Death in the Jungle (31 page)

When the coxswains of the two Whalers located us, they rammed their bows into the riverbank so the nine of us could jump aboard. Nothing had ever felt better to me than the fiberglass deck of the boat where I plopped my rear end, even though it was as cold as, well, steel. Cold, but safe, and being safe was at the top of my priority list right then.

The Whalers roared away from the ambush site, dramatically rescuing the good guys as they were paid to do and prayed to. We left behind two or three dead enemies, depending upon who was counting. Oh, yeah, and Mr. Meston’s teeth.

Over the next three and a half weeks, we went out on five missions. On the first, I spotted a large deer that ran from beneath the helo when we inserted. Then on ambush at dusk, a large buck appeared just twenty-five yards away from me. He was fat and sleek and had a rack similar to an elk’s with five points on each antler. He foraged around for about ten minutes, barked a few times, then disappeared into the jungle. The week before my sightings, Mr. Meston had seen an enormous deer walk to the edge of the river where we had been positioned on an ambush site. I believed that to be the first sighting ever by a SEAL of a deer in the Rung Sat.

On the second mission, Foxtrot Second Squad killed two VC and expropriated two weapons and a sampan. Before the hit, I had discovered a booby trap, a pineapple-type hand grenade secured in a tree, with a trip wire running across the trail from the grenade to another tree. Fortunately, I had found the booby trap with my eyes and not my feet.

In between these missions, the fourteen members of Echo Platoon had invited the rest of us to their going-away party at the chief’s club, where the SEALs, helo crews, and boat support personnel consumed steaks, baked beans, French fries, and salad along with twenty cases of beer and two cases of hard liquor. The next day, Echo Platoon flew to Subic Bay on the first leg of its journey home, and four days later, 10 December, the
twelve men of Bravo Platoon replaced Echo at Nha Be. The Bravo Platoon members were Lt. (jg) Van Heertum, WO1 Casey, EM2 Lou DiCroce, RMSN McHugh, GMG3 Jewett, HMC Blackburn, SA Keith, AN Klann, ETNSN Luksik, TM1 Payne (because of wounds Payne was later replaced by EM2 Puckett), SN Antone, and FN Hyatt.

On our last mission, which was my twenty-sixth of the tour, we patrolled to a VC base camp, which the occupants had left in a hurry before our arrival, leaving behind hot ashes in their kitchen. We blew and burned several huts and four sampans with incendiary grenades, keeping some papers and M-79 ammunition we found at the scene.

The next day was Friday, December 22, 1967. Some VC swimmers struck back at us in the early morning hours by floating a contact-detonated mine into one of the civilian tankers anchored at the naval base. The tanker suffered some damage but did not sink.

In the spirit of tit for tat, Lieutenant Meston passed a warning order early in the day, then led our briefing at 1800 hours. We were to insert by helo into an area close to the Vam Sat River where no enemy was then supposed to be. With information provided through an intelligence system run by Marine First Lieutenant Winsenson, we knew that a huge bunker complex made out of logs and mud existed in the area, and our job was to destroy the bunkers before the VC came back.

After the briefing, all of us got very busy preparing our gear. Since the area of operation was not hot, I left Bad Girl behind and carried a lighter Car-15 instead. Like the other men, I would tote ten pounds of C-3 explosives. In addition, as the designated photographer, I was to carry a Nikonos camera and take slide pictures of the op.

The next morning, reveille came at 0515 hours. After
a hearty breakfast, Foxtrot 1st and 2nd Squads assembled at the helo pad at 0630 hours. The army helos, however, didn’t show up from inserting Alpha and Bravo platoons in the T-10 area, so our mission was canceled until 1400 hours.

At 1300 hours, we had a rebriefing, then we boarded the slicks and headed for the Vam Sat. The flight took just forty minutes, and with no reason for concern over close proximity of the enemy, we were dropped in a partly defoliated mangrove swamp just outside the bunker complex boundary.

We moved into the complex area and were amazed at the sight. I counted eight bunkers and they were the biggest I’d ever seen, with each one measuring at least ten feet by twenty feet. The bunkers were made with mud and logs and were built on muddy ground, designed to absorb the shock of aerial bombings and ground vibrations. Craters from U.S. bombs lay within twenty-five yards of some bunkers but appeared to have done little or no damage to them.

Foxtrot 1st and 2nd Squads were divided into four teams of three men apiece. Funkhouser, McCollum, and I were assigned two bunkers on the eastern edge of the complex. We were to enter the bunkers with flashlights, looking carefully for booby traps. After placing C-3 explosives at strategic reinforcement points within each bunker, we were to detonate the charges to destroy them.

As the three of us approached our first bunker, Funkhouser halted in his tracks and pointed at a crater just ten meters from the bunker entrance.

“Oh, my gosh,” he said, his mouth agape, “look at that ten-foot hole!”

I looked. “That’s what a thousand-pound bomb will do for you.”

McCollum stopped beside us, gazing at the crater. He
snorted, then said, “Maybe we got lucky and a dink was standin’ there takin’ a leak.”

I chuckled. “That’s what I’d like to think. Another slopehead became a dead head.” Ignoring noise discipline, we all laughed. With the enemy far away, we were not being real tactical about security.

“You go in first, Mr. Point Man,” McCollum said to me at the entrance to the bunker.

I clicked on my flashlight and aimed the beam inside. “No sweat,” I told him, happy to lead the way.

“Just watch out for a cobra,” warned Funkhouser, half seriously.

“Or a man-eating man-a-cheetah,” added McCollum quickly.

I looked back at my teammates before stepping inside the bunker.

“Anything else, fellas?”

Funkhouser glanced at McCollum, who shrugged his shoulder and said, “Don’t forget the booby traps.”

I nodded my head, pointed the flashlight and my rifle into the bunker and stepped inside. My flashlight beam probed every nook and cranny of the large chamber. After a minute of exploration, I was sure that no gooks or goblins awaited me.

McCollum and Funkhouser entered the bunker and all of us looked for the best place to position our breaching charges. McCollum checked out the roof and quickly made a suggestion.

“Right here is the main log in the overhead,” he said, pointing at the beam. “What do you think?”

Funky and I agreed with Muck’s assessment. “Let’s do it,” Funky affirmed.

I took the ten pounds of C-3 that I’d been carrying and fastened it to the log with a piece of parachute suspension line. At the same time, McCollum attached five pounds of C-3 to a corner support post. I then ran sensitized
detonation cord from my charge to McCollum’s. Funky handed me two six-foot lengths of safety fuse. On one end was a nonelectric blasting cap and on the other was an M-60 fuse lighter. We double-primed our charges, as always, in case one of the nonelectric caps was a dud. McCollum helped me tape the two nonelectric caps to the center of the det cord.

Just before we lit up our handiwork, Funkhouser went outside to make sure no other SEALs were nearby and yelled, “Fire in the hole,” three times. A few seconds later, he stuck his head back into the bunker and called to us, “The coast is clear!” Then McCollum and Funky left and walked seventy meters to where a convenient crater, courtesy of the U.S. Air Force, welcomed us.

I pulled the two M-60 fuse lighters, and as the safety fuse started smoking, I hustled out of the bunker and followed Muck and Funky.

“The charges should go off in five minutes and ten seconds,” stated Funky. We hid down in the hole, peeking over the top so as not to miss the fireworks.

After five minutes had passed, McCollum gave a verbal five-second countdown. “Five, four, three, two …” Before he could say, “One,” the C-3 blew.

“You’re one second off, Funky!” Muck commented.

“Eat your heart out!” barked Funky from deep within the crater.

I saw little of the blast as my natural reflex action was to duck my head, especially when the charge was but seventy meters from our cover. The detonation, however, was muffled, and when I raised my head, I saw that the bunker was still standing. There was a sizable hole in the roof and a smaller one through a side wall, but that was all. Top-notch design and construction of the bunker had enabled it to shrug off most of the effects of our modified breach charges.

“Hoo-yah!”
shouted Funkhouser, waving an arm over his head in a celebratory gesture.

“Whoa-yeah!” McCollum yelled in my ear, then he slapped me on the back. “I love playin’ demo man!”

“Me, too,” I told him, “but we didn’t play too well. The damn bunker’s a long way from being destroyed.”

McCollum climbed out of the crater, chuckling. “Hell,” he said, “that don’t matter. We’ll just blow the son of a bitch again!” He waved five pounds of C-3 under my nose. “This should be good for bustin’ another air vent through the roof.” He grinned at me, and I grinned back.

As we set the next charge, several blasts were heard from other areas of the bunker complex where our teammates were taking care of business. We wasted little time in adding to the ruckus. Back in the crater again, we kept our heads up this time and watched as sticks and mud blew into the air. The roof of the bunker was now half gone and the remaining portion was ruptured and loose enough for us to tear apart by hand.

After pulling apart the ceiling and knocking down the bunker walls, we used Funkhouser’s ten pounds of C-3 on the second bunker to rip a huge hole in the roof. Another charge or two was needed to wreck the sturdy bunker, but the three of us were then devoid of explosives.

I located Mr. Meston and told him of our predicament. He cussed the strength of the VC bunkers and said all four of our groups were experiencing the same problems. He immediately radioed Nha Be TOC requesting more C-3 to be delivered by helos. While we waited, I snapped several pictures of the bunkers. Then I took a picture of one of the helos as four haversacks containing twenty pounds each of explosives, safety fuse, and M-60 fuse lighters were dropped down to us.

Mr. Meston gave me one of the sacks, which I toted back to McCollum and Funkhouser. We utilized ten
pounds of the C-3 to punch a couple more big holes through the die-hard bunker walls, then we physically forced the conquered structure down.

“
Hoo-yah!
” I cried as the last logs fell, releasing my frustration by throwing up my fists and pummeling the air. “It went down hard, but it went down!” We all laughed.

Several minutes later, after a few more explosions, Mr. Meston called everyone together in the center of the bunker complex.

“The helos have sighted several large bunkers about three or four hundred meters to the west,” he informed us. “We’ll patrol there and use the remaining C-3 on ’em.” Using the azimuths the helo crew had given, he fixed our direction with his compass. Then glancing around at every face, he said, “Let’s get it done before it gets dark on us.”

With Pearson at the point, we began patrolling through the nipa palm toward the distant bunker complex. My position in line was behind Markel, who was carrying the radio behind Lieutenant Meston, and ahead of Lieutenant (jg) Schrader. With no enemy in our area of operation, we moved quicker than usual through the jungle. The ground was muddy, but the mud was not thick and clingy. We were able to proceed at a steady pace, which was essential in order to reach the bunkers and have time to blow them before nightfall.

After three hundred meters of relaxed, easy going, I spied something to give me pause: fresh bootprints along an intersecting path. I stopped and stared at them, pointing them out to Mr. Schrader.

“Looks like several people walked through here today,” I declared. Mr. Schrader nodded his head in agreement. We both looked up at the backs of our teammates ahead of us, who were continuing on without hesitation.

“Surely they saw these tracks,” I said, my voice becoming quieter as my concern escalated.

Mr. Schrader turned and faced Flynn, who was hurrying toward us with a look that told me he had something urgent to report.

“There’s a VC bunker on our left flank to our rear,” he told Schrader.

I got a queasy feeling in my stomach, comparable to the sick sensation I had gotten back in the fifth grade when I had discovered the school bully waiting in the bushes for me on my way home one day. I had known he had wanted to jump me, but I hadn’t been expecting the attack in the security of my own backyard.

I looked at the fresh tracks again, and I knew in my gut that the enemy was close. I gazed ahead thirty meters at Mr. Meston’s back, and I wondered what was in his mind. I wished he would look back so I could signal to him.