I flew southeast from Binh Thuy to Bac Lieu, where the PRU adviser was Gary Gallagher, a West Coast SEAL I had met on my way over in May. Gary met me at the helo pad and took me to his headquarters for a situation brief.
When he finished, I said, “Gary, I want to go someplace and do something that’ll really screw the VC.”
Bac Lieu Province, being situated just north of the U Minh Forest, was a major assembly area for units and logistics that had infiltrated from North Vietnam. There were large rest camps containing hospitals where troops recovered from their long journey and got ready to fight in the Saigon area.
“No problem,” Gary replied. “I’ve got plenty of targets. In fact, I’ve got a perfect place for you guys, but you’re going to need slicks.”
He pointed out the area on his map. The only way to reach it was by helicopter, because the bad guys had a lock on all land and water communication.
I went back to Binh Thuy and started the ball rolling. My plan was for an extended reconnaissance-ambush. We’d lay up on the large canal that serviced the biggest camp in Bac Lieu, survey the situation for a day, pick a target of opportunity, hit it, and get out. I’d insert by helo at last light (the Army couldn’t fly too well at night without using landing lights).
We moved to the LST at the mouth of the Bassac River and prepared to go the following day. I wanted the guys to get a good “shipboard” meal before we left because it might be the last time they’d eat well for a few days. Two Army helicopters arrived early in the morning, and I went over the plan with the pilots. For fire support, I would use the Seawolf Light Helo Fire Team stationed on the LST. I hadn’t worked with them before, but they had a good reputation. One helo, I was told, was flown by John Abrams, the nephew of General Creighton Abrams, who had recently relieved General William Westmoreland as Commander, U.S. Forces Vietnam. John Abrams’s copilot was a Cuban expatriate, a Bay of Pigs veteran who liked to fight.
We launched the helos from the LST in time to land at last light. The Seawolves accompanied us in case we got into a fight as soon as we touched down. Helo insertions were as hairy as boat insertions, particularly since we’d be landing in an open rice paddy. The two Seawolf gunships flying low over the area would keep enemy heads down, I hoped, long enough for us to get out of the slicks and go to ground near a dike. To confuse the enemy, I had the slicks and the Seawolves do dummy landings in two other rice paddies, a thousand or two meters away. This sort of deception had worked in the past.
Our destination was easy to recognize from the air—or so I’d thought, on the basis of an air recon on the way back from Bac Lieu. The target area was at the confluence of the major canal and a smaller canal running from the east, five canals in from the Bassac. All we had to do was count canals and land between the fifth and sixth. Both I and the lead pilot miscounted, though: we got out between the sixth and seventh canals. Fortunately, this turned out not to matter. It was a really target-rich environment.
With the helos hovering about three feet over the rice paddy, we jumped out, raced to a dike, and set security, waiting for possible fire from the tree line a thousand meters to our rear. I sent two of the men crawling to the edge of the small tree line next to the canal. I needed them forward in case the VC sent someone to investigate from the base camp across the canal. I thought we’d gotten in undetected, but you never knew.
Just after we hit the ground, darkness descended like a curtain. Here in the middle of the Mekong Delta, there were no lights, and the moon had not yet risen. I kept the rest of the platoon by the dike while Clay Grady got on the radio to Gary at Bac Lieu and the TOC on the LST. Once we got good communications with both locations, I moved the platoon to the main canal and formed a perimeter. Dick Cyrus and I headed north along the canal, looking for a good place to stay for the next thirty-six hours.
We found a small, apparently abandoned hootch about ten meters from the canal, partially hidden in a grove of low trees and brush. Alert for any sign of enemy activity, we entered it and looked around. There was no sign of habitation, so I sent Dick back to get the rest of the patrol. I’d be rotating the guys on ambush; the hootch offered good concealment and a place to catch a few winks. We moved in and set up, expecting to be there for a while.
I deployed the platoon by squad in two locations about fifty meters apart on either side of the hootch. The squads would handle their own rotations. We set a perimeter of Claymore mines to our rear, toward the rice paddies.
At first light, I was in the hootch with Clay Grady, Andy Hayden, and Dick Cyrus. Andy manned the doorway, looking through binoculars at the tree line a thousand meters away. Suddenly he said, “Hey, boss, look at this.” He handed me the binoculars. “Look at that tall tree in the tree line behind us.” It was twenty-five meters taller than any tree around it. “Do you see it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
He told me to look at the top. I moved the binoculars slowly up the trunk. In the foliage at the very top of the tree was a guy perched precariously on a branch. He had a set of binoculars to his eyes, and he was looking right at us. I had to resist the impulse to wave. He stayed in the tree another fifteen minutes, then disappeared. I was troubled, but did nothing more than pass the word to stay alert. There had been absolutely no traffic on the canal all night. I was beginning to wonder if we’d drawn a blank.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than Chuck Newell ran into the hootch and said the squad on the right flank had spotted three men in khaki uniforms headed our way. Two were carrying AK-47s and one had an M-79 grenade launcher, but they didn’t appear to be on alert.
Chuck asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Shoot ’em when they get to the edge of our ambush line.” Off he went.
The men were more than likely doing a routine check of the area, but it was possible that our friend in the tree had reported seeing something strange by the canal and that these guys had been sent to check it out. We knew the VC communicated by VHF radio in this area, so we all got a little more alert.
I had gone outside the hootch for a better view when I heard the unmistakable chung of a round leaving an M-79 grenade launcher. A 40mm grenade exploded in the water in front of me. Another one followed. I figured the VC were reconnoitering us by fire; if, as they hoped, we returned fire, that would enable them to fix our position. I still wasn’t convinced we’d been spotted—if we had been, I figured, they’d do more than just recon by fire. No mortar rounds were exploding in our midst. I told the men to hold their fire until the enemy got closer. This might be part of an NVA battalion. I got on the radio and told the LST to send the helos our way.
The next sound I heard was an M-16 on full automatic fire. Chuck had decided they were close enough and opened up. The next sight I saw was a khaki-clad figure literally running on the water toward the opposite canal bank. Rounds were hitting all around him, but he must have stayed on top of the water halfway across the canal. When he emerged on the other side he kept on running.
Our fire had told them our position. Suddenly we were taking heavy automatic fire from what seemed to be all directions. My guys shot back, but when the incoming rounds stopped, I yelled, “Cease fire.” For a few minutes all was quiet. I knew it was the lull before the storm. I figured they were maneuvering to cut us off from the rice paddy.
I got on the radio and asked the status of the slicks and Seawolves; the ship reported they were right over the place they’d dropped us in. Andy Hayden spotted the four birds circling about 2,000 meters north of us, which was how I learned that we were south of where we wanted to be. We were right across the canal from the large camp, and we were probably surrounded. As my old squad chief Jess Tolison used to say, “We had them right where we wanted them.” Rounds started coming in again from all directions.
I radioed John Abrams; the helos immediately swung in our direction and started looking. Normally, to help them find us, we’d throw out a smoke grenade, the helo would tell us what color smok
e they saw, and we would confirm it. (We didn’t say the color first, because the enemy had been known to listen in on our frequencies and lure helos to them with smoke of the same color.) On this occasion, I didn’t want to use any smoke—it would pinpoint our position for the bad guys as well as for our helos. Instead, Andy stood in the little clearing around our hootch and made himself conspicuous by waving a large water jar we’d found inside.
There wasn’t room for the birds to set down where we were. I decided to go through the bushes to our right rear to the paddy, where we could be extracted. I passed the word that I was going to fire the Claymore mines, and we’d haul ass through the smoke and debris. I figured if anyone had penetrated from our rear, the Claymores would get their attention and, if not kill them, stun them and enable us to kill them as we headed toward the pickup point.
I yelled, “Fire in the hole!” and squeezed the firing device. There was a deafening explosion, and the bushes erupted in black smoke and debris. We charged. Either no one had been close by or the mines did the job, because we took no fire on the way to the paddy.
We quickly set up behind a dike; it shielded us on only one side, but there was no place that gave us all-around protection from the ever-increasing volume of incoming fire. I figured the slicks would come right down to pick us up, so all we had to do was hold on for a little while.
The Seawolves started a pattern around our position, putting M-60 minigun and 3.5 rocket fire into the suspected VC firing positions. The minigun put down a heavy stream of fire. As long as the Seawolves fired, the other guys lay low.
But the Seawolves couldn’t fire continuously, and during the interval after the first firing run all hell broke loose. We came under increasingly intense fire from 360 degrees, with rounds smacking into the dike between Clay (who was carrying the radio) and me (who was talking on the radio). I was trying to convince the slick pilots that we had things under control on the ground and that they could come get us any time, but they weren’t buying. Yet whenever we returned fire heavily, the other guys stopped shooting. For about twenty seconds out of every minute it got really quiet.
Then the rounds would come in again. And my guys would open up again. Ed Bowen firing his Stoner machine gun. Ken McDonald lobbing 40mm grenades toward the canal. Andy Hayden putting down heavy fire from his M-60 into the tree line a thousand meters behind us. The heaviest volume of incoming fire seemed to be originating from the tree line along the canal, so two men fired LAWs into the trees to keep the enemy down. The LAW, a very lightweight antitank rocket, had a shaped-charge warhead that I liked for punching through the caked mud of bunker fortifications. Fired into a tree line, it would explode as it hit the heavy foliage, scattering tree shrapnel. On previous missions LAWs had proven to be good “area” weapons. We used them almost like we’d use mortars.
I began to get concerned about our ammo status. We’d come in with a lot of bullets, but we were also expending a lot. I yelled for the guys to ease up and told the slicks to come down. There was a pregnant pause. They still weren’t buying.
Then a Cuban-accented voice came on the air. Soto, the Bay of Pigs veteran, told the slicks’ pilots they had two choices: go down to get us, and risk getting shot by the VC; or keep dawdling, and be certain of being shot down by the Seawolves. Both those pilots were also running low on ammo, and there was no way they were going to leave us on the ground while they went to get more.
The slicks killed collective and auto-rotated down. I watched as they hurtled through the air directly over our heads. The two Seawolves laid a fierce curtain of fire all around us. Rockets came screaming over our heads and exploded into the area by the hootch. The friendly fire was so heavy, I began to wonder if we’d survive it. Yet without that volume of fire, the enemy would probably shoot down the slicks as they landed. Pick your poison.
The slicks got to fifty feet and flared. Their rotating blades grabbed the air and kicked up a tremendous downdraft. Dust and debris from the dry rice paddy flew around the birds. They seemed to disappear, then hit the ground about ten meters to our right.
My squad put down covering fire as Chuck Newell’s sprinted for one of the two helos. When the last feet disappeared into the bird, I yelled, “Go.” Clay and I fired to our rear as we ran for the second bird. The two door gunners on both choppers were firing their M-60 machine guns toward the canal behind us—they must have spotted enemy movement there as they came down.
Clay reached the helo and threw himself in. I was right behind, dodging the fire from the gunner’s M-60. The bird was already lifting off the ground as I dove headfirst through the door. As it hurtled forward, I landed half in and half out, and someone grabbed my shoulders to pull me the rest of the way in. I sat up in the door and resumed shooting. Clay squatted just behind me, firing his M-16 out the open door. Off we went, firing everything we had, rounds slapping the sides of the birds. That slick rose faster than any helo I’d ever been on. We kept firing until we were at 1,500 feet. Our door gunners didn’t stop firing until they ran out of ammo.
Back at the LST, I thanked John and Soto and took the platoon below for debriefing. Our ammo inventory revealed that everyone but Clay and I had fired everything. I had three full magazines; Clay had two. And that was only because we’d been so busy with the radio. Good thing Soto made his pronouncement when he did.
After our adrenaline stopped pumping, we had a chance to evaluate what had happened. I told the troops we’d had a good mission. True, we’d jumped a much larger unit, been outgunned and surrounded, but we’d killed a few and gotten away with no casualties of our own. Plus, we’d accomplished two things: we’d rattled the gooks in their backyard, and we’d scared the shit out of ourselves. Actually, while we were in the firefight, none of us were scared. We were too busy fighting. We had taken on a large force of VC (or NVA) and fought our way out of a sticky situation. We were damn good.
I never learned the identity of the people we killed. Intelligence officers told me they were probably NVA regulars. Gary Gallagher told me later that he had gotten good information about our battle from some of the locals. Seems many new graves were being dug in that area the next day—more than enough for the four I knew we’d killed.
Gary was so excited by our success he took his PRUs into the area about a month later. Operating on more precise intelligence than we’d had, he captured a high-ranking VC leader. As his unit was leaving, they got into a fierce fight with a battalion of NVA regulars. Vastly outnumbered and without any helo gunship support, they fought a hasty retreat away from the enemy. Gary’s PRU chief wanted to kill their wounded VC prisoner, but Gary refused. In the next wave of heavy fire the PRU chief himself was seriously wounded. Gallagher picked him up and carried him as the team fought its way back to a road where the PRUs had stashed its trucks. Amid a hail of fire they all got out. For his heroic action, Gary Gallagher was awarded the Navy Cross.
As for us, we’d done what I’d set out to do—only sooner, and with a little more excitement. Most important, we’d penetrated an area in which the VC felt absolutely safe and created havoc, once again showing them that with us around they didn’t have any real refuge.
14
SOMEBODY HAD TO DO IT: PULLING BODIES
Much has been written about the Seawolves, the Navy helicopter gunship squadron that worked under CTF-116. I don’t know a single SEAL who operated in Vietnam and wasn’t saved by those guys at least once. They were the best helo crews I’d ever seen. Land-based throughout the delta and aboard LSTs at the mouths of rivers, they’d fly anywhere, any time, to support us. Night or day, good weather or bad, they were there. As my old Seawolf buddies used to say, “We like to get down low and root around,” and they did. I can’t count the number of times I could feel the heat from their 3.5 rockets as they passed over our heads toward the enemy. Often Seawolf fire teams made dry runs on the enemy after they had expended all their ordnance in order to give our guys a chance to break contact and get the hell out. And they wer
e just as likely to land and pick our guys up if things really got serious. The Seawolf crews were real heroes.
Because of my gratitude to them, I ran a very distasteful mission not long after the Bac Lieu operation. I went to retrieve the remains of a Seawolf and its crew that had been shot down over Dung Island while coming back to the LST near the mouth of the Bassac, the same LST from which we’d staged our Bac Lieu operation.
When we arrived for the retrieval, I asked who had gone down. The CO told me it was John and Soto, who had pulled us out of Bac Lieu. I couldn’t believe it. They had been on final approach to the ship when a burst of Chicom (Chinese Communist) 12.7mm machine-gun fire hit them. The people on shipboard watched as the rotor blades locked and the helo plummeted a thousand feet to the ground. They immediately launched another bird, which found the crash site and reported that there was no hope for survivors. The CO said they wanted to retrieve the bodies and what was left of the helo.
A Popular Force (PF) company from the Junk Force base had been waiting for us to get to the LST; they’d provide security while we worked at the crash site, but they wouldn’t go in until we got there. Popular Force companies, which resembled militias, mostly defended the areas in which they lived, though some units sought out and aggressively fought the VC. I’d worked with a few PF units upriver and found them to be as good as their leadership. Usually, though, Junk Force PF weren’t very aggressive toward the VC. On this operation they could at least provide lookout service while we policed up the helo and the crew.
I got the men together, gave a quick brief, and headed for our boat. The ship put up another Seawolf fire team to cover us from the air. We inserted on the island and patrolled about a thousand meters. Just after first light, we found what was left of the helo.
It was a mess. The helo lay on its left side in an irrigation ditch six feet across and three feet deep. Except for the rotor assembly, the entire helo was squeezed into the ditch, its left side underwater. It had landed with terrific force. We could see the right door gunner hanging out of the door, still strapped into his seat. I saw Soto still in the right seat, staring straight ahead. We couldn’t see any of the left side of the helo below the water. I made sure the Popular Force company was in place around us, and we started the grim task of getting the bodies out.
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