by Nguyen Cu’ van

a Soldier of Vietnam

edited by Tony Spletstoser

 

      "Sat Cong" not a phrase in the Vietnamese language,
but as common usage in spoken Vietnamese, it has the basic meaning of

  "Death to the Communists"

      --Foreword--

    This story comes from the life of a friend.  I have known this ex-soldier of Vietnam for 20 years.  We met shortly after he and his family had resettled in the same city that I lived in.  This came about where my wife attended the same English classes at a local Baptist church.  Nguyen and I had in common beautiful Vietnamese wives and we also loved the outdoors, hunting, and fishing.  From time to time over a few Brewski's, we would talk about my experiences in Vietnam during the years between 1969 and 1973; then my VN friend would relate his tales of the “Special Operations” that he took part in. 

   I've since given up the Brewski's and the wife, but I still have my VN hunting and fishing buddy.

   When I recently asked Nguyen if I could write down these stories for possible publication, he expressed concern.  He said, "My friend, I tell you these stories because I know that you have been there and I know that you understand about Vietnam, but I don't want to put my name on anything.  I still have family there and my name is on a `list.'  You and I can talk about these things, but none of the other Vietnamese around here know that I was Special Forces or what I do. I worry that the wrong word said to the wrong people will get back to the Communists and that they will take it out on my family.  Even here, I don't know who were communists and who were not."   

   Names and places in the following have been changed to protect the innocent. 

   EDITER;   Con Cop  (The Tiger, or the VN would leave out the con Tiger.  Cop  would still say the Tiger.   He agreed to let me write this story if I changed his name.  Since "Nguyen” (Winn) is a family name that is as common as Smith or Jones here in the western world, we let that stay the same. 

    His given name, I changed to [Chet cong-(san)] or "Sat Cong" either of which in Vietnamese loosely translates to "Death to Communists."  I think that the name fits him, since he had terminated so many of the NVA, VC, and VCI cadre during his active duty, not to mention the tons of their supplies he caused to be destroyed.[1] 

   If someone reading this, believes my friend's fears are unwarranted, just note a short time ago, Dr. Haing Ngor, the Cambodian actor from the movie "The Killing Fields" was gunned down in the car-port of his home in Los Angeles. This was not a robbery attempt!  Other Vietnamese friends tell me of Vietnamese Communist agents posing as refugees to gain entrance to the US.  Some are passing themselves off as Buddhist monks and one recently exposed agent wore the robes of a Catholic priest, Communist spies and assassins are living in the Vietnamese communities and doing their evil work.

 I have heard similar remarks from other former special operation types, Americans, they had tales to tell, but didn't want their names mentioned. 

   Twenty to thirty years have passed, and now we are older and with families.  Their families are their concern.  Most have seen more war than the average soldier would see in three lifetimes and do not care to see more.

    I wrote Sat's story from taped interviews; using his words, I haven't tried to `Anglify' them.

    

 

   However, since I first started writing this Cu van has become more secure for his self. He has even retuned to Vietnam to see his family and old friends several times. So the following is under his real name.

                        

                      

 

 

 This is Nguyen Cu’ van’s BIO.

 

    "The Life and Times of a Vietnamese Special Forces Trooper"  

                   with his friend, Tony Con Cop       

     Cu’ van:  When I grow up at my home near Nha Trang, I was poor, my family was poor. But at the time I didn't know that I was poor. Everyone that I knew had to live the same way, and we always had enough.

    I was not born there in this hamlet near Nha Trang. I grow up at two places.  Before, my father had a small farm in a valley xx km[2] south of Qui Nion, near the city of XX, XX[3] province.  This is where I live for the first 12 years of my life.

    Up there we were also farmers, my daddy have several small pieces of land.  Our house is on one and the others for rice paddys. If they were all put together they would have added up to about 2.5 acres.  The house we live in has walls made out of woven sticks that have been plastered with mud/clay. It had a dirt floor and a roof of coconut palm-tree leaf.  My daddy had coconut palm trees planted around the house.  We have good vegetable garden in the back of the house. We are healthy and always have enough to eat. 

    This where I live in 1962, this is when I see my first American.  One day about 4:30 or 5:00 o'clock, I heard this, "Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp" noise over head.  Everybody in the village heard that sound and look up in the sky and see one of them Chinook kind of helicopter letting down over our houses, you know, with rotor blades at both ends. But not as big like our friend Mr. Vo used to fly, it was older, different, it's body look like a banana.[4] It came from over the mountain and down into our valley.  It was strange to us to see and hear. 

   I'm just a little boy, maybe seven or eight years old, I only wear the short pants.

   Our farm in the valley is right at the foot of the mountain  at the mounth of the valley.  From the foot of the mountain and across the Hwy #1 it is maybe 800 meters to the water's edge. The helicopter passes over the farm, across the National hwy.#1 on over to sand bar spit on the bay shoreline. It lands and they shut it down.

   The American GIs get out with their guns, first they set up a guard around it, then begin to work on it. There seems to be some trouble with the helicopter. This is a strange sight to all of us children, we have never seen one up close on the ground before.  My friends and I, we running out there to look at this thing. At first we stand far away from it.  We all afraid to get in too close. 

    In that valley we got maybe 150 people live there and maybe 25 to 30 houses. Everybody come down to see the Americans and helicopter.  The Americans, I look, golly! They are so tall and big. We never see anyone like that before. They so strange looking with blonde hair and their green eyes.  Some have blonde, almost white hair.  When people in Vietnam that look like that, that means that people are sick, but these men are so big and look so healthy. Some are black like ink and black hair too. All of us children stand around and watch, we are afraid to go too close. 

    After the Americans got their guards out it look like they try to do something to the helicopter.  Then we know then that it is an emergency landing and now they try to fix it. 

    My friends and I see the helicopter before many times when they fly back and forth in the air over us, but never on the ground up close like this. 

    At the first all then Americans just stand around like they guard the airplane, and don't come any closer to us.   We know that we scared too, but we still want to see everything. Then about one hour later, some of the GIs look like they not afraid of us any more and motion for boys like me to come over to look.  We follow him over and this big GI lift about six of seven of us up and took us inside the helicopter.  Next they show us all through the inside. Just like they do here at a air show.  That's the first time that I see an American and a airplane.

    Then some of the older men, my daddy and others, begin to come up close. The GIs give them American cigarettes. The men never see cigarettes with the filter on it before. You know that nobody can speak any English.  It's just like a chicken talk with a duck, they can not understand each other.  But the Vietnamese men get it, they understand cigarettes.  Before, they only smoke cigarette that they make from the tobacco that we grow in the valley.  The men when they come home, for the next few weeks or a month they still talk about the American cigarettes, it was such an event for people that always live by themselves. They don't know anything except their valley, never any radio or TV, they never see it before in their life.

    We been around there until dark, then everybody go home.  The American GIs stay there overnight.  We don't know what they do about fixing the helicopter.  Early, about six or seven o'clock in the morning a couple more helicopters come with some more men

and they landing out there. Maybe they bring some spare parts and mechanics?  About one or two o'clock everybody gone. This is a day that we never forget for a long time.

    My family and I live there until about 1964 or 65, it's hard to remember now, it's been so long ago and I was still just a little boy. I was about 11 or 12 years old.   In our valley the South Vietnamese Army and the Communists fight back and forth and finally the government just give up and the Communists took it over.  So we have to move to the south. My daddy have to buy some new land there, in a valley near Nha Trang.  My daddy have to build a new house the fast way, not like our old house.  He have to build a better one later.

    I have a older sister and a younger brother and sister.  Our family is mama. daddy and four children.  When the communists come to our valley in the north, we left, but my daddy still there getting our belongings together.  My sister go back up to get some more of her stuff and the Communists get her. They make her go with them for transport, to carry supplies like animal.

We never see her again.  We hear from some old people that stay behind, talk come back (informed rumors) that maybe airplanes bomb on the trail and she die somewhere in the jungle. 

    I know that a lot of Americans never understand.  They see the movies of the children and women making the bamboo arrow to put down in the water for GIs to step on, that they all do that for volunteer to fight, but that not true, the communists force them or they die.  My sister die with the communists, but she is their prisoner.

    In the valley that I have to leave when I was a boy, I love my life there.  I go back to Vietnam two times now and visit my family near Nha Trang, but also I return to my valley in the north. It's so peaceful now a it brings back memories of when I was a small boy in short pants and I play with my friends. 

    Ain't never seen a shirt, no shoes either.  I got pair of good clothes, shorts only, but that's just for going to school.  When you get home, you have take it off, change.  All the `valley' boys dress like that. 

    I'm 45 years old now and I have many `things' here in America, but I think that if I'm by myself, I'd give it all up for the sweet life that I knew as a boy.  When I was small, back then, my friends and I play. When we hungry, we go down a catch a dozen crabs and a dozen shimps from the bay, pick some vegetables from the garden and put in a pot. There is always rice for us.  We live good. 

     When it's real hot, we all run out there to the river and jump in. Ohh, it's cold. That river, it run down from the mountain and it makes us shiver at first. 

    A man doesn't need things to be happy.  Everybody there was so friendly. Back then I know everyone's name in the valley.  Not like here, I don't know who live next door or what they do. 

    The house that my father built there in 1963, is still standing at our old home place, and is still in use. 

    When he know that he want to build a new house, he have to plan ahead almost two years. He cut the trees and drag them down to the bay. We must have sea water with the salt. The trees are peeled then put in the water. Daddy put rocks on them so they are held under water.  The trees must stay that way for a long time.  After we get them out and they dry good, there are never any bugs or worms eat them. You see how the house lasts a long time.

    After my daddy has all the materials sat down there ready, he call out and everyone in the valley come.  The women all come too. They start cooking the rice, the fish, crabs, clams, shrimps and all kinds of vegetables that we have in the valley. It's almost like a party or picnic.  The children all do something too.

    In the Village, we have one expert, a carpenter.  We have to have him. He know how to make the plan and how to make everything fit right. All the beams in the roof have to fit and lock-in without nails. We don't have money to buy anything.

    When it's all done, the people and the carpenter, we never talk about money to pay, because we ain't got no money, nobody does.  But whenever somebody else needs something, we all there too. Everything works out sometime in our lifetime.  Every year at Tet, New Years, my daddy must take something to present to the carpenter as a gesture.  He usually take a stalk of bananas, only thing that we got, even though we know that the carpenter got his own banana trees.

    My daddy and the others had planted coconut trees all around.  We have over 100 trees around our house alone. Sometimes when we hot from working in the rice paddy, we come up and get one of those fresh coconuts, take knife to cut the top off of it, stir up the inside, mix a little salt in it and drink it down. It's good, it make you feel good. 

   Where our house at, there are coconut trees all around.  If you were to drive by on Hwy #1, you never see any houses, only the coconut-palm trees. The trees keep the house and yard shaded and cool, even in the summer.  Our yard never have no grass, but it's kept swept clean and neat. 

    In the winter you have to be careful when you go outside when the wind is blowing.  The coconuts and paln leaves (frond) begin to fall and you can really get hurt.

    When I live there, I go to elementary school at the village of XXX XX XXX[5]. But not like here today. No bus, I have to walk. I have to cross the river and go around the mountain to the next village. It takes 45 minutes to an hour to make it.  When the river is high, I have take off my pants and put them and my books on top of my head and wade across, sometimes up to my shoulder. But I am never in any danger. I want to go a learn how to read and write and how to do numbers.  My daddy and mama never get to go to school.  Mama, she know how to read a little.  My parents want their children to have a better chance than they have.  Some things are the same all over the world, mamas and daddys always work for their children.  

   We grow enough rice to live on and a little to trade or sell. The only thing that my parents need to buy, are the clothes for themselves, my sister and brother and me. 

    To cultivate the land we have to rent a cow to pull the plow. (water buffalo)  Sometimes we have a few ducks, and a garden for a few vegetables to go with the rice. 

    You know in Vietnam the garden, it grow all year round.  We grow every kind of vegetable, as well as some things for medicine, `lemon grass' and other things. We eat it every morning, it keeps you cleaned out.  We never have any doctor, so we have to take care of ourself. There are wild things that grow out in valley, that we can gather.

    My father and I clean off a acre on the side of the mountain, you call it here `slash and burn' farming.  The land on the mountain is free for us to use.  After it's clean we take a stick to make a hole and plant young banana trees, corn and beans. There is a kind of root that we grow, we use it to pound up and make a flour like you make from wheat. You can make bread with it. 

    Sometimes we have ducks and a pig. But the ducks and the pig are not for us to eat, they are for the market to sell in order for mama and daddy to buy clothes and other things that we can not make. 

    When I grow up, I am 12 years old before I eat a piece of meat because my family is so poor.  We never eat the cow, because that's what we need to cultivate the land with, they are like a four legged tractor.  We can go down to the bay a catch some crabs, some shrimps. The fish we can get easy with a net or traps. The river is nearby and anytime that we want fish, we get some.  That's why all of us live there, the river is for water to flood our rice paddys and to get fish to eat. 

    I never see even one penny when I was little, we are poor.  We always just barely make it. But in truth, life is not too bad, we are never hungry, and except for the war, we would have had enough and have been happy. 

    When we have to move to the Village near Nha Trang everything is almost the same except my sister is gone and my daddy not there either. 

    My moma always blame my daddy for the loss of my sister, because she had gone back up there to help him.  It's not his fault, but they never live together again after that.  My daddy stay in the north at the old house.  My moma and us three children, we work in the rice paddy and garden the same as before. 

    This new village has a wide creek flowing down from the mountain too. I still have to go to school.  After I finish the lower grades I go the the high school, and it's a lots farther away. Sometimes the moon is up before I get home.  One friend has a bicycle and I ride with him. I have to pedal and do his home-work too. But I learn a lesson also. 

    In 1969 when I join the Special Forces I got two different reasons to do that.  I got the call to go into different services that are easier: Army, Navy or Air Forces.  I am 17 years old, if I wait until I am 18, the government will draft me and put me in as regular army recruit.  I want to be the best, so I choose the Special Forces.  For being the best, we are better paid.  My family needs anything extra that I can give them because I'm not going to be home to share in the work. 

    The other reason is because I know that they will teach me a lots of different things. Everything from how to be a nurse, to how take out a enemy supply cache.  Not like regular army. We're special.

    My mama she don't want me to.  You know all mamas worry about their children and how they could get killed.  So much of their life given to bring a boy up to be a good man and then it can be all lost in a second. I understand exactly how my mama feel when I join the Special Forces, she cry. I try to explain to her a couple of times, I don't want to talk too much about it. It

seemed that the more I talked about it, the more that it hurt her. 

     I told her, I said "Mom, you see how the war goes, how hard things are, if you don't know how to survive, if you don't have the best training, you will get killed."  I try to tell her that I get better training and that's how you can save your life. I try to work the best that I can. 

    When I am first sent to work (train) in the Special Forces training camp, we have different camps for different kinds of training. The first camp named `Lam Son,' 30 kms NW of Nha Trang (via Ninh Hoa), we have basic, advanced infantry and hand to hand. It is the same for all Vietnamese Army recruits, but our `advanced' takes a lots more time.  We get more of it for Special Forces. 

    At Long Thanh, in the south near Long Binh, it is parachute jumping. 

    At Dong Ba Thin  (near Cam Ranh).  we learn how to handle different kinds of explosives; hand grenades, rockets, mines and how they are all constructed.  Also we are trained how to use explosives like TNT and C-4.  They teach us radio and other kinds of signaling for communications. Also they have a small hospital there and they teach us how to be a nurse (Medic) and how to save our lives when we get wounded.

    They send us to another Army school near Lam Son for our non-commissioned officer training.  Because we are special, we are sent to camps that have schools for the best training.

   I listen very carefully to our instructors. It takes two years to complete training for a Special Forces soldier, but only three months for a regular ARVN recruit.  During training I have Vietnamese and American instructors. They all teach us how to stay alive.

     When I go home I explain all this to Mama to make her feel easier.  Mama think about this and tell me to go on in and if I can't handle it for me to get out.       

    I made it through. It was something that I was proud of. It was hard, but I increased with it.  For example, sometime our instructor send one of us into a room and are told to find ten ants in five minutes. Now, he knows that there are not any ants in that room, but that is his orders.  When five minutes are up, he open the door and ask if we find any ants. Of course we haven't. He say, "OK, give me 100 push-ups."   And we do. We know it's not fair, but orders are orders, and we must learn that.        

    Sometimes they come up to you and slap the shit out of you; you must just sit there and smile.  We must learn not to get upset about anything.  If a man let himself lost his temper when he is on a operation, it can cause it to fail and you lose your life as well.  So anything like this is a mark against graduating.  If you have too many bad marks, you wash-out.  

    During the advanced training, I took part in some of the instruction.  This was because, as a boy I had trained in martial arts (Vietnamese Kung Fu) with my uncle.  My uncle was a Kung Fu Master in my valley.  At the time that I was in training, my level was higher than my instructor and he happily allowed me to instruct in "Hand to Hand." 

    During my training class, a lot didn't make it. The instructor mark them for each test that they fail.  Some even wash out even after they had completed the training.  Some are never strong enough, some don't have the mind for it, and some wouldn't jump; they scared.

     When they wash out, the government will not let them just stay home. They either have to go in the regular army or if there is a opening in National Guard unit near their home, they can go there.  They think that they are lucky if they can do that. But in the home Guard, they are not trained hard anymore, not like they get in the regular army.  They get careless and they get used up.  

    One time I come home and the first thing my brother tell me, "You know your friend Trai?  He get killed."   I say, "What happened to him?"  My brother told me that when the government send him back, they put him in the local National Guard (a kind of militia, for the county only, Dia phuong Quan)   One night they send out two patrols, one on one side and one on the other side. They get orders mixed up, go the wrong way or something, so when they find each other in the dark, they shoot each other. Fourteen get killed.  I tell my brother, "How can they be so stupid, don't they know how to communicate with each other?" 

    So I tell my mother, "You see that? That's what I'm talking about, a soldier have to have experience before being put into a situation.  We need experience and training in order to survive.  If we make that kind of mistake in the Special Forces, that causes a lot of damage for the whole Army."

    Sat Cong:  I graduate from the SF school in 1971.  All enlisted men that graduate are promoted to the rank of sergeant. (Three "Chicken Wings", stripes, chevrons.) Officers in the Vietnamese S.F. rise from the ranks.  No officers are ever accepted to be given SF training except for maybe someone that has a very special skill. Then he can go through, but he goes through with no rank and it still take two years.  Not like American Special Forces.

     When ever I return to my home for a visit, I wear civilian clothes so that I don't draw attention to myself. (VC live all around there too.) Only a few in my village know that I am Special Forces.  One time a few years after I am graduated and many missions in my experience, I get leave to come home.

     My family are all happy to see me and mama cooks all the things that she knows that I like to eat. A day or so later, I can tell that something is wrong. Mama won't tell me. I ask my brother.  He told me that the village mayor, policeman secret police, have been bothering them. They are underpaid and have gotten corrupt.  Now they want bribe money from everyone in the village, if they don't pay they have trouble. This make me very mad.  I have to go away with the Army to fight the Communists and then I have to find this back home. It's not right, it makes me real mad. 

    I unpack my Special Forces uniform and put it on, my boots all shined, everything clean and correct.  Then, I pay a visit to our police station.  I tell them who I am and what my bother tell me. I tell them that I don't want to find out anything like this again or I will be back. 

    They understand the "Green Beret" and know what I mean. They know that if they try to do anything to me, that they will have my whole S.F. group on them.  My family never have anymore trouble after that.

 

 

                   "ARMY VIETNAM SPECIAL FORCES"

    We have two kinds of Special Forces. 

    One; we do the same things sometimes that the Americans used to do; you know, we go in there to what Americans call `indian country', to get the information that our commanders want, and the enemy must never know that we were there.  Sometimes we work with the American Special Forces doing this.  Some missions they tell us to go in to look at where the VC live in a camp, the direction to it, how far, what kind of house (structure), the number of buildings,  exactly how they look like outside and inside, how many windows and doors on any side.  We make notes about who is there, what they do and when they do it and who come and go. This kind for recon only.

   Two; we look for ammo or supply dump that the VC hide. When we find it we blow it up.  Sometimes we catch a communist soldier to bring back for our leader to question.  We have a name, a picture of someone in the NVA that we are told to either kidnap or kill.     

     The mission that I will talk about now, was like the first example. Our job will be to gather more detailed information (Intelligence) only. Our commanders already know that there is a big encampment; now they want to know about everything inside it.     We know that there may have been other teams in there before this, because someone found out for us, exactly how the communists in there were dressed.  Sometimes for a recon like this, our commanders will send in three, four or more teams in over a month to checking everything out very carefully, but the communists must never know about even one team

   It's so secret that even we don't know about what the other teams in our own camp do.  We are told only what our leaders want us to know and we never discuss our operations with them or they with us.