Combat Swimmer

by Robert A. Gormly

  While we officers were developing the procedures for putting everyone (including ourselves) in their “comfort zones,” the troops got bored. One night Bob Gallagher, the chief petty officer of the 2nd Platoon, took a couple of his men to the Army NCO club at Can Tho Air Field, a Vietnamese base with U.S. Army advisers assigned. Can Tho was also a supply base for the Army Special Forces units who “advised” Vietnamese forces near the Cambodian border. One thing led to another, and Bob’s crew got into a fight with the entire club—three against about thirty—and did some serious damage to a couple of Army sergeants. The Army sent a colonel to Binh Thuy to investigate. He came in with fire in his eyes, ready to hang all of us.

  “What the hell are you guys doing, letting all your SEALs beat up on our men?”

  “Well, sir,” Jake explained, “there were only three of our men in the fight.”

  That was the end of the investigation. Nothing more was said and the colonel left with his tail between his legs. It didn’t take long for the truth to spread around Can Tho, and I don’t remember us ever having a problem after that. Anyway, once we began to fight the VC, we didn’t need other enemies.

  Finally, we were able to get to work. We started out just doing ambushes at night along canals known to be VC transit corridors. Sometimes we were successful interdicting VC, but most of the people were curfew breakers or fishermen trying to get an early start. Sure, we were authorized to fire on anyone we saw in the areas in which we operated, but I got no satisfaction out of killing people I didn’t know were the enemy.

  The problem was, our enemy didn’t wear uniforms. Often I wasn’t sure until we’d already done the killing, and could inspect the sampan, whether we’d hit a good target. If I saw weapons before we opened up, there was no doubt. Sometimes we’d find the weapons after the hit and I’d feel better. Eventually, if I didn’t see weapons, I’d call the sampan over to our position. Any hesitation or other indication that the occupants weren’t innocent civilians and I’d open up.

  Often they’d come over for inspection and we’d find nothing to suggest they were the enemy. Yet I knew that just because we didn’t find any contraband didn’t mean they weren’t Vietcong. Often, the VC would draft villagers as messengers; the villagers would travel unarmed, with the messages in their heads. One night we had about five sampans lined up on the riverbank with us as we continued to wait for the “bad guys.” After a while I sent them on their way. No doubt we released some messengers along with the innocent, but I could live with that. I just had to find another way to fight the VC.

  The next stage was to patrol in enemy-controlled territory. The Navy intelligence system wasn’t set up to provide us the information we needed to go after specific targets, so instead we collected tactical intelligence. I set up many a patrol into VC country with the notion we’d move until we found the enemy, and then we’d attack. Sometimes we found VC, sometimes we didn’t, but we learned something new each time we went out. Operating where no other U.S. force had been, we soon knew where to go to get action. Ours wasn’t a perfect system, but each time we showed up at a VC’s door we created havoc. And every time we went into a new area we provided the river patrol force with another piece of the VC puzzle.

  Since we’d been prescribed no strategy from above, we SEAL officers decided our “strategy” should be to kill VC wherever and whenever, terrorizing them by hitting them in their “safe” areas. I chose when and where to operate, and my decisions were based on one goal: to kill as many VC as we could without our missions falling into a predictable pattern.

  6

  MEKONG AMBUSH: TAKING AWAY THE NIGHT

  Mid-April 1967, Lower Mekong Delta

  In total darkness on the Bassac River, the twenty-two-foot armored, reinforced-fiberglass SEAL Team Assault Boat (STAB) throttled back, slowed from twenty-five knots to five, and turned toward the riverbank. Six of us crouched expectantly in the boat. My adrenaline meter was pegged.

  I put my hand on Bump’s shoulder. “Are you all set?”

  “Yep.” Charlie is a man of few words.

  Slowly he lifted the AN PVS-2 night-vision scope to his right eye. “I can’t see a damn thing at the insertion point.”

  “Look to your right, toward the canal.”

  “Got it. Looks like we’re on track.”

  “Lieutenant,” said the coxswain, moving one of the earphones connecting him to the boat radio, “Mr. Baumgart says we need to come left five degrees, and we’ll hit the shore two hundred meters from the canal.”

  “Roger. Do it.”

  Lieutenant Satch Baumgart, our boat support officer, was in our armored LCPL, cruising near the middle of the Bassac, using the boat’s surface-search radar to guide us to our insertion point. Satch and his men from Boat Support Unit One in Coronado ran our specially configured boats. He was lying just off our insertion point, ready to give us fire support if we needed it. We were not using secure radios, because in those days the encryption device for our PRC-25 VHF radio was bigger and heavier than the radio. If we needed to communicate with the River Patrol Force Tactical Operations Center (TOC) at Binh Thuy, Satch would use a code book to “kack up”—encrypt—a voice message.

  Bump squeezed my arm. “Take a look at that shit.”

  I took the night-vision device and put it to my eye. The greenish glow of the scope revealed nothing but a solid wall of vegetation. I knew from the maps that the area near the Long Tuan Secret Zone was covered with thick nipa palm along the rivers and canals, but this was worse than I’d expected. Moving through nipa palm is no fun. The plants grow very close together and the stalks of the plants are solid. I never could figure out if it was a shrub or a tree—not that it much matters.

  We’d been operating for more than two months. Our rules of engagement called for us to do our thing in areas that were thought to be inhabited only by the VC. We, unlike other forces on the river, were allowed to fire before being fired upon. The PBR patrols had to take a round or two before they could return fire. Sounds like a strange way to fight a war, but the Mekong Delta was inhabited by many Vietnamese who weren’t VC. Unless they fired first or you were in an area designated a free-fire zone, U.S. Navy forces couldn’t shoot.

  Tonight, our ambush site was on a canal in the western end of the Long Tuan Secret Zone, one of the most hostile areas in the Mekong Delta and a designated free-fire zone. The intelligence guys thought the canal was a major transit point for VC in the area. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about fishermen breaking the dusk-to-dawn curfew.

  “We’re about a hundred meters out, Lieutenant.”

  “Roger. Slow down and let’s drift for a minute.”

  As the boat’s twin outboard engines went idle, we moved slowly toward the riverbank. We all listened. Ears are better than eyes in complete darkness, and there was nothing darker than the Bassac just before the rise of a full moon. The moon would be up at 2200 that night. It was now 2030.

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Neither can I, Charlie. Keep looking through the scope.” I turned to the coxswain. “Bring her to just above idle and head toward the beach.”

  Now I could see the riverbank. The tide was ebbing. It would be low in about one hour, leaving a bank about three feet high.

  The boat grounded slowly in the river mud, the bank about five meters away. This was the hairy part of the mission. If there were bad guys in the foliage in front of us, they’d have a field day. Even knowing that our operational security was the best didn’t keep the big butterflies out of our guts. We were hanging out.

  Charlie went over the bow of the STAB, then me. We struggled through the mud to the riverbank. Behind me was Fred McCarty with our radio, followed by Pierre Birtz. Jess Tolison came last, just behind Petty Officer Doyle from SEAL Team One’s detachment at Nha Be. He was there to see how we did our thing. By then we’d had quite a bit of success working in the delta, and those guys wanted to have a look.

  Near the top of the riverbank,
I motioned for the men to form a semicircle perimeter. Behind us, the STAB was backing slowly away. The silenced outboards made no sound. From where I crouched, I could hear only the lapping of water against the hull as the STAB returned to the LCPL.

  We sat and listened intently, growing attuned to the night sounds—insects chirping, frogs croaking. A light breeze whispered through the dense nipa palm. No man-made sounds.

  I squeezed Bump’s shoulder. I didn’t have to say anything; he knew what to do. Easing his lanky frame up over the bank, he started slowly toward the canal mouth. I slid silently right behind him. The rest of the men followed, keeping about five meters apart. Rather than trying to walk through the nipa palm, we kept just in front of the riverbank. It would have been stupid to thrash our way through—nobody could move through that stuff without making noise—and from the bank we could easily hear anyone coming our way.

  Our feet made a sucking sound as we waded through the mud. I wasn’t concerned. The withdrawing tide uncovered holes in the earth, and the noise they made sounded just like someone walking, pulling his feet out of the sticky delta mud. I’d been fooled by it in one of our first ambushes, thinking we were about to be overrun by a large force.

  As we neared the canal mouth, Bump held up his hand to stop the patrol. This was another danger area. If the VC were taking any action with a large group tonight, they would probably have a sentry somewhere near the mouth of the canal.

  I eased myself up to Bump. “Move back up on the bank and take a look around,” I whispered. Meanwhile, I slowly crab-walked toward the mouth of the canal. I wanted to peek around the corner and be in a position to cover Charlie. The rest of the patrol hunkered down and waited.

  I reached a spot from where I could see about fifty feet of the bank on the other side of the canal. I couldn’t see farther because it was so dark, but I didn’t see the telltale shape of a sampan that would have contained the sentry. I looked up to my left, where Bump had crawled along the top of the bank. Lying on his stomach, he peered left, up the canal. After a few seconds he held up his right arm and motioned back and forth. “All clear.”

  I turned around and gave Fred the same signal; he repeated it. The rest of the guys slowly approached my position. Charlie stayed where he was as we moved up the canal just under him. As we came abreast, Jess climbed up the bank, and Bump slid down just in front of me. Jess covered us as we started up the canal, then he fell in behind.

  We slogged through the mud about fifty meters before Bump stopped and turned to me. Into my ear he whispered, “This about right?”

  I nodded. We’d gone over the procedure in our mission brief, and everyone knew what I had planned.

  I motioned toward the nipa palm above us, watching as each man turned and made his way up the bank. Our patrol order was also our ambush order. I crawled up behind.

  At the top we turned and sat, our backs against the thick foliage. As I hunkered into position, I thought this might be fairly comfortable. The relatively soft mud provided a good cushion, and the nipa palm served as a backrest. Sort of like sitting down in front of your TV in your favorite recliner, waiting for your favorite program to come on. My favorite program that night would involve about six sampans loaded with troops moving slowly into our kill zone.

  We traveled light, but with a lot of firepower. Now that we’d settled into position, I took a mental inventory. Bump, to my left, had his M-16 rifle, which launched about 900 5.56mm rounds per minute on full automatic fire. I carried an M-16. Doc McCarty, to my right, had an M-16 and the radio. Pierre, just to his right, had a Stoner Model 63 light machine gun that fired more than a thousand rounds of 5.56mm ammo per minute. He had a thousand rounds of ammo with him. Firing in short bursts, he was a killing machine. Doyle had an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher attached. The grenade launcher had a canister round chambered, making it a heavy-duty shotgun. Jess Tolison, on the right flank of the ambush, carried the same load as Doyle. Each man with an M-16 carried 230 rounds of ammo. Our “bullet launchers” could put out a lot of rounds in a few seconds, and that’s all it would take. Each of us also carried concussion and fragmentation grenades. Satch, in the river with our mini-battleship, could move to the mouth of the canal and make anyone giving us a hard time wish he hadn’t been there that night. The .50-caliber machine guns on the boat could cut a man in half with two rounds and would easily penetrate the nipa palm. The M-60 machine guns could clean up the rest. The recoilless rifles and naval mortars could lay down a dense cover fire that only a deranged person would attempt to move through. And if all that wasn’t enough, Satch would call for PBRs on patrol in the river to add their .50-caliber and 7.62mm M-60 machine guns to the fray. Satch could also scramble the Seawolf light helo fire team on call back in Binh Thuy and they’d come running with their 7.62mm miniguns and 3.2 rockets blazing. You get the idea. I wasn’t afraid to take on a battalion of VC with all that firepower on hand. We’d start it, and my friends would finish it.

  We’d reached the ambush site at 2130. I planned to stay there until just before first light, unless we got a hit first. Ambushing was like rolling dice: you picked a spot and hoped your numbers came up. As ambush sites went, we were in a fairly good one. The area was under VC control, and they moved along the canal system at night with impunity. The primary purpose of our routine ambushes, apart from killing as many of the enemy as we could, was to remove some of that “impunity.” We wanted not only to take the night away from the VC, but to make them afraid to move their men and supplies. We were few in number—only two SEAL platoons operating in the lower Mekong Delta, a vast area that covered a large part of South Vietnam. (The three SEAL platoons at Nha Be weren’t considered part of our force because they had to stay close to the shipping channels going to Saigon.) But already we thought we were making our presence felt. The word seemed to be getting out among the VC; it seemed that some canals upriver near Binh Thuy, where we’d been honing our skills, were no longer used as much as they had been. To get hits, we had to travel farther and farther away from Binh Thuy. Tonight we were about forty miles downriver from our base.

  Ambushing takes patience: you have to remain motionless for long periods of time. That night my patience was tested. As I sat in the mud, waiting for action, I began to feel movements in my crotch. We wore camouflage uniforms and jungle boots. Instead of “blousing” our trousers in our boots in standard military style, we left the bottoms outside to allow water to drain. Of course, while water ran out, critters could crawl in. What kind of visitor did I have? I hadn’t felt anything climb up, so it probably wasn’t a roach. Now that the tide had started coming back in, our feet were almost in the water, but sea snakes normally weren’t a problem. Up the river toward Binh Thuy we had a problem with leeches, but not down here, where salt water predominated. Looking slowly down, taking care not to bump my rifle against anything, I saw a slight bulge in the earth just below my thighs. An anthill!

  “Shit,” I thought, “fire ants.” Fire ants lived in nipa palms as well as in the ground. On an earlier patrol through an area covered with that damn plant, some fire ants had dropped out of the leaves and down my neck. It took me ten minutes to get rid of them. I’d had to strip completely, rub them off my body, shake out my cammies, and cover myself with insect repellent. I couldn’t do all that now.

  They must have infiltrated between the buttons of my fly. Sneaky little bastards. I felt a sharp pain on one of my testicles. It’s impossible to adequately describe a fire ant bite; the closest I can come is to say it’s like being stung by a wasp. There’s a big difference, though: normally a wasp stings just once. Fire ants are never found alone, and they chew until they’re full. I slowly reached into the left chest pocket of my cammy jacket and felt for the plastic bottle of repellent. We usually didn’t use mosquito repellent in ambush, because the VC could smell it. Instead we used unscented camouflage “face paint,” which supposedly repelled mosquitoes, and wore aviator gloves to cover our hands. Also, as long as you wer
e moving, mosquitoes weren’t a big problem. Once we’d reached our ambush site we pulled mosquito nets over our cammy hats and gutted it out. But fire ants were a different story. If I didn’t act fast, I’d embarrass myself in front of my men. There was no such thing as gutting out fire ant bites.

  As more critters started feasting, I opened the bottle, unbuttoned my fly, and squirted repellent into my groin. It had an instant effect: the fire ants hauled ass. Then the secondary effect took over. The repellent was giving me first-degree burns, much the same as gasoline might cause. It was a small price to pay, and the heat felt good.

  As I went through these subtle gyrations, Bump on my left and Doc on my right looked on. “Fire ants,” I whispered. They nodded and grinned. No pity. I gave each of them my sternest look, and then I found myself grinning, too.

  All this took only about five minutes, but it seemed longer. Above the background noise I now heard something else—a low roar, much like a strong wind. I looked down at my feet and found that they were now immersed. The tide was coming in—and fast. The Mekong Delta has a greater tide range than most places at its latitude. The reasons for this are complex, but mostly have to do with the shallow depth of the South China Sea off the Vietnamese coast. Also, when the tide came back in, it had to fight the natural flow of the Bassac. The two forces meeting made noise: the low roar I was hearing. The full moon tonight heightened the effect, because full moons create higher and lower tides.

  As the tide roared in, I began to think maybe we weren’t in the best place. When the water reached my waist, I looked around. The men were squirming. It was now around 2300, and we hadn’t heard any enemy activity. But the VC liked to wait until after midnight to move. Also, the rising tide would help them float larger loads.