Combat Swimmer

by Robert A. Gormly

  The delta is one of the largest rice-producing regions in the world. It’s a landscape of rice paddies, canals, and offshoots of the Mekong River, with trees lining the waterways. Unlike the Rung Sat, the delta was heavily populated, and the VC were fully integrated into the population. Figuring out who was who was a problem throughout Vietnam, but nowhere more so than the Mekong Delta.

  With all that open area, we figured we’d better have people trained to direct air, artillery, and naval gunfire, so we took a course at the Naval Amphibious School. We also thought we’d better learn rappelling, a mountaineering technique of rapid descent from heights. In those days we attached ourselves to a rappel line with a simple snap link. The technique involved sliding quickly down the line and braking just before you hit the ground. We practiced many hours on the water tower at the amphibious base until we got damn fast. Then we got helicopter services from a local squadron and taught ourselves to rappel from them, as we’d have to do in Vietnam.

  Jake learned that the Marines had a Small Unit Tactics School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. We went there to learn from instructors who’d all had a tour in I Corps, the area in northern South Vietnam where most Marine units were assigned. The best things they showed us were their quick-reaction drills. They also helped us modify their small-unit tactics for our really small units. Suppose we were ambushed—well, we for sure weren’t going to charge our ambushers with six men the way a Marine unit could with forty. We developed tactics to get out of the kill zone as fast as possible and break contact. My squad’s basic maneuver was the “leapfrog.” If the ambush was to the front or the rear, the closest man to it would fire his weapon on full automatic until he expended a magazine. Then he’d haul ass to the other end of the patrol and reload. As soon as he broke, the next man in line started firing, and so on until we broke contact. If the ambush was on either side of the patrol, we’d do the same thing, only in groups of three. The basic reasoning was to get as much continuous fire as possible. We practiced these drills until we looked like a professional football team running plays. Good thing we did.

  By the middle of December 1966 we were ready, and Bill Early wanted to show us off. He arranged for the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) to come to Little Creek for a demonstration of our capabilities. We set up a scenario in Desert Cove, a small bay inside the confines of the base. We built two “hootches” (the U.S. military term for the mud-grass huts in which rural Vietnamese lived) in one of the areas designated for explosives on the north side of the cove. From NAS Norfolk, we obtained a CH-46 helicopter, the Navy variant of a heavy-lift helo the Marines used to transport troops and equipment. It had two rotors and two engines—and, most important to us, a stern ramp that lowered to allow easy access in and out of the bird.

  We were going to demonstrate an integrated raid on a VC village. Our boats, with the 2nd Platoon embarked, would lay off just outside Desert Cove. My squad would come screaming in at treetop level just as the boats came at high speed down the cove, and we’d hit the hootches as simultaneously as possible, my squad rappelling from the helo as the other platoon attacked. We used blank ammunition in our weapons but put real half-pound charges of C-4 explosives on the hootches. We’d kill the enemy, blow up their hootches, and take off in the boats. Bill told us that all funding flowed from above. Since SECNAV was going to be there, so would CINCLANTFLT and our immediate boss, COMPHIBLANT. We got the picture.

  Circling north of the area, I could see that the boats were ready. We got the signal to go, and I had the helo take off across the beach. Jess and I were already hooked into the two rappel lines attached to rings located just above our eye level in the top of the helo. We stood facing in, our heels over the end of the open ramp, ready to go. Between my feet I watched the ground pass rapidly under the helo. My squad came in just over the trees, and the pilot “flared” the helo, coming to a rapid halt over the target.

  When the helo tilted forward, the helo crew threw out our two rope bundles, and Jess and I jumped. I had told the guys I didn’t want anyone braking until he was just off the ground. That meant we would be almost free-falling down with the line passing through the snap link, one hand wrapped loosely around the rappel line just in front of our face to keep us falling feet first. The other hand would be behind us, also holding the rappel line loosely. To brake we had to bring our lower hand, with the line, across our butts, creating friction on the line as it passed through the snap link. The key to doing it as fast as I wanted was to avoid exerting any pressure on the line with your lower hand until you jerked it across your butt just before your feet hit the ground. If you did this right, you went down fast and landed fairly easily. As soon as your feet hit the ground, you had to open the snap link and pull the rappel line out before the next man could come down the line. Any resistance on the line from below would stop him. We had used ground handlers for safety during training—if a man lost control on the way down, the ground handler could stop him before he crashed. I’d told Bill I wasn’t going to use ground handlers for the demonstration because they’d detract from the realness: we wouldn’t have ground handlers in Vietnam.

  Jess and I fell down the lines side by side, braked at the last instant, and hit the ground together. We quickly disengaged the rappel lines and sprinted to our positions to fire on the hootches. Fred’s platoon had thrown smoke grenades, and the smoke was being swirled all around by the downdraft from the helo’s rotors. The surrealistic scene was just what we wanted.

  I heard a loud thud behind me. Bill Garnett was lying on the ground, with Doc McCarty getting rid of the rappel line. Bill just lay there: he was out. Doc got him off the rappel line, and the last two men, Bump and Pierre, came hurtling down to take positions with Jess and me. The four of us assaulted our “hootch,” leaving Fred to tend to Bill. Because there were live demolitions placed on the hootch, which would go off just as we cleared the area for the boats, I wasn’t going to leave Bill and Doc where they were.

  Instead of going to the boats, we went back to Bill and carried him into the woods behind the hootch area, where we’d be safe when the demolitions went off. Fred’s guys saw what we were doing, and left as soon as they hit the boats. The hootches exploded in balls of fire, helped by barrels of diesel fuel placed there beforehand. It was quite a show—and our distinguished guests never noticed that we’d ad-libbed.

  As for Bill, he was conscious but dazed. Apparently he’d lost the rappel line with his lower hand about halfway down and had been unable to brake. As he slammed into the ground, his left knee hit his cheek and fractured it. He looked like a pumpkin, but he told me he didn’t care what the doctors said, he was going to Vietnam with us. And he did, but the bruise didn’t fade completely for three more months.

  After our little show was over, the SEALs gathered around the SECNAV to get his pep talk. He was really impressed with what he saw, particularly with how fast “that man came down the rappel line.” We said our rear security guy was very conscientious.

  In mid-December, we learned we’d be headed to Vietnam in early January. All that remained to be done was pack up our gear and take Christmas leave. Though none of us ever said so, we all wondered if it would be the last Christmas we would be spending with our families. We kissed our wives and girlfriends good-bye on January 12, 1967. After a short stop in Coronado, California, at SEAL Team One, we were bound for Vietnam. Becky was eight months pregnant and not very happy to see me go off to war.

  5

  FEET WET: BREAKING IN THE TROOPS

  January 29, 1967

  After a five-day trip in a slow-flying Navy C-121 from California, two hard-charging SEAL Team Two platoons landed in the Mekong Delta at the Binh Thuy Vietnamese Air Force base ninety miles from Can Tho, about ninety miles southwest of Saigon. During our approach to land, I looked out one of the small windows to see what I could see. What I could see was a lot of water, interspersed with heavy vegetation. The Mekong Delta was divided by three branches of the Mekong River: the Bassac (
the main branch), the Vinh Long, and the My Tho rivers, which all flowed into the South China Sea. The land was essentially silt that had been deposited over the ages. Innumerable natural and man-made canals spiked off the rivers, and trees lined the canals and riverbanks. At the coast and around the southeastern side of Vietnam, vast mangrove swamps flourished in the brackish water. From a much higher altitude than our plane’s, the delta would have looked like a big checkerboard. Most of the land was devoted to rice paddies, which were separated by dikes, and most of the people lived in the tree lines along the canals and rivers. Most of them were farmers, harvesting the vast quantities of rice produced by the fertile land. The Mekong Delta was capable of feeding all of Vietnam, and then some.

  From my vantage point all I could see was the Bassac River, a few canals, and some rice paddies. As we passed over the river on our final approach, I was surprised at the volume of boat traffic below me. There were sampans and junks everywhere. How in the hell were we going to sort out the good guys from the bad?

  Adrenaline was flowing when we landed and taxied to the apron to off-load. When the door opened, I could taste the heat and humidity. We were all in our combat gear, ready to engage the enemy as soon as we stepped off the plane. Instead, though, friendlies met us. We loaded our gear into waiting trucks and headed for the Navy river patrol force base across the street on the Bassac. We knew the SEAL Team One guys at Nha Be were living on a barge, but we didn’t know what to expect at Binh Thuy.

  The base had four long one-story cement buildings. One held a mess hall and a small club; the rest were living quarters and offices for the CTF-116 staff and the officers and men of the river patrol. A small pier on the Bassac had a large troop barge tied up alongside, parallel to the shore. The barge, like those at Nha Be, contained offices and repair shops. The whole facility was about the size of two football fields side by side.

  Physical security was poor. The perimeter fence was flimsy and ran only ten feet from the building on the airfield side of the base. The main road running parallel to the river was about 200 meters from the fence. Guard towers stood at each corner of the fence, but they offered no protection for the watch, being manned only at night, by not-very-alert sentries. We learned that the base had never been subject to a ground attack but that the VC did mortar them fairly often from a nearby tree line. A few defensive bunkers were scattered in the compound, for protection during a mortar attack. No one seemed to be worried about any of this.

  The rooms we were assigned, in the building on the outer perimeter toward the road, weren’t bad—pairs of two-man rooms connected by a head with a shower and toilet. Each set of rooms was assigned a “mamasan” maid who cleaned them and washed our clothes. It was better than I’d imagined.

  Unfortunately, we apparently hadn’t been expected, because CTF- 116, the local Navy leadership, didn’t have a clue what to do with us. The first thought was that we would ride shotgun on the river patrol boats (PBRs). Some of us did that for a while, but Jake finally convinced the commander that we could best support the CTF-116 mission by operating off the main river, doing what we had trained to do: attacking VC in their safe areas.

  At that time there were no U.S. ground forces operating in the Mekong Delta; we were it. Two hundred meters off the main Bassac River was bad-guy country. CTF-116 was reluctant to allow sailors to get away from the main river, on the theory that we’d be killed or captured once out of sight of the boats. This was partly a result of the secrecy surrounding SEAL capabilities. At that time, most senior officers in the Navy had no idea what SEALs could do. Also, the regular Navy’s notion was that a sailor ashore was to be avoided the same as a ship ashore. We had to start slow, or we wouldn’t be allowed to start at all. Having put our heads together, we decided we’d begin by doing what SEAL One was doing in the Rung Sat (ambushes) even though we sensed our operations area called for different tactics.

  CTF-116 was still nervous. Their operations officer thought we ought to send people to the Rung Sat to “learn” how to operate with the proven performers. We knew how to operate, and if they’d just give us a chance we’d prove it. But we swallowed our pride and drew straws for a contingent to go study at the Rung Sat.

  I was one of the officers who drew a Nha Be straw. The others were Lieutenants Fred Kochey and Larry Bailey. Ensign Dick Marcinko and his squad stayed in Binh Thuy to watch the gear and learn the river.

  Nha Be, which was much larger than our base at Binh Thuy, lay about twenty miles southeast of Saigon, alongside the main shipping channel to the city. As at Binh Thuy, river patrol boats operated up and down the Saigon River and the main estuaries of the Rung Sat. The SEALs lived on a barge tied up at the main pier, but the base itself was a series of Quonset huts set back off the river. I could see many new huts being built and a big, half-finished, warehouselike building that I would later learn would be the new river patrol group headquarters.

  Soon after we arrived, the officers huddled to see how we would organize ourselves for the break-in operations. An old friend of mine, Lieutenant Irve C. (Chuck) LeMoyne, was the SEAL One senior platoon commander. He and I had been teammates at UDT-22 from 1964 to 1966, and we had a lot of confidence in each other. He assigned my squad to his.

  Chuck’s guys exuded professionalism, so although being sent to the Rung Sat had annoyed us, my squad and I were anxious to learn whatever we could from them. Chuck set up an ambush mission to get our feet wet. To keep the numbers down, he included only two people from his own squad. We left base in the detachment mini-battleship, an armored, modified LCM-6. It was slow, but it could take a punch. At low tide, just before dark, we inserted at an ambush site inside the Rung Sat and got settled in. The spot lay on a tributary of the main shipping channel, a favorite avenue of the Vietcong as they traveled to their own ambush sites.

  As I’ve mentioned, the SEAL One mission was to interdict VC trying to ambush shipping headed for Saigon. This was a hit-and-miss proposition at best, but at least we were in the field. As night fell, we sat among the mangrove trees on the canal bank. At this point Chuck introduced us to “stay-awakes”—little green pills guaranteed to keep you from sleeping and missing a firefight.

  SEAL One SOP for ambushes called for the squad leader to initiate fire after popping a handheld illumination flare. It also called for one man to be in rear security, about ten meters behind the squad. I didn’t like that tactic because I couldn’t communicate with the rear guy. But when in Rome . . . I also figured Chuck wasn’t going to put us anyplace too likely to see action on our first mission. So I put Charlie Bump in rear security.

  We waited and the tide came in. Once just after settling in, we’d thought we heard movement to our rear. Bill Garnett whispered to me that it was probably “Charlie.” Now, “Charlie” was not only our man Bump, but also slang for VC, as in “Victor Charlie.” Chuck’s two guys overheard, swung to the rear, and took their weapons off safety, ready to fire. I grabbed them—“No, it’s Bump.” We decided we’d have to start calling Charlie by his last name only!

  After four hours the tide was high and we were neck deep in water. I noticed two logs in front of us and pointed them out to Chuck.

  “Not logs,” he said, “crocodiles.”

  They went by no more than six feet away. I didn’t tell my guys what they were.

  Some time later I was staring across the canal, and there was a twenty-foot water buffalo. When I pointed it out to Chuck, he said it was the stay-awakes: they made some people hallucinate. That ended them for me.

  The rest of the night was uneventful. We got out of there just before dawn, “experts” at last.

  We had one more operation scheduled, but Chuck felt that we didn’t need it. Instead, we did what SEALs do when the work is over: we partied. West Coast SEALs and East Coast SEALs found they had more in common than not. After the party, Chuck and I liberated a bottle of scotch from the officer’s-club bar, parked ourselves on the ground behind the club, and proceeded to tell lies unti
l about 0500.

  At seven in the morning, I was asleep in my bunk aboard the barge. Someone pulled on my shoulder. I did the right thing—I rolled over and took a swing at the intruder. Who was, of course, the messenger of the watch.

  Ducking, he yelled, “Hey, Lieutenant, ease up! The Red Cross just sent word your wife had a baby—a girl.”

  Still bleary-eyed, I said, “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “No sweat. I took the liberty of ordering flowers in your name. You owe me twenty-five dollars.”

  I was completely awake in a New York minute. Becky had finally had the baby! Our second child, Anne. I’d felt bad about leaving her in January; but, as usual, she’d understood: duty called.

  “Thanks—you’re a good man,” I told the messenger, feeling like a real asshole. I gave him the money and apologized profusely. I made sure a bottle of his favorite booze found its way to him that night.

  We returned to Binh Thuy later that day.

  Our main problem before we started operations out of Binh Thuy was how to clear an operations area for ourselves without informing the VC of our whereabouts. At each Vietnamese administrative level there was a U.S. military adviser, and this dual chain of command—half U.S., half Vietnamese—ran all the way to the highest level in Saigon. It was common knowledge that the VC had infiltrated the Vietnamese chain at every level. So we had to figure out a way to inform our chain without the Vietnamese side knowing; otherwise, we’d find artillery and air strikes raining down at the most inappropriate times.

  We worked it out that we’d tell the local U.S. military advisers, in general terms, where we wanted to operate. Usually the coordinates we gave them covered about a hundred square miles. They would say nothing to their Vietnamese counterparts, and we would never appear on any map in any operation center. To protect us from inadvertent artillery fire, the U.S. advisers would just tell the Vietnamese not to fire. This worked, for the most part.