by C. R. Ryder
With an iron clad endorsement from the United Nations the embargo began. It was directed against Vietnamese sea traffic. The entire country of Vietnam was a coastline so Vietnamese shipping could approach the Gulf anywhere over a very wide arc, and even with the navy’s best efforts there few frigates, destroyers and combat vessels available to enforce it. The Vietnamese, moreover, were well aware that any errors in enforcing the embargo would fall squarely on the shoulders of the United States and might prove embarrassing enough to bring about its suspension. With that in mind the Vietnamese concealed contraband weapons among baby food onboard a freighter. To add to an already risky situation public relations wise, the ship was crewed by Vietnamese women. The hope was that they could film burly Marines roughing up women up onboard an innocent ship carrying humanitarian aid. In reality the US Navy knew exactly what was in every container onboard that ship and that was not by accident.
The embargo was made possible by a sophisticated ship-tracking system devised to target missile attacks against the Cold War Soviet fleet. The ship-tracking system was called JOTS (Joint Operational Tactical System), and it’s had passed its acceptance test that summer and onboard US warships that fall. It turned out to be one of the most valuable tools of the embargo. The system employed shore-based data fusion centers that communicated via satellite with computers aboard ships at sea. The computers collected the massive information and collated it ashore and then used satellites to carry a near time picture of shipping identities and movements.
The beauty of the system was that it depended mainly on computer software, not specialized hardware. This particular software ran on any standard commercial computer. Up until then the philosophy of the military had been a special tool for a special job. Now there would be one tool for every job with specialized software. The computer revolution had reached the Navy. Earlier military systems, which could never be made in great numbers to begin with, and which took years to field, was dramatic.
Of course the navy would not be alone for long.
Help was on the way.
Captain William Bell
F-15 Driver
FL220 Over the Western Pacific
When the United States launched Operation Jungle Shield on Aug. 6, 1990, days after the release of the 1405 Document the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing was one of the first units to be deployed. It was a long way from the Langley Air Force Base, Virginia to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. We began flying our F-15C Eagles with only a few hours’ notice. It was something we were trained for, but I don’t think anyone was ready for. Forty-eight Eagles made the longest fighter deployment in history on that day, flying 18-hours nonstop from Langley to Clark, with six to eight air refuelings per aircraft enroute.
The flight was the worst experience of my life.
I thought it was an exercise so all I brought to eat was one stick of beef jerky and a pack of gum.
By the eighth hour I was losing feeling in my legs from a pinched nerve in my back.
At the ten hour point my piss tube either malfunctioned or the tank was full. The system coughed up a load of wet, cold liquid all over me. I could not even say that it was all my own pee.
I’m hungry and tired to begin with and now my balls were wet. I was ready to take on the Vietnamese Air Force with the Soviets and the Chinese right behind them just for a chance to get shot down and eject from that fucking fighter.
The Philippines could not get here soon enough.
Major Wesley Clinton
B-52 Aircraft Commander
FL300 Over the Southern Pacific Ocean
Two days after C-Day, I picked up the phone on a Saturday afternoon. On the other end of the line my squadron commander said "Be here in 2 hours with your bags packed. We’re going away indefinitely."
Four days later my crew along with the rest of the squadron found ourselves flying to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. We would be integrated into the 4301st Bomb Wing upon arrival. The unit was a hodge podge made up of B-52s and crews from all over the states including Castle, Loring, Griffiss and Barksdale.
We were tasked to make high altitude runs against major industrial and military targets as well as low altitude runs against Vietnamese armor columns if a ground invasion moved forward. No one was using that language at that point. It was all a lot of rumor and hearsay at that point. The only thing we knew was that something was going to happen.
I knew Guam was not an exciting place to deploy, but fortunately we had a lot to occupy ourselves with. We would spend the next five months training for what was coming next. The training became much more serious when it was about to get real.
All we had to do was get there.
Airman First Class Holly Kennedy
March AFB, California
POW Reception Area
March Air Force Base is an awesome place to go TDY. It was warm and sunny all the time, a short drive from L.A. and not far from the beach either. It was the site chosen for POW reintegration because it was on the west coast and the base had the space. They had just built new enlisted dormitories the year before. It was a two to one set up where each member had a furnished bedroom with a sink with a bathroom between each with a toilet and shower that was shared. There were four hundred rooms available and tents were moved in to provide for more if needed. In the event more POWs were found then arrangements were made to house them at McClellan and Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego.
The March hospital was vamped up with two hundred extra personnel in anticipation. Training ran from sunup to sundown on how to deal with every classic ailment that returning POWs had showed symptoms of in the seventies.
Robust quarantine areas were prepared to deal with malaria, typhoid and yellow fever.
These guys returning would be the equivalent of finding someone alive in a time capsule. To make them more at home magazines from the seventies were brought in from libraries archives around the country. From small towns to big cities came a flood of reading material from the seventies through the present. The main reception area would have stuff from right around the time they were captured. As they moved through the hospital and the dorms the magazines would bring them closer and closer to present times.
In addition paperbacks poured in from the USO, VFWs, American Legions and other organizations.
There was so much fan mail the first month that we had to pile it in a warehouse. Letters of thank you, care packages with canned food and cookies, paperback books, VHS movies. Kids colored pictures.
I took these out and put them up all over the dorms. There were bulletin boards in all of the common rooms and I covered them with these things. I didn’t run it by the psyches and that may have been a mistake. Maybe seeing them would make one of the returnees freak out because he hadn’t seen his kid in years, but I took the chance. They made me feel good. Maybe it would make them feel good too.
One in particular was done by a 5 year old named Molly Sims from Livingston, Montana. It was a soldier holding hands with a little girl with an American flag in the back ground.
It said We Miss U with Miss misspelled Mizz.
It was the cutest thing.
Senior Airman Khoa Tran
Special Operations
They told me not to get my hair cut and to be ready at any time. Less than forty eight hours later the pager they gave me went off. I called the number and Todd answered the phone.
“We’re a go. Be at the airport at five o’clock.”
We flew into Thailand on tourists passports. The eight guys in Scott’s team weren’t unfriendly entirely. They were tight with each other. I felt like a third wheel.
We were picked up by a civilian named Judge who served as our driver and overall fixer while we were on the Thailand-Vietnam border. He took care of the hotel, cars and everything else we needed. I didn’t know it then, but I had just met my first military contractor.
While we waited for further words we hung out like tourists. We drank beer and ate at some of the l
ocal places. I noticed all they ate was meat.
Todd and Scott were meeting with someone constantly. The third time they went to see them they took me along. Judge drove us to the outskirts of town. It was as seedy as I could have imagined. The meet was at a cock fight. It was a very public place and I suspected all parties wanted it that way.
The men we met were skinny Vietnamese smugglers. They made their coin by taking goods into and out of Vietnam. The embargo since the end of V1 had made some men rich. These two were not some of them.
I recognized them as being from the south by their accents. I had spent my entire life among Vietnamese refugees so I knew my way around accents and dialects pretty well.
“Listen to the conversation and let us know if they are trying to fuck us.” Scott told me.
“Is this where the Americans are being held?” Judge asked showing the men a map.
The men spoke to each other in a language I did not recognize. Then they said something to Judge.
“He wants more money.”
“No more money.”
Judge told them.
“He says more money or he is not going to budge.” Judge said.
Todd reached into one of the pockets of his cargo pants and retrieved a stack of American dollars.
The man took it and counted it.
Todd turned to me while the men looked at their funds.
“What are they saying?”
“I don’t know. They are speaking Thai.”
“Goddamn it!” Scott said.
“Told you.” Todd told him with a smirk.
Judge waved for our attention.
“He says more money.” Judge said.
“No more money.” Scott said waving his arms.
The smugglers talked frantically to each other and then to Judge. I could tell they were holding firm.
“More money and he will tell you.”
Todd repeated the exercise.
“He says more money.” Judge said seeing that the whole thing was going south.
Todd and Scott didn’t answer this time. They just looked severe.
“He says more money.” Judge said with a shrug.
They looked like they were ready to kill them both and I wondered what the hell I should do. I took a step backward out of reflex.
“Tell him if his lead works out then there will be more money.” Scott said at last.
Judge passed it along.
“He says okay.”
Everyone relaxed a little bit.
Todd brought out a map. The man looked at the map and found his bearings. He pointed at a location.
“He says there is a prison there. He says that they had Americans there once. He says the facility is still open.”
On the drive back to the hotel it started to rain.
“I thought you were going to kill those two.”
“We were.”
“Looks like we are going to the ‘Nam.”
“What are we going to do?”
“People have been tracing these rumors about surviving POWs for years. They always fizzle out somewhere down the line. We are going to penetrate the country and go as deep as we have to in order to follow these clues to their very source.”
“How are we going to get there?” I asked picturing black helicopters spiriting us in and out in the night.
“We are going to walk.”
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Adams
State Department
Washington D.C.
Resolution 678
The Secretary of State’s work at the United Nations was not in vain. The evidence was pronounced overwhelming. The U.N. Security Council announced on 29 November 1990 that Vietnam would have until 15 January 1991 to return the POWs. If they did not comply the resolution authorized “all necessary means to secure the American Prisoners of War.” The final verbiage of the resolution authorized the use of force if Vietnam failed to comply.
I was in Russia when the word came. I caught the highlights on BBC news before we left the hotel. We had a full day visiting various statesmen, military leaders and other dignitaries. It seemed like one side of their government did not know what the other side was up to and we needed to smooth things over with everyone in order to proceed. The old Soviet system was dissolving and the mobster mentality that would dominate that country for the next twenty years was already taking over.
Russia was still a real issue. They may have lost the Cold War, but they still had remnants of the Red Army and nuclear weapons. America might be coming to their doorstep. It was important for both countries to define their roles.
If they put up a fight the whole thing would be off. Johnson and Nixon had hesitated to escalate the first Vietnam War due to fear of Soviet intervention. Whether the President would be willing to poke the bear, even to decimate his former enemies, was an open question.
“What about Cam Ranh?” The Russian delegation asked.
This was tricky. Former Cam Ranh Air Force Base in South Vietnam had been given to the Soviet Air Force on a twenty five year lease. Its taxiways contained squadrons of Mig-23 Floggers and Tupolev Tu-95 reconnaissance aircraft and Tupolev Tu-160 bombers where F-4s and Huey’s used to be stationed.”
Everyone from the American delegation was looking at me since it was a military issue. I thought fast and answered faster.
“We can avoid it. We will build a flight path that will not bring our planes near your base. The last thing we want is conflict with you.” I told them. I did not know if we could do it, but it sounded possible.
There was a long pause. This guy wasn’t the decider. You can bet though that whatever he said next Moscow would go with. If it was no then the whole thing could be in jeopardy.
Lieutenant Colonel Carol Madison
U.S. Air Force Intelligence Officer
Pacific Command Operations Center
Watching the Secretary of State address the UN was about as much fun as watching paint dry. He had the Thailand Box and he showed it to the members. Then he spoke of atrocities that the Vietnamese had committed in their extended war with Cambodia. I don’t even know what that had to do with anything. What I realized later was that the State Department was painting Vietnam to be a rogue state.
The Vietnamese did themselves no favors when they kicked the inspectors out on the first week of December.
Even though they could not prove it, the Vietnamese accused them of espionage.
Imagine that.
One of the things the US had against Vietnam was the way they blatantly ignored the Geneva Convention in the past. Their track record of human rights abuses were examined in detail. If they had a better history record then the whole thing might not have moved forward. As it was they looked very guilty to begin with. They put men in tiger cages, committed torture and other atrocities. It was all coming back to haunt them now.
In addition there was the Vietnamese Dac Cong. The Dac Cong were direct descendants of commando killing units from V1. They were the ones running around the jungle setting up punji stick traps or sniping Americans. Out of work after the war they put their show on the road. The Dac Cong did well for themselves training members of Marxist guerrilla groups including El Salvadoran FMLN, the Chilean MIR and Colombian FARC came up. They had even gone to Afghanistan adversely to train Soviet forces on how to fight against a guerrilla war there. They were masters of fighting big army tactics with guerrilla warfare. If this became a ground war they would be our toughest opponents.
Finally, the Secretary of State brought up evidence that the Vietnamese armed forces had shipped all the captured American-made weapons from the fall of South Vietnam, including M-16s, to Latin American insurgents, through Cuban intermediaries, during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
It looked like the State Department was throwing everything except the kitchen sink at Vietnam.
I thought the whole thing had to do with the POWs.
I guess there was a bigger picture.
Senior
Airman Khoa Tran
Special Operations
We crossed the border into Vietnam on November third. I was excited and scared in equal measures. I kept bugging the operators about it as we got close like a kid asking his parents if we are there yet on a holiday trip.
After we were in I was smiling like an asshole. To my knowledge we were the first American military unit to enter Vietnam since we pulled out in the seventies. I hoped that one day I could tell my dad about this.
“What are you so happy about?” Todd asked.
“We’re the first! In Vietnam. We are making history.”
Todd shook his head. I could not tell if it was a negative or just frustration with me.
“What?”
Todd did not answer.
“We’re not the only team dumbass.” Jeff told me.
“Oh,” It had not occurred to me. In fact there were more than a dozen teams from three services as well as CIA agents operating in the country. We were one of the last teams to mobilize. Of course I did not discover this until after I was back home.
Oddly enough none of us had been here before. Other than me I guess, but I had been a child. Operators were in and out of Indochina throughout the mid-seventies, but this kind of work is a young man’s game and even the NCOIC Scott is less than thirty. We brought the contractor along with us though. Judge was pushing fifty if he wasn’t already past it. None of them seemed impressed with him, but after getting in here I was glad he was there.
He speaks the language and can carry his own pack and mine sometimes when I can’t walk anymore.
The second day after crossing the border we found the camp. It was a little plot of land with ramshackle buildings. They all looked unfit for human habitation.