by Orr Kelly
The monitor lit off and sprayed the bank with fire. Nothing. We went over and found the hole where he was in, found the launch tube. He had tied bamboo poles together and had eleven flashlight batteries taped together. And he was touching the wires to the ends of the batteries to set those things off. The bamboo pole holds it as a launch tube. Just roll up the fins and stick it in there with the head of it out. If he had fired those things as quick as he fired them, four seconds earlier, he would have hit the well deck and we wouldn’t have been here because of all that powder we had in there.
In Vietnam, when you got off the plane in Tan Son Nhut, it was pucker factor. It wasn’t til you got on that plane and landed in Hawaii that you … [a sigh of relief].
Our homecomings weren’t that great. We usually landed at North Island [the naval base in San Diego Bay], loaded up the trucks, and came down the beach, back toward the team area [at Coronado] and that’s when we got this great welcome home.
They knew we were coming back from Vietnam. As we came down by the beach, we were looking at the honeys and they’d see all our combat gear and stuff. They’d throw beer bottles at us and holler at us. It wasn’t any welcome home. But we got used to it. That’s what they paid us extra for. It was definitely party time once we got home.
CHAPTER
24
“I Don’t Want You Operating…”
In the fall of 1970, Lt. Thomas Hawkins, commander of the seventh platoon of SEAL Team TWO, and another officer were ordered to the far north of South Vietnam to consider operating in that part of the country.
He and members of his platoon were based at that time in Nha Be, east of Saigon, by then a quiet backwater of the war. They wanted to move deep into the delta south of Saigon where the Viet Cong were much more active. But higher authorities wanted to dispatch them to the northernmost portion of the country—the area known as I Corps—to attempt to stop enemy mining of the Cua Viet River.
“We looked the place over and decided that was the worst place you could send a SEAL platoon,” Hawkins recalls. Hawkins describes what occurred next, setting the stage for a frustrating assignment as the U.S. sought to turn over the fighting to the Vietnamese:
By the time we got back to Da Nang and subsequently to Saigon, a ferryboat had been blown up on the Cua Viet River. The Chief of Naval Operations of the South Vietnamese navy was in a helicopter over the river when the boat hit a mine and blew up right in front of his eyes. I was told he had a relative on that ferry. The South Vietnamese army didn’t have the resources to stop the mining.
We were told, “Hey, you’re going up there whether you like it or not.” My platoon got sent up.
We moved into temporary spaces in Frogville, the UDT base in Da Nang. We were given a target: a large and complex series of bunkers over on an island. We decided to have a go at it. We were really eager to do something because we hadn’t really done all that much. We spent most of our time planning to do stuff rather than actually doing stuff because we were being moved around country so much.
We got aerial photographs of this thing and it was one of the most intriguing photographs I’ve ever seen. It looked like a two- or three-story bunker. We did a pretty good job of planning this op. This thing was beside a canal that came in off the main river. We planned to go in in typical SEAL fashion—walking up the canal.
The real problem is, we didn’t have any real boat support. In order to insert, we had to use Vietnamese navy boats and there was always a communications problem and always an organizational problem.
The truth of the matter is, we liked to operate at night and those guys didn’t want to get their boats out there at night.
The first night we went to do this op, we got inserted at the wrong spot. As soon as we realized these Vietnamese navy guys had put us off on the wrong spot, we came under intense .50-caliber fire. Tracers were flying everywhere. We were compromised, really compromised.
We got on the radio and pleaded for these boats to come back in and get us. Of course, they weren’t going to come back while this .50 caliber was coming in there. We ended up with the whole platoon just getting into the water and lying down.
The funniest thing, when we got pinned down, guys were yelling and I was lying there, trying to get my bearings and figure out what to do. These bullets are snipping all around. It was recon by fire, which we found out later.
It goes through my mind that my big ass is sticking up in the air and I’d better do something before I get hit in the rear end. And I did. I rolled over and I’m looking up like this and I see the tracers flying over me.
And I went, “Holy shit! They’re going to shoot my nose off.” So I rolled back over.
We backed the whole platoon into the water and we sat there for a considerable amount of time until we can get boats back in to pick us up. Well, it ends up, the guys shooting at us were Koreans. The ROK [Republic of Korea] guys were trigger happy. There had been a lot of sapper attacks going on, which was why they wanted us to go in and kind of disrupt this VC stronghold. The Koreans were shooting at us from their base over on the other side of the water. They must have thought we were the sappers.
We decided the op had not been compromised. If we could get to our proper insertion point, we still had a great probability of running this operation.
Our aim was to insert into the mouth of the canal and walk the canal, clear up to the bunker complex. That was our plan, very simple.
We inserted. My point man found two or three booby traps. So it wasn’t that they hadn’t anticipated someone coming in this way, but the booby traps had been there for a long time and they were really old. I guess they never went down and refreshed the booby traps.
When we got up in there and found those booby traps, we were moving so slow. After we found the first booby traps, our time schedule was way off. One of the guys found this really well traveled path. We stopped the squad, sent a guy up to see what was up there.
He came back and said, “You’ve got to see this.” So we took the whole squad up in there. It was a bunker complex. It was totally empty. We went inside. There were mattresses with sheets, pillowcases. This place was decked out with all the comforts of home.
We decided we were never going to make it to the big bunker and that we probably never would make it in a single night. We decided this was not an achievable objective. We left a whole bunch of literature scattered around this bunker. We had picked them up as a joke. The psyops guys, I guess, were putting them out. It was a piece of paper with a big eyeball on it. It said something in Vietnamese akin to: “We are watching you. No matter where you go or what you do, we are watching you.”
We exfiltrated that night and went to sleep on the beach. Then the boats took us back to the Vietnamese navy base the next day. We decided going through the canal was not the best way. And any other way would not be good without a guide. I came back and wrote up my report. Basically I said we had a mission that didn’t bear fruit.
In his Barndance card reporting on that night’s mission, Hawkins wrote: “Patrolling inside canals into known highly booby trapped areas seems to be an excellent method and unexpected by the enemy.”
The next day or the day after, somebody decided they would take an EOD [explosive ordnance demolition] team and blow these bunkers away. Just fly in in broad daylight. I remember hearing that the team that went in got a couple of people killed and a helicopter shot down.
We were the first SEAL platoon that had been in I Corps for a long time. The army, everybody, felt it was strange we operated at night.
I went to set up one op. I had gone to the army TOC [tactical operations center] to clear the AO [area of operations] and try to get air support and try to set up an op like I had set them up in the delta.
They are all giving me every reason in the world why I can’t do things. Most of it had to do with the fact that we’re Vietnamese-izing and nobody fights and we don’t want you guys up here, particularly out at night, stirring things up.
I’m talking to this major who’s setting up the gunship support. And we’re up at the map. In the navy, when a senior officer walks into the room, they say, “Attention on deck!” and everybody snaps to.
I wasn’t used to the army. Well, somebody said, “attention.” They didn’t say, “ATTENTION!” This guy walks up to the map and he’s got one star. The navy never had one-star flag officers; they go to two stars. I’d never seen one star except on the collar of a chief petty officer. My first response to him was, “Hi, Chief.”
I was introduced to him. I quickly found out he was a general officer. I was introduced as “Lieutenant Hawkins, he’s with the SEAL platoon.”
This guy looks at me and says, “I want to see you in my quarters right now!”
Everybody’s giving me these blank stares. He did an about-face and went crashing out the door and back to his office. This major escorted me over to his office. Typical army. Nicely painted hut, little white painted rocks. Nicely appointed. Not like Vietnam. More like Fort Bragg [North Carolina]. Had a gorgeous Vietnamese secretary.
He’s standing, holding the door, waiting for me to come in. The major walks me up to the door and when I walk in, the general closes the door in the major’s face.
And he points a finger at me and he says, “I’ve heard about you assholes. You’re assassins and I don’t want you operating in my area.”
I’m a lieutenant that’s trying to set up a combat mission. He gives me this story about things are quiet up here and we’re not stirring anything up. We’re basically not operating. We’re Vietnam-izing.
I went, “Aye aye sir, thank you very much.” I went back to the TOC and said, “What’ll I do?”
I basically told this major, “That’s my grid. I’m going to be in there tonight. If I need help, I’ll be calling you.”
But I found out, in I Corps, I had to clear four AOs and never tell anyone which I’d be in. I had to clear with the Koreans, the Australians, the Vietnamese, and the U.S. Army.
I cleared all four and all had plausible missions. I got zero cooperation from the army. Zero from the Vietnamese navy. We made very fast friends with the Australians. We drank hard in off-hours and quickly gained a reputation for being inseparable. They were manning firebases and they had guys sneaking up on them almost every night. We were dying to go outside the perimeter and play with these guys.
We just wanted anything to do. But the army would not approve us operating with the Australians. We were basically stuck in a spot where nobody wanted to operate anymore. Me and my platoon were getting real, real, real frustrated. We really did want to operate and we kept running into these barriers.
The Vietnamese people were not used to friendly forces operating at night so they would routinely violate the curfew.
One night we were patrolling along the beach. A grandfather and his grandson were up there. They had violated curfew. They were out on the beach, basically a free-fire zone. When we ran into them, we just opened up on them.
We ended up shooting this kid, maybe eight, nine, ten years old, and he had a sucking chest wound. My corpsman was taking pretty good care of him. We couldn’t get air cover. I called for medevac. They wanted to know whether it was American or Vietnamese.
I said, “It doesn’t make a shit. I want the bird. It doesn’t matter. We’ve got an injured kid up here.”
They didn’t want to fly. Down in the delta, we had the navy Sea Wolves. They were a very dedicated, brave bunch of men. It was almost a hand and glove thing when we operated with these guys. We used to use a capped strobe light to show the Sea Wolves where we were. We’d use a white flash or an IR [infrared] cap or different color cap. And the Sea Wolves could pick that out of a triple canopy. Up there on an open beach, these army pilots kept swearing they could not see the strobe light.
We finally got the kid on a medevac and the corpsman flew out with him and we got him to the province hospital. I went down the next day to see the kid and see his parents. They were crying and I didn’t know what to say to them. I just simply told them I was sorry it happened but they were up there in violation of the curfew and they should not do that and they should tell the rest of the villagers.
We knew after we shot the kid that they were not bad guys. I lost some sleep over it that night. But my guys were alive. We did the right thing.
CHAPTER
25
They Called It Bright Light
As American involvement in the war in Vietnam wound down in the early 1970s, a few SEALs remained behind, acting as advisers to the Vietnamese. For most of them, it was a frustrating period. But one thing made it all seem worthwhile: the possibility of rescuing Americans believed to be held prisoner by the Viet Cong.
A number of operations—under the code name Bright Light—were run in various parts of Vietnam in response to reports that American prisoners had been spotted. On several occasions, the SEALs came tantalizingly close. They received reports of large men—presumably American prisoners—being moved just ahead of them. They even saw footprints that could have been made by Americans. Several raids resulted in the release of South Vietnamese. But American prisoners—if they were there—remained always just beyond the reach of the rescuers.
Tony Thomas, who was a medical corpsman with SEAL Team ONE, tells of one of the last of the Bright Light operations:
In 1972, I was in SEAL Team ONE attached to MACSOG—the Military Assistance Command Studies and Observation Group—up in Da Nang. We had army, navy, air force, marines. By that time, things were winding down.
Earlier, SEALs from both the East and West Coasts had been there and they had run some excellent operations—really kicked some butt.
When I was there, they were primarily Vietnamese operations.
I had the ammo bunker. All of our weapons were AK-47. We had 82mm mortars. The U.S.’s are 81s. It was all the other guys’ munitions and weapons. When I operated with them, I operated in khakis, pith helmet—NVA.
These [South Vietnamese] operating teams would come to me with a requisition for ammo.
“Oh, we’re going to go kill many VC tonight.”
“That’s good, Chief. What do you need?”
“Oh, ten thousand rounds of AK. Five cases of hand grenades.”
“Yeah, you are really going after some bad guys.”
“Oh, yeah! One hundred pounds of C-4.”
“No problem.”
They loaded it all in a truck and out it would go.
I’d see them the next day and ask, “How did the operation go?”
“No operation. We go tonight. Had to cancel last night.”
“What happened?”
“One of the guys got sick. Going to go tonight.”
“That’s good.”
“We need five thousand rounds of AK, four cases of hand grenades …”
“Wait a minute. What did you do with all the stuff I gave you?”
“Oh, we practiced.”
“Wait a minute. Hold it. I didn’t come in on the noon balloon.”
I went to the officer in charge and told him, “We’re going to get shot with our own ammo. This is what I gave them and they didn’t go anyplace.”
“Well, give it to them.”
“Wait a minute, commander. You’re not understanding me. They didn’t go anyplace. They didn’t go to the range. They didn’t take the boats out. Where did the stuff go to?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just give it to them.”
“Commander, you’re screwed up. You’re going to get Americans killed. I want no part of it. Here’s my key to the bunker. I want out of this one.”
Were you Americans operating at all then?
I operated with the [South Vietnamese] sea commandos. The last op I was on we went after an American POW all the way down in III Corps, down in central Vietnam.
We inserted with twenty Vietnamese, one Vietnamese lieutenant commander, a U.S. Marine captain, a marine gunnery sergeant, and me.
&n
bsp; To give you an idea of the mentality. The marine gunnery sergeant—we had two other staff sergeants begging to go, but they said they were going to take me because I’m a corpsman.
“We’re going to take Billy Flores because he’s a Mexican.”
“What?”
“Yeah, the guy we’re going after is of Mexican ancestry. Because of the strain he’s been under and everything, he may have reverted back to his native language.”
“What?”
Even so, it was a good op. We took the boats in off an LST, landed and then we walked in probably three klicks—three thousand meters. And then we were spotted. We were spotted by scouts or whatever. We saw them. We saw them and they saw us. There were three of them. It was mangrove swamp.
You couldn’t see very far?
Not a long ways, no.
All the Vietnamese, with the exception of the lieutenant commander—he was from Hanoi; he was about my size—he, the marine captain, and I were dressed up as NVA. We were too big to be Vietnamese. The gunnery sergeant and all of the Vietnamese were all dressed up in black pajamas.
If we were spotted, the story was, we were survivors off a junk bringing weapons from the north. It almost worked. The three that saw us—we didn’t know, but one went after the forty-man reaction force. The other two were trailing us. We snatched them up. We set an ambush and jumped them.
We said, “We’re really sorry, we didn’t know who you were. We thought you were a rice farmer who was going to turn us in to the Americans.”
They said, “We weren’t sure. We saw the khakis and we didn’t know if you were north, south, what you were.”
“Oh no, we’re off this junk out here.”
“Well, that’s good because our forty guys are on the way and they’ll help us unload the junk.”
We had a small problem here.
One thing that the people setting up this op did do for us—after making us take the Mexican … They did set up everything that would fly in III Corps and IV Corps. They were at our beck and call. They were sitting on the runway.