Introduction
We’re in the beginning of the stretch run for the 2024 presidential election, and, already, I need a break. I’ll bet you do too.
With that in mind, regular readers will know I have occasionally posted stories from my long-ago time in Vietnam. A number of you, perhaps having dallied too long with the doctored-up Kickapoo Joy Juice, have suggested if I could come up with a few more, I might have the beginnings of an actual book some foolish people might be persuaded to read, maybe even buy.
Giving these misguided literary critics the benefit of the doubt, it’s conceivable they might have a barely discernible point. So, what follows is the first of two stories. I will post the second one next week. Let me know what you think.
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Orders arrive
It was a beautiful late summer day in Vietnam, and my 28-man Platoon and I, along with Rusty the scout dog and his handler, PFC Snyder, were feeling good. Having recently concluded one of our personally satisfying occasional encounters with a few visitors from the North, we were sunning ourselves on the rocky top of what passed for a mountain in northern South Vietnam, when Bobcat called.
Bobcat, who preceded Bulldog of The Calendar and Nuts fame, was Colonel Robert Stillingworth, “Still” to his friends, Bobcat to me.
Anyway, Bobcat called, and the ultimate, sub-rosa reason he called was because, in his tenth month of a 13-month Vietnam tour, Bobcat, who has long since become one with the universe, had yet to win his Silver Star. He, like all full-bird Colonels of the Vietnam era, believed winning this award was essential in his quest for what he considered his much-deserved promotion to Brigadier General. Of course, I did not know any of this at the time. Why should I? But afterwards it explained everything.
As soon as I heard his voice, I knew siesta-time was over. “Go to the secure freq. I have orders for you,” he said. I switched to our secure frequency. He said, “You are to proceed to the sea.” Then he gave me a couple of coordinates, which, with deduction worthy of an officer and a gentleman, I presumed to be somewhere on the coast of the South China Sea. “You are to be there no later than 0100 hours. You will receive further orders upon arrival. Any questions?”
Well, no. Seemed simple enough. Then I heard, “Bobcat out.” The man had a way with words.
I pulled out my map and saw that our upcoming little nighttime stroll would cover about 24 kilometers, we called them “clicks.” This would equal roughly 15 miles. Twenty-four clicks in less than eight hours and, since we had just been resupplied with rations, ammo, and what not a couple of hours earlier, we’d be bebopping along with about 85 pounds on our backs.
The good news was we wouldn’t have to bebop through much jungle. After we made it down the mountain, we’d be just about one click from Highway 1, the only paved road north of Saigon. We’d take that north, and it would lead us right to where we were supposed to go. Simple. As long as we didn’t stumble onto any of the bad guys.
So, I gave the bad news to the squad leaders and my platoon sergeant Dave Lucey, we gathered up our stuff, and off we went. About an hour later, we were on Highway 1. That’s when the rain began. It rained all the way to the sea.
We arrive
In the gloom of a rainy night, about one click from where we were supposed to wind up, we took a right off the highway onto a dirt track and saw the lights from a village up ahead. As we got nearer we could hear voices, a lot of them. But before we got there we smelled the bread.
In our haste to make the deadline, we hadn’t stopped to eat, just kept slogging up Highway 1 in the rain. Now, dead ahead of us, a sorry group of cold and wet-to-the-core soldiers, was an old woman, smiling from ear to ear, standing behind a table in front of a tiny building that appeared to be the village bakery. She had two hanging oil lamps, one on each side of her, and spread out on her table were loaf after loaf of newly baked bread. Somehow, the lady had known we were coming.
Ravenous as we were, we bought every loaf, making the smiling Mama-San instantly wealthy. We wolfed them down. If you ignored all the sand still in the bread it was the best we ever tasted.
Then we moved on to our rally point, where all the voices were coming from. We found ourselves in a little harbor, really little. And in it were a few small boats, not much more than Sampans, really.
Standing on a small pier hanging out over the water was the Intelligence Officer of our Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Barnacle. He showed me written orders, but didn’t let me read them, and told me the boats behind him belonged to the South Vietnamese Navy. “Excuse me, Sir, South Vietnam has a Navy?” I asked. “Yup, and you’re lookin’ at it.” He then said, “Your orders are to board that ship over there with your men and, ah, the dog, I see you have a dog. Well, that’ll be all right. Dogs can swim. The ship will ferry you up the coast to just south of the DMZ , where you will conduct an amphibious assault and secure the beach.”
When he said DMZ, he got my attention, because the DMZ was the Demilitarized Zone, the most dangerous place in all of Vietnam.
I just looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is a joke, right?” “No joke,” he said. “Get ready to board, cause you’re leaving in 15 minutes.” “But sir,” I said, “Are you going to brief me on the resistance my men and I will likely encounter when we do this stupid-ass, crazy thing?”
Colonel Barnacle draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me aside. “Lieutenant,” he said. “Believe me when I tell you it is highly unlikely you and your men will encounter much resistance, if any.”
“Is this just an exercise?” I asked. “Sort of,” he said. “But it’s kind of secret. Now get your ass on the boat.”
So, we did. Scout dog Rusty, PFC Snyder, and the rest of us began squeezing ourselves into the hold on the deck of the first boat. The hold, about 20 by 20 feet, sloped from the middle out to the sides. At the middle it was about four feet high. At the sides it was down to about two and a half feet. Somehow, we crammed ourselves in. It would have been a lot less uncomfortable if it weren’t for all the 85-pound rucksacks and weaponry. Finally, crushed together, we pushed off from the dock, and the put-putting engine sent us all slowly out into the South China Sea.
But before we got too far out, our South Vietnamese Navy piece of junk started rattling underneath us. Then, after about ten seconds of gears squishing and grinding, everything stopped, and it became quiet. Too quiet. From somewhere in the middle of the hold we were stuffed into, I heard Randy Billingsley, who was our M-60 machine gunner, say, “I can’t swim.” Then, a couple more guys said the same thing, and I was beginning to think Vietnam’s hot, swampy, snake infested jungle wasn’t such a bad place, after all.
That was when a door opened in the front of our compartment, which seemed to be getting smaller by the moment, and a wiry little man with a big smile slipped through it. He was carrying a wrench about the size of his arm. He slid between two of our guys and opened another door. He oozed through that one and disappeared.
Next came the banging. That was when Billingsley once again let everyone know he couldn’t swim. This got Rusty the dog upset, so he began howling. Then, everyone was talking excitedly at once, Rusty kept barking, the little man kept banging, and I began to get worried.
I don’t know what would have happened next, if not, at that very moment, the engine hadn’t suddenly come to life, which instantly silenced everyone, even Rusty. The second door opened and the little man with the big wrench was once more with us with an even bigger smile. He said, “Okey dokey,” and vanished through the first door.
Relieved, we continued up the South China Sea in the dead of night.
About ten minutes later my big mistake reared its furry, German Shepherd head, because that was when Snyder, stuck way back in the left corner, yelled over to me, “Lieutenant, the dog’s gotta go.” The mistake had been loading Rusty and Snyder in first. They always led after our Point man in the jungle. Why not here? Well, this was why not.
There was nothing we could do, no way to get him anywhere else. So, with all of us glued tightly together and doing our best to squeeze away from the stench about to come, Rusty did his thing, a four-plopper according to Snyder, and the rest of our trip up the South China Seacoast was redolent with the very special aroma only dogshit can make.
The assault
At 0815 hours in the morning we were finally at the assault point. Getting out of the little torture chamber that would have made Grand Inquisitor Torquemada proud was probably the most ridiculous part of the entire operation. But we did it and said goodbye to South Vietnam’s gunless Navy. We even scooped up Rusty’s calling card to save the little man with the big wrench from having to do it. After we tossed that into the sea, we noticed that the genius who designed the “plan” didn’t allow for low tide, so we hit the water for the big battle about a quarter mile from shore.
Not a shot was fired. Heads up, we casually waded ashore, walked up the beach, and found rectangular table after table along about 100 feet of beach, behind which, with smiles to light up the sky, stood six beautiful women of the American Red Cross, dressed in their signature pale blue outfits, handing out cans of Coca Cola. To the guys in the field, they were known as “Donut Dollies,” and they’d been doing this since World War II. But for us they had no donuts.
Having not died in the second coming of D-Day, we occupied the beach for the next three weeks, never encountering a single moment of stress from an enemy that must have had other things on its mind.
During our little vacation on the beach I developed a bacterial infection from a small cut I got when, in bare feet, I stepped on the discarded pull tab of a can of Bud. It became ridiculously painful, and I couldn’t stand up, let alone walk. So, I called in a chopper, my guys carried me to it, sat me in the door, and I flew back to base camp for ten days of penicillin shots in the ass. While there I met up with the Brigade Adjutant, a friend. It was he who told me the story of how Bobcat had directed an amphibious assault on a tightly held enemy location on the South China Seacoast, and, .45 calibers in each hand, had led his men to victory.
At least, that’s what the citation for his Silver Star said.
