We got to the LZ just as the bird landed. In thirty minutes, Fred and I were in the dispensary at the Binh Thuy Air Force Base. Larry Bailey met us there. As I sat on the examining table with my left wrist hanging loose, I told Larry I would probably have to become a fag if the doctors couldn’t fix it. SEAL humor. By that time I’d had four morphine syrettes, two from Fred and two more from the medic on the helo. I think medics like to give morphine shots—they probably make the patient easier to handle. The doctor put me on a C-123 leaving for Saigon.
Two hours later, I was admitted to the Third Field Evacuation hospital, a grungy, filthy SEAL still in his cammies and war paint—an oddity, because they usually got only Army personnel who had been well scrubbed at field dispensaries. They took me to an operating room and started working.
The doctor gave me a radial block, which completely numbed my left arm. It was pretty impressive: he put a needle in my left armpit and said, “You should feel a tingle in your left thumb as I put in the needle.” Yes indeed, my left thumb started tingling. I remember thinking, “This guy’s good.”
Once they’d completely numbed the arm, they went to work, scrubbing the hell out of the wound and talking all the time, as I lay there and watched. The bullet had entered the underside of my left wrist, shattering when it hit my bones; the exit wound opened up the entire top of my left hand. In passing, the bullet had destroyed my SEAL Team-issue Rolex watch, most of which ended up in my wrist along with the bullet fragments.
The doctor asked if I knew what kind of weapon had shot me. I didn’t, but from the amount of damage done by the round he figured it was probably an AK-47. He also reconstructed the path of the bullet. From behind and to my right, its trajectory was from about four o’clock to nine o’clock. He told me I was lucky (I’d already figured that out for myself). They worked on me for about an hour, and then the doctor said he wasn’t going to do any more because I would need a hand specialist—and, he said, I stunk so he couldn’t stand me any longer. I like a doctor with a sense of humor. Later, on the ward, he brought me a plastic bag full of metal and glass—the remains of my Rolex, plus bullet shrapnel. He hadn’t gotten all the shrapnel out; some of the fragments, he said, might work their way to the surface of my skin and I could just pull them out. The rest I’d probably carry in my wrist for the rest of my life. (I do, and it sets off airport metal detectors.)
Next a nurse came in to ask if I’d urinated yet. I told her I hadn’t had the urge—and besides, I whined, my wrist was hurting so bad I couldn’t get out of bed. This crusty old major, who looked as if she could go bear hunting with a switch, told me if I hadn’t pissed in twenty minutes she’d put a catheter in me and drain my bladder. I came off the bed like a Polaris missile. She was laughing as I staggered to the head. (But she turned out to be a kind person. Later that night, when the pain in my wrist got worse, she gave me a morphine shot stronger than the pills the doctor had prescribed.)
The next day my old commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Dave Schaible, visited me. In his new position on an amphibious ready group staff off the coast of Vietnam, Dave had seen the after-action report that said I’d been shot. So he’d hitched a ride on a helo to Saigon to harass me about trying to catch bullets.
While he was there, Fred McCarty came in. The platoon had been told to stand down for a few days, and as my corpsman, he figured he ought to come to Saigon to see how I was doing. He told me that our LCPL, every PBR in the western Bassac, and most of the local air assets spent the rest of the day battling the VC on the island. Though they never completely suppressed the VC fire, they probably screwed up or delayed the big crossing.
Intelligence figured the advance party of a regiment-sized force had reached the island the night we arrived. When we started blowing bunkers, they sent out a group to set up an L-shaped ambush, with the long side along the river just past where I turned us inland. The tracks I led us down were on the short side, so we’d surprised them. If we hadn’t turned off the main trail when we did, chances are none of us would have survived.
Fred also reconstructed our fight. Apparently the VC force never saw us until I opened fire. I had been shot over my left shoulder, from about ten feet away (that VC was a terrible marksman); our Vietnamese SEAL, Quan, immediately greased the guy. If I’d been standing upright, I would have been shot in the back. No one else had even been scratched: our initial volume of fire had made them lie low long enough for us to leapfrog back to the river. In retrospect, our fire discipline and tactics had gotten us out.
10
PATCH ME UP AND SEND ME BACK
I left Saigon on a C-141 MEDEVAC flight on June 10, 1967. When I got on, I realized how lucky I was. There were men going back to the States with no arms, no legs, no arms or legs. One of the saddest was a young sergeant who had been a tank commander in III Corps. He had seen a lot of combat and now had suffered his third wound, which, under the Army policy in effect in those days, meant an automatic return to the States and no more war. He looked fine, so I asked where he had been wounded. Seems his tank hit a mine. He was blown out of the top hatch unharmed, but he landed feet first in a punji pit. One of the upright, razor-sharp stakes had gone into his groin, severing the muscles and nerves at the base of his penis. The kid had been married two days before coming to Vietnam, and he’d had no R & R since. He’d spent two nights with his new wife. Doctors in Saigon told him he would probably never be able to use his penis except to piss. Yeah, I felt very lucky.
When my second-leg flight pulled up to the terminal in Norfolk, a couple of guys from the Team were standing on the tarmac near another plane. They turned out to be members of the platoon replacing mine at Binh Thuy, so we talked for a while. I gave them a quick-and-dirty about how I got wounded, and some words to live by when they started operating. As they stared at my bandaged left hand, I could tell they were wondering if they’d get dinged too—or worse. I was the second member of SEAL Team Two to get wounded, and the first man had also been shot in the hand. We were just the first of many. In the first two years the command had platoons in Vietnam, we had a 95 percent casualty rate—but only seven guys killed.
Naval Hospital Portsmouth was a good hospital, but I hated hospitals (still do), and all I wanted to do was get out and get back to work. The doctors had other ideas. (Coincidentally, one of the doctors treating my wrist was the same fellow who’d delivered my daughter in February. I never did figure out whether Becky had been attended by an “orthopod” or I had been treated by an obstetrician.) At any rate, they told me the damage to my wrist and hand was worse than they had first thought. All the bones in my wrist had been broken, the tendons leading from my fingers had been severed, and all the skin had been torn off the top of the hand. There was also extensive nerve damage, which they said might not heal (it hasn’t). I needed at least two operations to patch things up, and they said I might be in the hospital six months.
I had other ideas. My first priority was to get out of the hospital to spend time with my wife, son, and daughter, whom I had not yet seen.
The doctors operated on my wrist the first day, checking the work that had been done in Saigon and resetting the bones. Even in a cast, my wrist still hurt like hell. I’d taken myself off pain relievers stronger than aspirin after I found myself levitating three feet off the bed after taking a codeine pill in the hospital in Saigon. Aspirin was all I was taking in Portsmouth.
Becky had been to visit me every day and stayed well past normal visiting hours. On my third day there, I called and told her I was leaving for the weekend and to bring me some clothes. When she arrived, I told the duty nurse I was going to the cafeteria. I left the ward, found the nearest head, went in, changed into the clothes Becky had brought, put my hospital pajamas and robe in Becky’s handbag, and left.
Sunday evening the phone rang. It was the nurse on my ward, letting me know I’d better be back by Tuesday because that’s when my doctor was due. She must have noticed the look in my eye when I told her I
was going to the cafeteria—most likely I wasn’t the first to pull that maneuver. At any rate, she covered for me, and I made sure I was back early Tuesday morning to cover for her.
That week I had another operation, in which the surgeons sewed the tendons of my middle two fingers to those of the forefinger and little finger. This gave me two tendons to control all the fingers on my left hand. They also shortened the tendons so I’d have better control of my fingers. In addition, they fused the bones in my left wrist, which gave me about 30 degrees of upward motion but none downward—the best they could do to allow me maximum strength in the joint. Then the doctor assigned me to therapy. I lasted for two sessions, then convinced the therapist I could do the work by myself. I promised to come back once a week so she could check my progress.
All I really wanted to do was get back to the Team and get to work. I had the use of only one arm, but I figured I could train the platoons going over. Only a few of us had seen any fighting, and there are no better trainers than those who have been in combat. So I returned to work full-time.
My doctor, who didn’t happen to know I was back at work, was considering me for medical retirement. At my next visit he gave me what he thought was the good news. I told him I didn’t want out—an attitude the medical folks weren’t used to. I was the first SEAL officer they had treated for combat wounds; all the others—mostly Marines—wanted out as soon as possible. I let him know that not only would I fight any medical discharge, I wanted out of the hospital right away so I could get back to the Team “officially.” He said he’d do what he could about the medical board, but until they made a decision, I would be assigned to the hospital. Unofficially, I could return to the Team—for paperwork only. I promised.
I convinced Bill Early to put me in charge of predeployment training. Over the next six months I also took whatever officer jobs needed doing—executive officer, operations officer, you name it. All the healthy officers except Bill were either in Vietnam or getting ready to go. Bill wanted to go as the OIC of our three-platoon detachment, but we convinced him he was more important to the Team in Little Creek, making sure the money continued to flow.
In May 1968, SEAL Team Two had a change of command. The new CO, Ted Lyon, had spent a year in Da Nang on a staff that controlled PT boat operations. But he was completely different from Bill Early. Bill was an “operator,” and he worked twenty hours a day.
All of us in Little Creek were putting in long hours and loving it because the work was paying off. Bill had gotten us to Vietnam and made sure we had the best equipment and training. Our platoons were doing great, and it wasn’t by chance—we worked very hard preparing them for combat. We had focused, realistic predeployment training that occasionally got people hurt but saved lives once the platoons got in-country.
When Ted took over, there seemed to be a shift in command emphasis. Ted seemed to be more of a staff officer. I didn’t have the same confidence in him—not that that’s unusual when a new boss comes on the job. One morning just after he took over, Ted gathered all the officers to give us his guidance. We all sat in his office in our UDT swim trunks and blue-and-gold shirts, the standard dress around the Team area. He was wearing his tropical white uniform.
Ted planned first and foremost to make us all good little naval officers—not that most of us didn’t need some polishing. He told us he expected each of us to pay calls on him and his wife, Judy. Paying calls is an old Navy custom, and it does serve a useful function when there is a new CO. Ted and Judy were great people and everyone liked them. But in that command at that time, requiring us to call on them sent the wrong signal, at least to me. He also said he expected all of us to drop calling cards in the tray as we came through the door. And, “oh, by the way,” we’d better have our own swords. At first I thought he meant we had to pay the call in full dress uniform.
These were the wrong first things to say to a group of combat veterans and soon-to-be combat veterans. They implied that social life had precedence over training and operating. Being a young “gunslinger,” I didn’t much care for Ted’s priorities. I had to figure out how to get myself back to Vietnam.
A serendipitous opportunity arose. Someone had to relieve Jake Rhinebolt, already in his second tour as Detachment Alpha officer-in-charge. It had to be a lieutenant senior to the three platoon commanders. Dick Anderson, the 9th Platoon commander in Vinh Long, fit the bill, and I was the only officer with combat experience available to replace Dick. I jumped at the chance, and got out of Dodge in mid-May, eager to be back in action.
PART 3
Fire Two: Second Vietnam Tour
It was not a good year for the U.S. war effort in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive at the end of January 1968 showed that the Communists could penetrate everywhere in the country if they were willing to accept horrendous casualties. Throughout the Mekong Delta, Vietcong forces seized key Vietnamese government strongholds. In a few days of fierce fighting, U.S. forces dealt them enormous defeats throughout South Vietnam. But the Communists won a strategic victory. The American public was shocked by the ferocity of their attacks, which went to the heart of Saigon. Pressure mounted for us to get out of the war. In late March, President Johnson announced bombing restrictions in North Vietnam. By mid-May, U.S. and North Vietnamese delegates held their first peace talks in Paris.
After Tet, North Vietnamese regular units began appearing in the Mekong Delta, since Tet had virtually destroyed most of the Vietcong main force units. SEALs were mostly unaffected. We figured we’d just have more to shoot at as the NVA infiltrated our hunting grounds. The NVA did, though, bring more sophisticated weaponry than their southern cousins had been allowed to have. Otherwise, things were much as they had been when I left in June 1967.
11
FIRST MISSION: CHECKING OUT ALL THE PARTS
May 15, 1968
The moment I stepped off the plane at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon, I knew I was back in the war zone. Vietnam was as hot and humid as I’d remembered. Bill Early, who was now the SEAL officer on the Naval Forces Vietnam staff, greeted me. It was good to see him. He told me he had some briefings lined up for me the next morning to bring me up-to-date on the tactical situation in the Mekong Delta. I told him I didn’t need any staff briefings. All I needed was to get right down to the delta. Bill relented, and that afternoon I got on another airplane for Vinh Long.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Dave Purselle, my new assistant, met me as I stepped off the plane. A large guy—six feet four inches tall and 210 pounds—he’d played college football, was covered with hair everywhere but on the top of his head, and was one of the strongest men I’ve ever met. After a few beers he could become dangerous. We left immediately for the villa where the platoon lived. It was a good way from the river, and I asked Dave if that created any problems. He said no because the platoon wasn’t operating that much anyway.
Even before leaving Little Creek I had been well aware of this platoon’s frustration. In-country three months, they’d seen little action and had had no real successes. I’d sent word ahead that I wanted some missions ready when I got there. I planned to get the guys in the field as soon as possible to see what I had. Though I had put them through predeployment training, that wasn’t the same as fighting with them. On the way to the villa, Dave told me he had set up an operation for the next night.
When we got to the villa, I saw one reason they hadn’t spent much time in the field. The place was a palace compared with what we’d had in Binh Thuy. That night, in a club attached to the villa, they held a going-away party for Dick Anderson. They had a blast drinking his good-bye. I stayed in the background—it was Dick’s party—but I spent a lot of time talking to the guys.
One of them was Chuck Newell, the leading petty officer. He’d been one of my instructors in UDT/SEAL basic training and had later served with me in UDT-22, so we were old friends. “What the hell are you doing back over here so soon?”
“My job.”
“You’re already a hero.
You got the Silver Star and a Purple Heart on the same op and a Bronze Star for all the other shit you did.”
“I’m no hero. I just want to get back in action because that’s what I like. I’m lucky enough to be getting paid for it.”
This conversation told me the platoon was apprehensive about me: they knew about my first tour and knew that I wasn’t going to let them sit around in the villa drinking beer. Getting in the field as soon as possible was definitely the best thing to do.
The next day, Dave Purselle gave me a brief on the operation for that night. Did I want him to run it, so I could see what they were doing without worrying about command functions? I told him no. I really wanted to see how the platoon would act under fire. Also, I wanted to see how I’d act under fire for the first time since I’d been shot. I wasn’t really concerned, but I knew the platoon was worried about me because my left hand was still in a “mobility device” to help it recover from the wound.
The mission was simple. We were going to search a suspected VC hootch area and set an ambush on a canal that was supposedly getting heavy VC use. The place seemed like one I’d have picked for a platoon’s first operation in-country, just off the main river on a narrow canal with good cover. To me this spoke volumes about the platoon’s experience and confidence.
We inserted by boat, patrolled to the hootch area, where we found nothing, and moved on to the ambush site. After two hours there I began to think it was a bust. I could see torches moving about on the other side of the canal—but, as I explained to the guys, farmers out in the rice paddies were trying to jacklight frogs. The torches were not a sign of sinister doings by the VC. I decided to call it a night for the ambush and do some “practice patrolling” inland.
Combat Swimmer Page 12