CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHINA BEACH WAS A twenty-mile stretch of white sand northeast of Da Nang extending into the blue waters of the South China Sea, only ninety miles from the DMZ. It was an idyllic setting out of a scene from James Michener’s Hawaii, certainly from appearances not the site of a secret CIA operation and base for deadly sabotage and espionage overtures against communism. Located at the foot of the dark and bare Monkey Mountain, OP-34’s cover name was innocent sounding—Naval Advisory Detachment.

At this point in 1963, Americans were strictly forbidden north of the 17th Parallel. The detachment from Commander Dave Del Guidice’s SEAL Team One limited itself to training Viet guerrilla fighters hidden away in secret little camps along a ten-mile stretch of beach between the two commanding promontories of Monkey Mountain on the north and Marble Mountain to the south. Each camp housed forty or fifty men, volunteers from the South Vietnamese Navy. Some were being trained as swimmers and behind-the-lines operators, others as shooters. Their boats, disguised as fishermen junks and trawlers, were harbored at finger piers and floating dry docks at the base of Monkey Mountain.

I was surprised to find the SEAL uniform of the day consisted of shorts, tennis shoes, and suntans. Hair was of varying unkempt length. Some men grew beards. They resembled beach bums from southern California.

“They blend in,” Del Guidice said. He was here on a short visit to check on his men. “As far as the local Viet Cong know, we’re ragtag ‘advisors’ to the South Vietnam Navy and have no connection to spooks or special operators.”

SEALs had the beach all to themselves and were living the life of Riley. They didn’t bother the local VC, the VC didn’t bother them. They seldom found it necessary to go armed when they jogged the beach, swam, or gathered at little beach bars near Da Nang to talk, drink, and watch moonlight sparkling off breakers rolling in from the sea.

“The VC aren’t interested in harassing us,” Del Guidice further explained. “That way they know where we are and what we’re doing. We suspect the boats and men we’re losing originate at an NVA naval base at Quang Khe, about thirty miles north of the DMZ. It’s a staging base for small boats smuggling arms and infiltrators south. The real danger is that it is also a base for Swatow gunboats.”

The Swatow was China-built, based on the Soviet P-6 class torpedo boat. It was steel-hulled and bristling with guns as its main armament rather than torpedoes. Slow, with a maximum speed of about ten knots, it was still faster than the junks and trawlers used by OP-34.

Christ! We were sending out matchboxes to take on warships.

More than two years previously, Admiral Arleigh Burke had pushed for greater efforts from the Navy to prepare for river and restricted water operations, to include the development of shallow-water craft and coastal-patrol craft. Captain Joseph Drachnik, chief of the Naval Sector for MAAG-Vietnam (Military Advisory Assistance Group-Vietnam), devised a concept for a “Riverine Warfare Force” with river craft backed up by helicopters and armed support ships. The CNO rejected both proposals on the ground that “we are required to remain in an advisory role [that prevented] our development of a U.S. force for use in your area.”

If I hoped to change minds, I needed the personal experience of conditions along the South Vietnam coast to bolster my argument. There was only one way to acquire it. I informed Del Guidice I would accompany a boat inserting South Vietnamese saboteurs into North Vietnam. He frowned but said nothing.

* * *

The sun sank into the South China Sea, turning the ocean blood-red, as though in premonition of an uncertain future. I boarded a Viet junk at the floating docks to ride north with the crew to insert an espionage team of five Vietnamese north of the DMZ. The five huddled together in the open stern, muttering nervously among themselves and glancing anxiously about as the fishing junk departed and rode the outgoing tide from the bay.

I couldn’t blame the poor bastards for being jittery.

Full darkness descended. I wore unmarked dungarees and a black cone hat, as though a disguise made a difference if the VC captured a six-four round-eye. Sails sloughed in a moderate night breeze. We pretended to be a fishing boat as the crew navigated past shadows of other fishing boats off the point of the bay and headed north. The black mound of Monkey Mountain disappeared into the night.

I rode easy at the bow with the captain, who spoke some English but was such a taciturn individual that he uttered few words even in his own language other than to bark orders at his crew. I looked up at the stars, at the sliver of a moon already high, back toward the black-pajamaed “fishermen” shaking out nets and lines for the sake of appearance should we be stopped by enemy patrol boats once we crossed the invisible water line into North Vietnam.

What a hell of a way to make a living.

Still, tonight, this night, with the salt scent in my nostrils, the soft brush of ocean breezes in my face, the gentle billowing huff of sails, the buzz of the small outboard engine, the motion of the boat, and the sing-sing of a foreign language in my ears—I could imagine being no other place in the world. I was born to the sea, I belonged to the sea.

An uneasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach as the low black line of landfall unraveled off our port side. The captain navigated not by the stars or moon or even an ordinary compass. He followed the coast and depended on his fishermen’s masquerade to protect us. Not a good course of action.

We arrived off the enemy’s shore between midnight and dawn. The sea was black and calm. The sliver of moon disappeared, leaving stars reflected in the water. Land and sea seemed to merge.

Low brittle words full of tension were exchanged between crew and swimmers as our infiltrators cautiously checked radios, weapons, and other gear in their waterproof bags. The junk swung in toward shore and cut speed. The silhouettes of men, like little pieces of stirred night, slipped over the gunnels and with barely a splash vanished into the black of night and water.

I had questions: How had this particular site been selected? What about security? How many people knew about it, and about tonight? Could contacts ashore be trusted? What was the point in all these infiltrations if the operatives were betrayed and captured once they reached landfall?

It suddenly occurred to me why our boats were rarely sunk. Swatows weren’t going to mess with our boats. Sonsofbitches wanted us to keep transporting sacrificial lambs to the slaughter. The only way to stop the slaughter was to bring in armed, fast patrol boats with skilled navigators and operators.

“Wait!” I commanded when the captain ordered full sail for departure.

“No—No. We go now,” he insisted.

“We go pick up those men before it’s too late,” I snapped. “Do you understand?”

I couldn’t be sure he did. The other two crewmen stared into the darkness, waiting for further commands.

I latched on to the captain’s shirt front and jerked him up on his toes. “Those men are going to die. Do you understand? Go after them. Now!”

The junk lay only a short distance offshore. About now the swimmers should be emerging from water onto sand. Suddenly, a fusillade of rifle shots erupted from the beach. Screams and shouts and more shots. Muzzle flashes sparked, a grenade exploded,

The massacre ended as quickly as it began. Silence returned to the night. I glared in disbelief and horror. We had killed those five men as surely as if we had squeezed the triggers ourselves.

Our captain turned the junk south to return to China Beach. I stood alone on the fantail and watched North Vietnam vanish into darkness. We couldn’t keep sending brave men to their deaths like this. There was a better way—bring in fast American patrol boats and skilled special warfare operators.