“General Giap, North Vietnam’s Defense Minister, reported that his soldiers have taken a fearful pounding in their head-on collision with U.S. troops. To cope with superior firepower, Giap stressed the need for better training and indoctrination. But most importantly, he called for a major change in tactics, emphasizing small-scale guerrilla operations to erode U.S. determination to fight. Hang on for a long war.”

—Newsweek, October 23, 1967

10

River Assault

October 18-23, 1967

This was no glorious crusade; the fratricide in Kien Hoa convinced me of that. Our efforts to win the war seemed futile and pointless. The excitement of combat was invigorating, but the thrill was followed by depression created by bungled opportunities, “friendly fire,” accidents, and most of all, losing friends. A void appeared where purpose should have been.

We prepared to launch another major operation. The tempo of activities increased, providing less time to restore our bodies and minds between missions. I wondered why were we increasing our operational pace at such a rate. That old feeling of wandering about in the dark in search of the truth returned to nag me.

Our newest venture carried us to Go Cong Province, near the Rung Sat Special Zone. Operational security had become a major concern for us, especially when operating near Highway 4. An organized band of informants had established observation posts to signal our movements to the Viet Cong as soon as our trucks left the compound. This time, instead of going toward Highway 4, we returned to the Mekong River wharf at My Tho. There we boarded landing craft of the Vietnamese Navy’s RAG. This time armed patrol boats escorted our ragged flotilla.

The RAG chugged down river toward the mouth of the wide, muddy Mekong River, the Cuu Long or Dragon’s Mouth. At the broad river mouth silt and sludge were expelled into the South China Sea. Tides here were so strong that the waters changed direction at high tides, refusing the stream’s deposits and forcing the river back inland.

Vibration, noise, and pungent diesel fumes spewing from tired engines of the World War II landing craft made it nearly impossible to sleep. The deck was so crowded that few could find enough space to stretch out, but that didn’t stop anyone from trying. The noxious, gray cloud that wrapped around the boats made breathing the fumes unavoidable. In time a trance-like state soothed the mind and made general discomfort seem like a bad dream. Semisleeping soldiers were strewn about randomly, making it impossible to walk. The ghostly boats appeared to be an apparition ferrying a cargo of the dead through an early morning mist. I wondered whether this really was a journey of lost souls.

The convoy plowed down the river all night, the warriors shivering from the cold night air and dampened from the water. At dawn the mystic flotilla arrived at the river’s mouth. We chugged from the muddy water into the waves of the South China Sea, flotsam to drift ashore. I imagined we might keep going until we sailed off the edge of the Earth. Instead the flotilla plodded ahead one kilometer, then swung in a large arc back toward land. The scene before us was not a white sandy beach; it was a tangled swampland where blacks, browns, and grays prevailed in a dark, foreboding panorama.

The landing craft formed an assault line and steamed for the beach. The timing of the river ride delivered us to this place at first light and high tide. Unfortunately a sandbar snarled our plan by stopping the entire formation 500 meters from shore. The landing craft reversed engines but were unable to back off the sandbar while fully loaded. High tide had already crested, so the sea had reached its highest level: We could not float off. Engines strained, puffing diesel smoke in torrents, but we were thoroughly grounded. Our only option was to step off into the dark water at a considerable distance from shore and walk inland. Having discharged their burdens, the boats could float away.

“Take off your rucksacks, " Bobby wisely advised the Americans. “Hold them in one hand and your rifle in the other. If you lose your balance, the rucksack will go to the bottom. If you’re wearing it you’ll be inverted with your feet above you. Also unsnap your chinstraps.”

That was sound advice, and we adhered to it without question. I noticed the Vietnamese soldiers were following our example.

Ramps went down in preparation for storming the beach. Captain Xuan demonstrated remarkable leadership and courage by being the first one off the boat. When he stepped off, he held his .45-caliber automatic pistol over his head. Slick was completely submerged into the muddy brine, with only his upraised pistol out of the water. When he surfaced his chin was barely above the water line, waves splashing in his face. It would have been comical, but the situation was far too serious for laughter—we were about to find ourselves in the same predicament.

We stepped off the ramp into the surf, one by one. After the initial shock, I discovered the footing on the bottom to be worse than it appeared from the surface. The ocean floor here was not hard sand, as I expected, but soft mud from the belching river. Goo sucked my boots deep down if I stood in one place. I was forced to keep walking, or I would be slowly sucked below the water’s surface. Everyone around me made the same discovery. Fortunately no one was shooting at us. One sniper on the beach could have annihilated an entire battalion, like the bobbing ducks in a shooting gallery.

The coastline was a bitch. There was no beach at all, but instead a swamp that extended to the edge of the water. Mangrove roots extending straight out into the ocean, pushing out large, exposed tentacles to trip us and entangle our feet. Miraculously, the entire battalion made it ashore without losing a single man. We exhausted raiders sprawled out on the roots of mangrove trees, completely sapped, and we lay there undefended for an hour before resuming military activities.

Five days evaporated as we trudged through the swamp and tangled with snipers—who were apparently local guerillas, because we found no evidence of main force units there. (Traditional units were too intelligent to live in this dismal environment.) I was not sure why we were searching here in the first place. This operation reminded me of our expedition into the Plain of Reeds when we knew the enemy was not there. Anyone who lived here would have to be very stupid or have a very nasty disposition.

On our last day in the desolate marsh, we trudged to an actual beach to prepare for our departure. The beach we found was beautiful, white, and sandy, with two exquisite French colonial homes facing the coast. The South China Sea appeared quite different from this vantage point: it was a beautiful blue, enticing, and clear. But from the sea itself, looking toward shore, the same water appeared moldy brown, ugly, and forbidding. Evidently the changed perspective made all the difference.

The Vietnamese searched the two colonial beach houses and uncovered Viet Cong documents and two antitank mines, but no one was home. A helicopter arrived to recover the documents and deliver new orders to Major Bouie. As the helicopter hovered near the house, the downdraft of the propellers sent red tiles sailing from the roof and slung them in our direction like frisbees. One soldier, casually watching the disturbance with his helmet lying at his feet, was hit in the forehead by one of the flying tiles, which rendered him unconscious. Blood flowed from an open gash along his hairline—another casualty of idiotic action. The same chopper that sent the tiles flying through the air evacuated him.

After the sailing-tile incident, we stretched out in the warm sun enjoying an unexpected respite on a utopian white beach. We stayed there most of the day, drying our clothing and ourselves, relishing the beauty of the South China Sea and just waiting for our ship to come in.

The landing craft appeared late in the afternoon, at low tide. The boats stopped a full kilometer from the beach this time, twice the distance from which we had waded to land. Now we reversed our earlier plodding through the muddy bottom to the landing craft. The warm sun had baked us all day, making warm waters feel like ice to our skin. The water was only armpit deep this time, but the walk was much longer. Upon reaching the boats, we were thoroughly soaked and exhausted. We faced a long river ride in open craft. Once again diesel fumes, noise, vibrations, crowded decks, and a cold night breeze were our shipmates. Shivering dried our wet clothing but did nothing to warm us. I could hear the chattering of teeth above the loud throb of diesel engines.

We arrived at the My Tho wharf at four a.m. To our universal dismay, no trucks waited to ferry us to Binh Duc; we were forced to walk back to the compound and arrived as the first light of the sun broke over the horizon. The walk after the long ordeal dejected us, but no one seemed to expect anything to go according to schedule. After all, this was a war—sort of.

Life’s a bitch—then you die.

—Anon.