A loyal and ferocious fighter, the Nung would and often did unselfishly surrender his life on behalf of the Special Forces soldier he was paid to protect. But, as we would soon learn, because of his dislike of the Vietnamese, he was not always an asset in what we were trying to accomplish.
In any event, I decided there was scant likelihood this mercenary force would ever be called upon to protect us during an attack, since after listening to what Grimshaw had to say about ARO, I was convinced that the probability of such an attack was microscopic. Here on this barren hilltop we were sustaining a force of some three hundred men, but it was a force in limbo—a force that was inflicting absolutely no damage on the enemy yet was costly to maintain. Charlie was an astute tactician.
I doubted he had any interest in running us out of ARO and seeing us employed in a more meaningful role elsewhere.
As the sun fell behind the Laotian mountains, I put aside my thoughts on the enemy’s philosophy regarding our border surveillance program at ARO and returned to the team house, there to discuss the fair market value of a case of canned wieners with the outgoing team’s executive officer.
12. Toward the River Boung: March 1965
Within days of our arrival at ARO, Captain Peterson, our detachment commander; Sergeant Matis, the team sergeant; and Sergeant Morgan, with a small contingent of Nungs and one strike-force company in tow, departed camp on the team’s first long-range patrol. It was a ten-day venture that, not surprisingly, turned out to be little more than a walk in the weeds. Or, as observed by Captain Peterson, “A great physical conditioning exercise, but probably of little significance as far as the war’s final outcome is concerned.”
Sergeant Wamer, the team’s assistant operations sergeant, and I accompanied the next foray of this sort. It too was an exercise in futility, providing information of no great consequence other than the discoveries that Vietnam’s jungle leeches could penetrate the smallest of openings in our clothing and that the Army-issue insect repellent was without question the most effective defense against them. We literally bathed ourselves in it.
We tried to keep at least one such patrol on the move constantly, screening our area of responsibility as best we could. With two or three team members accompanying each of these operations, any of the twelve of us would return to the bush on every third or fourth patrol.
On rare occasions, we greatly expanded our area of influence on these excursions by inserting our force via helicopters. In early March, Sgt. Ken Luden, our senior demolitions sergeant, Australian Warrant Officer Kipler (the “Kipper,” or simply “Kip”), and I found ourselves involved in such a venture. And everything that could conceivably go wrong did.
“I’ve overflown your LZ and see no great problem,” Yankee Papa’s flight leader said, as we squatted in a circle on ARO’s runway.
Assigned to the Marine Corps 163d Aviation Battalion flying out of Danang, he was briefing us and his pilots on our pending assault. Six of his cumbersome H-34 helicopters, sequentially numbered YP-1, -2, -3, and so on, were lined up on the strip behind us.
“‘Course it’s awful damn small,” he continued, “but shit, finding a clearing bigger than a backyard garden in these mountains is like witnessing the second coming of Christ. See it as a two-ship LZ, so we should have you down in three quick touch-and-goes.” Then, turning from us to his pilots, he said, “Now we don’t know what’s out there, so we’re gonna go in hot!”
Great! I thought to myself. That means an LZ prep, those Marine F-4Cs from Danang, gunships firing rockets, maybe even a little…
“That means your gunners are firing when you go in to set down. And I don’t want to hear any gripes ‘bout cleaning guns when we get back to the house.”
Door gunners! That’s it? That’s going in hot? No fast movers, no red leg, no gunships? Just helicopter door gunners spraying 7.62 around with their M-60s? Sonofabitch!
“Okay, that’s it, then,” he said, concluding our joint air-ground prebrief. “Load time is 0855, takeoff at 0900.”
Having conducted our airmobile insert without incident, by nine-thirty we were moving generally in an easterly, northeasterly direction about twenty klicks from ARO. The operation was to be a tento fourteenday foray during which we hoped to reach the Song (river) Boung, travel it west, then reenter ARO from the north. Accompanied by twelve Nungs and one company of strikers (which had fielded a force of approximately sixty men), there were about seventy-five of us fighting our way through the jungle on this the first day of an ill-fated mission.
In the late afternoon, shortly before dusk, we began searching for an acceptable RON (remain overnight—a position identical to an NDP, RON merely being the acronym in vogue in early ‘65). As we approached a small clearing that descended downward from the side of the mountain on which we were making our way, the patrol abruptly halted.
Moments later Luden approached the Kipper and me from the front of the column, saying, “Point man stepped in a pungi trap, sir. One of the spikes went all the way through his right foot; he isn’t gonna walk much further.”
Shit! I thought. If we hadn’t come in by helicopter, if we weren’t so far from home base, we could send him and fifteen or so strikers back to camp. We obviously can’t carry him around with us for the next two weeks. That leaves only two options: dust off or scratch the op and return to ARO. Funny how we never really think of these things when we’re planning these excursions. Always kind of assume we won’t have wounded. Or if we do, they’ll be walking wounded. Got to get a dust off, can’t scrap the operation on day one.
“Gonna be hard to get ’em to fly a dust off,” Ken commented, as if reading my thoughts. “If it were one of us, it’d be different. But you know how they feel about dusting off one of the little people.”
He was right. Vietnamese wounded, paramilitary or otherwise, were supposed to use ARVN medical evacuation resources, not U.S. And there was a far greater likelihood of the tooth fairy flying into this jungle and whisking away our wounded soldier than of ARVN doing SO.
Suddenly, while pondering our dilemma, we heard the familiar sound of an H-34 in the distance. It was evidently flying toward us from the southwest.
“H-34. Probably flying a milk run out of Kham Duc en route to Danang,”
Kipler said. “What do you think, Skip? Think they might make a pickup?”
“Can’t hurt to try, Kip,” I replied. “We got their push, Ken?”
“Yeah, should be the same one we used on the insert this morning.”
Luden quickly located our PRC-10 radio, a little-used communications asset, since we depended primarily on a CIA-issued, singleside-band HTI radio for most of our communication needs. However, the HT-1 would not net with the Marine Corps helicopter.
“Uh… Yankee Papa, this is Roaring Tiger,” I said, after Ken had calibrated and affixed the proper frequency to the Korean-vintage radio.
Silence.
“Yankee Papa, this is Roaring Tiger, over.”
Then, after another brief pause, the H-34 pilot responded, “Roaring Tiger, this is Yankee Papa. Don’t recognize call sign or push. Authenticate. Over.”
Shit, we don’t have their CEOI. How the hell can I authenticate?
“This is Roaring Tiger. Uh… don’t have your go codes, but Yankee Papa inserted us this area, this morning.” Then, concluding that a slight compromise in radio security was a minor price to pay for getting the wounded striker out of our hair, I added, “We’re the Special Forces element out of ARO. Got one wounded, and our op can’t go any farther unless we get him out of here. Over.”