But orders were orders, so we spent the next month burning, dismantling, blowing up, and caving in bunkers.
The night before we bid our final farewell to ARO, we also bid a sad farewell to our two attached Aussies, neither of whom would be accompanying us to our new camp. The C detachment in Danang (our higher headquarters) was fanning a Nung “Mike” force that could rush to the aid of any besieged Special Forces A camp in I Corps. It was a good idea and a necessary asset, as these camps were usually well outside the range of artillery support, ARVN could not or would not send forces to aid them in the event of an attack, and in the spring of ’65 there were no American ground forces to come to their assistance.
Unfortunately, the C detachment needed our attached Australians to organize and train this Mike force. So on that last night atop a hill we’d never miss, we threw a party for a couple of Aussies whom we’d miss very much indeed. We drank, we talked, we sang. By any measurement, Kip and his companion beat the rest of us at all three—for no one can outtalk, outdrink, or outsing an Australian.
The following morning, we blew what remained of ARO sky high, mounted Marine helicopters, and journeyed our way southward to Kham Duc, another of I Corps’ border camps.
14. Ha Thanh, Vietnam: April 1965 to January 1966
On April 25, the day after ARO had become but another page in the history of I Corps’ ill-fated border surveillance program, we boarded C123 Providers and flew ninety miles southeast to Quang Ngai City, the capital of Quang Ngai Province. From there, we flew another fifteen miles or so in a westerly direction, once again via Marine Corps H-34s, to a hilltop overlooking a small remote village called Ha Thanh, the district headquarters of Son Ha District. We had arrived at our new campsite.
Son Ha was the west mmost of Quang Ngai’s districts. It was a fertile rice-growing area dominated by its valley of the same name, which ran generally northsouth through the district along the banks of the Son Ha River. To the north and west of the valley were the mountains in which the Viet Cong, and Viet Minh before them, reigned supreme. In the lowlying areas the district was inhabited by “friendly” Vietnamese, who lived primarily in the village of Ha Thanh, and Hre Montagnards, who lived mainly in the countryside. With a population of perhaps twelve hundred people, Ha Thanh was the social, economical, cultural, and most certainly political center of the district.
Our strikers fell in love with Ha Thanh the moment they disembarked the helicopters. Although the village was little more than a random assortment of thatch-and mud-walled hutches astride a dirt road, it had everything ARO lacked—food, sundries, beer, women. Understandably, we preferred Ha Thanh to ARO. Here there was a camp to be built instead of destroyed, a mission to be accomplished, a populace to be protected, assisted.
As an added incentive, within days of our arrival a helicopter landed at Ha Thanh, disembarking the newest members of our team. Clad, as were we, in “tiger” fatigues with green berets atop their heads, were three young and very attractive Vietnamese nurses. In the coming months, they would share our hardships, pain, and laughter as well as be a source of comfort and encouragement to the district’s medically deprived.
Our camp was atop a small hill adjacent to the district headquarters on the western side of the village. The hilltop was barren except for a single mud-walled, corrugated-tin-roofed barnlike structure that sat in the middle of it.
There was much to be done. The airstrip, located outside our campsite at the base of the hill on its northern side, had to be extended, since it was then little more than a duplicate of ARO’s runway, capable of receiving only rotary-wing aircraft. But the airstrip was of secondary importance. Our first priority was construction of the camp itself, a task that had to be performed from the outside first. Since we were vulnerable to an attack, we had to start on our defensive barriers around the hill before worrying about our living quarters.
Surrounding the base of the hill, we laid ten meters of tanglefoot (barbed wire strung randomly at ankle level). Up the hill, this was followed by a pyramid of triple concertina anchored on each side by double-apron barbed-wire fence. Then there were more tanglefoot and a second run of concertina and double apron, still more tanglefoot, and finally a third run of concertina and double apron. At critical junctures within this wire barrier surrounding our defensive perimeter, Sergeant Luden positioned command-detonated claymore mines and fugas. (Fugas was a napalm mixture contained in a fifty-five-gallon drum, the bottom of which was slightly submerged in the ground while its top faced upward and outward at an angle pointing toward the enemy. At the base of the drum, Ken rigged a command-detonated shaped charge that would blow both bottom and top off the drum when fired, igniting the napalm in the process and throwing it in a fiery arc for a distance of thirty to forty meters. In short, our fugas devices were stationary, homemade napalm bombs.)
Behind this wire barrier, around the hilltop’s military crest, the strike force dug its fighting trenches. At several points on or behind these trenches, we constructed our two-man covered positions. In addition to our assigned M-16 rifle and .45-caliber pistol, each of these positions normally housed a .30caliber A6 machine gun and an M-79 grenade launcher (as well as a hodgepodge of backup weapons that, depending on the preference of the individual concerned, might include a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun, a .30caliber M-1 rifle or M-2 carbine, a twelve-gauge shotgun, and an abundance of both frag and smoke grenades). Completing the camp’s defensive infrastructure atop the hill, we dug an underground communications bunker and constructed two 81-mm mortar positions with their adjoining ammunition bunkers.
Our defenses were somewhat augmented by four mountaintop observation posts (OPs) a short distance to the west, northwest, north, and northeast of us. These OPs were manned by Son Ha’s regional popular force, a paramilitary organization composed primarily of Hre Montagnards and commonly referred to as “Ruff Puffs.” Unfortunately, our only means of communicating with these positions was through district headquarters, at best a time-consuming process.
Our mission in Son Ha was simple: pacify the district. And pacification was a simple process: protect and assist the populace on the one hand while destroying the enemy on the other.
A week or so after arriving at Ha Thanh, we conducted our first full-scale offensive operation, a two-company foray to the north of the camp. Sergeant Morgan led one of the companies and Captain Crawford the other. (Captain Crawford had replaced Captain Peterson upon our departure from ARO.) The two companies departed Ha Thanh around ten o’clock in the morning, and all went well until midafternoon, when Morgan’s company found itself in trouble.
As Ken Luden, Sergeant Boyde, the team’s weapons specialist, and I sat in our tented open-air team house, discussing where next to go on the camp’s defenses, Phil Sanford ran out of our nearly completed commo bunker and, in a concerned voice, said, “Morgan’s in a bind, sir! Says he’s surrounded and can’t extract himself! Got two dead on the ground, more wounded.
“He’s in a firefight?” I asked excitedly, then said to myself, well, that’s brilliant, Lieutenant. What the hell do you think they’re in with two dead on the ground?
“Yes, sir! Ambushed! Crawford’s moving in to assist him, but he has a way to go.” He paused, then said, “Hell, they’re not too far from us. Here’s his plot.”