5

A-TEAM ADVENTURES: WHACKING MR. CHARLES AND ALMOST GETTING WHACKED MYSELF

After about a month, the Battalion CO tagged me to take over as the S-2, staff intelligence officer. Dealing with the enemy, weather . and terrain rather than keeping track of beans and bullets was definitely a step upward. Our Battalion was one of several that had been given an area of operations that blocked the major avenues of approach for the NVA into Saigon after Tet.

Unlike most combat battalions, who were hopping around the country chasing the bad guys, we were in a static location. As a result, I had relatively little to do in my new assignment, as the enemy units in our AO stayed the same, as did the terrain. So I had time on my hands. I established contact with the local Defense Intelligence Operation Coordination Center (DIOCC), which was the local office of the Phoenix program. It was headed up by a young Second Lieutenant, John Kelleher who controlled, to some degree, a dozen-plus thugs he had inherited or recruited, most of whom were VC defectors. He was somewhat of a smart ass but quite sharp and aggressive. His mission was to track down and eliminate, in one way or another, the VC province infrastructure. In our province, his success was primarily achieved by his young thugs moving around in the various villages and hamlets till they saw some of their former comrades and put the grab on them. He had his own informant network, and when agent reports predicted a movement of a VC unit which was too large for him to handle, he contacted me. I went to my colonel and requested a company of infantry to ambush the route of the VC element. Sometimes we scored, sometimes we didn’t. In any event, we were one of the few straight leg infantry combat battalions that got kills based on agent reports, and I even got a letter of commendation from James Dameron, who was the Phoenix Province Chief for setting up the ambushes.

I started developing my own wire diagram of the province VC infrastructure, and as time passed I developed an insight into how we were slowly gutting the VC organization—whacking a couple in an ambush here, another in a raid there. Our battalion, along with the ARVN units in the province, were getting a few more every month. It was simply a matter of flooding the province with nightly ambushes—like over 1,100 a month—and sooner or later Mr. Charles would stumble into one and get blown away. We could see the results as we soon realized that various VC leaders were wearing two hats—responsible for more than one area of operations. Inexperienced VC were forced to move up the chain of command. We were hurting them and hurting them bad. No macho SpecOps personnel or fancy Intel moves. Just simple, plain old plodding grunt work.

I also enjoyed the intel bit, especially interrogations, as I got to look inside the heads of the enemy.

However, my enthusiasm for such endeavors nearly ended in disaster. On one sunny, bucolic afternoon my driver, blond, curly haired Spec. 4 Randy Goldman, was driving me and a young recently captured POW from the Brigade Intel shop back to my headquarters at the Bn. TOC, me in the back, the prisoner in the front next to Goldman. I was lolligagging around, enjoying the scenery and greenery as we slowed to make a left turn near a small village. As we did so, the VC bolted.

My reaction was so automatic that I have no recollection of whether I had a round in the chamber of my M-16. I do remember, though, that as soon as you could say, “Stop!” I was running after him, rapidly squeezing off individual shots . . . aiming low . . . no spray and pray shit. I saw him tear into a deserted hooch where I picked up a blood trail. I had popped the little shit. He had run out the other side of the hooch. I moved in, did a “spray and pray” inside to discourage any potential problem makers, and tracked the VC out into a pasture where the little shit had the misfortune of running into a patrol of local ARVN soldiers. I had a rather heated argument with them as to who this slicky boy belonged to, and I guess my uncompromising yelling won out that day, as I had no intention of being hung from the yardarm if I did not return with the prisoner.

Obviously the old angel/gremlin was up to his tricks again in this escapade. I had been purposely aiming low—don’t ask me to try and evaluate my decision making in this case—and one bullet had gone through the sole of his right foot as he raised it while running. I could say I planned it that way, but that would piss off my angel/gremlin.

BROWN RETURNS TO SPECIAL FORCES

But this was all about to end, as in late ‘68 dame fortune turned from a fickle whore into a loving mistress. I found out that an old but not by any means close acquaintance, John Paul Vann, was operating out of CORD Headquarters in Bien Hoa, a few clicks up the road from our TOC in the water plant.

Colonel Wendell Fertig, who had been a major leader of the guerrilla opposition to the Japs in the Philippines during World War II, and had continued to serve as a consultant to the DOD or CIA regarding the communist insurgency in the islands for several years, had introduced me to John Paul Vann. I had met Fertig, who lived in Golden, Colorado, a hop, skip and jump from Boulder. My small publishing firm, Panther Publications, was not only publishing a few somewhat baroque books on unconventional warfare, but was retailing a wide range of titles on the subject by other publishers.

After reading his memoirs I called Fertig, told him of my interest in the field, and that I would like to visit. After a couple of meetings he introduced me to John Paul Vann, a former Lt. Colonel in Vietnam, who had resigned his Army commission as a protest over the way the war was being conducted in 1964. In 1963, he went public regarding the true state of the conflict—that the South Vietnamese were getting their asses handed to them by the VC—which went against the Army establishment’s line of official bullshit. When I met him, he was working for defense contractor Martin Marietta and he was angling to get back to the action in Nam. Now he was Deputy for Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development for III Corps, and based out of Bien Hoa.

Though we had met only a couple of times, I later contacted John Paul Vann and he invited me to breakfast at his home in Bien Hoa. He picked me up at 0700 at my TOC. After pleasantries, I got right to it. “John, I’ve got to get out of this leg outfit and back into Special Forces.” I explained how I got kicked out of SF and my assumptions as to why it occurred. He sympathized with me and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” And, bless him, he did. Shortly thereafter, I got a copy of a letter he had sent to Colonel Arron who was commander of the 5th Special Forces Group in Nam. He tooted my horn saying something to the effect that I was one of the Army’s leading counter-insurgency experts, etc., etc. This was rather embarrassing, but no way was I going to throw a wrench in the works and disillusion the good Colonel Arron and jeopardize my chances for getting transferred back to Special Forces.

Shortly thereafter, I got a transfer to the 5th Group. Getting an in-country transfer like this was highly unusual, but who was I to complain or contradict John Paul Vann, who eventually held the civilian rank equivalent to a Major General. I saw him only one other time, when I arranged for him to attend a demonstration of exotic small arms at the nearby ARVN Infantry School in South Vietnam in the fall of 1968. Also in attendance were high-ranking ARVN officers, U.S. military personnel and representatives from the CIA. After the demo John Paul Vann spent an hour with us busting caps and left in his helicopter. I never saw him again.

Yet if John Paul Vann had been running that war, and if the dickhead McNamara, his whiz kids and the politicians had played with themselves instead of the lives of our military and our allies, we would have won the war. As it was, John Paul Vann gets most of the credit for playing a decisive role in defeating the North Vietnamese by calling in B-52 strikes on the NVA armored columns during their March 1972 Easter offensive. He was a brilliant tactician and strategist who might have won the war in Nam if he had not died in an ill-timed chopper crash.

I never did find out who the unlucky Infantry Captain was who thought he was going to Special Forces and instead ended up assigned to a leg outfit in the First Division.

My good fortune continued when out of the blue, a TV crew from CBS showed up at our TOC. I noticed a familiar face. It belonged to a cameraman who had been filming the abortive Haitian invasion attempt in 1966. We did the “Hi, howdy,” bit and he informed me, “Guess who jetted over here on the same flight?” “Ok, who? Papa Doc?” I responded. “No, Mitch Werbell, III, with all of his goodies. He’s bunked up at the Astor Hotel on Tu Do Street.”

Werbell was one of the most if not the most flamboyant snake oil salesman I’ve run across in my nefarious career. Mitch had an unparalleled gift of BS. He claimed his father was a Russian Cavalry Colonel in the Tsarist Army. Who knows? Over time, I learned to take everything he said with a grain of salt. If he said the sun was going to rise in the east in the morning, I would say, “Mitch, I’ll wait and see.” He often claimed he had been in the OSS in the Burma-China-India theatre during “WWII. I was suspicious of this until one weekend when I was visiting his semi-palatial farm and saw him and Lou Conien, a famous CIA operative who played a major role in the Diem assassination and then ran the DEA for several years, reminiscing about the big war as they looked at faded snap shots. Werbell and Conien were similar in the respect that with both of them one could never separate truth from fiction.

Only Werbell wasn’t selling snake oil, but something far more deadly— state of the art submachine guns, like the Ingrahm M-10 and M-11 as well as the then state-of-the-art Sionics suppressor or silencer to the U.S. military or at least trying to. I had first crossed paths briefly with Werbell in Miami in ‘66 when we were both dicking around during the attempt to overthrow Papa Doc Duvalier, I then started running into him when I was the OIC of the XVIII Airborne Corps AMC in the first half of “68 when he was attempting to peddle his wares to the Army stateside at the various Army marksmanship centers, such as Ft. Bragg and Ft. Benning.

As soon as I could bamboozle a jeep from my CO, I headed to Saigon and the Astor hotel. “Got some hot intel I got to pass on to the Intelligence Center in Saigon. Hush, hush you know.”

Well, anyhow, I got the jeep and linked up with Werbell, who took me and my driver out to a nearby French restaurant where I was introduced for the first time to French baguettes which were backed up by some sort of mystery meat which was passed off as steak. Plus, real, honest scotch which I hadn’t touched in four months.

Werbell, in turn introduced me to Connie Ito who was one of the Colt M-16 reps in Nam and Peyton McGruder, who was, though a civilian, a work unto himself. Peyton, a fine human being, had played a major role in engineering the B-26 bomber that became famous in WWII and was used in a number of unconventional conflicts for the next 20 some years, including the Bay of Pigs and S.E. Asia. Peyton had a villa on the outskirts of Saigon, which he made available to me when I was passing through.

Werbell lent me one of his suppressors for my M-16. During the first firefight I got into the new toy ended up rocketing down a few meters toward the enemy. I hadn’t screwed it on tight enough

BROWN GETS HIS A-TEAM . . . IN THE GARBAGE PIT OF III CORPS

I reported into 5th Special Forces Group, headquartered in Nha Trang, where I was assigned to Company A, headquartered in Bien Hoa, who in turn, assigned me to a B-Team located in Hon Quan, near An Loc. When I arrived, Lt. Colonel Michael Lanter, tall, lean, black-haired and pleasant, decided after looking at my personnel file to make me the B-Team S-i or personnel officer. I suppose that since I had a master’s degree he assumed that I was reasonably literate and could handle all the Team’s bullshit paperwork.

I bit my tongue for a couple of weeks, and in a letter to John Paul Vann, dated 18 February1969, wrote, “Dear John: My long sought after transfer to Special Forces finally has happened. However, if it is a blessing it cer-tainly is well disguised. I reported to the SFOB in Nha Trang on 24 January. I asked for IV Corps but was told SF was at full strength and therefore I was assigned to Company A, and later to Detachment B-33. I was promised an A-Team in about 4–6 weeks when in Bien Hoa but apparently my CO here has different ideas. If I don’t get some type of operational slot in the relatively near future, I should pick up my ball and bat, terminate with SF and ask for a “leg” outfit.

I continued: “It is both disgusting and frustrating to be placed continually in staff positions because of my educational background, writing and publishing experience. Furthermore, the war effort receives damn little benefit from my extensive (and expensive) training in unconventional warfare and counter-insurgency . . . “

Shortly after writing John Paul Vann, I confronted my boss, Colonel Lanter. “Colonel, with all due respect, I came up here to fight, not fill out forms. If I can’t get an A-Team and get some action then I might as well devolunteer from SF and go back to a leg outfit where I at least will get some trigger time.” He smiled and said, “We’ll, see.” Well, we saw all right. Shortly thereafter, he sent me out to A-334, commonly known throughout the B-Team as the “Garbage Pit of III Corps.” The previous team had a lot of problems and the team leader and several of the team were relieved and sent to some purgatory somewhere. I took over with a hand-picked crew of some of the most competent SF NCO’s around. And God knows I needed them, as our basic mission was to interdict the NVA’s LOC, or Lines of Communication, from their supply depots in Cambodia into South Vietnam.

Not only was Tong Le Chon a shithole, it was nonfunctional. There were gaps in the barbed wire that you could parade a marching band through. No trip flares, No claymores implanted. No minefields.

My Team Sergeant, Master Sergeant Jim Lyons, reminisced about his experiences at Tong Le Chon: “Upon my arrival at TLC, I set out to repair the defenses of the camp and the general police of the camp, i.e., putting in new wire barriers and claymores, picking up garbage lying around the inner and outer perimeter. Upon Captain Brown’s arrival, he immediately took charge of the situation, developing a crash program to upgrade the camp defensive positions. This included building new fighting positions, repairing existing bunkers, installing additional tons of wire and thousands of claymores and trip flares. At the time of his arrival we had no outer berm per se—except tin and some dirt that was pushed in front of it. We instituted a program whereby all the fighting positions were improved—in some cases cemented, overhead cover was installed, and the entire berm was revamped. The policing of the entire camp was improved at least one hundred percent.”

Lyons noted in an interview on 24 April 1999 that, “Detachment A-334 (Tong Le Chon) had been there for a long, long time but it had never been built into a fighting base. It was just wire strung around a bunch of sandbagged bunkers.”

So, confronted with this mess, I decided to lie. Now, I had promised myself that there was no way I was going to bullshit anybody when I got to Nam. I’d been around the rodeo arena a few times and knew there was no way that I was going to make the Army a career. So forget kissing up to and lying to some limp-dicked superior officer. But lie I did. The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) at that time called for half of my battalion of Civilian Irregular Defense Force (CIDG) to be out on operations at all times. Well, we can’t do that when I don’t have a camp that I can fight. So in went the phony operations reports, while my CIDG and my team constructed a reasonably impregnable fortress. As Lyons points out, we put in the requisite barriers of barbed wire, mines, claymores, flares, etc.

WHEN BROWN WAS KING AND MINISTER OF . . .

As an A-Team commander I found myself in what was to be, looking back on it, the most challenging, frustrating, yet rewarding period of not only my bizarre Army career but also my life. I was a “King,” albeit of a rather small kingdom. I was also the de facto Minister of Defense, Minister of Justice, Minister of the Treasury and Minister of Health, Education and Welfare. I was superintendent of roads and low-income housing—very low income housing. I mediated personal problems such as how to handle the marriage of a Buddhist nurse and a Catholic. I was ultimately responsible for the lives and safety of over 576 mercenaries, Vietnamese, Cambodians and tribesmen along with several hundred dependents.

Every day presented a new set of challenges, with Mr. Charles doing his best to contribute to our uncertainty. I knew when I took over the camp that I should keep a diary, even though it was forbidden. One got around such a restriction if one had a mind to by titling such a work a “Memo for Record” or a “Log.” But what with the responsibilities of my position, I simply just did not have the necessary self-discipline to do what I should have done. The only decent record of specifics are parts of letters that I sent to my then close friend, attorney and rodeo buddy, Robert Bruce Miller, who, for whatever reason, kept them.

One, dated 17 February 1969, reads as follows: “Yep, I’ve finally scored. I’ve got an A-Team about seven clicks from the Cambodian border. Most of the elephants, tigers and other wild life have left the area or have been eaten and been replaced by a much more dangerous animal whose initials are ‘NVA.’ I’ve got one of the most forlorn asshole camps of the world—but I’m almost the ‘king’ though the official policy is that I and my team are supposed to advise and assist rather than command. I’ve got 374 motley Cambodians (who are waiting for the right time to desert and get assistance in the overthrow of the present Cambodian government), Montagnards who are ready and willing to slit any Vietnamese throat,

North or South, and some shifty Vietnamese thugs who would stick it to anybody for a Piastre.

“Haven’t had a mortar attack in two days. Since we blew the back off the head of a VC mortar section leader three days ago. I didn’t, but one of my 15-year-old Montagnard mercenaries did the job. Now the only thing that keeps me awake sometimes is our firing H&I fire with the 4.2’s and 81mm mortars.”

OTHER THAN THAT, TODAY IS QUIET

On 7 April 1969, I wrote; “A busy day today. Old Charles tried to liven things up by firing a rocket into our camp but his aim was off by about 600 meters. Then, about 2100 hrs, a couple of clumsy NVA, who were trying to penetrate our defensive wire set off a trip flare. All our mercenaries on the south wall opened up with mortars, .30 and .50 caliber machine guns and their M-16’s. This is the third ground probe in three days so we’re expecting to get hit in the near future. Our concern was heightened after examining the documents on one of the KIA we got during one probe which stated he was a member of a Recon unit of the 7th NVA Division that recently got its ass kicked to our south. We speculate that they may hit us to regain some face.”

While on radio watch on 23 April 1969, I wrote: “Interesting job. A typical day was yesterday. At 0500, Charley dropped in 35–40 rounds of 82mm (mortar rounds) on our runway, killing two ARVN Rangers and wounding three as well as destroying the chopper refueling point. At 0700, laid on detail to police up debris so planes could land. At 1000 almost got into fight with three Rangers who got pissed when I wouldn’t sell them any beer. Chased them out of the compound. At 1200 one of four Montagnard children set off a claymore wounding one Air Cav trooper. They were thrown in jail for a couple of hours and everyone yuk yuked—except the Cav man who has a hole in his arm—course, he may be yuk, yuking cause he got medivaced to the rear. At 1400 went over with 1st Sgt (Lyons) and chewed out the 4.2 mortar crew cause they weren’t working—much yelling and screaming. Made more enemies. Found out that the VC mortar crew that disturbed my sleep got dumped on. An Air Cav unit found their position—bloody bandages, blood trails and a blown up 82mm mortar. Called in air strikes and arty in support of field element yesterday afternoon and eve. This morn, went up in Cav chopper for visual recon. We got called in on a downed chopper shot down by ground fire and burned. Rescue chopper got out one seriously wounded. Back to our base to refuel— landed—Ranger 3/4 truck nearby —backed up to get out of our way— over two Rangers who were sleeping behind truck—one had broken pelvis so had to get medivaced. Other than that, today is quiet.”

OLD CHARLIE GOT ME

On 20 May 1969, I wrote: “Old Charlie messed me over on the 15th. We took 27 rounds of 107mm rockets within our perimeter . . . was running back from artillery position and got hit 20 meters away . . . 16 holes in me . . . mostly small . . . face pretty screwed up for a while . . . one fragment went through my right cheek and out my right lip . . .”

25 June 1969: “Got some good action last week. Had a combined op-eration—100 of my little people and a troop of the iith Armored Car. Went around shooting up NVA bunker complexes in the Michelin rubber plantations. Sighted five gooks one afternoon and got two on our way back. Charles ambushed us. The Armored Cav. Troop commander, a Captain, in whose APC I was riding took a .50 cal round which blew half of his wrist away. Missed me by less than a foot. The Buddha I wear looks out for me. We shot our way out. Took one U.S. KIA, three WIA and five CIDG WIA. Two nights latter Charles lobbed RPG rounds into our perimeter we had set up with the Cav. Troop. Two of my CIDG were wounded by friendly fire from our perimeter. I had sent them out on ambush but instead of moving several hundred meters away from the perimeter as ordered, they only went out about 50 meters and, playing the part of laggards as they were prone to do when not supervised, sacked out. And being where they weren’t supposed to be, got shot up. I was glad to get back to Tong Le Chon, shit hole that it is, where we just get mortared occasionally . . . though I’m a bit more cautious about standing up on top of a bunker and watching the mortar rounds explode. Yea, I’m out of the hospital and have been since about 24 May. Got bored and became so obnoxious the head nurse discharged me five days early.”

TROUBLE IN THE CAMP

As time passed, I found myself more and more at odds with my counterpart, a Captain Long, who commanded the resident Vietnamese Special Forces detachment. Hypothetically, I and my A-team were in the camp to advise and assist the Vietnamese. In fact, in my camp and most A-team camps that was not the case. We ran things as we controlled the funding of the camps’ operations as well as the salaries for all the CIDG mercenaries. We decided when and where to conduct combat operations, as well as, for the most part, camp policies.

Early on, it became apparent that Captain Long was less than enthusiastic about scheduling our combat patrols in areas where we might run into the enemy. Sergeant Lyons also was not impressed with Captain Long. He remembers, “I had noticed for a month prior to Captain Brown’s arrival that Captain Long was a very hard-to-understand, hard-to-get-along-with individual. While he was with you, he was always patting you on the back and telling you what a great job you were doing, and how great it was that you were fighting alongside the Vietnamese. Upon departing from your company, however, Captain Long would revert to his old individualism and would ignore our advice and suggestions. . . . We never could seem to get them (LLDB) to work or conduct aggressive combat operations . . . When an operation was planned which seemed to promise a hairy situation, Captain Long always seemed to have a reason to go to Bien Hoa or An Loc. Captain Long only ran two combat operations in the six months I was in Tong Le Chon, and he was ordered by his superiors to run both of these operations.

“There was also a strange feeling among the detachment members in TLC about Captain Long. It seems that every time he left the camp during the months of May and June, we would receive rockets, mortars, or a probe of our perimeter. My Intel sergeant, Fletcher Blocksum, would make an intelligence assessment as to where our efforts would most likely produce results. Captain Long would always suggest an area least likely to encounter the enemy.”

After being in my camp for a couple of weeks, I developed a rapport with the commander of the Cambodian company who were of the Khmer Serei political persuasion, and who after Lon Nol took over the Cambodian government in 1970, were sent along with all the other SF Cambodian companies to bolster the Lon Nol regime. The Cambos were far superior to my other two companies of Vietnamese and Montagnards. The Montagnards were of the sub-tribe, the Stang, and simply were not as aggressive as other Yard tribes like the Bru or the Rhade.

The Cambo company commander, once he felt he could trust me, told me what was really going on in camp, e.g. the corruption. Captain Long had come to see the camp as his own personal money machine. For instance, he had his own PX, through which he sold fresh food to the CIDG and their dependents. We had about 576 troops and another 400 or so dependents that lived within the wire of the camp. Tong Le Chon was somewhat unique in that we were the only one of the 50-some A-Team camps that did not have a village nearby where fresh food and other necessities could be purchased and the troops’ dependents could live. Since the road from Hon Quan, where our B-Team was located and which was the nearest village, was unsecured, all supplies and fresh food for the i,000-plus inhabitants had to be airlifted in. I found out, from my Cambo Captain, that Captain Long was essentially extorting money from the CIDG by charging exorbitant amounts for the necessities of life like $50 for a live chicken—when the average monthly salary was only $50! I put a stop to that shit by not allowing him to bring goods for his PX into camp on U.S. aircraft, and thus gained an undying enmity from Captain Long.

Sergeant Lyons confirmed the treachery: “As far as graft and corruption go, in our camp Captain Brown made an earnest attempt to get to the bottom of the problems. This was probably one of the factors which led to the deterioration of rapport. Captain Long was opposed to Captain Brown’s efforts as Captain Long was making several thousand dollars a month through profiteering.

“Captain Long ran a PX at Tong Le Chon. He would bring fresh food, black market cigarettes and whiskey on U.S. planes and would sell it at outrageous prices to the CIDG. I remember one instance when his ‘co-op’ sold a small cucumber for 80 piasters. A live chicken would cost as much as 1,400 piasters. His younger brother, who was on the CIDG payroll, ran the PX. This character commuted to Bien Hoa almost weekly to get goods. . . . During the six-month period I was there, Captain Long’s brother was never out of camp on any type of operations—even local security.”

Captain Long also fostered dissent in TLC by showing favoritism to the Vietnamese over the Cambodians or Montagnards. An example of this and how it adversely affected our combat effectiveness, Sergeant Lyons recounts:

During the month of April, we had a recruiting program going. Captain Long sent his Reconnaissance Platoon Leader to An Loc to recruit individuals for the CIDG. He recruited about 170 people in the course of a week. Long took trained personnel from the two CIDG reconnaissance platoons and put Vietnamese recruits in place of the Cambodians, which caused dissent. (CIDG assigned to the recon platoons received slightly higher pay than regular CIDG personnel.) These people went on operations and aggravated an already dangerous situation. Beyond that the recruits (Vietnamese) were inept, lazy and poorly trained.

DENS OF THIEVES

Speaking of food, at some point in time I became suspicious (I don’t remember why) that we were somehow being cheated on the amount of fresh food we were actually receiving from our food supplier, a devious Chinese who had the contract to supply all the A-Teams in the area. I asked the B-Team for a scale to weigh the food. Not surprisingly the response was, “No funds available for unauthorized purchase.” So, I went out and bought one on the local economy. The next time the fresh food was flown in on the twin-engine Caribou, I and my ever faithful Team Sergeant, Lyons, were on hand with our scale. We started weighing each category of food. And suspicions were confirmed. Instead of 110 kilos of watercress, we got 100 kilos. The 150 kilo pig, 135 kilos, etc., etc. The son of a bitch Chinese food supplier was overcharging us 10%. I was infuriated. Shortly after the food arrived, by pure chance, Lt. Colonel Robert Campbell, the C Team commander stationed at Bien Hoa, choppered in on an unannounced inspection tour. I blew it. I had planned on sending the scale around to all the other A-Teams in our B-Team area and have them weigh fresh food shipments and then have an irrefutable case. But I was so pissed that I had to blow off steam to the good Colonel. He listened politely, as I recollected, promised nothing and departed. However, within an hour an Air Force major, who was in charge of getting food and supplies to the camp, flew in. “Look, Captain Brown,” he said, “You’re mistaken. Maybe your scale is wrong. We weigh every shipment that leaves the airport to see that the manifested weight is correct.” “Bullshit,” I muttered, “Mr. Hon is screwing us with the U.S. government and your help.” He turned red and stomped off to his chopper. Perhaps I was being unfair to him, as he may well have thought he was telling me the truth.

As I was being transferred from my camp, I had an experience that provided an insight about how such errors could occur without the good Major being aware.

From the time I assumed command of A-334 in February, an assistant of Mr. Hon, who had been a former camp interpreter who went by the nickname of “Cassidy,” was always trying to get me involved in some sort of illegal activity which would make him big bucks. Early on, I told him, “Cassidy, do not bring us anymore free 10 kilos of meat and 10 kilos of French bread.” I did not want my team to be indebted to the Chinese food supplier.

“Not to worry, Dai Uy.” The third time it occurred, I told him, “We cannot accept this, Cassidy. Next time you bring that out here, I’m going to feed it to the pigs.” Once you get on the take with this kind of trash, you’ll pay for it eventually. Then it was, “Dai Uy Brown, you get birth control pills from States, we make big money from bar girls.” “NO.” Then later, “We go PX, you buy cameras, scotch, we sell on black market.” “NO.” And so it continued, one scheme after another. And he was always trying to entice me to party in Saigon, all expenses paid. And it was “NO” again.

Then I got my order to report to my next assignment. Cassidy, ever optimistic and not knowing I was being transferred, once again approached me. “Mr. Hon want you to come to Saigon for dinner. Number one Chinese restaurant. He pay all. You be his guest,” He was unexpectedly overjoyed when I said, “Tell Mr. Hon that I would be highly honored.” Well, old Cassidy about wet his pants. After months of trying, the persistent con man thought he had finally suckered me in.

The dinner was delightful, the scotch acceptable, the company charming. Slicky boy Cassidy and the insidious Mr. Hon were as happy as cats in a bird’s nest. This was all well and good but Hon was also hosting three young Air Force enlisted men—with free food, booze and bimbos and presents of gold Buddha’s. And it just so happened that these young troopers were in charge of weighing, loading and manifesting the fresh food and supplies flown out to the camps, including TLC. I remember thinking, “My, what a generous chap Mr. Hon was.”

It was now clear how the wily Mr. Hon got phony manifests of the food sent to the A-Teams. He compromised the young enlisted men loading the aircraft.

As I finished the meal I shook hands with Cassidy and then Mr. Hon, saying, “It was so good of you to throw me a going away party. Wish me luck as I’m off to my new assignment at SF Headquarters in Nha Trang tomorrow.” Doing an about face and striding off, I turned and smiled to see the two crooks start to go into terminal shock. A victory. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Heh, heh, heh.

SURVIVING THE PSYCHO B-TEAM COMMANDER

Sometime in April 1969, I led a company of my CIDG on an operation outside of our normal Area of Operations (AO). Shortly after, we broke out of the bush into the Michelin rubber plantation. The plantation’s hamlets had long been deserted. The rows of rubber trees had a foreboding look as there was no movement from humans or animals. After having moved out into the rows of trees for 50 or so yards, we ran across the tracks of half a dozen or so VC, a Ho Chi Minh sandal and a pole that was used to carry bunches of bananas. We had obviously spooked a small VC infrastructure unit who had heard us tromping into the plantation.

There was no way that you could move a hundred or so men silently through the bush, and the bad guys bolted. It was getting towards dark and I decided to set a defensive perimeter for the night. Concurrently, I sent out a couple of patrols to check out the area. Within the hour, one of the patrols returned with a young Vietnamese male in his late teens. Since there was no legitimate reason for him to be in the deserted area, we assumed he was a VC and advised our B-Team, who sent a chopper out to pick him up and take him back to B-Team headquarters for interrogation. The next morning they choppered him into our perimeter, as he had agreed to lead us to his base camp a few clicks away.

A couple of Montagnards on each side of him, they prodded him along with their M-16’s, hoping against hope that they would have an excuse to blow him away. The Yards hated the VC, the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese equally, as the Vietnamese in general considered the tribesmen savages, calling the Yards “Moi,” which had the same meaning as “nigger” did in our country. They were oppressed and exploited on a long-time continuing basis. And tragically, they still are today by the communist government.

The young VC lead us into his camp which had obviously just been abandoned, as a couple of cooking fires were blazing; the rice was still warm. Once again, our numbers had announced our arrival, giving what we estimated to be eight to ten bad guys an opportunity to flee. We saw no point in trying to track the VC, and made our way back to Tong Le Chon, where we secured the prisoner behind barbed wire.

The following morning, our B-Team commander, Lt. Colonel George R. Murray and his B-Team counterpart, a Vietnamese by the name of Major Long (no relationship to my camp counterpart), choppered into TLC. I hopped in a jeep and drove down to meet them at the chopper pad. I walked up to Murray and saluted. Murray opened the conversation without pleasantries, growling, “Brown, how many VC have you killed this month?” I knew Murray was a glory hound, determined to make his mark and reputation no matter what it cost or whom it killed. I had already had several run-ins with him from the time he took over command from Lt. Colonel Lanter, who was a decent human being and a competent SF commander.

On one occasion, Murray had approached me, suggesting, “Brown, take a couple of your team and a dozen CIDG, put on VC black pajamas, grab some AK’s and go interdict the 5th NVA Division’s main supply line.” I replied, “I don’t think so, and Murray did an about face, grumbled and stalked off. True, I disobeyed a direct order. But there was no way this sorry excuse for an officer was going to bring me up on charges since at the time no American forces were allowed within five clicks of the Cambodian border and U.S. aircraft were not allowed within two clicks. He wanted us to emulate the highly effective SOG operators who ran recon operations into Cambodia and Laos, but without any air cover, extraction assets or artillery support. He was only interested in body counts and didn’t give a shit if we were the ones providing the dead bodies.

Another time, I had a company of CIDG who were making a helicopter assault into what our intelligence had reported was likely a hot LZ. The SOP for such an operation called for half the helicopters to disembark their troops who would immediately secure half the perimeter. The remaining troops would land and secure the other half of the perimeter. Then, once again according to SOP, we would immediately high tail it into the jungle to reduce the possibility of being attacked on the Landing Zone. But no! Murray instructs us to remain in position so he can land his chopper and come over and congratulate us for a successful insertion. Everyone thought he was insane. Fortunately, it was not a hot LZ and nobody got killed. No thanks to our fearless leader.

On another occasion, Murray was with one of our sister A-Teams in a firefight, picked up a burning smoke grenade and hurled it on top of a bunker for reasons unknown, and later had the audacity to put himself in for a Purple Heart. The commander of the C Team, LTC Campbell rejected his award and wrote a scathing memo that went out to all SF personnel condemning such gross self-promotion. Campbell even sent Murray a barbeque mitt.

Murray, we found out, had never been in Special Forces and was not Special Forces qualified. He was one of hundreds of officers who had been placed in a position that he was unprepared for but would allow him to get his six months of “command time,” which was imperative to have if an officer had any hopes of promotion.

AN INVITATION TO COLD BLOODED MURDER

Now as far as the young VC prisoner we had taken, after I told Murray we hadn’t whacked anybody during the month, he raised his bushy black eyebrows and offhandedly mentioned, “Well, Brown, if the prisoner is killed trying to escape tonight, you’ll get a body count.” Major Long, his Vietnamese counterpart, simply smiled. I was stunned! This was a blatant invitation to commit murder. The prisoner was no threat to the camp. I was at a loss for words. I should have told him that he could go fuck himself. But for reasons unknown I didn’t, and have regretted it ever since. Instead, I said, “Look, I’ve had a fair amount of experience interrogating VC. . .let me see what I can get out of him.” Murray and Long stalked off, obviously not satisfied with my response, and they choppered back to the B-Team.

Sergeant Lyons received an almost identical proposition. As he recounts it: “Major Long and Lieutenant Colonel Murray arrived at Tong Le Chon after the POW was captured. I met Lieutenant ColonelMurray at the airstrip. Lieutenant ColonelMurray came up to me in the jeep and I got out. He took me aside and asked, ‘How is your body count coming this month?’ I told him we hadn’t gotten anyone and he said, ‘Well, you have one POW out there. If he was to try to get away tonight, and you people were to shoot him, you would get a body count for it.’ I immediately thought Lieutenant ColonelMurray was joking, and I said to him, ‘Sir, you must be kidding.’ He replied, ‘No, if the man should try to escape and you were to kill him you would get credit for a body count.’ I said, ‘Sir, I don’t want any part of what you’re talking about. If you want anything from me, I will be up at the team house.’ And I got in my jeep and left.”

The next morning I rousted out the Vietnamese Special Forces intell sergeant, got the prisoner, my intell sergeant, Sfc Fletcher Blocksum, a raw-boned redhead WWII and Korean vet from Texas, and my interpreter and went down into the CONEX which served as our communications center. I conducted the questioning about his family. After a few innocuous queries, I got to the meat of what I was after. This youngster claimed he had been impressed into service by the VC, which was not all that unusual. I was stern in my questioning but not threatening. For a while, that is.

“Nguyen,” I asked, “what did you do with the VC unit you were with?” “Oh, Duy Uy, I provide security for my team when they go to village to propagandize, collect taxes and rice.” A few more unimportant questions, like what the food was like, etc. Then I casually asked, “Did you ever carry a gun?” “No, no,” he shook his head vigorously. “Never carry gun.”After more insignificant questions, I let out the clincher. “Well, Nguyen, when you were providing security for your unit, how did you warn of the approach of the Americans or South Vietnamese?” “I fired my carbine in the air three times.” Gotcha! “All right, you lying piece of shit,” I yelled in his ear as I hovered over him. “I’ve caught you lying and you better damn well tell the truth or I’ll turn you over to the Montagnards.” He quivered and I started on him. After an hour, I had elicited intelligence of incredible value, easily worth the elimination of a battalion of VC. Spilling his guts, he gave me a list of the names of the VC in small infrastructure units in the area, the location of mines and booby traps, weapons caches, etc. I was in hog heaven. A big score for the good guys!

Sgt. Lyons documented the episode:

“Captain Brown continued his interrogation of the POW, and the man agreed to go back to the area he had been taken from to point out meeting places and quarters of VC and NVA and to identify VC infrastructure per-sonnel. A couple of days later, however, we were told that the individual had tried to escape and the airport outpost had to shoot him. We were not notified of the incident until the next morning; and when we asked where the body was, they said they had already buried it. Later the Intelligence Sergeant of the VNSF admitted that they had received orders from the VNSF B-Team that the man was to be executed.”

The next morning, in choppers, Lt. Colonel Murray with his toad-like counterpart showed up. I barrel-assed down to the chopper pad to gloat over the invaluable intel I had wormed out of the POW. After enthusiastically detailing the info developed from the VC, there was a toe-in-the-sand type of embarrassed silence. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “Do you know the prisoner was killed trying to escape from the camp last night?”Once again, I damn near went into terminal shock. I have no recollection what I said, if anything. Murray and the toad departed and went up to the camp team house to discuss the situation with the rest of the team. I was in a white-hot rage due to the fact that this was nothing less than cold-blooded murder. So, the question was, “Why?”

There were a number of factors that led me to believe that he was killed because he knew too much; that Murray and Long ordered him liquidated because, since he was spilling his guts, he might well implicate the Vietnamese Special Forces collaborating with the VC. I figured the kid was part of a commo-liason unit in the Province. Therefore, he might well have known the nature and scope of the contact between the LLDB in TLC and the B-Team and the Province VC. My theory was based on the fact that when my patrol picked up the kid, he was wearing a clean, short-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts; he had a recent haircut; his exposed body extremities were clean and without sores or scratches; he had clean paper money in his pocket. Now, there was no way that he had been living on a long-term basis in the primitive camp he led us into which had no running water and only rickety lean-to’s covered with torn plastic ground clothes.

Sergeant Lyons recollects, “One night we had Captain Long over to the team house drinking. Captain Long got pretty drunk and admitted in front of Sergeant Blocksum and me that he had been told by the B-Team that this man would be executed. He did not give the names of the individuals who told him this. I made a statement for the record at the time, and it was put on file in the safe in the intelligence folder.”

This is another one of the funny instances to show that whenever something happened, Captain Long was not available. He was visiting the B-Team on the night the POW was shot.

Sergeant Lyons continued: “I have been in the Special Forces for approximately sixteen years. I have had a number of team leaders, good and bad, but Captain Brown was the best team leader I ever had, bar none. This individual will listen to anything anyone has to suggest and will evaluate and judge it on its own merits. As to Lieutenant Colonel Murray’s remarks on Captain Brown’s efficiency report, which Captain Brown showed to me, some of the things stated can be summed up as being true, but it is a one-sided story. Reports were repeatedly made to Lieutenant Colonel Murray concerning the VNSF corruption and lack of aggressiveness. Such reports were consistently ignored. Lieutenant Colonel Murray would suggest that an individual do something which was almost suicidal; Captain Brown repeatedly opposed these hair-brained schemes.

“I can quote three separate examples: During the six months I was at TLC, Lt.Col. Murray repeatedly tried to get us to go to the Fishhook area, where even U.S. troops with gunships would not go. On one occasion, Lieutenant Colonel Murray took me to the Fishhook area and dropped me off with 100 CIDG in an area which was known to be a VC cache and supply area for the entire 5th NVA Division. Murray sent us, with 100 CIDG and one interpreter, into this area to look for a division. Another time he sent me to a firebase with two other Americans and three Vietnamese to look for a battalion. It was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, yet we had no artillery or air support on call. I interpreted this to be a death mission. If we had been killed in making contact I am sure Lieutenant ColonelMurray would have thought only about the body count he got out of it. On one other occasion, Lieutenant Colonel Murray sent me, with only 120 CIDG, into a known VC-infested area where there had been no American units operating for two weeks because of the activity there. He picked me up by vehicle after that operation and dropped me off in another area, approximately 15 kilometers from our camp, to recon back to the A-Team. I was going through the First Division Tactical Area Of Responsibility (TAOR). Murray failed to notify anyone of my presence there. I was spotted by a FAC that was flying in the area. By chance he happened to call my A-Team and ask if we had anybody in the area. I happened to be monitoring on the radio and overheard him. The FAC was in the process of calling in 175mm artillery on us from Quan Loy.

“These are only a few of the examples of the mistakes Lieutenant Colonel Murray made while he was in command of B-33,” Lyons wrote. “In my personal opinion, which is only the opinion of a Sergeant Major, Lieutenant Colonel Murray is not Special Forces material. He is not a competent individual capable of commanding in such an operation as we had in Vietnam.”

Over a couple of beers in 1999, when I asked Lyons why he didn’t get along with Murray, he meditated a bit and said:

“Because I think Murray was trying to make a name for himself at everybody else’s expense . . . I don’t know if you were still there or you had already been medevaced when he sent me and two other individuals out to one firebase west of camp. I don’t know where it was but we had to leave at midnight and he gave us a time that we were to arrive on station and then we had to RON there that night. And we didn’t go. We went and looked and there was nothing there and we backed off . . . I wasn’t remaining there because I thought the guy was crazy,” Lyons said.

I asked Lyons, “Why did he want you to do it?”

Lyons replied, “I don’t know. I never did know what he wanted me to do. He gave me grid coordinates that were supposedly the location of an enemy base camp and we were supposed to go and verify that. I had said, ‘I’ll send somebody out’ and he said, ‘No, I want you to personally go.’ I had made him mad about a month before. We had gone on a mission and ran out of water and couldn’t find any—they didn’t bring us any. I made the decision to walk out back to the B detachment and he was going to have me court martialed for this. He read me my rights and everything.

“Since we didn’t have water I decided to come in. He said he had Intel that it was being occupied by the VC. That is when I got sprayed with Agent Orange. They sprayed all over us.”

I asked, “Any after effects?”

He chuckled, “Well, prostate cancer and bladder cancer . . . both at the same time. I beat them both though. It’s been nearly two years and I’m supposedly cancer free. The VA declared me 100% disabled. I laugh all the way to the bank every month.” (Command Sergeant Major Lyons died in 2008.)

I could expect no assistance in dealing with this apparent murder and unraveling the mystery from the B-Team for obvious reasons. It was pointless to go to the USAID Province advisor, who was located in Hon Quan, as I was told he was one of Murray’s West Point classmates. After a couple of weeks, I was able to get to Saigon accompanied by my team medic, Robert Bernard, where I looked up my CIA contact, briefed him on the situation and asked for his advice. “Look, Brown, this kind of shit happens all the time over here. In any case, there’s nothing I can do about it since we do not have a CIA presence up where you are located. Sorry about that.” So, that was where the case rested until I could find some excuse to get up to a higher headquarters to file a formal complaint.

CAPTAIN LONG TRIES TO GET ME WHACKED . . .

A couple of weeks later, on 7 May 1969, I got my trip to higher headquarters, though not in the manner I expected or chose. The monsoon season was beginning and the day opened overcast with a light, persistent drizzle. About1400hrs, I was in the team house when I got a call on the radio from my counterpart, the omnipresent Dai Uy Long. “Dai Uy, you come down to end of runway . . . see rockets.”

We had a battalion of the 1st Division that had been located in a temporary base about 200 yards to the west of TLC, which was moving out by C-130’s using our airstrip. Mr. Charles took exception to this and decided incoming and outgoing planes were targets too juicy to pass up. Every day, he was dropping 82mm mortar rounds on and around the airstrip, inflicting one or two casualties. It got so annoying that every time a plane landed or took off, we had to have fast movers overhead to keep the bad guys’ heads down. I decided to humor the little shit and hopped in my jeep to go down and see his blasted rockets. Sure enough, in front of the grinning Captain Long and his little band of sycophants, there were two 107mm rockets on crossed bamboo stalks pointing straight down the runway. Then Long said, “Dai Uy, go up to camp, get camera . . . take pictures.” “OK, you little shit,” I thought, “all in the interest of good counterpart relations.”

I wheeled into camp, went into my hooch for my Cannon SLR camera, and then into the team house when the first round landed inside our perimeter. . . . More followed . . . 82mm rounds and 107mm rockets . . . we started taking casualties with the first round . . . while in the team house we were in touch with our CIDG company that had just left a couple of hours earlier on an operation. Sonny Elrod, my commo sergeant, told us they could hear the rounds flying overhead. We looked at the 1:50,000 topographical map and drew an azimuth from our camp to our unit in the field and off the map; we then identified all open areas 100 yards on each side of the azimuth as possible bad guy firing positions out to the maximum range of 82mm mortars which is about 3,200 meters. We had two 105 howitzers, manned by South Vietnamese artillerymen, who were already firing, who knows at what. I will give them credit, however, as they were loading and firing in their gun pits while all of the rest of us kept out of harm’s way in our bunkers.

We had the eight-digit coordinates of suspected enemy firing positions, but how to get them to the ARVN artillery? We had no direct commo with them and it wouldn’t have mattered anyhow since we had at that particular time no interpreters inside the perimeter, nor did any of my team speak Vietnamese. There was only one way to get the info to the arty. . . . Someone would have to run the info over. Though the ARVN could not speak English, they could read and understand map coordinates, and that was where they were to fire. “Who wants to volunteer to run these coordinates over to the artillery?” I asked. The silence was deafening except for the rounds continuing to fall in the camp perimeter raining death and destruction.

“No volunteers? Well, gentlemen, I’ll do it myself.” And with that, I burst out the door, rockets and mortar rounds be damned, and set a new record for a 50-yard dash as I legged it over to the ARVN firing pits and gave them the coordinates. They nodded their heads enthusiastically, cranked in the necessary changes to adjust elevation and windage on the coordinates I provided, and started firing away. I waited while they fired a couple of rounds, looked around—for what I don’t know—and started dashing back to the team house the way I came. About 25 yards later I suddenly found myself on the ground. . . I was unconscious . . . don’t know how long . . . got hit right next to the camp dispensary. . . . I felt for all my limbs. . . they were all there. . . so were my cojones, and I could see. I groped my way along the side of the dispensary and staggered into the charnel house that the dispensary had become. . . the dead, the dying, the wounded. . . . blood streaming from a number of holes, most noticeably from my face.

Sfc. Robert Bernard, nicknamed “Bac si,” or Vietnamese for medic, looked at me, checked me for sucking chest wounds, slapped pressure bandages on the most bloody of the 14 places I had been hit, and told me, “You’ve got no problem. . . . get out of here.” I stepped over a withered mama-san who had half her brains exposed, and sprinted another 20 yards to the team house as the shit still continued to impact. We all figured this was a softening up process for a full-scale ground assault on the camp as soon as it got dark. I turned command of the camp over to my rock-like dependable Team Sergeant, Jim Lyons. Trying to play hero, or as Lyons said, “stupid!” once in the day was enough. Shock took me flat out of the fight.

I FINALLY GET TO HIGHER HEADQUARTERS . . .

The next few hours were a blur . . . in and out of consciousness . . . helped into a medevac chopper. . . . Off-loaded into some sort of forward-based medical facility where they stabilized you so you would, hopefully, live until they got you to a major field hospital. I blurred my way onto the gur-ney and into surgery about 0200hrs . . . freezing . . . I swear they put ice water in with the intravenous medication . . . woke up about 0700 or 0800hrs . . . looked around and saw two of my team members sitting by my bedside. I had sent them to Bien Hoa to trade the Air Force a bunch of captured AK’s for cases of steaks and buckets of ice cream, and they had followed the attack by monitoring the radio traffic between Tong Le Chon and SF headquarters in Nha Trang. There was no ground attack; why we never found out.

My head cleared and I told them, “I want to get out of here, now!” Whether I muttered or screamed, I have no recollection. “You can’t do that,” Sonny Elrod objected. You just came out of surgery. That’s insane.” But white-hot rage had returned and I was not to be denied. “Listen, go get me a uniform and boots and help me out of this shroud,” I demanded. Reluctantly they took off and returned with an out-of-the-box, brand new set of jungle fatigues and a pair of boots. Obviously, no hospital staff were around and we sneaky-peted out of the hospital. “Take me to Company C Team Headquarters,” I directed them. Next thing I remember I was standing in front of the A-Team commander.

I don’t recollect what he said, if anything, just that I was yelling how Captain Long was a VC; that he tried to get my team and me killed. Lt. Col. James Lillard, as I recollect, was calm and listened until I ran out of volume. I knew he knew what had happened. And I must have been a sight coming out of the hospital bed four or five hours after surgery, looking like the Bride of Chucky or a Frankenstein without the plugs in my neck . . . a dozen plus sutures holding together the wounds on my face and mouth. In any event, I stalked out, struggled into the jeep and rode back to the hospital where I had them drop me off at what I thought was the hospital entrance. Wrong again. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t have my team members take me back inside because I didn’t want them to get in trouble. I was lost. My medication was wearing off and, damn it, I started to cry. That I remember. How I got back to my bed is another mystery, as are any comments about my actions from the hospital staff.

The next day, one of the surgeons told me they were going to ship my sorry ass to Japan to a convalescent hospital. “Wait a minute,” I said, “you’ve got me all patched up. I don’t want to go to Japan. I want to go back to my camp.” After a “discussion” we compromised and he agreed to send me to the convalescent hospital at Cam Ranh Bay for two weeks. Why they didn’t send me there in the first place . . . another mystery. While awaiting transfer, I reflected on the whole sorry incident and puzzled as to why I had failed to insist on seeing the body of the executed VC. And I haven’t figured that one out either. Just plain dumb.

BYE-BYE, TONG LE CHON . . .

My usefulness at Tong Le Chon was at an end and it was time to move on. I wrangled an assignment as the 5th Group Political Warfare Officer serving under my former B-Team commander, Lt. Colonel Lanter, where I primarily edited translated enemy documents while awaiting approval of my request for extension of service for another six months in-country with the then-mysterious Special Operations Group. SOG had been conducting, officially denied at the time, cross-border operations into Laos and Cambodia. I figured another six months would put me close to my discharge date and I might as well spend it in Nam where the action was. Furthermore, in my new position, I looked forward to traveling throughout Vietnam.

While at Group Headquarters, I once again bitched about Lt. Col. Murray, the duplicitous Captain Long and the “disappeared” VC, all of which essentially fell on deaf ears. In retrospect, what with the turmoil churning from the Calley massacre, the last thing my superiors wanted to deal with was another scandal. Within a couple of weeks I got word that my request for extension had been denied. Whether it was because of the withering officer’s efficiency report authored by my nemesis, Lt. Col. Murray, or because of my stirring the pot regarding the trouble at Tong Le Chon, or perhaps the fact that Special Forces Headquarters had only then become aware that I had, unbeknownst to them, somehow wiggled my way back into a Special Forces slot, remains a mystery. Or, maybe it was because higher echelons became aware that I still did not have a security clearance.

While with the 1st Division and later with SF, I periodically would drop by the intelligence section and inquire regarding my clearance, only to be told that I had an “Interim Clearance.” This security clearance limbo dragged on through the remainder of my active duty service and continued all the way through my subsequent attendance at the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, from which I graduated in 1973. I undoubtedly had set another record, over and above being kicked out of SF twice, for being the only student to attend said school with no security clearance. My orders to Command and General Staff College read: “Security Clearance—None.”

BACK TO THE WORLD OF THE GREAT PX . . .

Once again, I lucked out. I was assigned to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri as a Basic Training Company Commander. Had I stayed in SF and returned to Ft. Bragg, I would have been simply one of hundreds of Vietnam veteran Special Forces captains. As it was I ended up commanding a company, a position considered by nearly all infantry officers as the best job in the Army. Granted, a basic training company was not a line company, but it was the second best thing. I ramrodded 250 young trainees through their eight-week introduction to the rigors and discipline of the U.S. Army. Seeing them graduate was almost as rewarding as calling in artillery on a concentration of NVA regulars.

Of course, there were a couple of assholes in every cycle of trainees. Two or three problem children took up 99% of the time I spent dealing with personnel problems. Back then discipline was going to hell in the Army, not only in Nam but stateside. I had young punks telling my Drill Instructors to “Go to Hell!” and they couldn’t lay a hand on them. Which was a bummer, as sometimes the only way to deal with such miscreants was to lay a right cross to the head bone out behind the barracks. For instance, one little shit, let’s call him Private Smith, a thin, slack-jawed whiner, was particularly vocal with the four letter words. Finally, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, good Drill Sergeant Minton, from a small town in Mississippi, had had enough. Minton, who was the Charge of Quarters for the day, had also had a few belts of moonshine. Private Smith walked by the Orderly Room and Sgt. Minton yelled, “Private Smith, go into the latrine and get the mop!” “Sergeant Minton,” Smith sniveled, “there’s no mop in the latrine.” Minton followed up, “Get the mop in the latrine.” “But there’s no mop in the latrine.” Minton growled, “Get in the latrine.” Smith did. And so did Sergeant Minton. A few blows to the body and they both exited. Private Smith now had just cause to snivel.

Shortly thereafter, my First Sergeant smiled his way into my office. Now my Field First was a hulk of a big, no-nonsense black who had been a contender in the ‘48 Olympics in the quarter mile. “Captain Brown, Pri-vate Smith wants to see you. He has a complaint.” And in came Private Smith, crying like a weenie wimp. “Captain, Sergeant Minton hit me. More than once!” I shot him my most unsympathetic glare, and said, “Well, Private, I guess we’ll have to look into it. Dismissed. Get out!”

I knew that we were going to see some shit rolling downhill right towards us shortly. Sure enough, he called his mommy who of course called her Congressman.

I saw this coming and called my First Sergeant and Sergeant Minton into my office and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to flat ass lie. We’ll portray him as the trouble-making sniveler he is. We all stick to our stories. He has no noticeable bruises. He must have fallen down.”A couple of days later, I was notified that a Congressional investigation for brutality was in the works. But we all held to our stories.

The investigating officer knew we were lying. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harold Riggs, knew we were lying. The brigade commander was sure of it. But they couldn’t break our stories and the investigation went nowhere. Private Smith was eventually busted out of the Army for being unable to adapt. There was a plus, however. Word got out to the trainees, and we had no discipline problems the rest of the cycle. No more, “Screw you, Sarge.” It was nothing but, “Yes, Drill Sergeant” or “No, Drill Sergeant.”

Come April 1970, my tour was up and I returned to Boulder, which had become Hippietown, USA.

After such an untidy career, I still puzzle as to how I got promoted to Major and then Lt. Colonel in the Reserve, much less how the Army, in its questionable wisdom, selected me for the Command and General Staff College. But I did not complain.

Though I stayed in the Reserves till my mandatory retirement date in October 1984, nothing much of significance occurred. My days of fun and games with the Army were over. But other challenges were waiting.