THE RECON MISSION,
Vietnam/Laos
DMZ
by Nguyen van
Cu’, Ex-Sgt,
ARVN Special Forces.
As told to Tony Spletstoser
Operation date; sometime 1972.
We
were based at Hue, inside the Imperial
City citadel and the airstrip. Our Special Forces compound
is there.
The
mission; Vietnamese Army Special Forces
G-2 had told my unit of a large Communist camp next to the
Laotian border and
they wanted to know everything about it.
The commanders tell us they believe there are maybe
two or three hundred
heavy transfer trucks there.
We
know that there may have been other
teams 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.
It's
so secret that even we don't
know about our own other teams and what they do. We are told
only what our
leaders want us to know.
We are
a six man team. We
each carry only food and water for nine
days. For this
job, we wear the same
uniform as the communist soldier; even our back-pack is like
theirs. Each
man carry AK47, with two full mags (30
rnds ea.) taped in reverse in the rifle, two spares in our
chest pack (`Harris'
rig vest) and two more in our back pack.
We have 12 small "cherry" type hand grenades (From
Belgium)
packed in double tape like strip slung around our shoulder
like bandoleer and
one Willie Pete grenade each. (White-Phosphorus.) We carry packets
of Korean style freeze dried
cooked rice (LRRP ration), dry meat or fish.
Most important, water, we each have nine canteens. It is very heavy
but water is so important to
us. We need at
least one for each
day. We all
have a small emergency
handie-talkie, it is the same as the survival radio that
American pilot's have.
"The Brick," (PRC-90) it has a locator beacon `beeper' too.
One man
in the team is the RTO and he carries a PRC-25, (Prick25)
back-pack radio.
One evening at
twilight, they fly us by
helicopter at low level to maybe 1.5 km from the target. We
jump by para-chute
from 200 feet above the trees.
All six
jump, 1-2-3, we need to stay close together. We drop into
the trees almost at
once. When you
parachute jumping into a
dense forest of triple-canopy trees, you have to have
special training. It's
not like jumping to a open field or rice paddy. Everything
different and easy
to get killed. The trees come up fast, it's keep your feet
and legs together
and arms straight up over your head, as you begin to
penetrate the branches.
After we stop falling. we hold onto the tree and unhook the
parachute. We
know that we are going to get hung up, we
also have get the chute out of the tree. What we do is, use
the next job for
two things. First we cut all the shroud lines lose, pull the
silk down, and tie
shroud lines together to lower ourselve down.
Next we hide and cover up everything. (We can not
leave anything behind
for the communists to know that we had been there.)
The
helicopter has to fly at it's normal
speed, they can't stand still over drop zone and let you
down with a cable, it
will draw too much attention.
That night we moved
out toward the enemy base.
We know it is a large base, about 4 km square. It was about
4-5 km from the
Laos border. We have move through 1.5 km of jungle to our search
area,
which is to be inside of "2 squares" on the map of this
camp. When we
get there we must stay exactly inside
those 2 squares. Other
leaders may
running other SF teams in that base at the same time. It's
not a good idea for
us to run into each other.
All of
us have to move very quietly and
slowly, just
like over here when we hunt
the deer. You
call it "Still
Hunting" where you
move a few
steps, stop, listen for a couple of seconds, look around
very carefully. We
are in heavy forest, deep woods, but at
ground level it is almost open with only light undergrowth
here and there, (The
shade keeps things from growing under the triple-canopy.)
We
move out
using the trees for cover. I am
walking in the head, "the point position." Each man of the
team behind has his special
job. Each man
is separated at about 30
meters, just far enough ahead to be in sight of the
following man. When we stop
for our check, the second man turns and looks to the right,
the third man looks
to the left, and so on until the last man. I check the man
behind me from time
to time also. We
comunicate with hand
signals, the same system as the Americans.
We are very careful not to disturb anything along our
trail, even how
the fallen leaves lay naturally on the ground.
The
last man's job is to always check the
rear, making sure that no one is following us, clean up our
trail, so that it
look like no one has been by there.
Every time that we stop we change which way we look. Every man depends
on the other; we can not
miss anything. We have to watch for enemy patrols, when they
come and so
on. We don't
care how long it take; the
main thing is that we don't get caught. It takes us two days
to reach the
base.
We found the fuel dump first.
There were about 15 or 20 large fuel tanks or bladders, each
about 20 by 20
feet, for gasoline. There
were also many
55 gal fuel drums stored there. We
know
that under International Law, we could be executed as spies
if we were
captured. But
we also know that if they
catch us, we would only live as long as they thought that
they could make us
tell something.
We got
a pill sewn into the corner of our
shirt collar to take care of that. We can just bite down on
it through the
shirt and we done. There is no way that we can do
the job unless we are
dressed like them, we are right in there with them.
When
we get there it is about two o'clock
in the afternoon. It
is early, but it
has been a ruff walk and we are all tired.
So now we take a break and just stop there and check
each other out. We
find a place about 200 meters away from the gas tanks.
You
must understand that before we start
our mission inside the camp, we need to be fresh and rested.
If we are too
tired, we can make a careless mistake. We must have plenty
of energy and fresh
in our mind to take care of ourselves. If we do this right,
it will be an easy
mission, if one mistake, we are all lost.
We set
a watch, eat something, try to
sleep. We sit
back to back, to watch for
each other, we sleep that way.
We never
talk or take off our packs. Everyone has a roll of string in
their pocket. We
tie the string to each other and also run
some around our position, so that we signal each other by
pulling on the
string, and if any stranger come to us, we know before he
find us.
We
make no sound of any kind.
We got a little piece of paper that we write
on about what we going to do next. Any
communication have to be silent. We wait
for everything to settle down over night; we sit there from
about 1230 until
about 6 O'clock in the morning.
For
the next four days we do our job to
find out everything we can about this supply dump and base. At first we stick
close together, each
watching in a different direction, we are slowly moving from
spot to spot. We
have to see how every-thing is laid out. You know, before we
really go in there
we must first learn how the communist do in there, and how
they work, so that
we know how to act just like them.
The
communist leave the big trees, but they
have cut down all the small trees and bushes under the
triple canopy. This is
in-order for it to be clear to move and store supplies
easily. So we
can see all around us. but the branches
of the tall trees are so interwoven that nothing can be seen
from the air, There
are trails that they walk from the tank
to tank, back and forth between the truck park and the other
supply stores.
We
see the men working there and sometimes
they see us, but they all got a job to do and are busy doing
their work. Since
we look just like them, they don't pay us any attention. That way we move
all around the camp. When
they see us, we might wave or smile and
then just go on. We
never act like we
try to hide, only just like we belong there.
We make them think that we are just another one of
their patrols or
guard groups. You see, we are so far away from any Saigon
government forces
that the communist soldiers there never think that any of
their enemy could be
nearby.
To
keep a record of what we see we had been
given a 35 mm camera and four or five extra rolls of film. Exposed film is
locked in a special tough
plastic carrying case.
In the daylight
we take a lots of pictures and write down notes about
everything that we find.
Even things maybe we don't are important.
We are
not exactly alone, our Leader is on
station some where over us.
Every move
that we make, what we find, every little thing we check out,
we report to our
leader in the sky. He
is flying in a
L-19 (Bird-Dog) airplane, just far enough away not to be
seen or heard. Our
leader is a Special Forces captain. Since he has
advanced through the ranks from
the same as us, he usually understands exactly what we say.
Our leaders become
officers because they are smart and brave and not because of
family
connections. Our
captain had passed some
real tests for his promotions. He
has a VNAF pilot trained to work with Special Forces. When we make
contact with our leader by
radio, we hold the radio mike down inside our shirt so no
sound can be heard
outside. We
listen by ear-piece. We
report to him what we see and where we are
at that time. Then
he tell us what he
wants pictures of. We
must act exactly
like the communist soldier do.
That
base has about a thousand men.
We see
what of supplies they store there and mark in our notes
exactly were they. There
are also sleeping quarters and the
places that they cook and eat.
One
surprise we see, they have the biggest VC flag that I ever
saw, not even the
Presidential Palace in Saigon got a South Vietnam flag that
big. It was on a
pole in the most open place that we see in there, although
it still can not be
seen from above.
We see
the men there do maintenance on
trucks, move supplies, load trucks going south, unload
trucks from the north,
just like one of our transportation bases, only nothing can
be seen from the
air.
We do
this for four and a half to five
days. Everytime we move and what we see, report all of this
to our group
leader.
Our
leader must stay on staion up there
all day long,
except
when he have to pull
off to go back to refuel. Then another airplane takes his
place while he gone.
After five days, our leader communicate the results to the
commander at our
headquarters. We
normally are set up to
stay out for nine days.
We tell our
leader that we think that we found out everything, all the
information, we have
a couple of days left, but we need that to get away to safe
PZ.
Our
leader in the air said, "We need
to get that place down."
That means
that they want us to destroy that place.
We say OK, but how?
We just go in
there as a recon team and we don't carry any explosive
equipment. The captain
say that they going to supply us by air drop.
This means we have to move back away from the camp to
someplace that the
enemy can not see the drop.
We wonder
why don't they just call in a air
strike, and talk this among our-selves. We don't understand,
"They exactly
know where everything is; why don't they send out some of
our F-5s or American
F-4s with bombs and napalm?"
That's
a big question on our minds.
It
sounds like our `Leader' is going to
make our `smooth' job a `ruff' one, doesn't it?. We must understand
that our Commanders know
other things that we don't know.
The
leader told us to figure our how much
explosive we need and they supply us. We
got two days to get it set up.
He tell
us since it will take more time, that they will drop us some
more food and
water also. Our
leader say that they
talk it over at headquarters and along with the explosives
they are going to
send us some more personnel to help us.
Boy, we don't like this at all; too many people make
too much
noise.
Most
of the time what our officers think is
right. I never understand why they think like this now.
Sometimes good men just
seem to think differently after they get a staff job. Anyone of us know
now that it will go all
wrong for us; the plan not right. We
still got a little meat and rice, but you know after nine
days it's going to be
ruff and with only two days left we don't have time to go
out to a drop point,
pick up equipment and then work our way back inside to do
the job. Also,
too much risk. We are tired, wore out,
it's too easy to make a mistake when a man is like that. We
told our leader
that it look like everyone want to get out.
When he finally understand that, he say, "Ok, we pull
you out and
burn it down the next time."
He
tell us that we must leave the enemy
truck-park in a different direction than we go in. There is
something more that
he want us to check on the way out. He
gave us the direction to take and the coordinates for our
PZ. We must be
there exactly on time when they
come to pick us up. We have to be in and out before the
enemy can respond.
When
our communication is over, the day is
in deep twilight, the sun is in a thin line and you know
that in the woods it
will be completely dark in a few more seconds.
I look at the map and I see that the PZ is about
three squares away
(3km). I think,
" How we gonna move
there in two days?" When
you move
through that kind of country, you don't know what you find
on your way. If we
have a road it only depend on how fast you walk, but this is
jun gle with
NVA soldiers all around; we cannot
estimate how much trouble that we will find.
That
night we talk with each other (with
pencil and paper). We know we do not have much time, so we
decide to move as
much as we can. We
know that if we are
not at the PZ on time that we gonna be stuck a couple more
days. We have to
move in the direction that our leader gave us.
Our leaders never tell us what another team has seen. The secrecy is so
that they can compare
reports against one another as a check for accuracy. So, we thought
that we were leaving the
supply base behind and going into the jungle.
We move maybe 2/3rds of a square distance on our
track (600 m). It
is now about 1130 and totally dark and we
do not know when we are in relation to anything in the camp.
So we stop and
take a break. After
rigging our strings
and setting a watch, we set back to back the same as before. We try to sleep
and get some rest.
The next day
about 0530, the man on watch
heard some noise, maybe a 100 feet away.
He pull on the string to wake us all up, then we all
listen. There are
men moving around, talking right where we at. We are in a
thicket hidden at the
foot of a big tree. A
little later we
find out that the Communist camp Head Quarters is right
there.
Our
leaders know about this place but don't
tell us. They want it checked on our way out too. In the dark, we
got too close. Nobody see us
yet. We look at
each other and we know,
"Don't be afraid of it, if we die we die, but the main thing
is to get out
of there."
The job is
done now and we must look after
ourselves. We
began to move, we move as
normally as we can, maybe a 100 feet from where the noise
is, then one of our
team make the sign that he go ahead to check out where we
are. We agree.
We say you come back as soon as you
can.
So he
move away, ahead and we move back 100
yards toward where start from last night.
About 30 minutes later we heard gunfire.
We fear the worse, because you know in that camp
there is no reason for
gunfire unless they shoot at one of us. That means that
probably something our
man do didn't look right and they know that he their enemy.
So we forget
about what the danger is, we
have to move back to see what is going on.
We see the fire coming from a watching tower. They
shooting in the
direction away from us, so we believe it's to where our
friend go. I
wonder what has happened?
We had been walking around and by these
check-point watch towers for the last 5 1/2 days and no one
had noticed
us.
Well, it's
too late to hide now, and what we
have to do is shoot the bad guys in the tower in order to
protect our
friend. They
don't see us yet. We
kill the shooters in that tower and we run
toward where our man go.
We run almost
to him, when we run into another check point (tower) and
they fire at us and we
have to lay down and work back away.
Then we see our friend hauling-ass by that other
tower check point, and
they shoot him. Now they shoot at us too. Then another
friend of mine run up
there and he get shot. Four of us left now. I run up there,
firing at the tower
as I go. I move up to the second man that got hit and pull
him back. It ain't
doing no good; he already dead. The
others lay down. The
enemy hasn't
located us yet. When
I get back, I call
our leader and tell him the situation; I tell him that we
run into the enemy HQ
and two of our team get killed. He said.
"OK, we get you out. Make
it to the
pickup point as fast as
you can. We wait
for you." That
means that he wants
us to continue in the same direction past the HQ and watch
towers, the same
place our friends get killed.
In his
mind our job isn't done until we check it out.
We
talk it over and make a decision between
ourselves to split up because if they catch us together
there is a good chance
they get us all. Just
like if you are
hunting and you kick up four rabbits and they run different
ways. First you
must make a decision about which one to shoot at and maybe
by then they all get
away. That's the way we think.
So the
other three head out separately in a slightly different
track in the direction
that our leader told us to go.
Did
you follow the rest of the team?
I
start to to follow the rest of the tean,
then I think to myself, "We already lose two men in that
direction and the
enemy know we go that way; I don't think that it's good
idea." So I
move back to where we were the night
before. I just make it there when I hear a lot of commotion
from the direction
my friends go. Lots
of shouting, yelling
commands, and shooting. I never see my friends again.
It's
then that I know that I don't want to
try to go that way.
It's
not that our leader
wanted us killed; he just didn't understand how bad our
situation was.
I
begin to work back toward the place where
we were put in. I
stop to check in with
my leader with the radio. He say, "What happen down there? Where you at?" I say, "I can't
tell you right now, I'll
tell you later."
I'm pretty sure
now that my friends are gone and that maybe one of
our radios fall into
the enemy's hands. I
don't want to
reveal anything over the radio. I tell
him I will call him again in 30 minutes. It's only about 10
o'clock in the day
then.
I know
that I am going to get into trouble
because I don't follow orders, but I know that the orders
are wrong and I must
save my life and complete the mission the best way that I
can.
I move
back to our original drop point. I
have to go slow because I still don't know what is out there
and I have no one
to watch my back anymore. The enemy may looking for me.
I
don't call my leader in 30 minutes. I
keep quiet and keep moving.
About two
hours later I call him.
My leader
answer, he say, "Where the hell you at?
How are the "children?" No one else call in." (When he say,
"children," he mean
my other recon team members.)
I say,
"I don't know, they not with me."
My leader ask,"What is your location?" I say, " Wait,
I'll tell you later." I
can't get him to understand that it's not
safe to give information out the radio.
So I
turn the radio off and continue to
work my way toward the drop point. The
less we talk the better.
Finally I see
the leader's plane turn around and he go home.
I get
almost back to the drop point about
noon the next day. Then
I hear the
leader's plane returning.
I take out my
survival mirror and signal him with it. I identify myself
and ask him if he
understand. In
the Special Forces, we
had worked out answering signals that a airplane could give. By kicking the
rudder pedals that meant
"no", pushing the stick forward and back was "yes". A
banking turn to the
left was another thing, and so on.
Then I
call him again on the radio and tell
him that I am ready to be taken out. The
leader say, "God damnit! Where in the hell have you been? We been missing
you for a whole day now.
Why aren't you at the PZ that I told you to
go and where are the other `children'?"
I tell him, "I'm here now, but I have to be quiet and
I don't know
where the children at.
But I'm here and
ready to be pulled out, no more water or food." My leader said, "I
have to check it out
with the commander back at the base."
I said OK and then wait. I guess he talk back to our
base then.
After
awhile he said, "I have to go
back now, we return tomorrow at 10 o'clock to pull you out."
I tell him,
"OK, everything I'll tell you later." Then he leave. So I make myself a
`hide' place the best I
can to stay another night and wait.
The next day
10 o'clock come and go and I
wonder if maybe my leader is going to leave me here?
Finally
when my leader come back again he
say, "OK, we get you out in few more minutes. Where is your
location?" I
said, "Good morning Sir! How are you!.
I tell him the he knows the spot from yesterday when I use
the signal
mirror." I
still don't want to use
the radio to give my location away. My
leader then ask, "How tall are the trees where you at? I tell him that
most are 100 meters tall,
some 60 meters. The
leader said,
"We have to find a place that is a little more open in order
to pull you
out.
I ask him since he can see from
the air better, please find a good spot and direct me to it. He find one and
tell which way to go and I
work toward it. About that time I heard a screaming "whoosh"
going
over at tree top level and I know that they are almost here.
It was VNAF F-5s'
that we use for top cover.
Next, it was
the Slick over me at a high hover and dropped the cable for
me. I hook up
my carabiner from my vest
"D" ring at my shoulder, to the cable ring, and away I go.
Sometimes
when we get pulled out the
forrest like this we are being drug through a few tree tops.
Usually this only
happens when we have been discovered by the enemy. They start
shooting and the pilot doesn't
have time to pull us all the way up.
This time they
could have drug me through
thorns and it would have been alright.
When
get back to our base they meet me at
the heli-pad. Someone is there to take the camera and the
film; then they put
me in a closed truck and take me to the SF camp. They let me take a
shower and change to clean
uniform, but that's all.
I
don't get to eat or
anything.
They
take me to the conference room and
begin to ask questions about the mission and what went
wrong. Our commanders
anixous to learn all about what you found inside the
communist base and what
went wrong at the end?
I tell them, but
some of the things they don't like to hear.
They talk everything over with each other and then
they write me up for
two things. (One)
is that I didn't stay
with the others and (two), I didn't follow orders and go to
the PZ that my
leader ordered me to....
Then they put
me in jail for four days.
The
"Jail" in our camp is
converted CONEX shipping container. It get real hot during
the day. While I sit
there, I think, "This isn't fair, I work hard and do the
best that anyone
can. They got the information that they wanted and the other
men lose their
life for it." I
think about that
some more; then I think, "It's a lot better being here in
jail than being
back out there dead." I rest easy then; I had survived.
My
leaders and my officers in command are
very strict; we must always follow orders exactly. Most of the time,
our survival depends on
that. I don't want anyone to ever think that our commanders
would send us out
to get killed on purpose.
We are too
valuable to the government to throw away. It takes over two
years just to train
us. My officers and all the officers in command came up
through the Special
Forces just like me. They
all know
exactly what we know, they are tough and must always be
obeyed.
There
is always something that we don't
want to do, but we must do it anyway. If we think that we
can do what we want
to, nothing get done. Sometimes
they
make a mistake, but they can't help it.
They
also teach us in Special Forces
training that first you save your life, and then the
`mission' is the main
thing. This time I knew that they were wrong and I had no
way to explain that
to my leader, so I must disobey my orders to save my life
and to finish the
job. But I had
still disobeyed them and
they have to show some punishment. I
know and they know, that for me, it was worth it and after
all, the punishment
is really not very much. [1] So we must do the
best that we can.
After
Sat fiished telling me this story,
Sat is sitting there thinking, remembering.
"My
friend, this is only one story.
I been on operations most of the time from when I graduate
in 1971 until April
1975, and maybe you think that it didn't bother me. Well, I'll tell
you, I never got over being
scared. I know that you been scared before and that you
think that you know how
to handle it, but I'd give you the easiest mission that I
ever had and you'd
piss your pants. I
know that because the
first ten missions that I made, I pissed in mine. After that I
learned how to handle my fear,
but I never quit being scared."
If you
ever run into a Special Forces type
that says, "I ain't never been scared," stay away from him;
he's a
dead man on loan.
When
I was about 12 years old, I grow up
in a beautiful valley near Quin Nhon, in central Vietnam.
Our family is mama,
daddy and four children. I have a older sister and a younger
brother and
sister. When
the communists come to our
valley in the north, we have to leave and move south to
below Nha Trang, but my
daddy still up there getting our belongings together. My sister go back
up there with him to get
some more of her stuff and the communists catch her. They make her go
with them for supply
transport, like a pack animal.
We never
see her again. Later
we hear from some
old people that stayed behind[2],
that maybe airplanes bomb the VC on the trail and she die
somewhere in the
jungle. I
always remember my sister and
what the Communists do.
I never tell
anyone about this, not even my closest friend in the army,
not even my wife
after I marry, but I never forget my sister and when I am in
the Special Forces
I don't worry about getting even, I get ahead. I
know that nothing will
ever give me my sister back, but every time that I put
another communist down,
I think, "There is one more that will never bother someone's
daughter or
sister."
FINI
[1]he American Special Forces
commander may have handled a
mission result such as this a little differently, but
always remember, there
are differences between our cultures. While many
things may seem the same on
the surface, there are always underlying differences
that the `Westerner' will
never understand.