I had expected to go out on patrol again on 2 September, but our mission was canceled because all of the CH-46 helicopters had been grounded due to a safety stand-down. The stand-down was the result of several fatal crashes caused by catastrophic tail rotor failures. While the problem was being investigated, we were told all future recon insertions would be made using Marine UH-34 helicopters, a sturdy and reliable helicopter, but one that was becoming obsolete. However, when one of these single rotor choppers went down in Happy Valley, all recon helicopter insertions were canceled for a few days.
There were national elections in South Vietnam on September 3rd, and the turnout was heavy in the Da Nang area, with long lines of voters at the polling stations. Vietnamese soldiers stood guard at most of the polling stations to prevent the VC from disrupting the elections, but U.S. Marines and other Americans were told to stay away from the polls so no one could say we were trying to influence the outcome. The voting went ahead with no apparent signs of fraud or voter ambivalence. In fact, every Vietnamese I talked to seemed to be genuinely interested in the election.
In Quang Nam Province there was a bitter rivalry between the two major contending parties, the Dai Viet and VNQDD, a rivalry both intense and violent. Despite this rivalry, it appeared that in the hamlets around our camp and the districts close to Da Nang the elections were carried out with no apparent problems. I learned later that things did not go smoothly in southern Quang Nam Province. There the VC attempted to disrupt the voting by intimidating some rural voters. The VC murdered 19 civilians in the province, 11 of whom were women and children, in a vain attempt to keep people in a few districts from going to the polls to vote.
Most Marines did not have any contact with the Vietnamese population, unless they were involved in some civic action or advisory job, so it was difficult for them to gauge the attitude of the average citizen in Quang Nam Province. I was fortunate to have made a few friends among the Vietnamese who worked near Camp Reasoner. I often talked to two Vietnamese women, Mai Ly and Dien, who worked as waitresses in the 1st Marine Division Officers’ Club. They were in their late teens or early twenties, and both were the daughters of South Vietnamese military personnel. If I had a question about Vietnam or its people, I usually asked these two women.
Whenever I went to the division officers’ club, they would greet me by name and ask me what drink I wanted. They were kept busy by the club manager most of the time, but once in a while I would spend a few minutes talking to them and flirting a bit. Although most of these conversations were short and did not cover weighty subjects, on occasion I would ask them questions about current events or how they felt about what the Americans were doing in their country. They both could be blunt and outspoken, traits that led me to believe their answers were honest and not crafted to simply appease me. For instance, Mai Ly once told me that while she valued the presence of the Marines in her province and understood the need for the security the Marines provided, she also was angry over the way Americans often treated the Vietnamese and the adverse effect the American presence had on the economy in Da Nang. Even though she personally benefited financially from the American presence and she was certainly not sympathetic to the communists, she admitted she was not happy with the impact the war had on the average South Vietnamese citizen. My friendship with Mai Ly and Dien grew to the point where they both invited me to their weddings and honored me by inviting me to their parents’ homes, a really singular honor for an American. Both Mai Ly and Dien married members of the South Vietnamese Air Force, and for a time they lived with their husbands in the Da Nang VNAF housing compound before moving to civilian houses near the Da Nang Airbase.
These young women had effervescent personalities, brilliant smiles, and a not so subtle way of making fun of some odd physical or personal characteristic they found amusing in their American friends. Mai Ly, in particular, was hilarious when she would mimic a lieutenant colonel (Lt.Col.) she thought looked and walked like a duck. Dressed in their national dress, the Ao Dai, they always made for a welcome sight whenever I returned from patrol. Talking to them for a few minutes helped to dissipate the stress of a long-range patrol. While most of our conversations were restricted to light subjects, there were occasions when we discussed the impact the war was having on their lives and the lives of their family members. Both women were fervently nationalistic, strongly anti-communist, and completely devoted to the welfare of their families. During my year-long tour of duty, I would often ask these two women questions about Vietnamese culture and attitudes, and in each case they seemed eager to educate me about their country and its problems. For example, I asked Mai Ly why so many people seemed to support the VC in the rural areas, and she told me the rural peasants had no choice. When I asked her to explain what she meant, she replied, “In the villages, the VC force everyone to belong to an organization they control, and they use these organizations to force people to do what the VC want them to do. If you disagree, they will kill you, so they have no choice.” When she spoke these words, it reminded me of the Chinese communist books I had read while I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy. Specifically, I thought of Mao Tse-tung’s emphasis on political mobilization using mass-based organizations, which he wrote about in his paper “On Protracted War.” I thought of a quote from that paper: “The mobilization of the common people throughout the country will create a vast sea in which to drown the enemy, create the conditions that will make up for our inferiority in arms..., and create the prerequisites for overcoming every difficulty in the war” (Selected Writings of Mao Tse-tung [Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963], p. 228). These words of Mao’s did not have any great significance to me when I first read them as a midshipman, nor did they seem particularly important to me when Mai Ly expressed a similar construct. This was because my war was not in the villages. It was in the mountains far from the rural population she spoke of and far from where Mao’s guidance on the conduct of revolutionary war was being carried out. I would only come to realize the critical importance of political mobilization on my second tour of duty in South Vietnam when my war took me into the villages and I had to confront the reality of the enemy’s mass-based organizations.
Mai Ly, the waitress at the 1st Marine Division Headquarters Officers’ Club, Hill 327.
My friendship with Mai Ly and Dien was purely platonic, but it was strong and enduring. We remained good friends until I left South Vietnam in the summer of 1970 after my second tour. Once in a while, I would hear Marine officers bragging that they had dated one or both women, but I knew this was only wishful thinking on the part of these officers. To this day, I often wonder what happened to them after the communists conquered South Vietnam.
In the early fall of 1967, the Division G-2 received intelligence that the enemy was planning a big offensive in early 1968. In preparation for this offensive, the enemy was increasing their infiltration of soldiers and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to their base areas in eastern Laos and western South Vietnam. This enemy infiltration activity resulted in an increase in requests for recon patrols near the suspected NVA infiltration routes in the western regions of Quang Nam Province. More and more patrols were sent into Happy Valley, the Ong Thu Slope, and Base Area 112 in an attempt to locate the NVA units that seemed to be pouring into the province. Killer Kane was part of this effort to detect enemy troop movement and arms infiltration.
On 6 September, our team was inserted into the Quang Duc Duc area about ten miles west of the An Hoa Combat Base with the mission of observing the trail networks that traversed the Khe Gio tributary. This patrol area was in the foothills on the eastern slope of the Ong Thu Slope, the huge, flat plateau overlooking the Arizona Territory. The terrain in this area was very steep with unusually thick secondary growth which made movement slow and difficult. To compound this problem, there were also many open areas in the hills that made it easy for anyone living in the Arizona area’s villages and hamlets to observe a patrol foolish enough to spend any time walking through them during the day.
Our two UH-34 helicopters landed in a fairly good, one-bird LZ, but I was concerned by the amount of time it took for both helicopters to make it in and out of the LZ. We had to use two helicopters to insert our nine-man team because of the weight limitations of the UH-34 helicopter. I did not have a choice in the matter, but it was something I did not like because it doubled the opportunity for the enemy to observe our landing. However, since our normal means of insertion, the CH-46, was still in a maintenance stand-down, we had no other option available to us. We had to jump from the side door of the UH-34, a tricky evolution given we did not really know how deep the elephant grass in the LZ was by just looking at it. We literally took a leap of faith when we jumped. Fortunately for us, the grass was about waist high, but with 70 pounds of gear on our backs, the impact with the ground was jarring. We moved off the LZ and almost immediately found ourselves on a well-used trail leading north down into a small valley just south of Hill 199. I had the patrol follow the trail for 200 meters and then I decided to leave it and cut down hill to the west. Two hours later, we found ourselves at the bottom of a small valley with a fast-running stream running through it. There I had the patrol rest for 20 minutes and fill their canteens before making our ascent to the summit of Hill 199. On our climb up the hill, we encountered several nests of fire ants which were impossible to avoid, so we doused ourselves with insect repellent and soldiered on despite some very painful stings. The climb up Hill 199 was very strenuous, and the heat made it even more difficult. We took our time since we did not want to make any noise that would give our presence away. It was dark by the time we neared the summit, a problem for us since it meant we would have to find a safe harbor site in the dark. After a brief search of the summit, we found a suitable site to spend the night, a place that was thick with brambles and vines. We had not eaten since our insertion, so I gave the order to eat a cold meal of C rations before I established our night radio watch and radioed our position report to Camp Reasoner.
The next morning, the 7th of September, we found a good OP site on the summit of Hill 199 and began scanning the trail network that crossed the Khe Gio River to our east and southeast. We had taken more observation equipment than usual on this patrol because our map study indicated we would have excellent observation from Hill 199 and other high ground nearby. If we were to accomplish our mission, we needed to find an OP that gave us good observation of the trails that led from the Ong Thu Slope to the Arizona Territory. With this in mind, we took two 7 × 50 binoculars, one 8 × 30 binocular, and a Starlight (night vision) scope. While the OP site on Hill 199 was excellent for observation, it was not comfortable since there was little shade. I was also worried about the lack of any significant cover at the site, always a serious problem if we got into a firefight.
At 0925, we heard several loud voices speaking in Vietnamese in the stream bed below us. We called in an artillery fire mission, and the voices ceased. We were surprised that people could get this close to us without our observing them. Later that morning, around 1130 we observed six enemy soldiers moving northwest on a trail several hundred meters to our north. These enemy soldiers appeared to be searching for us, and they fired several signal shots from their rifles, probably as a warning to their colleagues that we were in the vicinity. I called in an artillery fire mission from an artillery battery at An Hoa Combat Base, and the coverage of the target was outstanding. However, since we could not observe any bodies due to dense foliage in the impact area, I gave the battery a rather conservative count of three probable kills. Assessing enemy casualties from artillery or air strikes was always an imprecise endeavor due the distance between a patrol and the target. When thick foliage concealed the impact area, the task was even more difficult. Still, we all felt very confident we had killed all six of the enemy soldiers. We just could not prove it.
Around 1830, Sgt. Dave Pugh and Cpl. Bill Ellison came to me and told me they had found two 250-pound bombs rigged as booby traps on the eastern side of the summit of Hill 199, not far from our OP. The enemy knew U.S. Marines and other American infantry units preferred to organize their defensive positions on prominent terrain features, such as hilltops, so they often implanted multiple booby traps on high ground. For this reason, I had everyone check the areas around them while I slowly followed Pugh and Ellison to where the bombs were located. After crawling up to them, but not touching them, I took down the fuse lot number of one of them so we could determine their origin.
Although no one reported finding any other booby traps or mines, I decided we should leave the area and find another OP site. Since we had encountered two lethal booby traps on the hill, I had the team move very slowly and cautiously to another OP site 150 meters away. At this new location, we had good observation over the trails in the southern portion of the Arizona Territory, especially those near the village of Khuong Dai (6). An agent report had indicated that this village had been used by the 3rd Battalion, 3rd NVA Regiment when it moved between the Ong Thu Slope and the An Hoa basin.
We spent the next two days in the vicinity of this OP observing to our east, but we did not see any enemy activity until the 9th when two enemy soldiers appeared only 20 meters from our OP. They seemed to be searching for us, and I was just about to take them under fire when they dropped over the side of the hill and disappeared. Soon after this, we heard more voices to our east and the squealing of pigs, but no one approached our position again. We suspected that the enemy knew where we were, but wanted to move their “pork on the hoof” and other supplies back up to the Ong Thu Slope without us calling in an artillery mission on them. Whatever their motives were, they did not attack us, and we were extracted from a good, flat, grassy LZ at 0900 on the 9th of September. The helicopters received small-arms fire as we lifted out of the LZ, and one round penetrated the deck of the helicopter, narrowly missing Sgt. Pugh, who was on his last patrol before rotating back to the U.S. As we left the area, fixed-wing aircraft came in and bombed the valley east of the extraction LZ (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 9 August 1967).
When we returned to Camp Reasoner, we were greeted with some very bad news. While we were on patrol two recon Marines were killed and another wounded on a patrol in Happy Valley. The seven-man patrol was hit by 15 NVA soldiers as the patrol waited in their LZ for extraction. Evidently, an NVA counter-recon team had followed the patrol and saw their chance to attack the Marines as they waited for their extraction helicopters to arrive. One of the men killed had only a few weeks left before returning home.
This bad news was compounded by the tragic events surrounding the first combat parachute jump by 1st Force Reconnaissance Company. Team Club Car, a nine-man team made up of parachute-qualified men from my 5th platoon and a few other volunteers, led by my platoon sergeant, GySgt. Walter Webb, was parachuted into Happy Valley on the night of 5 September with disastrous results. High winds and poor navigation by the USAF C-130 transport plane carrying the Marine parachutists resulted in the team landing far from their intended drop zone and into high, 150-foot triple canopy. The team suffered many injuries and was unable to continue on their mission. Compounding the injuries was the loss of one of the team, HN2 Michael “Doc” Laporte, who went missing and was never found despite a long and thorough search. (Sgt. James W. Hager, Cpl. Robert J. Garcia, and LCpl. John Slowick from Team Killer Kane participated in the ill-fated jump [see also: Stubbe and Lanning, pp. 119–126]).
The parachute drop was necessitated by a combination of factors. First, intelligence had suspected the enemy had been staging Soviet-built Frog 3 missiles in Happy Valley, and they feared the enemy was preparing to fire these long-range missiles at the Da Nang Airbase. Second, maintenance problems with the CH-46 helicopter put a premium on the use of the few UH-34 helicopters available, so a parachute insert was deemed to be a good substitute. Finally, there were persistent rumors that the 1st Force Recon Company needed to prepare for a major operation planned for early 1968 in the northern end of the A Shau Valley very near the Laotian border, an operation that would require the entire company to parachute at night into this very dangerous area. I was told by a friend of mine in the division headquarters that the company would seize a hill in the northern part of the valley that overlooked the road that ran along the valley floor. Once we had seized this hill, two heliborne Marine infantry battalions would land in the southern part of the valley and sweep north toward us. We all knew such an operation would be a very high risk one, but I was told III MAF wanted to establish a blocking force on the hill as covertly as possible since they feared a daylight helicopter insertion would allow the enemy to escape into Laos where we were forbidden to follow. The best way to prevent the enemy from escaping was to establish a blocking force along the road leading into Laos and to do this under the cover of darkness, thus the use of a night parachute operation. While many of us questioned the wisdom of such parachute operations, there were many advocates who endorsed the parachute jump into Happy Valley. They believed it would serve as a means of proving the feasibility of similar clandestine airborne operation near the Laotian border, where the enemy had many logistics facilities and base areas. Although the Tet offensive of 1968 was the primary reason for abandoning the operation into the A Shau Valley, the disastrous results of the jump into Happy Valley was a major contributing factor in the decision to abandon the idea.
III MAF headquarters continued to receive numerous indicators that the enemy was planning “something big” for early 1968, but exactly what was not clear. Everyone knew that the enemy would need to reinforce their units in Quang Nam Province with more NVA troops if they intended to launch a really big attack against Da Nang, so it was only logical that they would soon be sending replacement drafts down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and along the infiltration routes leading to their staging areas in the province. As a result, the new S-2 of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, Lt. Paul Young, began to schedule additional patrols in the areas that were suspected enemy base areas or infiltration routes. The division wanted to know what the enemy was preparing for, and they hoped our patrols would produce more information about the enemy’s plans. As part of this effort, Capt. Edwin H. Walker, the battalion’s new operations officer, called me into the S-3 shop on 14 September and told me he wanted Killer Kane to try to determine if the 2nd NVA Division was moving from their traditional base areas in the west of the province into Antenna Valley, the large fertile valley south of An Hoa. With this objective in mind, he assigned us an NFZ around Hill 454 in the hope that we could find a good OP site on that hill from which we could monitor enemy activity.
After performing our routine preparations, including an overflight of the projected NFZ, Killer Kane was inserted at 0900 on 16 September into a large, two-helicopter LZ located in the hills overlooking the northern part of the valley. The insert helicopters took a lot of ground fire from a hamlet south of the insert LZ as we approached but no damage was done. Once we were on the ground, our eight-man patrol left the LZ for the safety of high jungle canopy and began to climb the steep slope of Hill 454. It took us only two hours to reach the summit, but the going was very rough, and the heat combined with the strenuous climb completely sapped our strength. Several of the men were near exhaustion by the time we reached the summit. After resting for a few minutes, I found a good OP site just west of the summit where we set up security and observed the valley to our south for the remainder of the day.
In the late afternoon, I began to search for a good harbor site for the night. As a security precaution, I sent out Cpl. Hager, my new assistant patrol leader who replaced Sgt. Pugh, with PFC Landis, PFC Ellis, and HN3 Connor to thoroughly search the entire summit area. After a few minutes, Cpl. Hager came back to me with a very worried look on his face, and he told me that “Doc” Connor was on the topographical summit of the hill, and he had stepped on a booby-trap mine. Since I was only 50 meters from the summit, I thought I would have heard an explosion if “Doc” Connor had triggered a booby trap, but Cpl. Hager explained that the booby trap was a “Bouncing Betty” pressure release mine and since Connor had not moved, the pressure-release mechanism had not been activated. If Connor moved, releasing the pressure his foot exerted on the mine, it would explode. As long as he continued to stand on the mine and not move, he was safe. I immediately moved up to where Connor was standing, but I moved very cautiously because I knew the enemy often “seeded” areas with mines, and I did not want to step on one in my haste to get to Connor. I had Hager take me back to Connor’s position using the exact route he had used so as to minimize the chance of triggering another mine. When I got to Connor, I could see he was extremely agitated and distraught, as anyone standing on top of a pressure-release anti-personnel mine would be. This mine got its name of “Bouncing Betty” because once the pressure-release mechanism was activated, a spring-type device would propel the mine up into the air about three feet and then detonate, causing the shrapnel to enter the torso of its victim. It was just such a mine that killed Capt. Eric Barnes and Sgt. Blankenship months earlier.
I told “Doc” not to move and then I crouched low over his foot to observe the mine. What I saw gave me hope. I could see the prongs of the mine directly under Connor’s toe, and I thought he may not have fully compressed them. The prongs had to be compressed to trigger the mine. We did not have helmets or flak jackets to lie around his foot to absorb or deflect the mine when it went off, but we did have our packs, so I gathered four or five packs around his leg. Then I had everyone move away, and I told Connor his best course of action was to fall directly backwards, holding a pack with a radio in it on his chest. In this way, any blast would go off above him, and the shrapnel would not penetrate the steel casing of the radio which would be protecting his vital organs. Connor was very scared, but he did what I told him to do. As he fell backwards, all we heard was the sound of him hitting the ground. The mine did not detonate, probably because Connor’s foot had not fully compressed the activation prongs. I then had our entire team get on their hands and knees and feel for any other mines that might be planted nearby. Our search was meticulous and careful, taking us over an hour to feel every inch of the ground in an area 20 yards by 30 yards. We did not find any other mines, but I decided it would be best to avoid the summit from now on and remain near our OP site. Once again, we relearned the lesson of how the enemy employed their most lethal mines and booby traps. They planted them on terrain such as hill-tops where they thought Marines were most likely to establish defensive positions.
The next day, the 17th, I decided to get rid of the mine since it could kill some other Marine who happened to reach the summit of Hill 454. Cpl. Hager and I cleared the dirt away from the mine, and then I took an M-26 fragmentation grenade and unscrewed the top of it and inserted an electric blasting cap into the grenade housing. We took cover behind a rock and then detonated the grenade and the mine simultaneously. As we did this, we heard cheering and laughing coming from near the hamlet of Ap Ba (2), 2,000 meters south of us in the valley. My men wanted me to call in artillery on this hamlet, but I refused since I could not be sure we would not kill innocent civilians along with those laughing and cheering. It was not a popular decision, but I reminded everyone that we only called in fire missions on observed enemy and we had not observed any so far. As an afterthought, I told them that if the people laughing when the mine exploded were the same people who planted it, then they might come up here to check on their handiwork. If they did, this would give us a chance to kill them. This seemed to mollify the team somewhat.
We spent the remainder of the 17th and most of the 18th looking through our binoculars during the day and using the Starlight scope at night, but we did not see a single enemy soldier and we rarely saw any males at all. In fact, the valley appeared to be deserted except for some women working in the fields and some children tending water buffaloes. After we had moved into our harbor site on the night of the 18th, we heard movement only ten meters from our position. Careful not to make a sound, everyone was placed on alert and took up firing positions in anticipation of a possible attack. As a general rule, we never fired our weapons at night, unless it was absolutely necessary. Doing so gave our position away immediately, something the enemy wanted us to do. Instead, we normally responded with M-26 fragmentation grenades first since this did not give our position away, yet it could inflict casualties on anyone probing for our harbor site. In this case, I had Hager throw two grenades in the direction of the sound. After the two grenades went off, lighting up the jungle, we heard more movement and then silence. We waited silently for two hours, but we did not hear anything else that night.
In the morning, we searched the area where we had thrown the grenades and found Ho Chi Minh sandal prints near a Claymore mine we had set up just before dark. I suspected that the enemy, probably local VC from Ap Ba (2), had climbed up Hill 454 to see what damage their “Bouncing Betty” mine had done. Instead, they found our Claymore mine and were either trying to steal it or turn it around so it would fire back at us. It did not matter now because our grenades had clearly told them that U.S. Marines were on the summit of Hill 454. I expected them to return with reinforcements, so I moved our OP and located our new harbor site in the densest jungle growth I could find. If they came back looking for us, they would not find us where they last encountered us, and they would have to make an awful racket moving through the tangle of vines and brush our new OP site provided.
From our new location we were able to see across most of the valley. It was still largely deserted, save for a few kids on their water buffaloes, but around 1500 in the afternoon an Air Force AO flew over the valley and four or five automatic weapons fired at his aircraft. The fire sounded as if it was coming from Ap Ba (2). We informed the AO and asked him if he intended to call in air strikes on the hamlet, and he told us he had no aircraft readily available. I then told him I would call in an artillery mission on the hamlet, which I proceeded to do. I fired thirty-six 105 mm artillery rounds into the hamlet teaching the inhabitants a grim lesson I hoped they would not forget. Two hours later, the AO returned, and this time when he flew over the hamlet no one fired at him.
On the 20th at 0900, we were extracted and returned to Camp Reasoner (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 20 Sept. 1967). When our team got off the extract helicopters at LZ Finch we were greeted by our new CO, Maj. Daniel J. Keating, a native of Larchmont, New York. I took to Dan Keating immediately. He had an easygoing manner that made him very approachable, but he was also thoroughly professional and serious when it came to leading our company. Dan and I were both Roman Catholic, but he was far more knowledgeable about the Church and its precepts. He often assisted the battalion chaplain with Mass. I learned he had a large family back in the States, and he loved to talk about his children and his wife, often taking a letter from them out of his uniform pocket and sharing portions of it with me. It was obvious that he loved his family deeply and missed them a great deal. Filling Capt. Dixon’s shoes would require a truly superior officer, but we all agreed that Maj. Keating was the kind of officer who could meet such a standard. The thing I most admired about Maj. Keating was his ability to listen to advice from his officers and enlisted men and to stand up for us, when the need arose.
About this time, I first became involved with the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Orphanage in Da Nang. At the suggestion of Father B. G. Ryan, the Catholic chaplain for the 1st Marine Division, I began sending monthly donations to the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, who ran the orphanage. Later on, I often asked Commander (Cdr.) Ray Stubbe, a Lutheran priest and Navy chaplain, to take my donations to the orphanage if I was unable to make the trip myself. Cdr. Stubbe was a much beloved chaplain, who served as the chaplain for the 26th Marines during the siege at Khe Sanh, and after the war he wrote a book about this important battle; along with John Prados, titled Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh.
The war had produced a lot of orphans, and many of them were now living with the Vietnamese and Filipino nuns at the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Da Nang. In between patrols, I would often stop by the orphanage to give my $10 contribution to the nuns and chat with them about their work. I was greatly impressed with them. Their love for the children entrusted to their care and the backbreaking work they performed in their badly understaffed and underfunded orphanage reminded me of the Scottish missionary priest in A. J. Cronin’s inspiring book The Keys to the Kingdom. Surely, I thought, there must be a special place in heaven for these dedicated and compassionate nuns. My association with this orphanage would last until a few months after the fall of Saigon in 1975, when all communication with the orphanage was severed by the victorious communists.
On 21 September, I was called up to the S-3 shop for a meeting with Capt. Walker and Lt. Paul Young. They told me that there was to be a B-52 strike against a large enemy target far to the west, only ten miles from the Laotian border and farther west than any Marine recon patrol had ever been before. They told me the enemy was stepping up infiltration of both men and supplies in anticipation of a major offensive, and the people at III MAF and MACV wanted everything done to locate and destroy these infiltration groups before they reached their staging areas near the lowlands. Lt. Young said a special reconnaissance plane had flown over an area of Western Quang Nam Province near the junction of the A Vuong and the Tam Talou Rivers, 15 miles west of Happy Valley, and had located a large number of enemy troops. This plane carried a new technology that could detect the presence of humans and animals by the chemical makeup of their sweat. I had my doubts about such a capability, but I continued to listen as they described this “people sniffer” technology and how it produced an estimate of nearly 1,000 people within a mile of the abandoned montagnard hamlet of Trao deep in the Annamite Mountains.
With great enthusiasm, they went on to tell me that the Division G-2 wanted Killer Kane to land in this area immediately after the B-52 strike to conduct a bomb damage assessment (BDA). At first I was incredulous, but then I saw they were completely serious. I asked them, “You want my team to land in an area where 1,000 NVA soldiers are located, and to do so right after they have been pissed off by a B-52 bombing raid? That sounds like a very dangerous mission with a high probability of my team getting wiped out.”
Capt. Walker acknowledged the danger involved, but stressed that there was only one way to determine whether or not the enemy was in the area and that meant the insertion of a recon team. He then went on to tell me that the Division G-2 had specifically asked for Killer Kane to take on this mission. I suppose he thought I should be flattered by this request, but that was the furthest thing from my mind. Lt. Young, who had a lot of patrol experience before his assignment as the battalion S-2, was far more sympathetic than Capt. Walker, who had never been on a recon patrol in combat. However, I could tell from Paul’s demeanor that the decision to use Killer Kane for this BDA had been made, and there was no turning back. I resigned myself to the fact that the mission would be carried out and Killer Kane would be the team to do it. Capt. Walker added to my apprehension when he told me there would be no overflight of the NFZ, because “we don’t want to alert the enemy before the Arc Light strike.” Now, I knew I would be going into an area thought to contain 1,000 NVA soldiers, and I would also be going in blind. I had a sick feeling in my stomach that remained with me until well after we were inserted two days later.
Lt. Young took me into his office later on, and the two of us went over everything he had on the area where we would be conducting our BDA. There wasn’t much. I respected Paul for many reasons. He was a proven patrol leader with many successful patrols to his credit, he possessed a keen intellect, and he was a highly competent intelligence officer. Most of all, I respected him for his genuine compassion and concern for the recon teams he sent out. He was eager to provide all the information available to each team’s leader. In my case, about all he could tell me was our patrol area was virgin territory as far as the Marine Corps was concerned. No Marine unit had ever been within miles of it. He thought the U.S. Special Forces had conducted a few “Road Runner” and CIDG patrols in the general area, but he did not know what they had encountered on these classified operations. One piece of useful information he provided was the Special Forces operations had often encountered NVA units using the trail networks leading south from the A Shau Valley and from eastern Laos, and the area I would be patrolling contained one such trail system. Paul mentioned that some of the U.S. Special Forces patrols near my NFZ had suffered heavy casualties. He briefly touched on the highly classified work of the Special Operations Group (SOG) that had its Command and Control North (CCN) headquarters near the U.S. Marine base at Phu Bai in Thua Thien Province, but nothing specific to my patrol area was produced. I had heard about SOG and CCN, but their work was so highly classified I knew very little about their mission. All Paul could tell me was SOG had “special long-range reconnaissance units” that operated in “the border area,” a term used to describe eastern Laos. At this time, very few people knew about SOG or their patrols into Laos, but I could tell from Paul’s cryptic comments that something like this was going on. Our patrol would not take us into Laos, but listening to Paul’s remarks, I could tell he thought the area we were going into was BAD.
Fortunately for me, the composition of Killer Kane for this BDA was exceptionally strong and experienced. I would be taking only seasoned men with me, another “All-Star Team” of recon men. My assistant patrol leader was Cpl. James W. Hager, who had many patrols under his belt and was exceptionally brave, intelligent, and knowledgeable. I came to rely on his judgment and knowledge frequently and had complete confidence in his ability to take over Killer Kane, if I was killed or wounded. He was uniformly respected and admired by everyone in the platoon. Cpl. John Slowick, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the point man, while LCpl. David Powell, of Washington, D.C., handled the rear point duties. My corpsman for the patrol was HN3 Connor, who was not only an expert at first aid but also a skilled reconnaissance man. My two radio operators were LCpl. Garner from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Cpl. Clarence Williams from Brooklyn, New York. Reliable, steady, and courageous, LCpl. Glor from Batavia, New York, carried the team’s M-79 grenade launcher. I knew this mission would be very dangerous, but I also knew I had a first-rate team of Marines going with me. This made me both proud and confident that we could accomplish this mission safely, if we were careful and had a little luck.
At 0600 on the morning of the 23rd of September, Killer Kane gathered together in the S-3 office to hear Capt. Walker’s briefing to the helicopter pilots who would be taking us on our BDA mission far to the west. We were told the B-52 “Arc Light” bombing raid had been carried out successfully a few hours before and that over a hundred 500-pound bombs had been dropped inside a rectangle 1,000 meters wide and 2,000 meters long, covering the area where the “people sniffer” had detected the presence of the enemy. Capt. Walker reminded us that our NFZ was many miles outside of the range of the nearest artillery battery, so we would have to rely solely on air support if we got into trouble. With this in mind, he had arranged for an AO to be on station over us the entire time we were on the ground, and he ordered two F-4 Phantom jets to be on “strip alert” at the Da Nang Airbase, ready to fly to our assistance if the AO called for them. While I was grateful for the extra support he had arranged, I knew the distance between the Da Nang Air base and our BDA NFZ meant we would have to wait at least 20 minutes for those jets to reach us. Twenty minutes in a firefight could be an eternity.
The atmosphere in the S-3 shop was tense, and the pilot leading the insertion package made a few caustic comments near the end of the briefing about the sanity of landing in a base area right after an “Arc Light” strike. I remained silent until the briefing was complete, but as I walked out the door into the light of a gathering dawn, the lead pilot turned to me and whispered, “I pray to God we don’t find any VC out there. This mission is crazy.” I could not think of anything better to say, so I simply said, “I guess we will soon find out.”
It took us a long time to reach our insertion LZ. As we sat in the helicopter shivering from the cold air and the long ride west, I thought about what I would do if we encountered 1,000 NVA soldiers on the ground. None of the options I explored in my mind ended well for us. Finally, we arrived over the insertion LZ. I could see out the Plexiglas window behind me that the jungle was still smoldering from the B-52 strike that had occurred a few hours earlier. Helicopter gunships could also be seen diving over the LZ firing their machine guns. The crew chief gave me the handset of the intercom so I could talk to the pilot, who informed me that the gunships had received some ground fire. He then suggested we abort the mission.
For some illogical reason, probably rooted in hubris and the knowledge that if we did not go in now we would surely go in later, I told him we should go in now. He and his copilot looked at each other after I told them this, and it was pretty evident they did not have a lot of faith in my powers of reasoning. After a jolting and rapid descent with everyone aboard expecting disaster at any moment, Killer Kane was on the ground in a large open area surrounded by high, steep, mist-shrouded mountains. The helicopter pilot stayed in the LZ for nearly 30 seconds because he thought we might decide to abort the mission, and he did not want to land again if he did not have to. As I moved off the LZ, I gave the pilot a hand signal that we were all secure, and he saluted from his cockpit. A second later the helicopter lifted off the ground. As the helicopter struggled to gain altitude and head back to Da Nang, we heard eight or ten rifle shots coming from the valley to our east. The enemy knew we were on the ground, and it was a sure bet they were not happy about it.
The evidence of the tremendous devastation a B-52 Arc Light bombing raid could inflict was everywhere: splintered and uprooted trees, large bomb craters, small brush fires, and the air thick with the smell of wet earth and pungent explosive fumes. After pausing for 20 minutes to rest and listen in a bomb crater, the patrol moved due east along the valley floor. As we did so, we heard several signal shots coming from the vicinity of the A Vuong River to our west, a sure sign that the enemy was nearby and aware of our presence. Although the terrain was covered with thick bamboo and high elephant grass in most areas and the environmental damage caused by the bombs compounded the difficulty of traversing the terrain, we quickly moved out of the LZ. On the valley floor, we found several well-used trails, most of which were effectively camouflaged from the air by trees. We located five different trails running into the valley, all of which had evidence of recent and extensive use. We also found a large cultivated area just east of our insertion LZ and several other cultivated areas to the east along our patrol route. We could not identify all of the crops in these areas, but some we easily recognized as tobacco and corn. The crops appeared to be well-tended, both in terms of irrigation and weeding. Most of these cultivated areas were either camouflaged among other jungle growth or hidden entirely under trees. Hiding a farm on low ground was not the way Montagnard tribesmen farmed. They used slash and burn agriculture along the slopes of mountains. So we knew these cultivated areas were the work of the NVA.
As we progressed east along the valley floor, we found several large, recently occupied harbor sites, over 20 well-made log bunkers, two tunnels, 50 meters of covered trench, two pits that were obviously field latrines, and 30 fighting holes that were flush with the ground and well concealed. On one trail, we noticed that a single, narrow rut ran through the center of the trail as if some type of wagon with one wheel had been used to transport heavy loads on it or, more likely, many bicycles had traveled along this trail and over time their wheels had dug the deep rut in the trail. The NVA were known to use bicycles to transport weapons, food, and equipment along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and this rut certainly appeared to us as something the continued use of bicycles could produce. We also found numerous Ho Chi Minh sandal prints, all pointing to the east.
In one place where a trail crossed the small stream that ran in the valley, we saw that the bank on the eastern side of the stream was completely collapsed and there were hundreds of Ho Chi Minh sandal prints in and around the collapsed earth. It was evident that a large number of enemy troops had rapidly crossed the stream at this place and headed east. At this same embankment, we saw two very large pools of blood, too big to be from humans and more likely from a large animal like an elephant or a water buffalo. Further on we found another pool of blood, but this one was more likely human since it was right beside a fighting hole that had collapsed from one of the bombs. Despite the blood and the numerous indicators that the area was a large enemy complex used for transiting troops, we did not find a single enemy body or even a single piece of enemy equipment or personal gear on our five-hour patrol. At every turn, we expected to encounter a large enemy force, but it was eerily quiet as we moved slowly along the valley floor uncovering one enemy bivouac site after another for a distance of 1,000 yards.
As we came to the end of our BDA, we found another large cultivated area with the remains of several fresh campfires that probably were no more than 48 hours old. Nearby we saw thousands of corn cobs strewn around in a haphazard fashion, as if something had interrupted the meal of several hundred enemy soldiers and caused them to drop everything and leave abruptly. Finally, not far from the corn cobs, we found several large wicker baskets filled with approximately two tons of corn. We did not have time to destroy the cache of corn, so we marked it with an air panel so an air strike could be used to destroy it after we had been extracted.
When we boarded our extraction helicopters around noon, we felt that we had definitely “dodged the bullet” on this patrol. Our five hours on the ground had determined that a large enemy force had indeed occupied the target of the B-52 “Arc Light,” but the enemy had either gotten advance warning of the bombing or they were in the process of leaving this transit base on their way east at a very propitious time. In either case, they escaped destruction by only a few hours. For our part, we found a large transit or rest area capable of sheltering and feeding at least a battalion of enemy troops on their way east toward the lowlands of Quang Nam Province, an area that would receive future attention by American air power thanks to our discovery of it (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 23 Sept. 1967).
Killer Kane had little time to rest from the BDA patrol because just two days after we had returned from that mission we went out on patrol again, this time in the Hiep Duc and Que Son Valley area in support of Operation Wheeler. We were inserted into an abandoned rice paddy on the southern slope of Hill 224 in the early morning of 29 September. We quickly found a spot where we could observe the prominent trail running through the mountains between the hamlet of An Long (2) to the north and An Son (1) to the south.
At first, all we saw were a few civilian woodcutters using the trail, but at 1120, we saw 17 VC moving southwest along the trail toward us. They were dressed in khaki uniforms and black pajamas with camouflage helmets. Five of them were carrying rifles and packs. We called in an artillery fire mission, but we could not observe the results.
Three hours later at the same spot, we observed five more enemy soldiers moving southwest along the trail. They were dressed the same as the previous group, and all of them were carrying AK-47 assault rifles. They noticed the results of our previous fire mission, either the dead bodies or shell holes, so they began to trot quickly along the trail and disappear before we could get an artillery fire mission cleared. That night, we harbored near our OP, and the next morning we began moving east through some very difficult terrain. At times, we had to haul ourselves up the steep and slippery slopes of rain-drenched ravines, even crawling on our hands and knees at times in order to get from one place to another. It rained most of the day since this was the beginning of the monsoon season, and the rain made our journey through the jungle more difficult and unpleasant than it normally would have been.
For the next five days we searched our NFZ but failed to turn up any more VC, although we did hear Vietnamese voices and AK-47 fire coming from a deep ravine south of Hill 381 on the 27th. Although we did not find any more VC on this patrol, we did find a very well-used trail that led up to Hill 381. Near the summit, we found a portion of the trail that had been fortified recently by the enemy. There were numerous fighting holes just off the trail facing downhill to the southeast. We had encountered these well-constructed and well-camouflaged fighting positions before, and this knowledge gave us a healthy respect for the skills of the enemy when it came to preparing their field fortifications. Any American unit trying to fight their way up Hill 381 would encounter stiff opposition from any enemy force occupying these positions. We also found an abandoned battalion-size harbor site about a mile southwest of Hill 381 surrounded by fighting holes and bamboo punji stakes. We concluded that the enemy had used Hill 381 for some purpose in the recent past, but had abandoned it at least a month earlier.
On our last day of the patrol, the 29th of September, we found a good extract LZ and waited for our helicopters to arrive. While we were sitting in some trees on the side of the LZ, we found an empty 12.7 heavy machine gun fighting position with a well-constructed ammunition bunker beside it. Since it had been raining heavily during the past few days, the condition of this machine gun position told us it had been built very recently, probably within a day or two. This put us on an increased alert because we knew that normally only NVA units possessed such heavy weapons, and such a weapon could easily bring down our extract helicopter. I radioed this information to Camp Reasoner, and they passed this information on to the extract helicopters. In mid-morning, after 105 rain-soaked hours on the ground, we were extracted without incident. Back at Camp Reasoner, we recommended that the well-used trail through the mountains between An Long (2) and An Son (1) be ambushed or used for a prisoner snatch because it had many good ambush sites along it. The enemy we saw using it seemed to be less alert than most enemy personnel we had seen in the past, even walking very close to each other, carrying their weapons at sling arms, and talking loudly (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 29 Sept. 1967).
On 30 September, I attended an awards ceremony at the 1st Marine Division Headquarters where my friend from the Naval Academy, Kenny Moore, received two awards for his bravery as a platoon commander with the 5th Marines during Operation Union II. He and his company commander, Capt. Stoney Burke, came over to our company area after the ceremony, and we ate lunch together in the mess hall. Kenny was impressed with how well I lived in comparison to his Spartan existence with his infantry company. I felt a little embarrassed talking to him in my hootch with all the comforts it contained. Still, he and his company commander said they thought the kind of war I was fighting was just as dangerous as their war, and they confided that they preferred engaging the enemy with a rifle company in the lowlands than with a small recon patrol deep in the mountains. As Kenny was leaving he told me he intended to take R & R leave in Bangkok in early November, and he asked me if I had taken R & R yet. I told him I had not, but maybe we could go on R & R together, if my battalion had a quota open. This was the first time I had really given much thought to R & R, but I decided I would take the subject up with Maj. Keating.
October began with another “interesting” patrol in Happy Valley and, similar to every other patrol in this infamous valley, it resulted in contact with the enemy and an early emergency extraction. It seemed as if every patrol in Happy Valley was destined to involve heavy contact with the enemy forces living there. Our mission on this patrol was somewhat different from previous missions. We were told to locate “possible rocket-launching sites, storage areas, fortifications and routes of access,” all objectives we had been given previously on other patrols, but in addition to these objectives we were also given a secondary mission of “capturing a prisoner.” The reason this mission had been added to our objectives was due to some recent intelligence III MAF had received, probably from radio intercepts, that elements of the 368th Artillery (Rocket) Regiment, an NVA unit that was reported to possess Frog-3 long-range rockets, were believed to have recently infiltrated from North Vietnam to the vicinity of Happy Valley. Our intelligence people suspected that this unit would be used to provide support for the upcoming enemy offensive due in early 1968. While no one I had spoken to at this time suspected there would be anything like the nationwide Tet Offensive, I was aware that our intelligence services fully expected a major enemy attack somewhere in I Corps in early 1968 around the Tet holiday. We were told that many NVA units were moving from North Vietnam to South Vietnam in anticipation of this major battle. Capturing a prisoner from one of these infiltrating NVA units would help solve the puzzle concerning the size and objective of this upcoming attack.
Patrolling in Happy Valley.
Conducting a “prisoner snatch,” as we referred to this activity, was the most dangerous activity a recon team could engage in since it meant a small team of American Marines operating in enemy-controlled territory had to physically compel an enemy soldier to surrender. Many things could go wrong with such an endeavor, and they usually did. Prisoner snatches were rare, and most of them went badly, so I was not very enthusiastic about conducting such a mission, especially in a place as dangerous as Happy Valley. Still, orders were orders, so I decided to take my entire platoon on the mission. I would need the manpower to fill the three elements required to successfully pull off a prisoner snatch: two security elements and an assault or capture element. I had Killer Kane rehearse both an ambush and prisoner snatch several times using different configurations since I was not sure what opportunities we would have on the ground. The basic configuration called for my 14-man patrol to be divided into two four-man security teams which would be positioned along a trail approximately 100 yards on either flank of the six-man capture team. The security teams would have radios so they could inform the capture team what was coming down a trail toward them. If the enemy moving along the trail consisted of one or two men, the capture team would prepare to capture them. If the approaching enemy was more than two, the capture team would either initiate an ambush or let the enemy pass, depending on the size of the enemy force. Such a configuration would require us to take three radios with us on patrol instead of the normal two since it was essential that each of the three elements be able to communicate with each other. There was no standard organization for a prisoner grab. I developed our system relying on ambush doctrine I had learned at the Basic School and information I had gleaned from reading about such operations conducted by the British in India, Kenya and Malaya. After two hours of practice on LZ Finch, including methods for securing prisoners using lengths of parachute cord and blindfolds, Killer Kane was ready for its patrol.
Since the entire 5th Platoon would take part in this patrol, I had to adjust the job assignments for each Marine to take advantage of their individual talents and experience. Sgt. Hauxhurst, the team leader of the platoon’s other team, Brisbane, would be my assistant patrol leader on this patrol, with Cpl. Hager as his backup. Both men were exceptionally good recon Marines, possessing an abundance of field experience, common sense, and courage, so I felt very confident having them help me with the patrol’s preparations. With one or two exceptions, every man on the patrol was a seasoned veteran with multiple patrols under their belt.
At 0730 on the morning of 4 October, Killer Kane landed in a small LZ 1,500 meters northeast of Hill 749 and 300 meters south of a stream called Tam Kho. When we landed in the LZ, we were greeted by team Circumstance, which had been patrolling in the area east of the LZ for four days and had observed many enemy troops using the trails on the valley floor. I spoke with the team leader of Circumstance for a minute before he boarded the helicopter to leave, but the noise from the rotor blades of the UH-34 insertion helicopter drowned out most of what he said. What I did understand was he thought his team had been followed during most of their patrol. Since Killer Kane would be assuming the mission of Team Circumstance and using their NFZ, we hoped the enemy would just think Circumstance was leaving and not suspect Killer Kane had replaced them.
After team Circumstance departed, I started to move Killer Kane uphill to the south and into some trees. I wanted to get to the top of Hill 749 and then move along a ridgeline west. I was not sure, but I thought any ridgeline in Happy Valley would have a trail on it, and I needed a trail to set up an ambush or prisoner snatch. We moved very cautiously uphill through thick brush and jungle canopy for two hours until the point man, LCpl. John Slowick, stopped the patrol and motioned for me to come forward. Slowick pointed to an open area in front of him that looked like a small, montagnard hill farm. A path skirted the western edge of the cultivated area and along this path there was a low fence made of bamboo striplings. We watched the area for nearly a half hour and were able to make out a bamboo and thatch lean-to just inside the tree line on the far side of the field, the only indication of human activity we could observe. This was definitely a danger area since anyone moving in the open cultivated area would be vulnerable to fire coming from the tree line above. I brought up Hauxhurst and Hager, and the three of us discussed the situation. We decided that it would be best to skirt the cultivated area to the west and use a natural depression in the terrain to give us cover as we moved uphill.
As we were preparing to move, the tree line 100 meters above us erupted with rifle and automatic weapons fire. Killer Kane returned the fire, employing both our M-60 machine gun and our M-79 grenade launcher to good effect. The enemy fired a single B-40 rocket grenade at us, but it passed harmlessly over our heads and exploded in the trees 100 meters behind us. Fortunately for us, we had good cover in the natural fold in the ground. The enemy fire was heavy but inaccurate, passing over our heads by several feet. After just a few minutes, the enemy ceased firing. Cpl. Hager said he hit one enemy soldier and saw him fall, but the rest of us only saw muzzle flashes coming from the tree line, so we did not know if we hit anyone or not. LCpl. Garner, my lead radio man, had contacted an AO flying nearby and soon the AO was directing an air strike on the tree line above us. Napalm canisters and 500-pound bombs, a lethal combination we called “Snake and Nape,” rained down on the enemy and sent large clumps of dirt and burning debris flying into the air. The air strike silenced the enemy and reduced the tree line to a smoking, torn up pile of charred and splintered wood. Since the enemy appeared to be withdrawing to the east, I decided to take the team west and uphill toward the summit of Hill 749.
About an hour after our firefight at the hill farm, our team reached the main ridgeline of Hill 749 where, as expected, we found a well-used trail nearly three feet wide. We moved west along the trail over the summit of Hill 749, searching for a good place to try our luck at a prisoner snatch. We descended gradually for 1,000 meters, moving with deliberate care and stopping frequently to see if we were being followed. On one stop, our rear point, PFC Glor, saw two enemy soldiers wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying Chinese Type 53 carbines approaching the patrol, and he took them under fire at close range. He thought he had killed one of them, but we decided it was too dangerous to walk back up the trail to search for his body since we did not know how many friends he had with him. We continued to move west to lower ground until the setting sun made movement too difficult and dangerous for us. I found a good harbor site 50 meters off the trail, and we spent the night there with mosquitoes and leeches feasting on our blood.
The next day, we came to the western base of Hill 749 on the floor of Happy Valley at a point where the trail leading off the hill intersected a larger trail running north-south along the eastern side of the Song Yang River. Our map showed this trail to be on the western side of the river, but either trails ran along both banks of the river or the map was wrong. This north-south trail ran from Happy Valley south ten miles through dense jungle along the Song Yang River until it reached the small village of Thuong Duc on the Song Vu Gia River. It was a very obvious infiltration route for any enemy unit wishing to gain access to the lowlands of Western Quang Nam Province. For this reason there was a U.S. Special Forces camp near Thuong Duc, which was often aggressively attacked by elements of the 2nd NVA Division. The intersection of the trail leading down from Hill 749 and the major north-south trail leading to Thuong Duc seemed to me to be a perfect spot to lay an ambush for any transiting enemy soldiers. As we set up our ambush, we noticed that there were two newly constructed bunkers on the north side of the hill facing south. These bunkers were well concealed and camouflaged, offering their occupants excellent fields of fire against any person walking down the trail from the south. Fortunately for Killer Kane, the bunkers were empty.
We had been in our ambush site only a few minutes when three enemy soldiers dressed in khaki and black pajamas walked into our killing zone from the south. The ambush element used a Claymore mine to trigger the ambush, and then we opened fire. Two enemy soldiers were killed immediately, but the third staggered back down the trail and off the side of the hill into deep brush. We quickly searched the bodies and retrieved a Chinese-made SKS rifle and a pack with assorted personal items inside it, including three sets of black pajamas, a journal, some pens, several packs of U.S. Marlboro cigarettes, three USMC socks filled with rice, several cans of Japanese mackerel in tomato sauce, and two photos of the dead soldier with some other soldiers in the jungle. Following my policy not to turn over any captured weapons that were not fully automatic or crew-served, I had the SKS rifle broken down and hidden in one of our rucksacks. I was still angry over the way our booty had been rifled and stolen from a previous patrol into Happy Valley, and I vowed never to let that happen again. We moved the bodies off the trail and covered them with brush and reset our ambush.
Two hours later, we triggered our second ambush. This time, we ambushed three enemy soldiers walking north on the main north-south trail toward Happy Valley. Unlike the first group of enemy soldiers, who were happily walking along without a care in the world with their weapons slung over their shoulders, this group had obviously heard our ambush. They were alert and carried their AK-47 rifles at the ready while they maintained a five-meter interval between them. Instead of walking at a normal speed, they approached our ambush site slowly, looking from side to side as they progressed. Again, our silence, our camouflage clothing, and our face paint prevented them from seeing us until it was too late. This time we triggered our ambush with rifle fire and again two of the three died in our killing zone while the third, obviously hit, tumbled off to the side of the trail and down into a steep ravine toward the river. We heard moans coming from the ravine for nearly 20 minutes, but I would not allow my men to search the ravine since I did not know if this enemy soldier was actually wounded, or he was just trying to lure us into the ravine where he could attack us. Finally, I had Sgt. Hauxhurst and PFC Charles Gillespie throw several hand grenades into the ravine, and the moaning ceased. We searched the two bodies of the enemy soldiers we had killed and retrieved a new Chinese AK-47 assault rifle from one of them and an SKS rifle from the other. Again, we broke down the SKS and hid it in one of our rucksacks. We also hid the ammunition belts we took off the bodies. I noticed that all of the enemy we had killed that day were young, wore clean uniforms, carried new weapons and equipment, and had short, military-style haircuts, all of which indicated they were NVA and not local VC. They also had numerous, fresh scars on their legs from leech bites, a sign they had been living in the mountains for some time.
There was now a lot of blood on the trail, even though we had moved the bodies into the brush and hidden them from sight. I was afraid the blood would give our ambush site away, so three of us found some fresh dirt and covered the pools of blood that had accumulated on the trail. When we had finished, I decided we had done enough damage to the enemy that day, and it was time to find a harbor site for the night. We moved 200 meters to the east, found a fast-running stream, refilled our canteens, located a good harbor site, ate a quick meal of C rations, sent in a position report to Camp Reasoner, set our radio watch, and waited in the shadows as the deep purple darkness of night descended upon us. As the last light faded away, we heard two distant rifle shots to our north. We suspected these were warning shots made by NVA “trail watchers” or a counter-recon team informing any enemy in the area that Marines were present in Happy Valley. Aside from the nuisance of leeches trying to make a meal of our blood, the night passed peacefully with no other sounds to disturb our sleep but the screeching of some monkeys who seemed to dislike our presence on their turf.
The next morning, I decided we should still continue to ambush the trail running north and south between Thuong Duc and Happy Valley since it appeared the enemy was using it regularly. I still wanted to try for a prisoner grab, so Sgt. Hauxhurst and I moved north on the trail until we found a large rock a few feet off the trail where we both could hide until an enemy walking on the trail was within arm’s length. I had designated Cpl. Williams, our biggest man, to be the prisoner grabber while Sgt. Hauxhurst and I would deal with a second potential prisoner or help Williams if there was only one. Our fourth man was LCpl. Dave Powell, and his job was to cover the rest of us as we moved onto the trail to either secure the prisoner or search bodies. We positioned this four-man “snatch team” and positioned the other two elements of the team on the trail leading off Hill 749 and at the intersection of that trail and the main north-south trail. In essence, we had three security elements and three ambush elements with this arrangement. Once we were all set in, we only had to wait for some hapless NVA soldier to walk down one of the trails.
Our wait was not long. At 0830, three NVA soldiers wearing light green uniforms and carrying Chinese Type 53 carbines and a captured U.S. M-79 grenade launcher walked into the ambush covering the trail from Hill 749. Unfortunately, the ambush was triggered prematurely, and only one of the enemy soldiers was hit. The wounded NVA soldier was able to run back up the trail away from the ambush. Cpl. Hager, who was in charge of this element, had told his men that he would initiate the ambush, but one of his men panicked at the sight of the enemy so close to him and fired a single shot from his M-16, which gave the three NVA soldiers a second to duck off the trail and run back uphill. The man who fired his weapon without authorization felt confident he had killed the man he shot, but I did not find a blood trail or anything else indicating the enemy was even wounded. Cpl. Hager, one of the best men I have ever served with, was extremely angry with the Marine who disobeyed his orders and promised to “take care of him” when we returned from patrol. Knowing Hager as well as I did, I did not relish the punishment Hager would mete out to the man who disobeyed his orders.
Later in the day, at 1430, we had another contact with the enemy and again it did not turn out as well as we would have liked. The “snatch team” heard Vietnamese voices to our north and downhill from where we were set in. The north-south trail had a steep incline of nearly fifty feet up to the ambush site, so steep that handrails had been built along it and there were several steps cut into the trail and reinforced with logs. The voices seemed like they were not on the trail but off to the west and fairly close. I decided to take a look downhill to our north to see if we could see who was talking. LCpl. Powell accompanied me for the short, 20-meter crawl to where we could look directly down to the bottom of the trail for a distance of 100 feet. As soon as we peered down the trail, we saw two NVA soldiers walking up the trail toward us. Because the trail was steep, both men had their heads down looking at the ground and one of them was holding onto one of the bamboo railings to help himself up the steep incline. LCpl. Powell and I immediately opened fire on the two enemy soldiers hitting them multiple times. Instinctively, LCpl. Powell fired at the lead NVA soldier while I fired on the second. Both enemy soldiers fell on the trail below us but one of them moved slightly so we both fired another magazine into the two of them to make sure they were dead. I noticed that one of the enemy soldiers we had killed had a red armband and a red neckerchief, items we had never seen before on NVA soldiers. We were about to go down and search the bodies and retrieve their weapons when we began to take fire from the trail behind them. It was obvious that this was an attempt at “recon by fire” by the enemy since the rounds did not come close to us but impacted harmlessly many meters below us. We estimated another three or four enemy soldiers were behind the ones we had just killed.
Since we had now encountered the enemy coming toward us from the east, north and south, I knew it would not be long before they knew exactly where we were, and they would come after us with a large force. With this in mind, I decided to collect the entire platoon and move back to a good defensive position near the intersection of the two trails. I did not want to move any farther along a trail since the enemy would surely have the trails watched by now and would establish ambushes along any route we might take.
We had other options but I did not think any of them were better than the one we adopted. For instance, I could have moved west off the hill, but then I would have to cross the Song Yang River, which would be a very dangerous thing to do. It would not only force us out into the open to cross the river, it also might carry us away in its swift current. The depth and current of the rivers in the Annamite Mountains were deceptive. Even a narrow stream that appeared shallow could have an extremely fast current or a deep, hidden channel. Marines had drowned in these mountain streams and rivers because of these deceptive characteristics. I decided the best thing for us to do was to stay where we were and request an AO so he could direct us to the nearest LZ.
It was not very long after we established our new position that the enemy struck. At 1515, two groups of enemy soldiers began firing at us. One group was coming from the south and the other was coming from the north in what appeared to be a coordinated attack. They did not know our exact position because they were firing erratically. Unfortunately for them, the group coming up from the south exposed themselves, and we were able to take them under fire from less than 50 meters distance, resulting in two enemy soldiers killed. Slowick and Hager, along with several others, drove back the southern group, while Sgt. Hauxhurst, LCpl. Gardner, PFC Adams, PFC Ellis, and Cpl. Kelly beat back the attack from the north. Along with the rest of the patrol, I covered the eastern approach to the patrol since I was convinced the enemy would attempt to distract us by their two-pronged attack along the main north-south trail while they maneuvered to get behind us, thinking we might attempt to withdraw in that direction. I realized the enemy now knew exactly where we were, and it would not be long before they concentrated their forces and attempted to destroy us. I radioed Camp Reasoner and told them we needed an emergency extraction immediately, but they asked me if I was capable of carrying on my mission. Evidently, they did not understand how precarious our position was so I sent them another message that said, “Killer Kane loves to kill Cong, but the time for extraction is now.” This message was not intended to be humorous, but the officers in the Division G-2 thought it was. In any event, an AO soon appeared over our position, and I asked him to give me the grid coordinates of the nearest LZ. A minute later, he told me there was a good LZ just 100 meters west of our position, but it was on low ground surrounded on three sides by hills. He warned us that it was also adjacent to the Song Yang River, and there were some trails leading into the LZ from the north. He added that while he thought it was a good LZ, it also was a dangerous one. I told him we would move to the LZ as soon as we heard that our extraction helicopters were on the way to pick us up. He replied that he was going to bring in some fixed-wing aircraft to prep the LZ before we were extracted since he suspected the enemy was waiting for us there.
Davis Powell (left) and W. P. Kelly (right).
Around 1600, we were told to begin moving to the extract LZ and to relay through the AO when we had arrived. We could not begin to descend to the valley floor immediately since the AO was calling in air strikes on the area surrounding our LZ. For about an hour the AO directed bombing runs on the LZ and the hills overlooking it with very good coverage. If anyone was in the LZ or on those hills, they would have been beaten up badly since the fixed-wing aircraft really worked over the area with their bombs and napalm. At 1700, we began to move downhill and to the west toward the LZ after telling the AO we were doing so and asking him to shift the air strikes to the west so the enemy would not know exactly what LZ was our intended destination. The tension was intense because we had recently had so much contact with the enemy, and we expected them to hit us at any moment. We did not have a long distance to move, but we had to move slowly since the terrain was both steep and thick. It took us nearly a half hour to move the 100 meters. When we arrived we were told the helicopters were only 15 minutes away and to be prepared to pop smoke as soon as the lead helicopter pilot asked for it.
As soon as I threw the yellow smoke grenade into the LZ, I saw the extract helicopter coming in from the west, guiding on the Song Yang River. As he drew nearer, he confirmed he saw my smoke in the LZ and he asked me to confirm the color. Then when the helicopter was only 200 yards away, the highly competent and always reliable Marine Air Wing put on a splendid display of choreographed support. Two Marine F-4s streaked over the LZ in a dummy run to keep any enemy at bay, while two Marine helicopter gunships strafed the hills on either side of the lead extract helicopter’s approach. It was beautiful to see such superb airmanship and reinsuring to Killer Kane that their awesome firepower was at our disposal. When the helicopter touched down in the LZ, eight Marines ran forward and scrambled aboard. Because of weight limitations, we could not board the entire team on one helicopter, so the remaining six of us waited in the LZ for the second helicopter to land. A few seconds after the lead helicopter lifted off and the second one began to hover over the LZ, we saw three NVA soldiers dressed in khaki uniforms moving into position on the far side of the LZ near the banks of the Song Yang River. We fired at them, killing one and sending the other two running for cover. The helicopter opened fire on them with their door-mounted .50-caliber machine gun. As we ran to the helicopter, we continued to fire on the enemy on the far side of the LZ. At the same time, one of the gunship pilots radioed to us that he saw another group of NVA running away to the west parallel to the river. In order to escape ground fire, the helicopter lifted off and banked sharply to the right following the Song Yang River south before gaining altitude, thus avoiding flying over where we had last seen the enemy. Once again, Killer Kane had been unable to avoid making contact with the enemy in Happy Valley, and once again the enemy had aggressively attacked us there. It was becoming obvious that the enemy did not want American reconnaissance patrols in Happy Valley or the trails leading west from it. They were hiding something there, but we did not know what (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 7 Oct. 1967).
Back at Camp Reasoner, Maj. Keating listened to our debrief and said he wanted me to write up several members of the patrol for personal decorations since we had so much contact with the enemy and had killed nine of the enemy with small-arms fire and not suffered a single casualty. The next day, I immediately went to work on the award recommendations, gathering written statements for the four men who were to be recommended for the awards and typing up my own statements for them. When I delivered them to Maj. Keating and SSgt. Cole in the company office, I asked both of them to do whatever they could to convince the awards board at division headquarters to approve them. I pointed out that if we told a Marine he was being recommended for a certain award and later he found that the award was downgraded or not even approved, this had a deleterious effect on that Marine’s morale. I told them it would be better not to make the recommendation if the awards board did not approve them. Both men agreed with me and promised to work behind the scenes to make sure the awards were approved as written. I had a lot of confidence in these two men, but I was beginning to have very little confidence in the 1st Marine Division’s awards board, especially when it came to giving awards to enlisted Marines.
About this time, my mother sent me a letter from home, including a local newspaper clipping, which quoted one of my state’s senators, Clifford Case, clearly stating his anti-war position and calling for a negotiated settlement. Since Senator Case was an elected official, I could not write or say anything controversial about him or confront him, so I asked my father to write a letter to him expressing how wrong I thought he was and how his statements would not help the morale of the troops fighting the war. This was the first time that the anti-war issue at home had any real impact on my morale and my reaction to it was very emotional and negative. Here is a portion of the letter I sent home:
Tell him (Sen. Case) that the men over here will never forgive any politician who allows us to accept any other solution but total victory. Any solution other than victory is a slap in my face and the face of my men and I strongly resent it. Many of the troops over here are getting a little ticked off at some of the politicians advocating peace ... we are going to win this war despite these people. I would be ashamed to call myself an American if the people of the U.S. allowed themselves to be duped by these political opportunists and allow these idiots to appease the communists. Please send me an absentee ballot so I can vote for the biggest hawks there are and any man running against Senator Case.
During my tour of duty in South Vietnam I never gave much thought to the anti-war movement in the U.S., but during those rare occasions when I did think about it, I never allowed it to diminish my support for the war or my commitment to the defeat of the communists. However, it did puzzle me. My parents and others who wrote to me told me the anti-war movement in the U.S. was very small and had little support from average Americans, but when I read U.S. newspapers, which were seldom available to us, and magazines from the PX, such as Time and Newsweek, the articles seemed to tell a different story. I began to wonder whose side the press was on and where they were getting their information about the war. Since I only had direct contact with a member of the U.S. press twice during my 32 months serving in South Vietnam, it was difficult for me to determine where the press obtained their information or why their reporting seemed so at odds with what I experienced. What I did know was I did not agree with much of what I read, and I often found their portrayal of events on the ground out of line with reality. My frustration and anger with the Western press in South Vietnam would grow as the war progressed.
Maj. Keating felt Killer Kane had had its fair share of contact with the enemy and was due for a rest, so he had us scheduled for another week on Hill 452, our radio relay site that provided continuous communications for the recon patrols working at the extremes of the 1st Marine Division’s southern TAOR. Since this mission required us to man four bunkers, I took both of the teams in my platoon. Jim Hager had been just promoted to Sgt., so I decided to take him along as an assistant patrol leader, sharing this duty with Sgt. Hauxhurst. Both men were very capable and brave men, and I wanted both of them to become team leaders in their own right. This “milk run” to Hill 452 allowed me to spend many dedicated hours with Hager and Hauxhurst going over the details of leading a team. In addition, I hoped that I would be able to conduct some much needed training so every man in the platoon would have at least a working knowledge of what to do if any of the team leaders were killed or wounded. With this in mind, I took along some lesson plans from my Basic School classes and the SOP for the battalion. I also asked Doc Connor to prepare a few classes on basic field first aid. I did not want this valuable opportunity to pass without getting in some training in our weak areas.
At the last moment, I packed four books I had recently received in the mail from home: Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel about Russia, And Quiet Flows the Don, Paul M. Angle’s A New Continent, A New Nation, Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Stalin, and Burke Davis’s biography of the legendary Marine, Chesty Puller. I read all four during my seven days on the mountain, which says a lot about how routine and uneventful such duty could be. When I wasn’t on watch searching for the enemy in the terrain south of us toward Antenna Valley, I would read. Sitting in the shade of a poncho atop one of the bunkers, I would lie back and read for several hours at a time, immersing myself in whatever book I was reading. This would be a habit of mine throughout my career. Reading was my favorite pastime for the 25 years I spent in the Corps, although I have to admit my reading was often focused on just a few areas of interest. I read very little fiction, but concentrated instead on history, political science, economics, anthropology, foreign languages, and military strategy. If I did read works of fiction, most of them would be the works of John Updike, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, and Ernest Hemingway, but I also read many of the great Asian classics, such as The Tale of the Genji, KimVan Kieu, The Water Margin, and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Each evening around 1700, I convened a class for the team. We would gather around one of the bunkers, and I would give an hour-long class on subjects such as map reading, calling and adjusting artillery, small unit tactics, the use of intelligence reports, and “Know Your Enemy.” Killer Kane had several new men in the platoon, so I had one class where I pointed to a location south of Hill 452 and told the group to locate where I was pointing to on a map I had laid out in front of them, use a compass to obtain an azimuth toward the target, then write down a call for fire for the target: all in less than a minute. We made a game of it and awarded several C ration cans of the much valued sliced peaches to the winners. When I was not giving the evening course, Doc Connor would instruct us in how to treat gunshot wounds, stem bleeding, clear airways, and build a poncho litter. After each class, we would watch the sun go down and eat a hot meal of C rations cooked over our field stoves before setting the night watch and going to sleep.
During this trip to Hill 452, we did not observe a single enemy soldier. Everything seemed peaceful and quiet in the villages far below us. We did, however, have one significant contact with the “enemy,” a colony of very large and aggressive rats! Since so many Marines had occupied the summit of Hill 452 for over a year, trash had accumulated, making it ideal for all sorts of wildlife. Rats were the biggest problem. One night shortly after I had settled into my bunker to sleep, a rat fell right on top of me and scurried away out the bunker door. An hour later, another fell on my foot, waking me up and squealing as I tried to kick it off. The next day, Sgt. Hager, Sgt. Hauxhurst, Cpl. Powell and I formed a “Committee for the Eradication of the Rodent Problem” and set in motion a plan to rid our bunkers of these nasty critters. We found the holes in the rocks on the summit where they lived, and then we put smoke grenades in a few of the holes and covered the others with our M-16s. Each of us picked a hole to watch and positioned ourselves so we could fire on the rats without hitting each other or anyone else on the hill. Within seconds of the introduction of the smoke grenades into the holes, rats began to pour out of the other holes. We killed eleven of them, and from that time on we did not have any midnight encounters with rats in our bunkers. Despite our victory over the rats and the easy life on Hill 452, we were all happy to leave when our week-long patrol ended (Team Killer Kane Patrol Report, 19 Oct. 1967).
When Killer Kane returned, we learned that two recon patrols from the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion had suffered heavy casualties in our absence. The two patrols were hit hard by the NVA, suffering a total of seven Marines killed and 21 wounded. It was the bloodiest week for the battalion since their arrival in South Vietnam. This news underscored how lethal our job was, especially when a recon team encountered a strong enemy force far from friendly lines. We mourned the loss of our friends and studied the events leading up to the two deadly encounters with the enemy in an attempt to ascertain the causes for these two tragic events. From the comments of the survivors, it appeared NVA counter-reconnaissance teams had located the patrols soon after the teams were inserted and the teams spent too much time in one location, allowing the enemy to concentrate their forces for an attack. These facts reinforced in our minds the standing policy to never spend more than 24 hours in one location while on patrol.