Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “You ever take off in one of these babies, Sir?”

  I shook my head. “I gather I need to ignite the rocket assist, if you would show me.”

  “I sure will. Soon as you get the wheels rolling, hit the button and you’ll be up to take off speed before you can spit. There are spare rocket packs in the aircraft, so if you want to use them when you leave here it won’t be a problem, maybe a bit of practice wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks, Chief. Anything else I need to know?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing, just full throttle and hit the tit when your wheels get rolling and hang onto your hat. She flies like a bird, you won’t have any problems.”

  I nodded and we shook hands. Then I climbed aboard. Paul was already in the right hand seat and had contacted the tower.

  “We’re clear to taxi out to holding position,” he said to me.

  I acknowledged and strapped in. “Fair enough, let’s get the engines started and get moving.”

  With a shudder and a fluttering roar, both engines started, one after the other. We taxied out to the holding point and watched while a flight of Phantoms took off, headed for a rendezvous with the enemy. I heard the tower give us clearance to roll, Paul throttled up, let off the brakes and we turned onto the main runway. Then he pushed the throttles all the way forward and I hit the auxiliary ignition button. There was a roar, a massive ear-shattering roar, I felt as if I had been punched in the back as the aircraft quickly gathered speed. The acceleration was insane, we both had to hold the column firmly and steer carefully to keep the nose straight ahead. Within seconds we had reached take off speed, I pulled back on the column and the C123 jumped into the air. The rockets pushed us upwards at a steep angle, when they finally cut out we were already a long way off the ground, well out of effective range of enemy machine gun fire. We were on the way to Khe Sanh.

  * * *

  We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

  Ronald Reagan

  LBJ wasn’t happy, in fact he was extremely unhappy. Dick Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, avoided his gaze. With a huge budget and assets spread over the whole of South Vietnam, his agency had totally failed to anticipate the Tet offensives. Sure, they were backtracking now, dragging out every old memo that warned off ‘possible enemy attacks’ to try and justify their position, to say that they had given warning, but it was too little too late. Ordinarily, Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defence would have borne much of the blame, but he was on his way out, resigned to take up a new and respectable position as President of the World Bank. And the fourth man, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State, ‘Reluctant Rusk’ as some people called him, had long opposed the course of the war. Before Johnson, President Kennedy was often so irritated by Rusk's reticence in advisory sessions, he claimed the State Department was "like a bowl of jelly" and that it "never comes up with any new ideas". No, when the shit hit the fan, it was Helms who would feel the heat. He didn’t have long to wait.

  “Dick, what the fuck is going on, why didn’t you warn us?” the President asked with an irritated tone.

  Helms knew it was coming and had thought out the response. The blunt Texan President was not known for enjoying long, waffling replies.

  “We didn’t see it coming, Mr President. There were signs, of course, but nothing to suggest the sheer scale or indeed the timing of this, until it was too late.”

  LBJ shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell we’re paying you guys for, Richard. All those billions of dollars, what have they bought us? Not intelligence, that’s for sure.”

  Helms could feel the other two men quietly smiling at him. The bastards. “We’re doing a lot of good things over there, Mr President, this is just one failure that...”

  “Jesus H Christ, Richard, you call this ‘just one failure’? It’s a fucking unparalleled disaster is what it is.”

  The Director felt bound to leap to his agency’s defence. “It’s certainly not that, Mr President, the communists are getting their asses kicked, that’s for certain.”

  “And what about Hue, what about Khe Sanh?” Johnson pounded him.

  On January 31st 1968 the ARVN, the South Vietnamese Army and U.S. Army forces were completely unprepared when the communists failed to observe the promised Tet Truce. Instead, they launched a division-sized force of North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong (VC) soldiers on a coordinated attack on the city of Hue. It was a massive, main force assault on the city that threatened to overwhelm the defenders. After several days of hard and bitter fighting, much of it house to house, there was still no end in sight. Khe Sanh had already been under attack since earlier in the month and public opinion was turning strongly against the war in the face of the tenacious attacks. Especially since they had been told by their government and the military that the Viet Cong were a spent force, about to give up.

  Dean Rusk leaned forward to intervene. “If I may, Mr President, should we not now be talking to the other side, trying to get a resolution to this whole conflict?”

  “You mean surrender, Mr Secretary?”

  “No, of course not, that’s not what I mean,” Rusk replied to the President’s acid retort.

  “It’s just that we don’t seem to be any nearer the military and political objectives we set out to achieve when we went into Vietnam. Isn’t it time to get out before any more of our boys get killed?”

  Johnson and Helms both sighed with exasperation.

  “That’s another way of saying surrender, Dean,” Johnson said. “Forget it, use some backbone, man. We did not kick Hitler’s and Tojo’s collective asses by giving up the second that things got a bit hard. We’re in this for the long haul, not to run like whipped dogs the minute things get a bit hot. Enough of that, I want to hear some ideas, how do we get ourselves out of this, how can we turn things around?”

  Helms pretended to think for a few moments. There was nothing politicians loved as much as intelligence gossip. “Well, Sir, in the short term we’ve got a plan to hit the leadership hard in the Saigon area. You know about the Phoenix Program?”

  The Phoenix Program was a counterinsurgency program designed, coordinated, and executed by the CIA, Special Forces, and the Republic of Vietnam's security apparatus during the Vietnam War. The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize", via infiltration, capture, terrorism, or assassination, the civilian infrastructure supporting the Viet Cong insurgency. The program was in operation had begun the previous year in 1967.

  They all nodded. “That’s old news, Richard. What have you got for us now?”

  “Dung Vo Phuc, Sir. He’s the VC commander for the whole of the Saigon region, equivalent rank would be about Brigadier level. He’s the driving force behind their operation in both Saigon and in large parts of the Mekong Delta. We’re hatching a plan to take him out, we estimate it will hit the VC hard, real hard.”

  The President smiled. “Good, I hope you get him. When does this take place?”

  “We’ve still got some gaps in our intelligence to firm up on, we’re hoping within five days.”

  “Can’t you make it any quicker?”

  “I’ll do my best, Mr President.”

  “Keep me informed, Richard. Now, what are we going to do about Westmoreland? I don’t like the way the American people has been led down the garden path by these Generals. Who do they blame when it all goes wrong, me, of course? I want you to start thinking about a replacement.”

  “Are you sure that changing horses midstream is a good idea,” Rusk asked him.

  Johnson grimaced.

  “What I am sure, Dean, is that this is a time for strong decision making, not waffling around the edges. I want some names, some suggestions, is that clear?” They all nodded.

  “Right, that’s it then. I’m going to take the dogs for a walk around the Rose Garden.”

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘'The thing that
was so ironical was that all through our training we were taught that the Cong wears black pyjamas and a panama hat and that's your enemy. Well, bugger me, we landed on the HMAS Sydney a couple of miles off Vung Tau and we went in by American landing barge with weapons, ammunition, the whole thing, and every mother's son standing there was dressed in black pyjamas and a panama hat, selling Coca-Cola and pineapples.'

  Barry Kelly, 1966, Australian

  We flew on northwards throughout the day towards the fort named Khe Sanh, positioned near to both the DMZ and the Ho Chi Minh trail. It’s function was to disrupt and intercept the enemy supply lines, as well as wave a flag to the enemy, come here and be annihilated by our superior firepower, part of Westmoreland’s strategy to tempt the Viet Cong out into the open. The trouble was they had accepted his invitation and threatened to overwhelm the base, its very existence was under threat. On the 20th January a lieutenant of the 14th Anti-Aircraft Company, 325th Division PAVN, defected at Khe Sanh and laid out the plans for an entire series of North Vietnamese attacks.

  The main base itself, and Hill 861, would be simultaneously attacked that same evening. Hill 861 was attacked by approximately three hundred North Vietnamese troops. The marines, however, were prepared. The North Vietnamese infantry, though bracketed by artillery fire, still managed to penetrate the perimeter of the defences and was only driven back after severe close-quarters combat. The main base was then subjected to an intense mortar and rocket barrage. Hundreds of mortar rounds and 122mm rockets slammed into it, levelling most of the above ground structures. One of the first enemy shells set off an explosion in the main ammunition dump. Many of the artillery and mortar rounds stored in the dump were thrown into the air detonating on impact within the base. Soon after another shell hit a cache of CS tear gas, which saturated the entire area.

  Hours after the bombardment ceased, the base was still in danger. Then a fire ignited a large quantity of C-4 and other explosives, rocking the base with another series of detonations. Thankfully, the communist forces did not use the opportunity to launch a ground attack, but the camp had been under attack ever since. When they were not attacking, the North Vietnamese lobbed shell after shell into the camp using long range artillery that was itself outside the range of the American guns.

  Our flight was uneventful but the landing was anything but. As Khe Sanh appeared in the distance we could see the puffs of smoke from the artillery duel. I took her in on a steep glide path to keep well away from communist anti aircraft fire and banged the Provider down on the runway. I kept the engines running, as soon as we stopped the ground crews started to unload the crates from the cabin. Simultaneously, medics and helpers rushed out onto the runway carrying gurneys with the wounded. There was a rather grimmer cargo to take aboard too, a truck came out and transferred eleven body bags onto the aircraft, everyone ignored them and pretended they weren’t there. We were all in a hurry, every second spent on the ground was a greater risk of being hit by enemy artillery. Shells were still landing around us, it was only a matter of time before they corrected their aim and started dropping them directly on us. One shell landed particularly near so that earth, foliage and small pebbles pattered against the fuselage. I wanted to tell them to hurry, but they were all aware of the need for urgency, nothing could be done to speed it up any further. Finally we were loaded, the door banged shut and we started to roll. A soldier ran in front of the aircraft, waving us to a stop, Paul jumped up to walk back to open the door and see what he wanted. He came back two minutes later.

  “We’re to hold here for ten to fifteen minutes, there’s a bombing raid due in. B-52s.”

  He sat down and we waited, we didn’t see the aircraft, just contrails high in the sky. There was a whistling sound as the bombs started to fall, then the explosions, they were shattering, waves of pressure sucking at the aircraft even though the targets were half a mile or more away. I even pitied any communists that were caught underneath that series of rolling explosions, it was vast, man-made death, a slaughterhouse delivered from the heavens. Wherever the bombs fell there was total devastation. We sat it out, not saying a word. The sheer power of the raid was overwhelming, awesome, a Gotterdammerung, a twilight of the Gods, as if Wagner’s breathless opera was being re-enacted for real on a ghastly scale. Eventually it ended and soon and there was an abrupt silence, then the camp started to come back to life.

  A soldier signalled that we could leave and Paul opened up the throttles. As soon as we were moving well, I hit the rocket assist button and we were punched forward, almost instantly up to take off speed and then we were airborne. Behind us an enemy shell hit the runway, as if to make a mockery of the terrible bombing that had been unleashed upon them. A series of flashes lit up the jungle beneath us as a communist machine gun sought us out, I flung the aircraft over in a steep bank to avoid the gunfire that brought us close to stalling. We fought the aircraft, getting the best we could out of our struggle for height and speed, eventually we got her flying evenly and we were able to breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I’m astonished that anyone was left alive to shoot at us,” Paul said.

  “There always is, my friend. Remember Berlin in 1944, totally destroyed? Yet it didn’t stop Hitler’s madness for a moment.”

  The flight back to Saigon was uneventful, night fell and we saw the lights of Saigon in the distance. From twenty miles out the skyline was lit with flashes as the battle continued.

  They were taking a terrible beating from the massed firepower of the combined American and ARVN forces, but the communist forces had stirred something up that would change the course of the war, of that I was already certain. Abe Woltz came forward to look forward through the windscreen.

  “Jesus, it’s a mess,” he said. “Seeing it at night makes it a lot more vivid, they’re all over the place, the VCs.”

  “Let’s hope that this mission of yours hurts them enough to make them want to stop,” I replied.

  “You don’t think it will, do you?”

  I shook my head. “That kind of thing never has and I suspect never will make any difference. Someone else will just step forward and take his place. Yamamoto’s killing in1944, that didn’t stop the Japanese, nothing did until you dropped two atomic bombs on them.”

  He was thoughtful. “You think that might work?”

  I turned abruptly to look at him. “For God’s sake, Abe, that’s not funny.”

  “Right. Just a joke.”

  I recalled the rumour that John Foster Dulles was supposed to have mentioned the possibility of lending atomic bombs to the French for use at Dien Bien Phu. Hardly a joke. Abe was silent then, just watching the violence of the approaching Saigon skyline. We contacted Tan Son Nhat tower, who cleared us in to land straight away, some of our casualties were in desperate need of emergency hospital care and couldn’t wait their turn whilst squadrons of fighters took off and landed. I put her down as gently as possible and taxied up to the cluster of buildings next to the terminal, military ambulances and personnel were already waiting for us to unload the wounded. Finally, I shut down the engines and Paul and I left the aircraft in the hands of the ground crew and walked over to the hangar.

  Emile, Ritter and Joe were sat quietly drinking and enjoying a game of cards inside. We joined them and poured ourselves whiskey, feeling our taut nerves relax as the rich, fiery liquid exploded in our bellies.

  “As bad as that, was it?” Emile said, looking up.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  He smiled. “You’re both as white as sheets, you’ve got that stretched look, like when we used to come in from a bad mission.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. It was bad, Khe Sanh is under continuous attack, it’s like Dien Bien Phu.”

  “Do you think they’ll let it fall?”

  I shook my head. “They can’t, Emile. The political shock would be immense, Dien Bien Phu signalled the end for us and the fall of Khe Sanh would make the same statement to the Americans.”


  “So what are we up to next?” Ritter asked. “When are we heading into the Triangle?”

  I gave him a sharp look. I trusted Emile and Joe completely, but it was supposed to be a secret. He laughed at my expression.

  “Jurgen, even the guy that comes around to empty the garbage told me to be careful when we head into the Triangle, it’s not a secret, my friend, believe me.”

  Security in Vietnam had always been unbelievably bad, but I was shocked. So many lives depended on us getting in and out before the enemy even knew we were there, now they might be waiting for us. Helene was now at more of a risk, as were the members of the team going in to seek out Phuc. There was nothing we could do about it now, though.

  “We’ll need some kind of a decoy,” Paul said abruptly. “Something to point the enemy in the wrong direction, if we go straight in they’ll eat us up for breakfast.”

  “Have you got any ideas?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “One or two, we’ll discuss them in the morning.”

  He meant quietly, of course, well away from our tipsy ground crew.

  “Fair enough. I’m going to bed down in the storeroom, I’ve got some blankets there. Where are you guys sleeping?” I asked Emile and Joe.

  They smiled. “In the DC-4, where else? We wake up and put out our hands for the toolbox, it’s a convenient arrangement.”

  “Until a mortar shell drops on your heads,” Paul said drily.

  They both shrugged. “Lighting doesn’t strike twice in the same place,” Joe said.

  “So they say,” Paul smiled. “When the Viets start shooting lightning you may have a point, but it’s shells they’re firing at us, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Joe looked vaguely uncomfortable, but he drained his glass at poured another. “In that case, I don’t want to waste any of this if we’re going to be killed during the night.”