by Orr Kelly
Of those who were on the scene that night, only one, James “Patches” Watson, now manager of the UDT/SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, gives an account closely paralleling that of Marcinko. In Point Man, his memoirs, published about a year after Marcinko’s book, Watson says there were three men, rather than one, in the sampan they ambushed. He does not recall the furious firefight reported by Marcinko. Instead, he says the only fire they received seemed to be one man firing sporadically from the far bank. He agrees with Marcinko that they could not raise the support vessels on the radio.
He, too, reports that “the lieutenant”—he does not use Bailey’s name—was off in the larger patrol boat chasing sampans. Watson also says he caused the destruction of a rubber boat when he threw an incendiary grenade that landed on the hidden boat.
What really happened that night?
Bailey, who has since retired from the navy as a captain, gives a quite different account of what occurred. This is his recollection of the night of 13 March, related in an interview at his home near Mt. Vernon, Virginia:
Fred Kochey [another SEAL officer] had to go to Dong Tam so I volunteered to take his place that night. I wanted to be where the action was and this was a prime river crossing area.
I took the STAB as an extra boat with the Mike boat. It was briefed that we would use the STAB to intercept radar contacts.
As I recall, we put Marcinko’s squad ashore out of the STAB. Some of them remember going ashore in rubber boats. I don’t remember that, although it could be the case.
Then the Mike boat and the STAB went downriver a mile or mile and a half and anchored, with the STAB tied alongside the Mike boat. All of us are in the Mike boat. All of a sudden somebody draws attention to a blip on the screen. It looks like a ship. We got excited about the VC having a boat that big. But it was going upriver, instead of across.
I jumped into the STAB with Bill Bruhmuller and the coxswain, Ron Fox [GMG1 Ronald G. Fox]. We chased this contact about two miles up the river. In so doing, we went past Marcinko’s ambush point. By the time we had caught the boat, we had gone maybe five hundred yards past Marcinko’s position. Still, we were a mile or so closer to Marcinko’s position than if we had stayed at the Mike boat. In no way was Marcinko’s situation jeopardized. His primary support was the Mike boat anyway.
We pulled alongside this radar contact. It turned out to be this little Vietnamese minidestroyer, an old French coastal patrol craft. We pulled alongside. Every gun was trained on us. An American who was aboard told me later that they were about to blow us out of the water. But they decided we were too fast, going the wrong direction. Happily, they did not shoot.
We radioed the Mike boat and started idling back down the river, going south or southeast. Just as we got abreast of Marcinko’s position, then’s when all the chtt-chtt-chtt, chtt-chtt, boom, boom started. We couldn’t have been more than five hundred meters from his actual ambush site when that happened.
So I got on the radio to the Mike boat and talked to Sam Braly [Lt. Sam W. Braly, the skipper of the Mike boat].
I told Sam, “I’ll stick around up here. You go ahead and weigh anchor and get under way. I’ll pick Marcinko up in the STAB because there are only three of us in it.”
We wait for five minutes or so and there’s no contact with Marcinko. I call back to the Mike boat and ask Sam if he heard anything. He had not, so we waited for the emergency extraction signal, which was a little blue-green pencil flare. You carry it in your pocket just like a pen. You pop it and it sends a little tiny flare up 150 feet or so, visible for miles. If you’d lost radio contact for any reason, you popped the pencil flare. That was the extraction signal.
We didn’t get any kind of signal, no radio contact, no nothing. So then we start trying to call Marcinko, both the Mike boat and I. And neither of us could reach him. We tried different frequencies. The Mike boat and I were talking back and forth all the time and we were getting worried.
Finally, Braly said, “What are you going to do, Larry?”
I said, “I’m going to go in and get him.”
Braly said later he thought we were absolutely bonkers for going in there in the dark. He had to vector us in by radar. We couldn’t even see the shoreline. We had three idiots on the STAB, three stooges. You had the coxswain who had no weapon. You had Bill Bruhmuller and me. We had a couple of AR-15s [an early version of the M16 rifle] and maybe a couple of magazines of ammo.
With our hearts in our throats, we beached the STAB. Bruhmuller and I jumped ashore, leaving Fox alone in the boat.
Is Fox a SEAL?
Fox was a SEAL. He retired as a lieutenant.
Bruhmuller and I go in, fifteen or twenty meters, not far, just stumbling around. As they used to say, going toward the sound of the cannon.
We didn’t know if our guys were okay and they had shot up a lot of ammo or whether the VC had got them. There was a lot of firepower expended in just a few seconds. Flares, willy peter [white phosphorous] grenades exploding. Tracers. There was too much fire for what ultimately turned out to be two or three killed.
With our hearts in our throats, literally, we went ashore, moved twenty meters in. I came face to face with Jim Watson.
He says, “Mr. B. What are you doing here?”
I said, “We didn’t have any radio contact with you guys.”
How did you know it was Watson in the dark?
They were talking. We heard them coming.
He says, “Hey, Mr. B. Look at my war trophies.”
He held up a plastic bag. I recall a couple packs of Vietnamese cigarettes. He told me later there was also a watch.
Then here come the other guys and they ask: What are you guys doing here?
So we loaded them all on the STAB. They said [in Marcinko’s and Watson’s books] that there were sailors joyriding on the STAB. The STABs were piloted by our guys. There were only three of us, all SEALs, on the STAB. We loaded them all in the STAB. On the way out, Marcinko asked why we came in. I told him we couldn’t make radio contact. Later, I asked his radioman, who was Joe Camp [RM2 Joseph H. Camp], what happened to the radio, did it get wet or something.
He said, “Oh, no. In the excitement, I forgot to turn the radio back on.”
Joe’s dead now. Missing in Nicaragua.
We put them back on the Mike boat and start steaming north toward Can Tho.
Marcinko says we got radio indications a Vietnamese outpost was under attack. Absolutely not true.
We came around a real sharp bend, around Checkpoint Juliet. There was a mud fort, like a Beau Geste fort. Literally, just as we came around the bend, our wits were blown because the VC picked that moment to open up an attack on this fort.
Lieutenant Braly consulted with me and Marcinko about what we should do. The decision was made, collectively, as best we could, without any radio contact with the Vietnamese in the fort and without any language ability either: we should try to pick out the VC and help relieve the siege of the fort.
You could see shadowy VC figures running back and forth. We popped some flares. We were able to bring some pretty good weapons fire to bear. We were only fifty meters away from the perimeter fence. We started hosing them down with everything we had. I was using an AR-15. We had .50 caliber, .30 caliber, grenade launchers, and a 106mm recoilless rifle firing from the pilot house. We probably made two, three, four firing runs. We’d go by the fort, make a 180-degree turn. Go by the fort, boom, boom, boom, all the time keeping it illuminated.
Those poor VC. I almost felt sorry for them. They must not have had a clue what was going on. We must have expended several thousand rounds of ammunition before the firing stopped, the VC withdrew, and we steamed away.
One thing Marcinko has in his book has a basis in fact. He says I was manning a machine gun and he and someone else were in the STAB and were being rained on by hot brass from the machine gun. Actually, it was Bruhmuller on the .50. I was moving around, directing fire, shooting with my AR-15.
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nbsp; It was prudent to get the STAB loose from the Mike boat. Jim Watson, and I think Bob Gallagher—it was a pretty heroic thing they did—jumped down into the STAB.
They went out in the river, just two or three of them, and they started their own firing runs. Marcinko and his boys went back separately in the STAB after the incident was over.
Not one word was spoken in anger between Dick Marcinko and me, all through the night, until the afternoon of the next day.
We got in at two or three o’clock in the morning. Normally, we’d do the Barndance card and then the next morning do the spot rep [spot report, a more detailed account sent to higher headquarters].
The first indication I had that Marcinko was less than pleased with my performance came the next morning, when Chief J. P. Tollison came to my quarters and asked about the accusations Marcinko was making against me at the base club.
I had no idea what the chief was talking about. Upon learning that Marcinko was telling everyone who would listen that I had left him in an unsupported position during his ambush operation, I went to Lt. Jake Rhinebolt, the Detachment Alpha officer-in-charge, and asked him to investigate. He did this and determined that Marcinko’s accusations were false and that I had acted properly throughout the evening.
One of the most serious questions that has been raised about Marcinko’s account was whether his squad was ever in danger from heavy enemy fire.
Gallagher, one of the most experienced men with the squad that night, says he was not aware of any. This is his account of what happened, as set out in a statement written at Bailey’s request:
I was the last man in the ambush line and closest to the Bassac River. Approximately one and one-half to two hours later the ambush was triggered. I did not see or hear the enemy; however, I did cover my area of the kill zone with fire. After about thirty or forty seconds the firing died down. The squad was doing a lot of talking and was very excited.
At this point, a sampan drifted by me into a shallow area. I walked out to the sampan; it was empty except for some cigarettes and a watch. At this time firing broke out and a grenade exploded in the water about seven yards from me. Looking around, I observed several members of the squad firing wildly. I did not detect any incoming fire and concluded that the grenade in the water was most likely one of ours. I then waded ashore and assisted in getting the squad organized into a perimeter. During this period several members of the squad continue to fire out of control.
Extraction took place approximately ten minutes after the ambush was triggered. We were picked up by the STAB with Lt. Bailey; Fox, and Bruhmuller aboard.… I was the last man to board the STAB. Extraction was uneventful. …
COMMENTS: I remember the above operation vividly, and the account contained in the book Rogue Warrior is not accurate. Specifically, I do not believe that Bravo Squad came under enemy fire at any time during the canal ambush operation, and it is absolutely untrue that I stated there were VC coming up on our rear. It is also untrue that the Mike boat went upriver chasing a sampan, or that Lt. Bailey left us exposed to enemy fire. As a matter of fact, I recall Lt. Bailey being aboard the STAB which picked us up ten minutes after the ambush was initiated. We were under no fire at all during the extraction.
I can categorically state that there was no confrontation between Ensign Marcinko and Lt. Bailey on the Mike boat…. If there had been, I, as Ensign Marcinko’s second-in-command, would have observed it or, at the very least, been told about it. Besides, it would have been out of character for Ensign Marcinko to confront Lt. Bailey in such a manner, as he was two ranks junior to Lt. Bailey, and for Lt. Bailey to have allowed it to happen without defending himself.
Ronald J. Rodger, another member of the patrol who later retired as a lieutenant, gave a similar account in a letter to Bailey:
I don’t remember the exact dates, but I recall being with my squad (2B) on an ambush operation on an island in the Bassac River shortly before we went to My Tho from Can Tho. We opened up on a sampan navigating in a canal in a free-fire area during curfew hours and killed two or three Viet Cong. After the ambush the squad sort of wandered around before we were picked up. I remember that there were a couple of tracer rounds that flew way over our heads from some unknown source, but I don’t believe that anyone ever fired at us. The next thing I remember is that a STAB, a small, fast SEAL support boat, landed on the beach and picked up the squad. I remember that Ron Fox was coxswain of the STAB and that Bill Bruhmuller and Lt. Larry Bailey jumped out of the boat and came in to see what was happening with us, since they had been unable to establish radio contact with us. We met them a few yards from the riverbank and returned with them to the STAB, which then carried us to a Mike boat out in the Bassac.
I believe this operation was our first land operation and the only one in which Squad 2B made contact with the VC the entire time we were in Can Tho, as we only conducted a couple of land patrols before we went to My Tho.
Bruhmuller, a veteran SEAL who now lives in Panama City, Florida, was in the STAB that extracted Marcinko’s squad that night. His account, provided in an interview, closely corresponds to that given by Bailey, with one exception. While Bailey and Gallagher say there were only three men in the STAB, Bruhmuller recalls one other SEAL, MM1 Kenneth C. Robinson, as being with them. Bailey has since contacted Robinson, who told him he was going to go in the STAB but remained in the Mike boat because the other three left so quickly. This is Bruhmuller’s recollection of the events of that night:
Dick had taken his squad in. We were supposed to support them. The Mike boat got an alert on the river that something was moving. They dispatched the STAB we were in. We went down to check it out. It turned out to be a Vietnamese military vessel. So we turned around to come back and as we were coming back to our location, to the Mike boat, firing started. We didn’t know what was going on because we couldn’t raise them on the radio.
We really had no idea of what was going on although I don’t recall any foreign weapons fire. You can tell the difference between an M16 and an AK-47. When we heard the initial burst of fire, I don’t recall any foreign weapons fire at all.
Bailey decided, hey, one thing we better do is we’re going in to that beach and find out, did these guys all get waxed or … We better get in there and provide them some support.
Larry Bailey was very responsive to the reactions that were going on. I thought the action Bailey took was dangerous enough in itself because we didn’t know whether these guys had run into a major element and gotten killed or what the deal was. Even if it had happened that way, we don’t leave our own people behind. We were going to go in there and try to do something for them.
So, Bailey and I, we jumped off the boat and started in. I think Ron Fox and Robbie Robinson stayed in the boat. They manned the helm, and the M60. And Bailey and I jumped out of the boat to go see if we could support these guys. Yeah, Bailey was right there. No doubt about it.
You didn’t know what you were going to get into when you got off the boat?
Had no idea. We could have run into an ambush ourselves. Our whole objective was to go in and find these guys, see if they were all right or lend some sort of help or assistance to them.
We jumped off the boat, went in a little bit, waited a few seconds to see if we could hear anything and then we heard these guys coming back to the river our way. They were fairly noisy, noisier than you would be if you were trying to get out of an area without somebody hearing you. I guess it was obvious to them that all activity had stopped and they were moving out to the river.
They weren’t all pumped up about having hit a major target or anything like that. There was no discussion I heard of Bailey leaving Marcinko or what have you. I don’t know why that came out that way. Personally I think there were some ill feelings between the two officers. But as far as Larry being chicken or anything like that, that’s not true. As far as Marcinko doing his job, he did his job. What occurred between the two later on, I just don’t know. I didn’t see any
of this picking him up and dropping him. It’s not a good career move. An ensign just doesn’t grab a lieutenant and slap him around, I don’t care how mad you get—not in front of witnesses, anyway.
Watson gives a similar account. Both he and Marcinko say they were stranded there and you didn’t come get them.
That’s a damned bald-faced lie because we damn sure did. I shouldn’t say lie. But we certainly did. We responded to it immediately. They were not let go. If anything, they did the wrong thing by turning their radios off. I think they stated that later on, that they did turn their radios off.
Wasn’t it common to turn the radio off so it wouldn’t make some sound and give away your position?
You can turn the squelch on that thing down so no one can hear anything, but at least you have it on. If you’re my radioman and you get killed and I’m trying to holler for help and I can’t because you’ve got that thing turned off and I can’t because I don’t even realize that radio’s off? You know, I’m liable to get waxed because of some stupid thing. I don’t think it’s a good thing to turn that radio off.
A lot of what happened down there was dumb luck. We had two platoons, four squads. I was with a platoon and our first night we got a hit. It was dumb luck. We stumbled into this thing. It wasn’t by design. We picked a place out on the river where we thought the VC would be and we sure enough got a hit. We hit a major crossing of people. They had to bring PBRs [patrol boat, river] in to get us out of there.
The other squad from our platoon got a hit. And then Marcinko’s group got a hit. And Larry Bailey went out a couple of times and didn’t encounter anything. It was dumb luck. You heard something going on down the river, so you try to insert and hope you can find some activity.
There was no intelligence. The intelligence we used to get from the army was as much as six months old. We’d go down to intelligence headquarters and get reports. They’d say there was a small contingent of armed VC. We’d go in and we’re liable to find there’s a damn battalion in there. That taught us right off the bat we can’t rely on this intelligence. We decided we had to make our own intelligence. We’d flip a coin, let’s go here. Flip a coin, go there.