15 Months in SOG (22 page)

“What’s wrong, Pham?”

“
Dai Uy
, someone is shooting that way.” He pointed south.

I strained to hear, but wasn’t successful. I whispered loudly to the others. “Everybody quiet. Listen. Does anyone hear shooting?”

The whole platform tipped as everyone moved to the south edge. “Go back, get away from the edge,” I ordered, fearful the thing would tip on us. “Just listen.”

Several of the Montagnard soldiers agreed with Pham. Somebody was shooting far out to the south. I wondered if Sidewinder was in trouble. Not one of the Americans with me could hear a thing. Too much rock and roll music in our decadent youth, I suppose.

It wasn’t long before I got confirmation. The radio buzzed, and Pham handed me the headset.

“Eagle Six, this is Sidewinder One-zero. Over.”

“This is Eagle Six. Go ahead, Sidewinder.”

Over the static of the radio, I could hear the panting wheeze of the speaker. “We just ran into a mess of NVA. We’ve broken contact, but they’re right on my ass. We’re headed back. Get them ropes down, ASAP.”

I grabbed the hand mike. “Negative, Sidewinder. You’ve gotta be sure they’re not right behind you before we pull you up. This thing’s a sitting duck if they see you headin’ up.”

My team sergeant gave it right back to me. “Goddammit, you’re not down here with half the fuckin’ NVA army on your ass. We gotta get up there.”

I forgave the indiscretion of the scared team leader. It was only his second recon insertion, and he’d not had a contact on
his first operation. “Understand, One-zero. Now listen up. Are you ahead of them now? Can they see you?”

“Roger, we’re ahead of ’em. We dropped everything we had on them when we ran into ’em. I think we’re a couple of hundred meters in front. Over.”

“Cool, Sidewinder. Go hard for twenty minutes in your current direction. Then do a ninety-degree loop for ten minutes.” I paused to allow him to digest the orders. “Now listen, One-zero. As soon as you’ve looped for ten minutes, shoot a round like someone accidentally fired his weapon. Then loop back on the original heading for the Nest. Call as soon as you’re close, and if you’re not in eyeball contact, I’ll send down the ropes. If they’re too close, you’ll have to keep on going, and hole up somewhere until dark. Understand?”

“Roger, Eagle. Wilco.”

The NVA had learned the hard way not to bust through the brush chasing a recon team. We had the nasty habit of looping back and setting up an ambush or putting booby traps in on the trail. What they liked to do was keep pushing the team, like hunters push deer, toward some spot where the terrain or manpower favored them. I figured if Sidewinder could divert their pursuers away from the hill where the Nest was, they’d have a good chance of getting up without being seen.

Suddenly, I heard a burst of firing off to the south.

“Sidewinder, you all right?”

“Roger,” a satisfied voice answered. “We saw some dinks crossing an open area about two hundred meters behind us. I hosed ’em down good. We’re moving again. Just about ready to loop. Over.”

Roger, Sidewinder. Be sure you draw ’em that way before you loop back toward us. Over.”

“Roger, Eagle. Sidewinder clear.”

The time dragged on, every second punctuated by a drop of nervous sweat falling from my nose. I was in a quandary. Should I take everybody down, where they had a chance
if the NVA found us, or stay up here and hope we were not discovered?

The radio broke my deliberations. “Eagle Six, we’re firing the single decoy shot now. Over.”

“This is Eagle Six. Roger.”

We all heard the solitary rifle shot. I hoped it would pull the NVA hunters away from our hilltop and set them off in a different direction.

“Eagle Six, this is Sidewinder One-zero. We’re starting the loop. Over.”

“This is Eagle Six. Roger. Make it wide, and be sure you clear Charlie before you turn back here. Call as soon as you’re within five minutes of home, and we’ll start down. Over.”

About an hour later, Sidewinder called in. “Eagle Six, we’re at the bottom of the hill. No sign of Charlie for the past hour. Send down the elevator. Over.”

The patrol leader may not have seen Charlie, but he was out, and in force. We could hear the positioning shots from their AK-47s every so often as they tried to encircle the elusive quarry, namely us.

I took a radio and rappelled down to the top of the lowest tree level. This put me about forty feet above the ground. I settled into a fork of two sturdy branches, and called up to Sergeant Wojo to lower the five other rappelling ropes on down to the ground. They had barely arrived when team Sidewinder came puffing up the hill. Even in their haste to get away, they moved by bounds, one or two men always covering the movements of his comrades.

The team leader, a young sergeant, started to call on his radio, when I whispered down to him. The sound caused him to jump like a startled rabbit.

“I see you, Sarge. Get on up here. Keep it quiet.”

The five men started up the ropes, climbing and using the branches as steps. It was the fastest ascent I saw in my time on the platform. The team leader stopped by me for a second.

“Thanks,
Dai Uy
. I was feeling awfully lonely out there for a while.”

“I know the feeling,” I answered. “How many do you think are coming?”

“I’m not sure. A whole bunch. More than a platoon, but not a company. Say fifty or sixty.”

“Okay.” I looked one last time at the ground. “Get on up, but for God’s sake, be quiet.”

The shaken young sergeant didn’t need a second invitation. He scooted up that rope. I wasn’t too far behind him. At the middle level of trees, I stopped for a few minutes. I was well covered from anyone below, but I could hear much better than higher up. I waited and watched the ropes jiggling and bouncing as the men squirmed their way to the top. Suddenly, the ropes disappeared into the foliage, and I knew they were at the platform.

I waited a few more minutes. It was dusk by then, and the breeze was rustling through the forest. Abruptly, I heard a voice. The enemy. He was close by, looking for the trail. Someone called softly. The sounds below me moved toward the gully. The searchers had seen the signs of traffic in the gully and were following them. They moved away from me, and it grew quiet. I stayed where I was for a little longer, but heard nothing more. Finally, I carefully moved on up the trees to our little home at the top.

I crawled over the edge and pulled up the rope. I gave Sergeant Wojo his orders. “They’re down there. Some went past our tree about ten minutes ago. I don’t want any noise tonight, so be quiet. Have two men awake at all times. They’re to wake anyone who snores or coughs, you got it?”

I’m telling you, it was a tense night. Several times, we saw what had to be flashlights shining up in the treetops. Whether the bad guys were looking up for us, or it was just carelessness, who knows. I can tell you we held our breath more than once. Nobody slept, and not a peep was heard the entire night.

At dawn, I sent Sergeant Wojo and one of the recon team leaders down to the lowest treetop. All was quiet. I called the extraction choppers in. “This is Eagle’s Nest. Ready to go home.”

“Roger, Eagle Nest. This is Covey. Your big bird is ten minutes out. Slicks (troop-carrying helicopters) are with him. Be prepared for extraction. Is your LZ hot?”

“This is Eagle Six. Negative, Covey. LZ is cool as ice. Come on down.”

The sound of the approaching helicopters was a welcome one. As we waited, I thought about the last five days. I hadn’t touched the ground once. I hadn’t seen a single NVA, although I did hear them. All in all, it was a strange way to spend time in Indian country.

The choppers arrived, and we scrambled onto the slicks. A single crewman jumped off the CH-47 and hooked the sling cable from the pie plate to the big hook beneath the cargo chopper then jumped back inside.

I watched as the big machine pulled the platform free from its leafy home and chugged into the blue morning sky. I’d piled the filled cans and twenty boxes of the men’s daily deposit in the center of the platform. As the big circular platform started to spin, the boxes and cans went sailing off to land in the jungle below.

I could just see the face of some unlucky VC, thinking he’s found a box of Yankee field rations to eat, he opens it up and finds a big box of human shit! The joke would be on Charlie.

It was a good feeling to see the miles slip past. We had gone into enemy country, put our ass on the line, and come back whole. I hadn’t lost anybody, and no one had been hurt. We were safe and soon to be clean and full of hot chow. I wish I could have experienced that feeling of contentment more often in the years since; I’d be a happier man. I may never have hit a homer for the Yankees or walked the halls of Congress, but I took men down into harm’s way and brought them back alive. It was a special feeling, and I savored the moment.

We arrived at CCN safely and got our hot shower and hot chow. I spent a good deal of time writing a report on the tactical advantages and disadvantages of the tree platform. I closed by pointing out the need for a portable toilet to be included in its equipment list, explaining along the way how we had solved the waste disposal problem.

The Eagle’s Nest sat on the tarmac for a couple of days and then was picked up by a big chopper and taken away. I watched as the monstrosity, spinning in its harness like a top on a string, faded in the distance. I never saw it again.

In a unit like CCN, every week seemed to bring some new objective, or command emphasis mandated by the powers that be in Saigon at MAC-SOG HQ. This week, the fifty-dollar hot button was “Prisoner of War.”

Of course, POWs were always important, and we continually hoped we could bring in some poor VC slob to tell us all he knew about his unit: its mission, strength, location, and weaknesses. Believe me, very few of the enemy had the capability to withstand the American methods of interrogation: we didn’t even have to torture them; we just promised them that they could stay out of the South Vietnamese prison system, go to work for us at a hundred times the money they’d ever hope to make in their lives, and hold out the promise of eventual emigration to the U.S. with a green card. As I say, very few could resist the offer, and most spilled their guts at the first opportunity.

Those few who resisted our inducements were passed on to the South Vietnamese Army, and even they talked eventually. Of course, many of those spent the rest of their lives without sex organs, teeth, fingernails, and so forth. Thanks to the reputation of the SVN prisons and the ARVN’s vicious interrogation methods, most NVA soldiers talked to us sooner, not later.

Anyway, the word came down that Saigon wanted prisoners, and to sweeten the offer headquarters was throwing in some special incentives: any POW delivered by CCN soldiers
would be worth five hundred bucks of fun money and a week in Taiwan, courtesy of the MAC-SOG Special Ops Fund. Special Forces had a safe house in Taipei, Taiwan. The stories brought back from those lucky enough to use it made the offer mighty tempting.

Every night at the club, we listened to one another brag how we soldiers of CCN were going to capture all these high-value POWs. I had high hopes that B Company would get a chance to get in on the gold rush. I was anxious to get a taste of the high life in Taipei. I’d had my R & R with my wife, tasted again the joys of the flesh, and convinced myself that a little fling on the wild side wouldn’t hurt me and would certainly help when it came time to sit around the campfire and boast to my drinking buddies of sexual triumphs past. Things I certainly couldn’t talk about doing with my wife. Our Hawaii reunion had to be off-limits for bragging to my way of thinking. Thailand had faded in memory, and I needed new ground upon which to build my campfire reputation. Therefore, it seemed clear to me that I needed a little foray to the fleshpots of Taiwan to round out my tour of duty away from the land of the free, home of the brave.

Major Skelton developed a convoluted plan that put recon teams out looking for good ambush spots to grab enemy soldiers. Places like rest areas or heavily traveled roads were the kind of prime locations the recon teams were looking for. Once they’d been located, a heavily armed reaction force would insert and make a sweep, policing up any unfortunates who stumbled into its path.

The thorn in the rosebush, at least for my company, was that Dick Meadows’s company would be first to go. Dick was the finest soldier I ever knew, a born warrior, the first man on the ground on the Son Tay raid later in the war, and brave beyond belief. Having been commissioned out of the NCO ranks while in his thirties, he was very old for a captain. Tall, calm, confident, he was my idol, and what I wanted to be like when I grew up.

As luck would have it, he got a good potential snatch situation right off and took in a reaction platoon on a suspected hospital area. They shot up a bunch of NVAs and brought back one alive, as per instructions. With barely concealed envy, I watched as Dick left for Taiwan amid wild speculation as to his nights of glory.

All he said when he returned was that there were great restaurants in Taiwan. Then he smiled benignly. It made me all the more determined to bag a POW and make the trip myself. I spent several fretful days awaiting the call I hoped would come. “POWs ready for pickup, just like cash in the bank.” I don’t know where I got such a silly notion. Nothing in Vietnam worth a cup of bat shit ever came easy. No way was I gonna scoop up five hundred bucks just lying around waiting for me to come get it.

I had about given up hope, when the magic call came through. One of the recon teams was shadowing a major route of travel. Several large formations of Charlie had passed by their hiding place in the last day.

The plans were made. I’d take in a platoon of forty men and lie beside the trail. If a small group went by, we’d jump them and take one or more alive. Two POWs meant two trips to Taipei. Hell, we might get a dozen. The whole company could go on the trip. I’d be the most popular commander in the SVN theater of war.