, another group led by Manuel Sanchez was departing an empty hamlet when they spotted an elderly woman on a bicycle pedaling in their direction. Several Tigers cautiously raised their rifles, but as the woman came closer, Sanchez could see she wasn’t armed. “Don’t fire,” he ordered, raising his hand.

  Everyone on the team lowered his gun but James Barnett. The sergeant had been in South Vietnam six months and didn’t trust anyone. The Vietnamese looked different. They smelled different. And he wasn’t going to take a chance. Let your guard down and that smiling young girl could toss a grenade in your Jeep. Relax for a second and the kindly grandfather could shoot you in the back. If the enemy didn’t wear uniforms, wasn’t the safest thing to assume everyone held a knife behind his or her back?

  As the old woman approached the soldiers, Sanchez raised his hand for her to stop, uttering one of the few phrases he knew: “Dung Lai, Dung Lai.” She immediately began dragging a foot in the dirt until the bicycle came to a halt. As the soldiers moved closer, she began babbling nervously, pointing to the tree line beyond the hamlet. The only words the soldiers recognized were “Nghia Hanh,” the name of one of the relocation camps.

  Sanchez turned to the men. “She’s harmless,” he said, guessing she had once lived in the hamlet but was now trying to join the others at the camp. Everyone could see she posed no threat. Kerrigan walked over to get a closer look at her bicycle, rigged with a half-dozen burlap bags on the rear. After closer inspection, Sanchez decided not to call a chopper to transport her and instead waved her on.

  Staring straight ahead, she started pedaling, but as she passed by Barnett, he jumped into the path and kicked her rear tire, sending her flying to the ground.

  Before anyone could react, Barnett picked up her bike and heaved it into the brush as she began screaming in Vietnamese.

  One of the bundles tied to the rear opened, and Barnett reached down and rummaged through her belongings. He pulled out a small roll of South Vietnamese currency and held it in the air. “See this?” he asked, waving the money as Sanchez approached. “She’s VC. That’s why she’s got this money. She’s VC.”

  Sanchez clenched his fists and growled. This was his team and he had already let her pass. He glared at Barnett and then turned around to pick up the woman while Kerrigan pulled her bicycle from the brush. The other team members quickly came over to see if Sanchez needed any help.

  Kerrigan carefully tied the bag onto the rear. He then rolled the pedals with one hand while holding up the back of the bike with the other to make sure everything was still working.

  Everyone on the team shared Sanchez’s anger. There was no reason to hurt the woman. “You do that again, Barnett, you’ll deal with me,” said Sanchez.

  Barnett shot back, “What the hell are you doing? She’s a gook. She shouldn’t have that money.”

  “I told her she could pass,” Sanchez said.

  Despite his time in South Vietnam, Sanchez wasn’t jaded. He didn’t believe that every villager was the enemy, especially an old lady who wasn’t trying to hide. She had been forced from her hut and was heading to the place where she probably didn’t want to go. Where was she supposed to leave her money—in a hut that would be burned down?

  The two sergeants stared at each other for a moment but said nothing. It was clear Sanchez was not going to back down, even if Barnett was four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. Barnett could get away with pushing around newcomers, but Sanchez wasn’t a newcomer—he had served in the Tigers longer than Barnett and he had survived just as many firefights.

  Barnett turned around and, stuffing the money in his pocket, walked away.

  By noon, the chopper pilots noticed a layer of fog over the valley.

  They called to battalion headquarters to report a strange haze shrouding the Song Ve, and they were quickly informed that the mist blanketing the valley was smoke. “The Tigers are burning the valley,” a voice crackled over the radio. Four hours after the Tigers had broken into teams, nearly every structure along the river was ablaze. The four teams had lit more than two hundred huts, with only a few remaining.

  For the most part, violence had been minimized. In one hamlet, six people were bound and dragged to a clearing, where they were placed on a transport chopper for the ride to Nghia Hanh. One man was struck several times when he tried to run. He was later tied and a burlap bag was forced over his head before he was whisked away by chopper for questioning at Go Hoi intelligence camp, about twenty-five kilometers away.

  Had that been the end of it, perhaps everything would have been different.

  There had been sporadic resistance. In one hamlet, Ybarra and Green had been forced to take cover on the ground when shots were fired toward them. Unable to determine the direction of the gunfire, they quickly began searching the huts but couldn’t find anyone. “I’ll kill all these gooks,” Ybarra blurted out. After several platoon members joined the two friends, they began torching the huts.

  Throughout the torching, Ybarra had cursed loudly, his face glowing red and his eyes narrowing into a deep, dark stare. God, how he did not want to be here. He had wanted to go into Duc Pho. He had wanted to go to the brothel. With money, he could buy a woman and feel normal. Now, instead, he was getting shot at during a futile attempt at pest eradication. When the Tigers were told they had to stay, he had taken it personally. Shortly after the announcement, one of the newcomers had inadvertently brushed Ybarra. Sam told the soldier he would kill him if he ever touched him again.

  Ken Green had seen his friend’s fury before, but not quite like this, not even when he was teased in high school. It was a rage that had been growing for years, born from rejection—a chubby teenager with acne and a broad, flat nose who never fit in. As he grew older, Ybarra had turned
his anger inward. Three years before joining the Army, he had run away from home and hadn’t returned until a week later, dirty and tired. He told his mother he hopped a freight train to Phoenix so he could be alone.

  Green was one of the few people who really understood him. Ybarra often fumed about his people being “treated like shit by white people,” how they were forced from their land and relocated to reservations. It was never a good omen of things to come when Ybarra started turning inward, and here in the valley, Green was seeing the signs: the frequent outbursts mostly over minor problems, like a blister (common because of moisture seeping into the soldiers’ boots, compounded by the heat and sun, which dried and shrank the leather), followed by silence.

  CHAPTER 6

  When the teams regrouped later in the afternoon, Ybarra pulled Green aside. Slowly, he opened the pouch he was carrying and nudged his friend to look inside. When Green peered down, he saw two bloody clumps of flesh.

  “I cut the ears off a gook,” Ybarra said.

  Green looked at his friend and, without saying anything, shrugged his shoulders. He figured the ears were from a soldier killed in a firefight, and besides, if he was surprised, he wasn’t going to show it. Both friends were always trying to outdo each other. When hunting near Lake Roosevelt, they would dare each other to see who could shoot the most game—deer, quail, and rabbit—and most of the time would leave their prey to rot. It wasn’t about hunting.

  Other times, they would see who could drink the most whiskey, and then challenge each other to a shooting match. With a friend driving, they would sit in the back of a pickup and fire at rabbits. If one still moved after it was shot, Ybarra would hop from the truck and snap the animal’s neck with his teeth and hands. It was his way of outdoing Green.