by Eric Meyer
The Willys MB US Army Jeep was initially built from 1941 to 1945. In the SS we had the radically different and inferior Volkswagen Kübelwagen. Based on a small automobile, the VW Beetle, it used an air-cooled engine and lacked four wheel drive. Before the Americans arrived in Vietnam the French Army produced the Willys derivative, the Hotchkiss M 201, in considerable quantities. When they left Indochina, a large number were put up for sale and our workhorse was one of these French built vehicles.
I noted with approval that Drexler had the Cessna ready to go, the engine already ticking over to warm it up. My pre-flight checks were almost completed when Goldberg and Anderson arrived. Goldberg had changed into Tiger stripe camouflage, almost a copy of the old SS pattern. He still carried his sidearm, but in addition he was carrying an AR-15 assault rifle with pouches of spare clips hung on his belt. Built of black plastic and aluminium, the Colt AR-15 was probably the most lethal assault rifle ever produced. It was light in weight, easy to shoot, and extremely accurate, so that it was fast becoming the standard infantryman’s weapon of the US and ARVN forces.
Anderson was dressed identically to the previous evening, I suspected it was the only type of clothing he possessed or would ever deign to wear. The only difference was that he was wearing a shoulder holster with a huge Colt automatic pistol in it, the standard sidearm of the US military. And of the CIA. He saw me looking at it.
“Yeah, don’t worry Hoffman, if we come down in Gook country, I know how to use this thing.”
I nodded at him. “That’s very reassuring, Mr. Anderson.”
Goldberg smiled. “Are we ready to go, I’d like to keep to schedule?”
“Yes, if you would like to climb into the aircraft and strap in we can take off straight away.”
They climbed into the Cessna, Anderson in the back and Goldberg next to me. I called the control tower and got immediate clearance from Nguyen Cam Le.
“You’re ok to go straight out, Jurgen. If you’re headed anywhere nice you can bring me back a nice present. Something small, like a Rolex watch,” he broke off, laughing to himself.
“Yeah, we’ll see, thanks Le.”
I taxied down the runway and took off, heading north towards Hue.
“That guy fancies himself as a bit of a joker,” Goldberg said.
“Le? Yeah, he’s always cheerful, but don’t let the jokes fool you, he’s a good man, very professional, runs a tight ship. Hates the commies, too,” I replied.
“Why is that?” Goldberg continued.
“Le’s family were murdered while he was in the US doing his air traffic control training. Apparently the communists accused them of supporting the Americans by allowing their son to train in the US. When he came back he tried to enlist in the ARVN, wanted to shoot every commie in sight, but he was too valuable in air traffic control so they ordered him to stay there.”
Goldberg grunted an acknowledgment as I concentrated on climbing to our operating altitude.
We reached five thousand feet as quickly as possible. I burned up more fuel that I would have liked but ground fire was becoming increasingly common and I preferred not to offer the Viet Cong a tempting target. We reached operating height and I set the throttle to cruise. Goldberg leaned nearer to speak to me, out of the corner of my eye I could see that Anderson had moved closer to listen.
“Do you know the area around Ap Bac, Mr. Hoffman,” the soldier asked me.
I thought for a moment, Ap Bac was a village about forty miles to the south west. I nodded.
“We’d like you to detour and fly over it if possible, we want to take a look.”
A strange request, I wondered what was behind it.
“It’s in the opposite direction, Colonel. It’ll add almost an hour to our journey time and put us on the limits of the fuel reserves.”
“I’ll add a fifty percent bonus if you’ll do it,” he replied.
It was a very good deal, I nodded, they both seemed to relax as I banked the Cessna around through one hundred and eighty degrees and set course for Ap Bac.
We flew on in silence, just the drone of the engine for company and the unending sight of the jungle below, hiding everything that was both good and bad about this benighted country. I heard the action of a pistol being worked and looked around. Miles Anderson was checking his Colt automatic, as I watched he removed the clip, checked the load and slid it back into the pistol. He saw me looking.
“You ever fired one of these or seen any real action, Hoffman, or were you just a desk jockey in those old wars?”
“I’ve fired a few guns, yes,” I replied.
Colonel Goldberg sighed with irritation.
“Christ, Miles, I thought you’d read Mr. Hoffman’s file.”
“Well yeah, I did glance at it, he was in the Nazi SS and the French Foreign Legion, I read some of it. That doesn’t mean a thing, he could have spent the whole time behind a desk.”
“Did you read the bit about him being an SS-Sturmbannführer, a major, a highly decorated combat veteran of the Eastern Front? Or his Foreign Legion record, a shitload of medals including their Legion D’Honneur, like our Congressional Medal of Honor, for leading countless engagements against the Viet Minh?”
Anderson looked at me, then at Goldberg. “I just glanced at it, Aaron. So he got lucky, did he?”
Goldberg and I looked at each other, we both smiled briefly, then he looked out of the window at the jungle below, I busied myself with the chart I had unfolded on my knee.
Four minutes later we were approaching the area of Ap Bac, I was about to call out to the passengers that we were almost there when there was a bang on the starboard wing. I looked across and there was a ragged hole about an inch in diameter punched right through it. While I looked, another bullet struck further out on the wing. I flung the Cessna in a tight bank to port, set the throttle to maximum and pulled back on the column to start gaining height.
“We’re taking ground fire, I’m going to get more height,” I explained to them.
I looked around, neither of the Americans seemed surprised, although Anderson had gone deathly pale. Just then a voice came over the radio.
“Unidentified Cessna over Ap Bac, you are entering a battle zone, turn back immediately. Acknowledge.”
I looked around, there was another Cessna, an army O-1 Bird Dog liaison and observation aircraft about half a mile away and closing on us.
The O-1 was the first all metal fixed wing aircraft flown by the United States Army since the U.S. Army Air Forces separated from the Army in 1947, becoming its own branch of service, the U.S. Air Force. The Bird Dog had seen a lengthy career in the U.S. military as well as in other countries, they were a common sight in the sky over Vietnam where they were used for artillery spotting, directing battle and a range of less glamorous but equally valuable tasks.
So there was some kind of a battle going on here, that’s why they were so interested.
“Mr. Hoffman, would you circle the area for a few minutes,” Goldberg said to me. “Could you let me have a communications headset, I’ll talk to the army spotter.”
I passed him a spare headset. “Colonel, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll give you five minutes over Ap Bac, no more. I have no intention of being shot down in an unarmed aircraft.”
“Five minutes will be fine, Mr. Hoffman.”
He put on the headset and clicked the send button.
“This is Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Goldberg, Fifth Special Forces Group, flying in civilian Cessna over Ap Bac, who am I talking to?”
I listened in my own headset, the radio was silent for a few seconds, and then it crackled to life.
“John Paul Vann, United States Army assigned to Col. Huynh Van Cao, commander of the ARVN IV Corps as advisor to the Seventh Division. Colonel, I’m observing and directing a battle right at this moment, I don’t have time to make conversation.”
“I read you, Vann, we’ll just watch for a few minutes and then head out of here. How is it going
? Those ARVN boys shaping up well?”
Vann replied immediately. “It's a miserable damn performance so far, Goldberg. These fucking VCs are outnumbered five to one but they’re still giving the ARVN a hammering. There’s gonna be some heads rolling after this little lot, I can tell you. Colonel, we’ve got a battle on our hands here, I’ll catch up with you some time, I suggest you clear the area immediately.”
“Understood. Good luck, Goldberg out.”
He took off the headset and turned to speak to Anderson, who had not heard both sides of the conversation. I looked down, two CH-21 Shawnee helicopters were visible sitting drunkenly on the ground, clearly casualties of the battle. I wondered if the troops they carried had got out safely. While I watched, a flight of five Huey UH-1 helicopters flew in and discharged a platoon of ARVN troops on the ground. There was an explosion in the middle of them, mortar fire, I noted, and the survivors scattered to take cover. It didn’t look very good. Five to one, Colonel Vann had said, that was by how many the Viet Cong were outnumbered, yet they were hammering the ARVN soldiers who didn’t seem to understand what was required of them. Several ran back to the Hueys, if they hadn’t lifted off the troops would have jumped back in them. Perched on a hilltop not more than two hundred yards away I could see the distinctive sight of a Type-24 7.92mm Chinese made heavy machine gun, a copy of our German First World War Maxim gun, belt fed, it would be deadly if it opened fire on the exposed ARVN. I shouted at Goldberg, “Colonel, the VCs are setting up a Maxim down there, a heavy machine gun, it’ll destroy those ARVNs that have just deployed.”
He looked down where I was pointing. “Yeah, I see it, Colonel Vann is bound to have seen it too, we have to leave it to him.”
Anderson leaned over and put his face close to me so that I would hear him. “It’s not your war, Hoffman, so I suggest you stay out of it and leave it to the experts.”
I smiled at him. “With pleasure, Mr. Anderson.”
I threw the Cessna in a tight bank and put her on a course for north east, to Hue. Anderson looked furious, but Goldberg only smiled at him. “Miles, you did tell him to stay out of it. Anyway, we’ve seen enough. You’re going to need those Montagnards, I don’t think the ARVNs can do it all on their own.”
The French term Montagnard, meaning people from the mountains, referred to an indigenous people from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. In 1950, the French government established the Central Highlands as the Pays Montagnard du Sud under the authority of Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai. When the French withdrew from Vietnam and recognised a Vietnamese government, Montagnard political independence was drastically diminished. The U.S. Special Forces were beginning to develop base camps in the area and recruit the Montagnards to fight alongside ARVN and American soldiers, and were intending that they would become a major part of the U.S. military effort in the Central Highlands.
I flew the Cessna steadily on towards the ancient imperial city of Hue, home of the Emperor of Vietnam, or more correctly, South Vietnam. I was concerned about the fuel, it was cutting it fine after the diversion to Ap Bac, but I throttled back to the most economical speed and at nearly seven thousand feet we should get there with a little fuel to spare. I didn’t think it likely that we had taken any hits to the fuel tanks, there were three of them on board the aircraft. If we were losing fuel, the gauge would have shown it.
Anderson and Goldberg were arguing about the Montagnards. It was no secret that the CIA regarded Vietnam as their own little war, a chance for them to cover themselves in glory. Nor was it a secret that the U.S. forces saw Vietnam as a chance to muscle in with their own advisors and weapons inventories, perhaps like our German forces did during the Spanish Civil War when the Luftwaffe tested their air war theories prior to declaring war on the whole of Europe. I was faintly amused, these Viets had shown extraordinary tenacity in defeating France, the final battle of Dien Bien Phu demonstrating that Ho Chi Minh’s troops were the equal of any in the world, and often better led and better motivated. It was well known that the French had treated their colonials as little more than slaves. What better motivation was there to fight hard than to gain your freedom from a colonial oppressor? A lesson we Germans had learned the hard way from the Russians during the war on the Eastern Front.
“We were talking about the Montagnards, Hoffman, what’s your take on these people?” Anderson asked me.
I had met a few of them during my time in Indochina, most I had found to be decent folk, if a little primitive in their strange costumes.
“They’re no friends of the communists, if that’s what you mean.”
“Exactly what I mean. We’re meeting some of their leaders in Hue, setting up a programme to help their people.”
I smiled at him. “By giving them guns to fight the Viet Cong, I suppose?”
He bristled at that. “Maybe we will, sure, why not? The VCs have given them a hard time, they sure want to fight back. Nothing wrong in that.”
“No, of course not. The French armed the Montagnards during their war with the communists. Giap sent his men into the Montagnard villages and wiped them out in droves, especially after partition when much of the Montagnard region lay in North Vietnam.”
“The difference is this time we’re gonna win, we’ll beat those commie fuckers once and for all.”
“Like you were doing at Ap Bac, Mr. Anderson?” I asked him.
Even as I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, the CIA paid well and seemed to have an endless pot of money from which to pay for their schemes. But I had seen those ARVN troopers thrown into the mincing machine, facing down a heavy machine gun like the badly led soldiers of the First World War. This American prick wanted to send more men into the lion’s mouth to enable him to play his stupid war games, as if they were pieces on a chess board. I’d seen too many sacrifices of good men not to be angry. Goldberg put his hand on Anderson’s arm and gripped him tightly.
“Leave it, Miles, it’s just a difference of opinion, not worth you getting riled about.”
Anderson gave him a murderous look, threw off his hand and sat back in the rear seat, a petulant look on his face. He didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.
The beautiful city of Hue came into view, the emperor’s palace clearly visible. I got clearance from Hue tower, asked my passengers to fasten their seat belts and dropped in to land. I helped them out of the aircraft, passed them their bags and shook hands with both of them, it seemed that even Anderson had decided to let bygones be bygones.
“I hope you have a good stay here in Hue, gentlemen. Can I offer to arrange your return journey?”
Anderson sniggered. “No thanks, buddy, we’re not coming back this way, the agency has got it all taken care of.”
Goldberg frowned, but Anderson rambled on. “Once we get these mountain men organised, we’ll go out and kick some ass.”
I smiled. “I certainly hope you do, gentlemen. No one has so far succeeded in kicking the ass of the Viet Cong, no doubt you’ll be the first.”
“You bet,” he replied, totally missing the irony of my words.
Goldberg gave me a cold smile. “Take care on…”
Several shots echoed across the field, I counted a total of four. We dived to the ground as a Vietnamese of about twenty years of age dressed in black trousers and white shirt and carrying an automatic pistol came running from behind one of the hangars. He sprinted towards us, saw us on the ground near the Cessna and took a snap shot that went wide. He was screaming something in Vietnamese. I’d heard it before during my service in the Legion, shouted by Viet Minh as they charged at our legionnaires, intent on killing us at all costs. Then another man came around the corner dressed the same as the first one, this guy carrying an AK-47.
Goldberg was fast and accurate. He brought up his AR-15, clicked off the safety, aimed and fired all in one smooth motion. The first man screamed and fell heavily to the ground. The second guy was still running, Anderson whipped the pistol out of his shoulder holster an
d aimed. At the last second, I knocked his arm up, ruining his aim, the pistol fired harmlessly into the sky.
“What the fuck are you doing, Hoffman? Colonel, shoot that Gook fucker while I deal with this German.”
“Leave it, Miles, for fuck’s sake shut up and stop making yourself look like an ass,” Goldberg shouted back. The CIA man’s eyes widened and he tried to bring the pistol down to point at me, but in combat terms he was nothing more than a child, I simply took the gun out of his hand, removed the clip and handed it back to him. His mouth opened making him look like a goldfish, but he was unable to get any words out. We watched the second guy walk up to the first, put down his AK-47, kick the fallen man’s pistol away and start to examine the body.
“Miles, the guy is airport security,” Goldberg said, “He’s on our side.”
The CIA man looked at me silently, his eyes filled with impotent rage. He then stomped off to the terminal building, a single storey structure that served as an airline office, departure lounge and customs shed. Goldberg looked at me sympathetically.
“I’m sorry about Anderson, he’s just not very experienced in this country. He’ll learn, sooner or later.”
“Either that or he’ll be dead, Colonel.”
“Yeah, I expect. Hey, I like your tail number.”
I looked at the tailfin of the Cessna, SGN-SS1. SGN was the international prefix for Saigon, SS1 was someone’s idea of a joke. We smiled at each other.
The Colonel went after Anderson and I walked over to the terminal and arranged for the Cessna to be refuelled for the journey back to Saigon. As usual it meant parting with more cash for bribes, in Vietnam, no one did anything, their paid job included, unless they were bribed. I wondered if Miles Anderson realised that, then it occurred to me that his ancestors had probably invented the system. I genuinely like Americans and got on really well with them, they were some of the best people I had come across, friendly and generous to a fault. But there were bad ones too, as with every nation on earth and when they were bad they were, well, like Miles Anderson. I sat down in the coffee bar and downed a cup of coffee, the radio was playing and I listened to the news. Already, the battle of Ap Bac was making news with reports of a casualty list of one hundred and eighty men, of which eighty were dead, and the loss of five helicopters. There was no mention of Colonel Vann, but I pitied him, once the final tally was added up the commanders would look for scapegoats and I guessed that he would fit the bill exactly.