Combat Swimmer

by Robert A. Gormly

  Some time later, I was awakened by Pierre shaking my shoulder. I was alert instantly, listening. He pointed to our right, where I heard the same noises as before, only closer. The others came awake and I told them to get ready. We waited and waited. The noises—voices and clanking—got closer. We couldn’t see more than twenty meters down the canal, so all we could do was listen. Suddenly, just as I thought they were coming close enough for us to see whom they belonged to, the voices seemed to be coming from right in front of us. I figured they must have been on another canal, one that intersected ours. We couldn’t shift without making a lot of noise, so we sat tight, listening, as the sounds faded.

  The tide was in far enough for us to get in the canal and move. About 1700 I decided it was time. We partially inflated our life jackets and slipped into the water. Bump and I went first. I wanted to see the other canal, which had to be only a few meters to our right. We pulled ourselves along the bank. About fifty meters down we did indeed see a canal, about thirty meters wide, leading northwest into the interior. This had to be the canal that led to the Bassac, I thought, the one I had originally planned to patrol.

  We crawled carefully out of the water and took our standard formation for a canal ambush, in a line parallel to the canal. I didn’t use rear security—we were all rear security. No one was going to sneak up on us in that terrain anyway.

  It got darker and darker. We hadn’t heard anything since we had set up. I had been trying to sort out our location, and as near as I could figure we were about a kilometer up the canal from the river. If I was right, getting back to the river was going to be easy.

  I passed the word down the line that we’d pull out about 2230. It was now 1830. There was no moon and it was pitch black. My night vision had kicked in, but I could barely see the other side of the canal. I wasn’t carrying a night-vision device; I had found them to be useless in mangroves, so it was weight I didn’t need.

  About 2100, I heard the distinctive sound of a sampan engine starting, up the canal to our left. We all came alert. Then we heard several more engines start up. The noise of a “one-lunger,” a sampan engine, was unmistakable. We were going to have some business. Wait . . . listen . . .

  Down Doppler, down adrenaline. I couldn’t believe it. They were going the other way. The engine noise receded and then disappeared. Jess sent word down that maybe they were going to pick up supplies and come back our way. Maybe. Jess was such an optimist.

  I waited until 2130 and heard nothing. I tried to reach Satch on the radio, but we must have been out of range. The mangrove terrain absorbed the line-of-sight signal the radios emitted. If we didn’t show up for extraction, Satch would call out the cavalry and start looking. I didn’t want that; up to now, no one knew we were there, so we could come back. I gave the word and we got in the water and started pulling ourselves down the canal.

  We were being really quiet in the water, but after about a hundred meters Bump froze. I eased up to see what was the matter. He pointed to our right front: A bunker complex and hootches. A base camp. There were no lights in the hootches. No one was home.

  We carefully approached the base camp. I’d not yet seen anything like it. The hootches had four-tier bunks in them, and the complex could have accommodated about a company-sized unit. Plus, the bunkers were formidable. That I couldn’t understand. Nobody bothered these guys in here. I guess, like our military, they had standards that applied everywhere. I laughed to myself as I imagined some VC operator arguing with his staff engineer about the building of needless defenses. We spent about twenty minutes taking a good look around, then slipped back into the canal and headed out again, reaching the river at about 2215—not bad.

  I signaled with a red-lens flashlight and got a return signal from out on the water. Back on the PBR, Satch said he’d been running radio checks since dark but never heard us. Lesson learned: range was shorter than we’d figured.

  We were all exhausted, but not too disappointed. We’d penetrated the Long Tuan, learned a lot about the area, and lived to talk about it. We’d be back. As it turned out, though, the minimal fire support we could count on kept me from operating too aggressively. And no other force in the delta was much interested in running operations in the region, so no one was going to react to any intelligence we brought out.

  9

  A CLOSE CALL: TAN DINH ISLAND

  By early June 1967 I was getting antsy for a big operation. It was near the end of my tour, only three weeks before we could go back to Little Creek.

  My dream at the time was to draw a VC platoon or company-sized element in the open and, with my five men, shoot the shit out of them. I was so confident of our firepower and the ability of my men that the difference in numbers was not a factor. Plus, we had plenty of help on call. So when I received word through the river patrol force intelligence officer that the VC were about to make a large crossing in the vicinity of Cu Lao Tanh Dinh, an island complex in the Bassac about ten miles downriver from Can Tho, I seized the opportunity.

  The CTF-116 deputy commander suggested that we go on the main island as soon as possible and destroy as many as we could of the heavily fortified bunkers that fronted on the Bassac. When the VC made a large crossing in that area, as they routinely did, the only real burr in their saddles had been the PBRs, which attempted to interdict the sampans as they crossed the 2,000 meters of open water. So the last time they had made a large crossing, the VC had manned their bunkers with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades and kept the boats at bay. When they hunkered down in those bunkers, the only way to disturb them was with ground forces, and there weren’t any U.S. forces in the delta at that time. The Vietnamese would have no part of the hand-to-hand fighting needed to dislodge the VC. Even air strikes had little effect, because the bunkers were so well built.

  I decided we should take out those bunkers. When large forces weren’t in the area, the VC kept only a platoon-sized force spread over the entire two-mile length of the island. I got in a helo and went to the subsector headquarters to talk with the U.S. Army advisers. Their intelligence also suggested there would be a major crossing soon; most tellingly, the Vietnamese had reduced considerably the number of daytime patrols on that side of the river, and the senior officers had found compelling reasons to go to Saigon within the last two days.

  The senior U.S. adviser was getting nervous because, given the reaction of the Vietnamese officers, he thought the VC might take a shot at his headquarters this time. He was really glad to hear we were coming; he figured we could cause enough problems for the VC that they might leave him alone. I shouldn’t give the impression that the two Army men were “shy.” On the contrary, they were brave men, but they were the only two Americans within twenty miles of the river.

  I decided we’d insert just before first light and do our business early in the morning. We needed to bring a lot of explosives, much more than the six of us could carry. (Though Jess had already gone back to the States to be promoted, we now had Quan, a Vietnamese SEAL, attached to our squad.) I felt the best thing to do was to put all the demolitions on our armored LCPL and run our Boston Whaler back and forth as we needed. Because I didn’t expect any real resistance, I figured we could shuttle without worry. Also, we’d be right on the river during the whole operation; we could always swim out to the boat if we got into more shit than we could handle.

  I went over the plan with the troops and Satch Baumgart. As my boat officer, Satch played a major role in all our operations, but this time he would have even more responsibility. And, sitting on the LCPL in the middle of the river, he’d be a very visible target. Satch said he had no problem with plunking himself down offshore on a 1,500-pound bomb with a bull’s-eye painted on the side. He wasn’t much smarter than I was.

  We left the base at 0100 on June 7 for our four-hour transit to the launch point. The river was quiet that night. We passed two PBR patrols, which reported no action, but the tactical operations center back at the base radioed us that a
large VC force had been reported moving about ten miles inland on the south side of the river, just about opposite where we were headed.

  We were going at the right time. The VC would probably take until the next night to reach the Bassac, since they normally moved only after dark so as to avoid air strikes while they were in the open. As for the actual crossing, their advance element might go the same night, but the rest of the force would likely wait till the next. A VC advance force was usually a company-sized unit; they’d man the bunkers and cover the main force as it crossed. I figured we would have the place virtually to ourselves, and if we did a good job on the bunkers, the advance force wouldn’t have a chance to repair them in time for the main body’s crossing. CTF-116 was planning a ten-boat PBR operation supported by Army and Navy Seawolf helo fire teams. If the VC didn’t have the bunkers, they’d take a beating.

  We reached our launch point, loaded the Whaler, and headed for shore. When the Whaler nudged the riverbank we quickly hopped over the bow and, in keeping with our SOP, moved inland about ten meters and set up a defensive perimeter. The boat quietly backed out into the river. I listened intently for sounds that would signal VC in the area. I heard the normal night sounds: frogs croaking, the river swishing by as the tide changed, and night insects chirping. After we’d sat in our perimeter for about twenty minutes, I was satisfied all was normal. We started patrolling along the south side of the island. Charlie Bump was on the point as usual, and I was behind him. Fred McCarty was next with the radio. Our Vietnamese SEAL, Quan, was behind him, followed by Pierre Birtz. Bill Garnett, my second in command, was rear security, the position Jess normally occupied. We were all carrying M-16s, and Pierre had a grenade launcher on his. (This rig was later developed into the MK-148 system.) We each carried one twenty-pound pack of C-4 plastic explosives. All of us had fragmentation grenades, and because we were going to be dealing with bunkers we carried more concussion grenades than usual. We were weighed down much more than normal, but the terrain was benign, and I figured we’d lighten the load as we got to the bunker complex.

  We moved cautiously, listening for human sounds—a cough, say, that would suggest someone was getting up and clearing his throat before going outside to relieve himself. We also looked for the glow of the candles Vietnamese left burning inside their hootches all night. Our targets, offensive bunkers, were located inside hootches for camouflage and concealment.

  All who served on the ground in Vietnam know that virtually every hootch, friendly or enemy, had a bunker. Our air guys had a habit of putting strikes into tree lines whether or not there were any enemy present, so the bunkers were the only way for people to avoid the bombs and rockets. Defensive bunkers were under every hootch I ever saw. What we were looking for was different. Offensive bunkers had well-built firing slits, from which a gunner could shoot with impunity. They were giving the PBRs fits.

  There were hootches all along the river. Some were homes, but others were there only to camouflage an offensive bunker. We patrolled for about thirty minutes, passing two homes occupied only by women and children, before we found the first offensive bunker. It was deep and fronted right on the river. We could see the firing slits from the riverside as we circled the hootch. Offensive bunkers were well cared for, covered with live brush to make them virtually invisible from the river. And usually where there was one there were more.

  Bump found two women and a baby in the hootch. We took them outside under protest. Because they made such a fuss, I figured there just might be men in the bunker. I positioned the troops in a security perimeter, and Bill lobbed a concussion grenade into the bunker. No result. We put in a Hagensen pack containing twenty pounds of C-4 explosives and blew it, then moved off, leaving the women and children there.

  We found the next bunker fifty meters from the first. This one was not under a hootch and it was enormous. It went down about ten feet, well below the level of the water. The firing positions commanded an excellent view: through the slits I could see our LCPL just offshore as it followed us down the island. Outside, the bunker rose about six feet above the ground. The ceiling was supported and reinforced by large palm trunks, and the roof was three feet of baked mud, hard as concrete. We put two packs in this one and fired. The bunker collapsed.

  The third bunker, smaller than the second but just as well built, was hidden in a hootch about twenty-five meters downriver. I put three packs on the bunker, fired, and watched the hootch fly about a hundred feet in the air. A large hole appeared where the bunker had been. I had used the SEAL formula for precise, surgical demolition work. If twenty pounds will do the job, use forty to be sure. In this case I used sixty.

  Just before the boat came in with our resupply of demolitions, Charlie Bump came to me and said, “Hey, boss, look at this.”

  He pulled up his fatigues. His legs were swollen to almost twice their normal size.

  “Fred, come here,” I called.

  Fred took one look at Charlie and said, “Must be an allergic reaction to some shit in the ditches we’ve been wading through.”

  I sent Charlie out to the LCPL and took over the point.

  We traveled about a hundred meters before we encountered another hootch. This one had only a defensive bunker. There were three women and two children inside. One of the babies had a terrible eye infection, so Fred broke out his medical bag and applied antibiotic cream. He gave the mother the rest of the tube and showed her how to use it.

  I noticed that the women were “nervous as whores in church”—even more nervous than I would have expected. So as we moved off, I told the troops to be even more alert. We were setting a very clear pattern, moving down the river and blowing bunkers—and we weren’t, obviously, being quiet about it. Still, I wasn’t too worried. We had Satch out in the river watching in front of us, and he hadn’t reported seeing anything.

  Suddenly, something caught my eye, and I stopped the patrol. Crouching down to get a better look, I saw that to the left of the trail some grass, pressed down by someone’s foot, was straightening into its normal upright position. It was the movement that had caught my attention. Looking in the direction the pressed-down stalks pointed, I saw an overgrown trail leading directly away from the river. Someone had just walked inland, probably after checking us out. I decided to follow the trail.

  “Heads up,” I whispered to Fred just behind me. “Pass it back.” I waited until I could see everyone had the word.

  We patrolled very slowly down the overgrown trail. The grass under the footprints started getting flatter and flatter. About fifty meters down the trail I stopped. Something didn’t seem right. Our standard procedure when stopped was for everyone to get low and watch in alternate directions; the point concentrated ahead, while the last man watched the rear.

  As soon as I squatted down, I saw movement about five meters in front of me. It was an AK-47 assault rifle, followed quickly by a helmeted head looking in our direction. The man wasn’t walking, just standing and looking.

  I remember thinking, “Oh, shit, we got problems,” as I rose quickly and shot him on full automatic. I had fired about four rounds when my left hand flew off the heat jacket and I felt an awful pain in my wrist. I thought my weapon had exploded.

  In the next split second I realized that I’d been shot and that we were in a hell of a fight. We were taking heavy fire from our right flank and our front. I sensed we had just about been ambushed. Incredibly, it looked as if I was the only one who had been hit. The guys were returning fire, but we needed to get out of there.

  I yelled, “Leap-frog back to the river! Move it!”

  We took off, firing on the run. The river seemed to be a mile away instead of sixty meters. The leapfrog tactic works well, but it’s designed for more than five people. With three moving and two shooting, we fought our way back to the river, rounds slapping the ground all around us. We broke free of the trap within seconds, but it seemed to take forever.

  We set up behind the berm at the river’s edge an
d kept returning fire to our right and front. Now my left wrist really started throbbing, and for the first time I took a look at it. Shouldn’t have done that. All I saw at first was a bloody stump where my hand had once been. When I looked again I realized that the entire top of my left hand appeared to be missing. Fred was on me like a tramp on a muffin, jabbing two morphine syrettes into my leg. We had to get out of there. VC rounds were hitting the berm all around us.

  Satch knew we were in trouble before I called him—the heavy fire going over our heads was also cracking over his. But he couldn’t do anything until he knew exactly where we were. That problem was solved when we reached the river.

  I told Satch to get some air support in (he’d already called the TOC), and tried to position the rest of us to get maximum firepower where it was needed. My troops told me later I gave Fred trouble because I wouldn’t stay put. I kept moving around, shooting and giving orders. I don’t remember that. I also don’t remember how long we were on the riverbank. I do know my hand hurt like hell.

  We were in trouble, but we did have the river at our backs, and our LCPL was putting out horrendous fire to our right flank. (Charlie Bump had taken over the .50-caliber machine gun.) So my original concern about being overrun was groundless.

  The LCPL’s firepower soon suppressed the enemy fire long enough for our Boston Whaler to come in and get us. Satch had already called for a medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) helo from the Air Force base at Binh Thuy; it would pick me up at the sector headquarters, just up the river. Fred and one of Satch’s guys jumped into the Whaler with me, and we headed that way.

  At the sector headquarters, we learned the MEDEVAC helo was in-bound. Fred had managed to get my wrist bandaged somehow, and since I hadn’t gone into shock I opted to walk the 200 or so meters to the LZ rather than be carried on a stretcher. The morphine really must have taken effect.