15 Months in SOG Read online

  We headed south out of Da Nang, following the curve of the bay. We drove past a Marine airfield and a navy evacuation hospital. Both seemed plenty busy. Then, we passed an immense scrapyard filled with destroyed tanks, wrecked trucks, and jeeps, as well as stripped-down shells of helicopters, which were stacked up like cordwood. I was fascinated by the debris of war piled up in the barbed wire–enclosed yard. Just before we reached a dark upthrust of rock, which had to be the Marble Mountain I had heard about in Nha Trang, we turned into another compound enclosed in barbed wire. Rolls of coiled razor wire and tangle-foot barbed wire were piled six feet high and just as deep. A sharp-looking SF sergeant and a stern-looking Vietnamese soldier checked our orders and then waved us through the front gate.

  I smiled. In a big arch, from one side of the entrance gate to the other, in two-foot-high letters, was a sign: WE KILL FOR PEACE. Underneath was the camp symbol, painted on a blood-red shield: a white skull suspended below an open parachute, a green snake, tail protruding from one eye, head from the other, glared at the visitor. From the four corners of the shield, lightening bolts arced toward the skull. What a macho, grab-your-balls welcome sign, I thought to myself. My adrenaline got to flowing even faster.

  The main camp of CCN was a four hundred- by six hundredfoot rectangular compound, surrounded by barbed wire, with twenty-foot-tall guard towers at each corner. There were only two exits, one to the road I’d just arrived on, and another to the beach of Da Nang Bay, behind the camp. Inside the compound, orderly rows of Quonset huts lined the rear half of the camp, and cavernous buildings made of corrugated metal and concrete the front. Paul said that the camp had room for 250 SF soldiers and 400 Montagnard mercenaries, whom we used as our strike troopers. An imposing concrete building smack in the center of the compound caught my eye.

  “What’s that?” I asked. I pointed to the big concrete structure as we pulled up to a prefabricated building with corrugated siding. A sign proclaiming the prefab HEADQUARTERS, CCN was fastened alongside the door.

  “That’s the TOC,” Paul replied. “It’s nearly impregnable. The walls are three-feet-thick concrete. Only one entrance, and that’s always guarded.”

  The TOC (tactical operations center) was the hub of business for the camp. From inside its concrete protection, plans were made, teams dispatched, messages received, and operations orders given. Everything that happened started and ended there, first as a plan, then as an operation order, then as a briefing, and, after the operation, as an after-action report that went down to Saigon to MAC-SOG headquarters.

  CCN was situated along the beach of Da Nang Bay. A person could walk out of the back gate right onto the sand of the beach, only twenty yards from the polluted waters of the bay. To swim in it was to risk mysterious diseases since the city of Da Nang, with its population of over 500,000, dumped its sewage directly into the blue-gray waters. Still, I swam there every chance I got and never was sick. Angels watch over fools and SF soldiers, I guess.

  Paul dropped us off at the HQ building, and I reported in. The S-1 turned me over to the XO. Skinny, sported a big nose and pale eyes too close together, with a sallow complexion that accentuated his sunburned face and arms. He was additionally cursed with a pronounced receding chin. He had shifty eyes, as if he was trying to catch me staring at his nonexistent chin. He flipped through my record folder and turned me over to the camp commander, Lt. Col. Jack Warren, a hard-core soldier if there ever was one.

  Lieutenant Colonel Warren was the toughest and most intimidating combat commander I ever served under. He lived to kill the bad guys, and worked hard at it. He also made sure we all kept pace with him. He could roast a young captain’s ass pink with a few, well-chosen words if he did not have his ducks lined up properly. Colonel Warren was shorter than average, lean and wiry, but looked like he could win a triathlon. His flashing dark eyes bored right into you when he asked a question. He was no-nonsense and truly a professional soldier whose intensity made me a bit nervous, right from the get-go.

  My new boss gave me a quick rundown about CCN and its assigned mission. “I run a taut ship, Captain. Do your job, and do it right the first time. Then we’ll get along. Fuck up, and you’re gone, period. I need an assistant S-3, operations officer, for a while. When Captain Jones rotates end of February, I’ll consider you as his replacement in command of my raider company.”

  My heart beat a little faster. Command of a raider company. That was hot stuff. I almost missed the rest of Lieutenant Colonel Warren’s monologue.

  “You’ll be involved in distributing Italian Green, a secret project sent up from SOG HQ. You’ll find out more about it at the S-3 briefing Major Toomey will give you. I’ll send for him right now and get you started to work.”

  I was hoping for time to get some chow at the mess hall, but I decided to shut up, and saluted my way out of his office. I wanted to earn that company command.

  Maj. Samuel Kanniu Toomey was a half-breed Hawaiian and looked more Indian than Caucasian. His hair was coal black, and his skin was darkened by the sun. Although stocky, there was a fluid grace to his every movement. He took me over to the tactical operations center, briefed me on my duties, and quickly put me to work writing operation orders and planning Italian Green (IG) inserts for coming recon missions.

  “Italian Green” was a code name for booby-trapped munitions and supplies. We would find a supply cache somewhere along the Ho Chi Minh trail and, in the name of lowering enemy morale, sneak into it booby-trapped ammo that would explode on use. Somebody figured it would shorten the war if the Viet Cong lost confidence in his supplies. It was a dangerous operation, and I’m doubtful that it was very effective, but faithful to our orders, we did it.

  I settled in and was soon deeply involved with my duties. On Friday morning, Major Toomey called me into his office. “We’re having a going-away party this Saturday night, for all the guys rotating Stateside. I want to go for a while, so you’ll have to stay here as duty officer. If I don’t get too drunk, I’ll relieve you before it breaks up and you can have a drink or two with everyone.”

  “Thanks, sir,” I answered. “Lieutenant Potter is a friend of mine. I’d like a chance to hoist a few with him before he leaves.”

  Paul had gotten me assigned a room in his hootch, as we called the Quonset huts where we slept. “You’re lucky,” he told me. “The end room was just vacated last week. You’ll have two walls with windows, and better ventilation than the other rooms. You’ll be right next to me, you lucky shit. Just call if you have a good lookin’ gal to share.” I remembered from our last duty together that the little ell-tee had a king-size yearn for the females.

  The officers’ quarters—formally Bachelor Officers’ Quarters or BOQ—were situated along the east fence of the compound. A drainage ditch ran between the company-grade building (for lieutenants and captains) and the field-grade quarters (for majors, the commanding officer, and VIPs). A narrow foot bridge had been built to cross over between the two buildings. Each hootch was a Quonset hut, built of corrugated steel to resemble a massive toilet paper tube cut in half lengthwise and dropped on a concrete slab. Each was about sixty feet long, with a center hallway and individual rooms, smaller ones for the company grade, larger ones for the field grade. Every room had a solid-wood door and heavy screens on the windows. The doors had a hasp lock which could only be secured from the inside. “Be sure to lock it at night when you turn in,” Potter said. “Just in case any bad guys come around and try and fuck up your dreams.” I nodded absently. The place was too well guarded.

  Saturday night, I reported to the TOC and spent a quiet evening with the dozen other soldiers unlucky enough to have duty while the party was going on, a slam-banger, with booze flowing like rivers and the lucky departees being toasted again and again. True to his word, Major Toomey showed up about midnight, three-quarters looped, but able to navigate.

  By the time I reached the officers’ club, it was well after midnight, and a new moon did little to drive away t
he darkness. The party was too far along for me to catch up, so I spent a few minutes laughing at the antics of the mostly inebriated revelers and playing “Remember so-and-so?” with Paul. He was barely able to keep his head up, and, at the rate he was slugging down boilermakers, was due for a miserable morning, his last day before leaving to out-process at Nha Trang.

  “Come on, Whiskey Puss,” I said as I finally helped him to his feet. “Time for you to go in to deep defilade and get some rest.” Only with my support did the singing and shouting short-timer walk out of the club and back to the BOQ. I steered my laughing, happy-go-lucky friend to his bunk and dumped him on it, clothes and all. I hadn’t reached the hall before he was snoring like a buzz saw. Never giving a thought to waking him and telling him to lock it behind me, I quietly shut the door.

  My room was next to his, so it wasn’t long before I, too, was sound asleep, dreaming of happier days with my friends and family.

  I jerked awake at the sound of an explosion and immediately pulled on my pants and boots. I thought a VC rocket had hit inside the compound. Then I heard running feet, and doors opening, followed by the distinctive krump! of Chinese Communist grenades exploding and the sounds of rifle fire. I backed up against the rear wall, crouching behind my small desk, and peered out of my corner window. What the hell was going on? I heard Paul’s door slam open, the metallic bump of the grenade hitting the concrete floor, and the massive krump! of its exploding. Hot shrapnel tore through the wall and hit my bunk and desk, but I was shielded and remained unhurt. The handle to my door turned, and I held my breath. Fortunately, the hasp lock held firm. The movement ceased, and a dark form darted out the front door toward the field-grade BOQ, across the little bridge.

  Without thinking, I shot the running man in the back, and the slender body flopped down into the ditch between the two buildings. A second enemy darted out and made it to the door of the next building before I could shake the shock of the first kill from my muscles. I fired just as he entered the doorway and sensed I’d hit him but didn’t see him fall. If he was hit, it was only a wound.

  That sapper must have dropped his bag of grenades inside the hallway then continued out the far end, because there was a terrific explosion, and the back end of the building started burning. I had just bent over to drag my web belt and extra ammo magazines out from under the bed, so any shrapnel that flew through the open window missed me. The outside wall of the BOQ was shielded to window height by sandbags, so nothing penetrated lower than the sill. Peeking out, I saw no sign of movement, although bullets were flying in all directions. The guards on the other walls and men inside the compound had started to fight back against the attackers.

  I crawled out of my window, the shredded wire screen no longer a barrier, and hid in the ditch. Sticking my head up and looking around, I saw movement and fired at it, until it faded into the shadows of the officers’ latrine.

  We officers couldn’t, of course, share a potty with the enlisted soldiers. I never was really sure why, unless the army didn’t want the ordinary soldier to know just how full of it most officers were. I watched, but nothing happened, so I assumed the VC had hidden behind the flimsy wooden building or run on, out of my sight. A couple of shaken officers peeked out the door of the junior BOQ and saw me.

  “What the hell is happening?” one whispered. His face was white in the glow of the burning building across the ditch. By then, several buildings were on fire, adding to the visibility.

  “Sappers inside the wire,” I whispered back. “Get your ass down here before it gets shot off.” I made room for them by pushing my kill to the side, a boy, surely less than eighteen, his eyes half open, a look of shock or pain evident in the firelight. Blood trickled out of his mouth, between clenched teeth. I never even noticed if he was dead, or merely dying. A fine, misting rain began, then steadily grew heavier, falling on my bare shoulders. We crouched in the ditch, water running past our ankles, and waited to see what would happen next.

  A terrific volume of fire came from the direction of the front gate, and I wondered if we were under assault from that direction as well. In a few minutes, it grew quiet. The rain continued, and the sizzle of the dying fire and the shouting of American voices were all I could hear. What the two other soldiers and I said, if anything, I don’t remember. I was shaking like a leaf; the initial rush of adrenaline had passed. The dim twilight of morning arrived before I even considered leaving the cover of my ditch or the company of my two companions.

  The VC attackers had swept through the camp like a deadly whirlwind. Only ten of them were killed inside the walls. The front-gate guards shot twenty more as they tried to wiggle under the wire and cross the road to the safety of the rice fields beyond. During the next few hours, a dozen more died in the reaction sweeps by local Marines. We probably got most of the attackers, but they had killed twenty-eight Americans and forty-one of our Montagnard mercenaries. One of the dead Americans was Paul Potter, still in his bed, his blood soaking the thin, army-issue mattress. He had not awakened at the sound of the grenade landing beside his bed. It had been easy for the VC. His door had been unlocked, in part, thanks to me.

  Hot tears of anger and frustration coursing down my cheeks, I stood beside my friend. If only I’d awakened him, I thought to myself. It’s not fair. He spent a year here, and now with less than a week to go, he’s dead. “Goddamn those VC bastards,” I said. “I’ll kill every motherfucking slope bastard I see, so help me God.”

  Lieutenant Mahorn came in the room with a camp medic. The young officer had spent the entire fight gathering wounded and taking them to the dispensary. Although covered with blood, it was all someone else’s. His face was grimy and streaked with sweat or rain, or both. He’d been shot at by both sides and had pressed on, doing his best to save the injured. It was an act of supreme bravery. I found out later that his recommendation for an award had been turned down because of insufficient eyewitness accounts of his action, or some such crap. “Get out of here, sir. We’ll take care of things now.”

  I wandered outside and leaned against the sandbagged wall of my hootch. One of the captains who worked in the S-2 shop rushed up. “There’s somebody in the crapper,” he breathlessly announced. He looked more scared than I was, and I didn’t think that was possible.

  “Jesus, Floyd,” I snarled back at him. “Don’t be shy. Just do your business and get on with it.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” he replied, looking with an ashen face at the bloodsoaked body of my friend being carried out on a bloody stretcher. “There’re some gooks in the crapper. I heard ’em when I went over to use it. I got Sergeant Calloway to watch ’em while I went for help.”

  I grabbed my M-16. “Come on, let’s smoke the bastards out. Now’s our chance to get a POW and find out what the hell is going on.”

  We ran toward the wooden latrine where I’d seen the movement earlier. Just before we got there, gunfire broke out. Sergeant Calloway had gathered some of the men running around the camp, and they had opened up on the hidden VC.

  “Stop firing. Cease fire,” I screamed as we ran toward the men. A half dozen men were standing in a big semicircle around the latrine, firing through the wooden walls as fast as their M-16s could cycle.

  Raggedly, the firing stopped, and we moved cautiously to the shattered door which had been punctured by dozens of bullet holes. I looked inside, my heart racing like a triphammer. What if one was still alive and blew my dumb head clean off? Too late. In the steel fifty-five-gallon barrels, placed under the holes cut in the wooden seat of the latrine, two dead VC lay huddled, shot to pieces, adding their blood and guts to the knee-deep filth in each barrel.

  I looked down dispassionately at the disgusting sight in the latrine. “Damn. What a way to start my tour.”

  “Welcome back to the war, Captain,” one of the NCOs said, spitting on the bloody, shit-covered kills lying in the foul-smelling barrels at his feet. “Now, I’ve gotta take them turds outta there and put ’em with
the rest of the KIAs.”

  He looked up at me, a resigned grin on his sweaty and dirty face, his white teeth accentuating the grime. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

  We eventually pieced together what had happened. A half mile down the bay was the sleepy little Vietnamese fishing village of Xom Son Tui. For the previous three days, Viet Cong soldiers, well-trained combat sappers (specialists who handled explosives), and assault commandos had been infiltrating into the tiny village, a couple at a time. Threatening death to any resisters, they moved into the locals’ homes.

  Around midnight on that Saturday, they gathered at the edge of the bay, then stripped to shorts or tight breechcloths. Carrying only rifles, ammo, and high explosives, the nearly naked men entered the warm, dark waters of Da Nang Bay. The bay’s shallow slope allowed them to wade fifty yards off the beach, invisible to anyone watching from land.

  It took a couple of hours for the thirty-five to forty men to reach a spot opposite the CCN’s barriers along the beach. They had targeted the slumbering compound for a long time.

  At the signal, the infiltrators in the camp security company disposed of the loyal guards along the back fence. We found three the next day with their throats cut. Then the traitors opened the back gate for the invading enemy. The raiders fanned out along the back wall, from the north to the south. Upon command, they moved to their preassigned targets, silent and deadly.

  Nobody knows for sure who fired the first shot, but it may have been the VC killing the guard in front of the TOC, where the door was locked as usual, but that didn’t matter. Two sappers pushed in an air conditioner from its mount in an exhaust hole cut in the concrete wall of the windowless TOC then threw in a ten-pound charge of Russian plastic explosive. The resulting blast killed ten of the fifteen men inside and knocked out the rest.