The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (28 page)

Papa Fox was approaching the end of his tour. He had already experienced a feeling of burnout, and had spent the final month down in Pakse, the country club. When the other Ravens asked him what the war was like down there he told them, ‘You fly from ten to twelve and from one to three. You don’t fight on Saturdays or Sundays. Targets have to be approved by the enemy.’

He had used his newfound leisure time to advantage. At an embassy party in Vientiane he had met Nancy, the daughter of a director of U.S. AID. Romance blossomed and, to the amazement of the Ravens, Papa Fox announced wedding plans. The marriage was the secret war’s social occasion of the month. Invitations were sent out - ‘war permitting’ - to the extraordinary assortment of men who had become friends and acquaintances. Even members of the Pathet Lao delegation in Vientiane were invited. Gen. Vang Pao sent his regrets - he wished Papa Fox and his bride every good for-tune, but he would be unable to attend the wedding as he could not get away from the war.

* * *

Lima Site 32 on the mountain of Phou Nok Kok to the north of the Plain of Jars lived in a state of perpetual siege. The position was strategically important because it overlooked the Ban Ban river valley, which ran east-west into North Vietnam, and operations could be run from it down across Route 7 and onto the northwest of the plain. To the enemy the site represented the linchpin of the plain, and offered control of the road out of Ban Ban.

It was defended by a force of five hundred Meo who lived on the mountain with their families. The troops were commanded by Black Lion, the code name of Will Green, a black CIA paramilitary officer who had become a legend throughout Laos. He was a tall, wiry, quiet-spoken man who might have been a college professor, and he had earned the respect and admiration of everyone who came in contact with him. He was a former Special Forces counterinsurgency expert, a professional soldier, and an inspirational leader. He ran a tight operation and his sites looked like state parks, unlike many of the Lao or Thai army outposts, which were littered with spent ammunition and trash.

The CIA told Black Lion in late April that a high-ranking defector had come across the lines to them with details of an imminent attack on Site 32. The soldier was the operations officer of the North Vietnamese regiment ordered by Hanoi to take the site at any cost. He had defected because he had been looking forward to going back to the North for a period of well-earned leave after two years of combat in South Vietnam, but he had been sent directly to Laos instead. The soldier brought handdrawn, large-scale maps that showed the enemy knew every detail of the site. He told the CIA that the attack was to be mounted by two battalions of North Vietnamese and one of Pathet Lao soldiers. The orders included strict instructions not to allow any avenue of escape - the same no-quarter tactic deployed against the defenders of Na Khang.

In a detailed debriefing the defector drew sketches and maps marking the planned axis of attack, the position the North Vietnamese artillery would assume, where their ammo was stored, and the location of individual foxholes. He listed the types of weapons each battalion had available, and even gave the times the enemy changed guard.

In preparation for the coming attack Air America began to fly Caribou aircraft in and out of the site to evacuate the women and children of the defenders. Black Lion sent out patrols to check the accuracy of the defector’s information. They reported back that a large force of the enemy was exactly positioned in the places indicated. Black Lion’s men strengthened the site’s fortifications, but even with such detailed knowledge of enemy plans the only hope of survival was air power.

The North Vietnamese must have been aware of the defection of a senior officer, but went ahead and launched their attack according to plan. Black Lion sent out Meo patrols to make contact with them. Once the enemy were located, the friendly patrol immediately radioed its position to a Raven, who gave them ten minutes to leave the area before directing fighters onto the coordinates. Enemy artillery positions, accurately marked by the defector, were worked after dark by U.S. AC-47 gunships flying out of Nakhon Phanom.

The enemy kept up their attack day after day, and throughout the night, for more than a week. One night they managed to penetrate the site’s barbed-wire perimeter. The Meo were reluctant at first to take them on in hand-to-hand combat, fearful of regular North Vietnamese troops. But when it became clear the invading soldiers were Pathet Lao they moved upon them. Unable to use guns in the confined area for fear of hitting each other, the Meo hacked the enemy to death with machetes. The next morning Ravens flying low over the site’s airstrip saw the bodies of a large number of dead stacked beside the perimeter like cordwood.

Despite strict orders to take Site 32 at any cost, the enemy had sustained such high casualties they were unable to maintain the attack. Tactical air power had saved a strategically important base and repulsed a massive enemy attack, while the Meo had suffered fewer casualties than usual. Once again Gen. Vang Pao saw the strength of air power without understanding its limits.

The course of the war in 1969 was increasingly dictated by the weather as the monsoon season came in, and there would be whole days of inaction followed by frantic periods of activity. Fred Platt made the most of one fine morning by putting in nine sorties of T-28s flown by Thais (‘Friendly Third World Power’). He was in the U-17, accompanied by an eighteen-year-old Meo who was new to the job. The last of the Thai T-28s had completed their run and a set of Thuds (F-105s) had just arrived when the cockpit of Platt’s plane was rocked by a round of 14.5mm antiaircraft fire.

The shell shattered the leg of the Meo, seated beside him. Platt tried to apply a tourniquet to stem the bleeding, but it was hopeless. The man’s leg was hanging in tatters with the badly splintered bone clearly showing through. He was also losing blood at such a rate he could not possibly survive the brief flight back to base. He thrashed and flailed beside Platt, making control of the airplane difficult.

Platt made a drastic decision. He pulled out the large Bowie knife he always carried in a sheath strapped to his leg (the blade of which was fashioned from one of the original rails on the first Houston-to-Galveston railroad) and began to work quickly. Piloting the plane with his feet, he used one arm to hold the Meo down in the seat while he sawed through the bone of the man’s leg with the other.

Throughout the crude amputation blood was being pumped onto the cockpit floor, until it was awash. The Meo’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head, and he continued to flail his arms in panic until he passed out. Platt threw the tourniquet onto the leg above the cut and squeezed off the blood supply as well as he could. He then flew as quickly as possible to the hospital at Sam Thong, unloaded his passenger, and returned to the target area.

(The Meo survived. He was not unhappy with his fate. The amputation of his leg meant he would no longer be called upon to fly or fight in the war, the Meo version of a million-dollar wound.)

The enemy always made their boldest moves on days when U.S. air was unavailable because of bad weather, and it was on such a day that word came through to the Ravens that a hilltop position was being overrun by a force of North Vietnamese. U.S. air was out of the question, and even the T-28s were unable to launch, but it was thought that if a Raven could get through to the area he might be able to direct the T-28s of the Laotian Air Force out of Vientiane.

Platt flew to the sight accompanied by a hysterical Backseater. ‘Very bad - many enemy - weather too bad. We no fly.’ It was a horrible flight, and then while snaking down the valleys below the hundred-foot weather ceiling he received the news over the radio that the T-28s were unable to take off.

There seemed nothing to do but return to base. Back at Alternate, Platt settled into a game of combat bridge (a form. of contract modified by Raven rules) and prepared to write the day off, until a message came through from Vang Pao. The hilltop position was under heavy attack and going down. ‘Please help. Need Raven. Need Raven now.’

The Ravens discussed the dilemma. It was only a matter of time before the Meo at the site were massacred unless they had close air support, but there were no fighters available in the whole of Laos. Someone came up with the madcap plan of flying up there in formation and using the O-1 Bird Dogs as attack planes. Platt, who had flown to the site and therefore knew the route, was chosen to lead the formation.

Dick Shubert, Jerry Hare, Paul Merrick, Scotty Shinn, and Bob Passman (a new Raven on his first day in Long Tieng) all volunteered to go along. Three Ravens would act as pilots, the others as armed Backseaters. Helped by their armorers, the men worked to replace their marking rockets with high explosive and T-275s, the deadly antipersonnel flechettes. They loaded cases of grenades, grenade launchers, machine guns, and boxes of ammo, and took off in a three-ship formation and flew up to the site along the valley floors, grazing the sides of mountains.

It also promised to be tight work on station. Men at the besieged site had lit a flaming arrow to indicate the direction of the enemy, who were already on the outer perimeter of the camp. By flying in low along the bottom of the valley the Ravens were able to come up behind the hill position and climb over it to attack the enemy. They buzzed around the site like a swarm of flies, firing M-79 grenade launchers, tossing fragmentation grenades out of windows, and strafing with machine guns. The unexpected arrival of the Ravens and the surprise tactics broke the attack, and the enemy began to retreat in a shambles. The Meo came out of their defensive positions and pursued them as they ran. By the time the battle was over, sixty North Vietnamese dead were accounted for.

The mission was reported in full to the Country Team - the senior officials - meeting at the embassy the following morning. The air attaché’s office was horrified. The Downtowners did not see the action - undertaken in terrible conditions by men using their initiative, to save a friendly position from certain massacre - as courageous. All they understood was that yet another gross violation of the Romeos had been committed by the Ravens, instigated by that unruly and uncontrollable cowboy Fred ‘Magnet Ass’ Platt. The pilots had taken off in below-minimum weather conditions in non-IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) airplanes and flown in an illegal formation, had used reconnaissance aircraft as attack planes, and had expended ordnance of an unauthorized kind. It was time to kick Platt out of the country.

The CIA passed on details of the meeting to their HQ at Alternate, which informed Gen. Vang Pao of the embassy’s reaction. The general remarked dryly that perhaps U.S. policy had changed - the Americans no longer even intended to hold the line, but actively sought to lose the war.

Vang Pao recommended Platt for the Air Force Cross. As a man who recognized raw courage when he saw it, he was profoundly grateful on behalf of his men. Several nights later he held a
baci
in honor of the action, with the commander of the hilltop position sitting on one side and Platt on the other. (The
baci
is the Laotian ceremony to celebrate the arrival or departure of friends, the birth of a child, or anything of social significance. There is feasting and drinking, and the person in whose honor it is held has strings tied around his wrist by the other participants, as a gesture of goodwill.) The general presented the Raven with a Meo musket, horn accouterments for powder, flint, and shot, and a monkey-skin rain cover for the flash pan. ‘They no give you but they not take away. I give you from all my people.’

When Karl Polifka, in his capacity as Raven decorations officer, later heard about the mission he wanted to recommend the entire group for a medal. ‘Shit, let’s write that up for a Silver Star. That’s pretty heavy stuff, driving off a North Vietnamese attack in lousy weather and terrible ground fire, in airplanes that can be blown out of the sky with a rifle bullet.’

The recommendation was rejected out of hand by the director of operations at the air attaché’s office, Vientiane. Polifka, who had only recently arrived in Laos, shook his head in disbelief. ‘In South Vietnam guys were awarded the DFC for falling out of their bunks to the sound of rifle fire.’

Not only was the recommendation rejected, but court-martial proceedings against the participants were still being considered, although Vang Pao’s open support for Fred Platt had presented the air attaché’s office with a dilemma. Was Platt to be treated as a hero or a heretic?

The CIA also stuck up for the pilots, threatening to take the matter further up the Air Force chain of command. The air attaché’s office backed down. Two of the pilots were awarded the Silver Star, while the Ravens who flew in the backseats received DFCs. Platt was awarded nothing. The only remark on his bravery by the air attaché’s office was ‘He’s lucky we dropped the court-martial.’

But somebody in the embassy had learned a lesson from the Raven tactic. If Ravens using three O-1s could beat off an attack when all other air was unavailable, what might they be able to achieve if they were allowed to FAC out of T-28s? It was well understood that all FACs were frustrated fighter pilots at heart, and were capable of getting into enough scrapes in the O-1 without giving them fighters. The fear was that the introduction of T-28s might mean the end of the Ravens as a FAC program and the creation of an unruly squadron of Yankee Air Pirates. But again, the CIA and Gen. Vang Pao backed the Ravens, and it was decided to check some of them out in the fighter. (Earlier Raven FACs who had flown the T-28 had done so in direct violation of the rules.)