But when the lady approached us, proudly showing off her now chubby, healthy baby, I immediately recognized her, and I was of course pleased and happy for her as she thanked us for saving her baby. She then chatted with me about the care she’d received and her trip back to this remote village. Later, as she got ready to leave and was about to say good-bye, she turned to me: “There are VC hiding in tunnels nearby,” she whispered, “and I’ll show you where.”
We immediately mustered the troops and went to the location she pointed out to us, just outside the village. There we found the camouflaged entrance to a large underground complex.
As we began to clear the complex, we realized there were people inside. Our troops talked them out by threatening to blow up the holes.
Soon—to my amazement—a group of VC emerged, clad in pinkish uniforms. They turned out to be a regimental medical unit whose aid station was located in the tunnel complex. And then by some kind of wild coincidence that was not really surprising, once you thought about it, our battalion doctor recognized the VC doctor. They’d both attended medical school in France together and had once been friends. A friendly lunch and chat followed (strange but interesting to me), with the old friends bringing each other up to date about their lives and careers since they’d last seen each other. At the end of the meal, friendly good-byes and handshakes were exchanged; and the VC were handcuffed and moved out as POWs.
As they moved off, I recalled that similar events had occurred in our own Civil War.
THE VC and NVA were masters at constructing well-hidden underground tunnel systems. We discovered elaborate networks connecting large, furnished subterranean rooms, fully equipped with handmade cloth gas masks with charcoal filters, and carefully booby-trapped dead-end wings.
When the deep rice paddies dried up in summer, the entrances to some of these complexes, submerged during the rainy season, would often be exposed.
We once stopped for a noon break and meal by one of the deep paddies where a tunnel entrance was visible near one of its corners, big enough to walk into standing up. Since it was the dry season and the entrance was exposed, we assumed the tunnel was empty. But while we rested, some of the Marines began poking around the entrance, and then suddenly became alerted when they detected noises from inside. We quickly surrounded the opening and ordered whoever was inside to come out. After some coaxing and threatening, we got an agreement to surrender; and out of the entrance came two young men dressed in sharply pressed khaki uniforms, with close-cropped haircuts. One was a NVA lieutenant and the other an NCO [noncommissioned officer]. When the lieutenant spotted me, he called the NCO to attention and snapped me a very sharp salute. And to the delight of the Marines, I returned it. The two were then taken off as POWs.
Other captures were much tougher. In the following, the VC tried to hide among fishermen on a lake, using them as human shields:
The area along the coast of Binh Dinh Province was filled with lakes, tidal inlets, and swamps, with fishing villages all around them. (Many of the villages in the area had been abandoned because of the resettlement program.) Since the availability of food and the population concentration made the area a favored objective of the VC, we never had any problems making contact with the enemy. We ran any number of sweeps in the region and never failed to end up in a firefight.
One day we had a big one on the Dam Tra O, the region’s major lake.
During a major sweep two of our battalions were conducting with the 1st Cav, we got into a running gun battle as we pushed eastward toward the lake with the lead element of our battalion. The other battalion was moving toward the lake from the south.
As we closed on the lake, rapidly forcing the VC toward the water, we could clearly see that we’d trapped them in one of the swamps. There was no way they could slip out to our flanks. Their only way out was into the lake.
When we made our initial contact, the Cav sent us an observer helicopter and a gunship (called a “a Silver Team”). They came on scene as we reached the villages near the water. I directed them over to the swamp where we’d last seen the VC, and they spotted several of them lying in the shallow water breathing through hollow reeds. The gunship fired into the water and killed a number of VC; and the others there surrendered to us. But the majority of the VC had reached the lakeshore, grabbed boats, and moved to the center of the huge lake, mingling with the civilian fishing boats.
We then gathered on the shore to decide what to do. As we were talking, I could hear on our radio net the senior adviser from the battalion to our south calling in an artillery fire mission—a VT (variable time fuse) mission, meaning the rounds would explode overhead and rain deadly shrapnel on the boats. I immediately jumped on the radio and called a check fire. “Wait a minute,” I shouted into the mike, “you can’t call in artillery. These are innocent people out there. The VC have gone in among fishermen. If they try to get away, the VC will shoot them.” While I was doing this, the VNMC company commander with me was pleading with his own chain of command not to fire.
This brought on a heated argument with the other adviser, a captain, who kept insisting that the boats were all VC. Since I was a lieutenant, it was a touchy moment. Soon a task force adviser, a major, came on the net to sort it out.
Meanwhile, dozens of panicked civilians had crowded along the shore, all anxious about their relatives out on the boats. “These are our fathers, our brothers, out there fishing,” they kept pleading. “They’re not Vietcong.”
Even when I pointed that out to the major, he seemed to be leaning toward the captain’s version. At that point, since I was sort of a wiseass anyhow, I let it all hang out. “I’ve got to tell you, sir, if we shoot this mission, in my mind we’re killing a lot of innocents, and I’m on record for that.”
“So do you have any other ideas?”
When I threw this question at the VNMC company commander, he knew what had to be done: “My men will go out in boats and get the VC,” he answered.
This was dangerous, but he and his troops did not want to see innocents killed. When I passed on the proposal, the adviser from the other battalion broke in to say that he and his Vietnamese counterpart didn’t think much of it.
“Stay out of it,” I told him. “It’s not your ass on the line.”
I knew I would pay for that comment, but I didn’t care.
Though I knew that a lieutenant can never be sure he is doing the right thing when he’s challenged by seniors, I’d already run into a number of situations like this, when my only recourse was to stand up for what my gut told me was right and take the flak for it. After seeing the results of doubting myself and backing down, I’d sworn I would never cave in once I’d reached down inside and determined that what I needed to do felt right.
Though this position did not endear me to the others on the radio, no one was ready to challenge me.
As the Marines began to climb into the boats, my mind fixed on the likelihood that many of them would be killed or wounded in this risky attack. Even though the Marines assured me we were doing the right thing, and I certainly agreed with them, I knew that any deaths would be on my conscience.
What unfolded next was just amazing—a scene right out of a pirate movie.
The Marines sailed onto the lake. Soon they’d chased down the VC boats, started firing, and then boarded them. Moments later, they’d taken down every enemy boat and killed or captured every single VC . . . all without a single Marine or civilian casualty.
Afterward, a few prisoners suddenly fell “very ill” with a high mortality rate disease. Our Marines were not happy they had used civilians as human shields.
By then I’d experienced dozens of incidents that made me proud of these courageous fighters, but this one definitely made the top of the list.
BECAUSE OF the demonstrated competence and fighting ability of VNMC units, American commanders gave them ever tougher jobs. In July, U.S. units in II CTZ began moving their operations out toward the Western Highlands, wher
e there was especially heavy fighting, leaving the coastal plain more exposed. This move was feasible only because the VNMC were available to pick up much of the action.
II CTZ headquarters specifically proposed that the Marines begin more aggressive night operations (promising full support, to include helicopter lift and fire support—a big plus in the eyes of the Marines). The Vietnamese were game for that.
The proposed operations involved a series of night helo raids, to be triggered by hot intelligence . . . a challenging but exciting mission for the VNMC (we had no night vision goggles then). It also excited me. By then I was confident I had my act together where fighting was concerned. I had become good at it.
We ended up conducting four of these raids. I was the adviser on three of them, but only one resulted in enemy contact.
That raid began on the twenty-fifth of July with an urgent call from U.S. Army command: A hot intelligence tip claimed that a squad-sized VC unit was moving a U.S. Army POW through the villages, using him for propaganda and recruiting. Army command thought a well-conducted raid might successfully rescue him. Since we were the only unit able to react quickly enough, we were tapped to conduct it.
The Army immediately sent an intel team to brief us: The tip had come from a local villager who had additionally reported that the VC squad was heading for a deserted village along the coast to spend the night. The intel team were not certain about the accuracy of the tip, but it seemed worth a serious follow-up. They then provided a description of the prisoner and his suspected identity.
We quickly began planning.
Raid planning had to be very precise and exacting, taking deception into account (we knew the VC were watching), and intel had to be very good. We worked hard on all this.
We decided on a raid force of eighty Marines. In order to deceive watchers, this force would move as part of a larger unit headed out that day for a routine relief of one of our mountain village outposts. The raid force would peel off from the larger unit in a remote area of the bush on the approach to the mountain villages and wait at a prearranged landing zone for night pickup by U.S. choppers. We coordinated all this with the pilots to minimize their time on the ground in the remote landing zone.
In those days we didn’t yet have M-16s, so we took Thompson submachine guns, grease guns, carbines—all automatic weapons—with extra ammo magazines, to ensure plenty of firepower for this relatively small force operating in very hostile territory. We wanted to make the raid as violent as possible. Our idea was to really shock them, hit them fast when they were sleeping (or so we hoped), and just open up. Machine guns would cover our flanks.
We knew the deserted village that was our objective from previous sweeps in the area. It was on the coast of the South China Sea and had a several-hundred-foot-high rocky ridge projecting out into the water to its north. We decided to land the helos up on the rocks; small, cleared areas there could take one helo at a time; and landing on the side of the ridge away from the village would mask the noise. We could then climb down the rocks and attack the village from the sea side—an unexpected route. (We were assuming that the enemy would be orienting their defenses inland.) There was one potential problem: Though we could cut off the north-south routes out of the village (the routes along the coast), we could not do much to cover escape routes to the west, which went out into vast, open rice paddies that led to more villages and wooded areas. Since our assault was going in from east to west, we didn’t want to put teams out west of the town into our potential fire zones. Instead, we hoped to put teams quickly into the western side of the village. This was another reason for instant violence. Without that, the VC might be able to melt away into the paddies.
The move out and helo lift went perfectly. The pilots flew well out to sea (thus promoting surprise) and came into the ridge area from the north as planned. We did have problems when some of the LZs proved too small for a helo landing, requiring troops to jump out of the helos from four or five feet up. A few of the guys got a little banged up with twisted ankles and the like, but not enough to take them out of action.
Our climb down the jagged rocks was tricky and painfully slow, but everyone got down with only a few bruises and cuts and moved quickly to our objective rallying point at the base of the rocks. From there we dispatched the four-man security teams that would cut off the village from the north and south. To avoid premature discovery, we tried to synchronize our movements to place the security teams and the assault force in position at the same time.
I moved with the attack force down the beach toward a long, north-south-running sand dune we were using as our line of deployment. This was an ideal place for launching the assault. It was about a hundred meters from the edge of the village and allowed us to come up on line for the attack from a covered and concealed position, with the crashing surf providing noise cover.
Things went well as we moved to our release points and began coming on line at the base of the dune. I hoped both of our main assumptions were correct—that the enemy’s defense would be oriented inland and that we were facing only a squad-sized unit.
Both assumptions were wrong.
We weren’t facing a squad but a reinforced company; and their defense was either oriented toward the sea or out over a full 360 degrees.
We crossed the crest of the sand dune and slowly started down, waiting for the signal to start the assault—the firing of the machine guns on our flanks. This was to lead us by fire to the edge of the village, then the machine guns would displace forward to join the attack and protect our flanks.
But before that happened, the enemy spotted us and opened up with machine guns and everything else they had. We immediately responded and went into the assault.
As we raced down the dune firing away, I saw the enemy tracers streaming over our heads, flying everywhere. Too many for just a squad, I realized. I also realized that their defense was facing the sea . . . and us. I could tell it was a well-organized defense, with the fires interlocking—a wall of flame, not something you want to move into—but, fortunately, all the fire was high. This can happen when a defense is oriented on a piece of terrain, like the dune, that slopes upward. In those seconds it took us to close on their lines, I said a quick prayer of thanks for that. Another prayer of thanks came a couple of seconds later, when it became clear that our fire, unlike the enemy’s, was effective, and their line was breaking.
As they retreated back into the village huts, we began a house-to-house fight, trying to stay on line so no enemy would get behind us. This meant we had to scrap our plan to race some troops through the village to the western end to cover the paddies, but there were too many bad guys and too many places to hide to take a chance with fire from our rear.
Meanwhile, I could also hear firing from our security teams covering the north-south trails.
The systematic clearing of the village took the remainder of the night (we fired flares to illuminate the area).
We were scheduled for a helo pickup at first light, and I hoped we wouldn’t be hit by VC reinforcements before then (though we had a plan to bring in a reaction force of Vietnamese Marines if we ran into a tough spot).
By sunrise, we had cleared the village, consolidated our position, and secured the landing zone for the helos.
The Vietnamese Marine captain who was our raid force commander then received the reports: We had taken a considerable number of wounded, but remarkably none had been killed, and none of the wounded had life-threatening injuries. We counted nineteen enemy killed and thirty-two captured. From these we learned that the American POW had indeed been with them, but he had been moved out across the paddies when the shooting started.
I immediately requested that air observers try to pick up any fleeing VC, but they saw nothing, and when our reaction force came in to search the area later that morning they also had no luck. A disappointing end to an extremely well-executed raid.
THE KEY to the Vietnamese Marines’ success was their superb set of batta
lion and company commanders. At one time or other, I operated with most of the infantry companies, so I had a good sense of their strengths and weaknesses.
Only one commander failed to reach the high operational standards I’d learned to expect. His leadership ability was poor and his tactical skills were marginal. He was also unusually vain and prissy for a Marine (he always had much more “stuff” with him than the normally lean-traveling Marines); he seemed to have the “privileged” attitude that you more usually found in ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) officers. But his major problem was his inability to handle more than one thing at a time—a critical requirement for a combat leader. A combat commander in a fight has to do twenty things at once. This almost cost me and his men our lives.
At that time, we were operating among the deserted villages near the coast, continuously moving a company through them to keep the VC from establishing a base of operations—and to keep the former inhabitants from sneaking back home. Though we rotated companies every couple of weeks to give them a break, junior advisers were scarce, and I stayed out to join each company returning to the area.16 After a while, some company commander must have noticed that I was looking haggard and mentioned to the battalion commander that I should get a break. I didn’t like that idea. A lot was going on out there that only an adviser could take care of.
But on the next turnover the commander ordered me to come back to base. “You come in with the company coming in,” he told me, “and we’ll just put a company out there without an adviser.”
“No way,” I said. “I’m staying. We can’t have a company out there with no adviser.”
“Well, look,” he said, “come in with a company. Get cleaned up. Take a break. We’ve got mail back here for you. Just take a day, at least, and then you can go back out. We’ll hold a platoon commander and a squad back from the company going out to accompany you back to the unit.”