Vietnam February 2021

Tet on the Water NVA Frogmen Attack Oil Tanker

Khe Sanh

HOMEFRONT Debut album makes Carly Simon a star

Under Siege The battle from inside a Marine command bunker

Terror on a Mountaintop

Enemy commando surprise attack strikes ‘secret’ CIA site

Mission of Mercy U.S. military doctors saved Vietnamese civilian lives

FEBRUARY 2021 HISTORYNET.com

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FEBRUARY 2021

ON THE COVER

A Marine in a bunker at Khe Sanh focuses his binoculars on communist positions in March 1968 during a siege of the base.

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; INSET: RICHARD E. AARON/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

22

THE LOST BATTLE OF LIMA SITE 85

This image is an Air Force reconnaissance photo of Lima Site 85 taken after the battle with the North Vietnamese Army.

2

PHOTO CREDIT

High on a mountain in Laos the CIA set up a radar site to help U.S. planes on bombing missions near Hanoi. The North Vietnamese Army was determined to tear it down.

By Don Hollway

VIETNAM

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6 Feedback Letters 8 Intel February Briefing 14 Reflections Battlefield Nurses 18 Arsenal Mark 22 Autoloading Cannon

20 Homefront January-February 1971 21 Battlefront 50 Years Ago in the War 60 Media Digest Reviews 64 Hall of Valor Valérie André

KHE SANH UNDER SIEGE

During the siege of Khe Sanh, the combat operations center of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, was a hub of activity as it directed units in the field while enemy shells bombarded the command bunker. By Dick Camp

38

30 TET WATER BATTLE

The North Vietnamese devised a bold plan to blow up an oil tanker in a busy port during the Tet Offensive.

By Hardy W. Bryan

A SURGEON’S VIETNAM STORY

PHOTO CREDIT

Dr. Sheldon Kushner, an Air Force officer working in a program to aid Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta, found his job full of anguish—and joy. By Mary Jane Ingui

46

54 USS MIDWAY ON DISPLAY

After a storied career with three deployments in Vietnam, the carrier is inviting visitors to its retirement home in San Diego. By Tom Edwards F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

FEBRUARY 2021 VOL. 33, NO. 5

CHUCK SPRINGSTON EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JERRY MORELOCK SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI EDITOR EMERITUS HARRY SUMMERS JR. FOUNDING EDITOR

BATTLE OF KHE SANH

The 77-day siege of the Marine base at Khe Sanh in 1968 was one of the epic battles of the Vietnam War. In this issue a Marine officer who was there describes what it was like in a battalion command bunker during those days. To read more about the siege,visit Historynet.com. Search: “Khe Sanh.”

Through firsthand accounts and stunning photos, our website puts you in the field with the troops who fought in one of America’s most controversial wars.

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ADVISORY BOARD JOE GALLOWAY, ROBERT H. LARSON, BARRY McCAFFREY, CARL O. SCHUSTER, EARL H. TILFORD JR., SPENCER C. TUCKER, ERIK VILLARD, JAMES H. WILLBANKS C O R P O R AT E ROB WILKINS DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIP MARKETING TOM GRIFFITHS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT GRAYDON SHEINBERG CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT SHAWN BYERS VP AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT JAMIE ELLIOTT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING MEDIA PEOPLE / NANCY FORMAN 212-779-7172 ext. 224 nforman@mediapeople.com SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION 800-435-0715 or SHOP.HISTORYNET.com List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc. 914-925-2406; belkys.reyes@lakegroupmedia.com

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Postmaster, send address changes to Vietnam, P.O. Box 422224, Palm Coast, FL 32142-2224 Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519 Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 © 2021 HISTORYNET, LLC The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of HISTORYNET, LLC. PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

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JOIN THE DISCUSSION AT VIETNAM MAG.COM

STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GUY ACETO PHOTO EDITOR

VIETNAM

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denied, they decided to travel the 80 miles to Haiphong, walking during the night and hiding during the day. They boarded a transport ship that took them to Saigon. Our friend’s mother, also from the North, traveled with her family but was able to fly to Saigon on a military aircraft. Life was very difficult after the war, but they were fortunate to have moved to the South and are doing well now.

Clyde Lewandowski St. Cloud, Minnesota

Army Special Forces at Khe Sanh

The Navy’s Boat to Freedom I read your October 2020 article about Tom Dooley [a Navy doctor who participated in a 1954-55 operation that enabled Vietnamese living in communist North Vietnam to board a ship at Haiphong Harbor and move to South Vietnam]. We have traveled to Vietnam a number of times in support of the orphanages in Kontum and generally travel with a guide who has become a close personal friend. Five FEEDBACK or six years ago, we were invited to dinner at our friend’s home in Saigon. Our friend’s father (who had been a South Vietnamese army medic) made the trip from Haiphong to Saigon in 1954. Our friend’s grandfather was the village chief of a small hamlet near the Chinese border and was assassinated in 1953. Then the brother of our friend’s father turned up missing. This family was Christian, and because they had firsthand experience of how the communist Viet Minh operated, they decided to relocate to the South. They applied to the government of the North as required. After a number of applications were 6

1st Cav Not the Only One There Regarding the “Hope for the Holidays” caption for a photo of the Bob Hope show at Cu Chi in 1969, which said the performance was for the 1st Cavalry Division (December 2020): Yes, the 1st Cav was at Cu Chi, but it had only had one brigade there beginning in January 1969. Cu Chi was the “home” of the 25th Infantry Division from January 1966 until February 1970.

Kenn Pekar Vermilion, Ohio Email your feedback on Vietnam magazine articles to Vietnam@HistoryNet.com, subject line: Feedback. Please include city and state of residence.

NAVAL HISTORY & HERITAGE COMMAND

Vietnamese living in North Vietnam board the USS Calaveras County at Haiphong for passage to Saigon in October 1954. When Vietnam was split in two and the border about to close, there was a short period during which people could move from one side to the other.

Regarding the Reflections article “The ‘Khe Sanh Two-Step:’ Pay Call Under Fire,” by Dick Camp (October 2020): You tell an interesting story of a payroll heist at the Khe Sanh Marine base during the siege. What you don’t mention in the story background material is that the Marines weren’t exactly alone at the base during the siege. There was a 30- to 50-man top-secret U.S. Army Special Forces unit manning an exposed position near the dirt road leading to [nearby] Khe Sanh village. We were there for the entire siege and longer, running secret infiltration missions into Laos and the DMZ. Needless to say our small recon patrols of six to 10 men didn’t do very well against the well-entrenched and very numerous NVA troops surrounding the base. We endured many casualties. The fighting for everyone at Khe Sanh was often savage and relentless, and we shared many a close encounter with our Marine brethren. You guys should have been there!

Denis Chericone Boise, Idaho

VIETNAM

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Shi Se

Native American Veterans Memorial Designed by Vietnam Vet

8

enduring, and this [memorial] is going be here for a long time.”

The circle is suggestive of the cycles of time and life and the movement of stars and planets. The design also evokes awareness of the drum as a focal point of shared traditions including dance, storytelling and prayer. Fire represents strength and courage, water signifies prayer and purification, and wind is associated with the spiritual movement of visitors’ prayers and memories.

The National Native American Veterans Memorial is intended to be a place for gatherings, reflection and ceremonies.

Water flows from its center, and there is a spot for a fire to be lit. Visitors can tie cloths on four lances for healing and prayers. The seals of the five branches of the U.S. military are set in a nearby wall.

To learn more, visit the website at: https://americanindian.si.edu/visit/ washington/nnavm —Zita Ballinger Fletcher

VIETNAM

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ROLLS PRESS/POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

The National Native American Veterans Memorial, which opened at the Smithsonian Institution on Nov. 11, 2020, was designed by a Vietnam veteran, Harvey Pratt, inset.

ALAN KARCHMER, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN; INSET: NEIL CHAPMAN

A

memorial honoring the military service of Native Americans opened on Veterans Day 2020 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, unveiling a design by Vietnam veteran Harvey Pratt, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma.

Pratt served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1962 to 1965. He was sent to Vietnam in 1963 and stationed in Da Nang, where he worked in air rescue and air base security. After his military service, Pratt embarked on a career in law enforcement. He was a forensic artist for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation from 1972 to 2017. He is also a Southern Cheyenne peace chief, the greatest honor of the Cheyenne Nation.

Pratt’s uncle, who fought in World War II and the Korean War, inspired him to serve in the military, the designer said in a 2018 interview published on the website DCist. “He’d been wounded so many times and has so much shrapnel in his body,” Pratt said. “He just carried on. He’s a real warrior.”

Pratt’s design for the memorial, called “Warriors’ Circle of Honor,” was selected in 2018 from a pool of 400 initial submissions.

The design incorporates the natural elements of fire, water and wind as well as the four directions. At the heart of the memorial is a large stainless-steel circle, 12 feet in diameter, standing on a stone drum. Pratt’s design brings important elements from diverse Native American cultures together in unity, focusing on spirituality.

“Everything that we have among tribal people honors the circle,” Pratt told Washingtonian magazine in 2018. “Tipis and kivas are round. Earth lodges and igloos are round. A circle is timeless and

A CON T R OV ER SI A L QU EST ION

A SERIES EXAMINING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES OF THE VIETNAM WAR BY ERIK VILLARD AT THE END OF DECEMBER 1967, a month before the communist Tet Offensive attacks throughout South Vietnam, approximately 225,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese fighters were operating in South Vietnam. They consisted of 68,000 full-time combat soldiers born in North Vietnam, 47,000 Viet Cong combat soldiers born in the South, 37,000 Southernborn Viet Cong administrative personnel who ran the communist shadow government in many parts of the country and 71,000 part-time Viet Cong guerrillas born in the South, according to estimates by Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.

MACV calculated that the communists committed 124,000 combat troops and guerrillas to the 1968 Tet Offensive—84,000 in the initial battles of Jan. 30-31, plus 40,000 over the next several weeks. About half of them served in North Vietnamese units, and the A Viet Cong who rest belonged to Viet Cong units. attacked the U.S. Embassy during the Some of the Viet Cong adminisTet Offensive is led into trative personnel took an active captivity by U.S. Military and visible part in the offensive by Police on Jan. 31, 1968.

Viet Cong units in Saigon attempting to organize uprisings in suffered severe losses cities. but regrouped later.

The attacking units suffered severe losses during the five-week offensive. By March 5, 1968, the date Vietnamese postwar histories identify as the end of the Tet Offensive, noncommunist forces had killed or captured about 40,000 combat soldiers.

Additionally, about 10,000 individuals not listed on MACV’s roster of enemy military units were killed or captured. Many in that group were civilians the Viet Cong had pressed into service as ammunition bearers or stretcher carriers preceding the Tet Offensive, but perhaps 2,000 of those civilians were Viet Cong administrative personnel whose shadow government was decimated in several large cities, particularly Saigon, Hue, Nha Trang and Qui Nhon, yet survived with little damage in most other cities and villages.

The estimated 40,000 deaths among enemy soldiers were about evenly divided between North Vietnamese units and Viet

Cong units. Some of those Viet Cong units sustained catastrophic casualties, particularly units that attacked Saigon, Hue and several regional capitals in the Central Highlands and the Mekong Delta, but enough survivors returned to base to form the nucleus for the next generation of that unit.

At the end of 1968, after the Tet Offensive and additional communist offensives during May-June and August-September, the Viet Cong fielded a larger force than it had at the end of 1967, despite the intensity of the fighting during Tet. MACV estimates put total enemy strength in South Vietnam at 251,000 troops, an increase of 26,000 from a year earlier.

That year-end 1968 total included 138,000 combat soldiers—86,000 from North Vietnam (up from 68,000 before Tet) and 52,000 Southern-born Viet Cong fighters (up from 47,000). Viet Cong guerrilla strength stood at 78,000 (up from 71,000), although Viet Cong administrative strength declined slightly from 37,00 to 35,000.

In the years from 1968 to 1975, communist units in the South relied more and more on the insertion of North Vietnamese Army troops to replace their losses, but the Viet Cong remained a viable fighting force through the end of the war.

ROLLS PRESS/POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

ALAN KARCHMER, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN; INSET: NEIL CHAPMAN

DID TET DECIMATE THE VIET CONG?

Dr. Erik Villard is a Vietnam War specialist at the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair in Washington D.C.

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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THE PHOTO AN HONORED TRADITION

A burial at sea ceremony is held on the aircraft carrier USS Midway in the summer of 1965 in the South China Sea. The ship lost many pilots on that cruise, including two killed on the flight deck during a landing. For more photos of the Midway, see Page 54.

“They [the South Vietnamese] are the ones who have to win it or lose it.

We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it—the people of Vietnam—against the communists. We are prepared to continue to assist them, but I don’t think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort, and, in my opinion, in the last two months the government has gotten out of touch with the people.”

—President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 2, 1963, in an interview with “CBS Evening News” anchor Walter Cronkite 10

TOP: PATRICK ALTHIZER; BOTTOM: CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

WORDS FROM THE WAR

VIETNAM

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Carlo D’Este, a renowned military historian who served 20 years in the Army including two combat tours in Vietnam, died at age 84 in Mashpee, Massachusetts, on Nov. 21, 2020. D’Este, born Aug. 29, 1936, in Oakland, California, graduated in 1958 from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, America’s oldest private military college, the “birthplace of ROTC.” Commissioned a second lieutenant, he began a career as an Ordnance Branch officer and retired as a lieutenant colonel. D’Este then became a historian/writer with a focus on World War II, producing 10 acclaimed books including Decision in Normandy; Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily 1943; and Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome. He also wrote awardwinning biographies of George S. Patton (A Genius for War), Dwight D. Eisenhower (A Soldier’s Life) and Winston Churchill (Warlord). In 2011, D’Este was awarded the Pritzker Military Library’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Military Writing. Norwich University presents the “Carlo D’Este ’58 Military History Award” to a graduating history major in his honor. In 1995, D’Este and novelist W.E.B. Griffin founded the William E. Colby Military Writers’ Symposium (now the Norwich University Military Writers’ Symposium). D’Este served on the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee and the Eisenhower Memorial Commission. —Jerry Morelock Tou-Fu Vang, a lieutenant colonel in the Laotian army who fought in a CIA-backed campaign against communist forces in Laos during the Vietnam War, died Nov. 26, 2020, in Woodbury, Minnesota, due to COVID-19. He was 76. Vang, born Dec. 25, 1943, and a member of Laos’ Hmong ethnic group, went to the United States as an exchange student at a Wisconsin high school and earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Iowa State University. He returned to Laos, taught English to university students and was recruited by the army. At the time the U.S. was using the CIA and undisclosed bombing operations to help the Lao government fight communist insurgents in a “Secret War.” Vang, fluent in English, assisted the U.S. Air Force in bomber missions. On his first assignment he boarded a bomber and pointed out enemy targets. Vang left Laos in 1975 and moved to Chicago, where he worked in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and helped resettle Southeast Asian refugees. Vang moved to Minnesota in 2010. He spent the last years of his life working to get more recognition for Hmong veterans of the Vietnam War. —Zita Ballinger Fletcher

EACH SERVICE’S SHARE OF THE U.S. FORCE

propriate in this

Percent (of

% % %

During the U.S. military’s peak strength in South Vietnam—543,400 personnel in April 1969—the Army supplied more than two-thirds of the American force. April 1969 was not only the peak strength of the U.S. force overall but also for all but one of the five services. The Coast Guard’s personnel total that month was 400, down from a high of 500 in June 1968.

SOURCE: SELECTED MANPOWER STATISTICS, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, OASD (COMPTROLLER) DIRECTORATE FOR INFORMATION OPERATIONS AND CONTROL, MAY 15, 1974

12

AIR FORCE 61,400

543,400

TOTAL SERVICE PERSONNEL

ARMY

363,300

67%

MARINE CORPS 81,800

15%

11%

NAVY

36,500

7%

COAST GUARD 400

<1% MILITARY BRANCH, NUMBER OF SERVICE PERSONNEL, PERCENT OF TOTAL

CARLO D’ESTE; COURTESY VANG FAMILY

Branch Strength

VIETNAM

s than 1% VIEP-210200-INTEL-BW.indd 12

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Shi Se

ANGELS OF THE BATTLEFIELD NURSES WHO SERVED IN VIETNAM GAVE MUCH AND RECEIVED LITTLE

By Jimmy Morrison The nurses in Vietnam were among the most heroic Americans there.

They made great sacrifices yet have not received the recognition and respect they deserve.

Many nurses, usually women in their early 20s, volunteered to serve in Vietnam because they wanted to go where they believed they could accomplish the most good, even though they were headREFLECTIONS ing into a war that was unpopular with much of the country.

Many others, however, were like Susan O’Neill, who was misled by military recruiters. While in nursing school she was told that if she enlisted the military would provide money that she could use to pay for her last year of school.

When O’Neill, who opposed the war, asked about Vietnam, the recruiter told her not to worry about Vietnam because there was long line of nurses waiting to go there. That was not the case. One minute O’Neill was protesting the war, the next minute she was in the middle of it. O’Neill used her experiences as 14

the basis for a collection of short fiction stories, Don’t Mean Nothing, published in 2001.

I was drafted at age 19 and served in Vietnam from September 1969 to September 1970 with Company C, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment, 196th-198th Light Infantry Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (Americal). For most of my tour, I was an assistant M60 machine gunner or the gunner. During my final 30 days, I was promoted to sergeant, which made me a squad leader. I regularly walked point for the squad. My unit was in one of the tougher areas of the war—the Central Highlands, near Laos.

The Americal Division was based at Chu Lai on the northern coast of South Vietnam. There was a large hospital at the base, and many of our men ended up in it, although I was fortunate not to be one of them.

Nurses there worked 12-hour shifts for six days a week. On their days off, they returned to the hospital to hold the hands of dying men and comfort them as best they could. One nurse said a seriously wounded soldier asked her to call his mother. She did and heard a scream on the other end of the line. The Army apparently already mis-

AP PHOTO

A soldier wounded during a battle with the Viet Cong in the Central Highlands is treated by a nurse at an Army hospital on the South Vietnamese coast in February 1965.

VIETNAM

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informed the woman that her son had died from his wounds.

Sometimes 60 wounded or dead would arrive simultaneously, and about 15 nurses and doctors on duty had to make quick decisions about which of the wounded they could save and which they could not. O’Neill said she once saw about 30 men severely burned from a helicopter crash and realized with horror that all were going to die from fatal injuries. A helicopter was shot down on our side of firebase Landing Zone Judy the morning I left for home, and 30 men died that day too. Another nurse said that during her first days at the hospital she had to open about 20 body bags and write the cause of death on the tags.

Nurses generally saw many more dead bodies than infantry troops did.

After a battle, we would move wounded and dead from the field and onto a helicopter. Sometimes when the medevac copter took off carrying a soldier with a minor wound you wished it was you. Yet even though most days were miserable for the infantry, we did not experience casualties every day. The nurses had to face pain and death day after day.

Although most infantry guys greatly appreciated and respected the nurses, not everyone showed those good angels the same respect. Some nurses were harassed by doctors and other members of the military.

Alongside professional nurses in the hospitals was a group of young Red Cross volunteers who had inherited the name “Donut Dollies” from World War II women who passed out coffee and doughnuts to the troops. In Vietnam, they visited with the wounded at hospitals and tried to comfort them.

Donut Dollies also traveled to outlying bases and landing zones to talk with the GIs there, distribute doughnuts and play games they had brought along. Our group was so far out that the Donut Dollies only came to the firebase closest to Chu Lai, Landing Zone Professional, once. It was a blessing to see them.

Nurses in Vietnam performed duties that only doctors would do elsewhere. When those nurses returned to the United States, many often found 16

that their vast medical experience gained in Vietnam was of no value. When they went to work in civilian hospitals, they were confined to more limited roles. Worse, some colleagues who opposed the war looked down on them.

One nurse told me that although she wanted to leave Vietnam and return to the States, she felt guilty about leaving behind the wounded men and other nurses and doctors. I felt the same way as I left my fellow infantrymen when my tour in Vietnam was over. That same nurse said that when she got to the States she stayed in the airport for many days, dreading to go home. She said her friends in America were worried about minor things like something their boyfriend said or what pocketbook to buy or what to wear. After all she had seen in Vietnam, those concerns seemed so trivial to her.

These nurses had gone through much more in Vietnam than anyone who had not been there could understand. It seemed that few people cared.

Returning nurses were treated at times as poorly as the troops who came back from Vietnam. Yet the nurses had made an enormous difference in the lives of so many young GIs. This is a story I needed to tell, and I am only 50 years too late. V

Jimmy Morrison and his brother founded Morrison Motor Co., a seller of collector vehicles, in 1970 in Concord, North Carolina.

Do you have reflections on the war you would like to share?

Email your idea or article to Vietnam@historynet.com, subject line: Reflections

LEFT: COURTESY JIMMY MORRISON; RIGHT: CHARLES BONNAY/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

Jimmy Morrison, who fought in one of the most dangerous areas of Vietnam, says “nurses generally saw many more dead bodies than infantry troops did.” RIGHT: A nurse at a Saigon hospital listens to a patient stricken with malaria in 1967.

VIETNAM

VIEP-210200-REFLECTIONS.indd 16

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GARY GALLAGHER ON GETTYSBURG’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS H

An Army Wiped Out Bicycles at War Testing the A-Bomb Soviet Female Ace Battle in Paradise Invasion Stripes

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Thomas Taylor of the 8th Louisiana was seriously wounded in the Cornfield fight.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1862

ANTIETAM NEW LOOK AT THE DEADLY CORNFIELD MCCLELLAN AT THE FRONT UNTOLD STORY OF A BATTLEFIELD GRAVE

WHY DID MACARTHUR WAIT FOR THE ENEMY TO STRIKE FIRST?

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Full tray

Rapid shooter

Recoil springs returned the gun to firing position after recoil.

Two crewmen on each side of the gun, “second loaders,” dropped up to 50 rounds per minute into a loading tray.

Fast feeders

Two other crewmen on each side of the gun, “first loaders,” lifted the rounds out of the loading tray and fed them into the automatic cannon’s rotating mechanical loader, which dropped the rounds into another tray and then rammed them into the breech.

Leader of the pack A gun captain directed the 10-man gun crew.

Not shown

A “trainer,” sitting to the right of the gun mount, “trained” (aimed) the guns on ships during surface engagements by controlling the traverse (horizontal) movement of the barrel. Also not visible are seven additional loaders.

Aerial marksman

A “pointer” aimed the guns at aircraft by setting the elevation (vertical movement) of the barrel.

THE MARK 22 AUTOLOADING CANNON Shortly before 10 p.m. on July 19, 1972, two waves of MiG-17 fighters attacked the guided missile frigate USS Biddle. Two MiGs came in the first wave. The ship’s Terrier surface-to-air missiles downed one and sent another scrambling. The three-MiG second wave, detected at about 8 miles, came in low at about 580 mph and quickly got too close to hit with a missile launch. With no working radar to direct the Biddle’s gunfire, the ship’s guns opened up with a World War II style barrage (at a low angle and high volume). During a period of just 90 seconds, 54 5-inch and 35 3-inch rounds were fired. One MiG was shot down. Another headed home. The third flew overhead without dropping any bombs. The ship fired two Terriers at the fleeing MiGs but failed to hit them. The Biddle’s action marked the ARSENAL Vietnam War’s only successful downing of an enemy aircraft by naval gunfire.

The weapon credited with that success, the Biddle’s 3-inch/50-caliber cannon, was developed after World War II to increase shipboard anti-aircraft firepower and range. The Mark 22, first produced in 1948, fired the same ammunition and used the same barrel as its semi-automatic 3-inch/50 predecessor. With the Mark 22’s automatic cannon, two crewmen—one on each side of the gun—loaded rounds into a rotating sprocket that rolled into alignment with the breech. A ram then drove the round into the breech, which closed and fired it when the cartridge tripped an ejector. The breech opened during the recoil stroke, dropping the expended round onto a tray and then onto the deck, and the process was repeated.

Installed on all ocean-going American warships, auxiliaries and Coast Guard cutters as well as patrol ships given to Saigon, the Mark 22 was at one time the U.S. Navy’s most numerous artillery weapon.

The 3-inch/50, employed almost exclusively against visible targets ashore during the Vietnam War, was succeeded by the shorter-ranged but deadlier Phalanx close-in-weapons system in 1980. V 18

Crew: 7-8 for singlemount gun; 11-12 for twin mounts Weight: 17,000 lbs. single; 31,435 lbs. twin Bore: 3 in.

(76.2 mm) Barrel length: 50 calibers (150.3 in./12.5 ft.)

Ammunition: high-explosive, anti-aircraft, antiship armor-piercing shells Rate of fire (max): 50 rounds per minute Range: 13,350 meters (8 miles)

GREGORY PROCH

By Carl O. Schuster

VIETNAM

VIEP-210200-ARSENAL.indd 18

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Sh Se

Jan. 1 The last commercial for cigarettes is broadcast when a Virginia Slims ad airs at 11:59 p.m. on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. A ban on cigarette ads, mandated by the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act signed by President Richard Nixon on April 1, 1970, kicked in at midnight.

Jan. 23 “Knock Three Times” becomes the first No. 1 hit for pop group Dawn, which issued its debut album Candida in 1970. After a change in background vocalists and top billing for the lead singer, the group is called Tony Orlando and Dawn (Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson).

HOMEFRONT

JANUARY-FEBRUARY

1971

Jan. 12 All in the Family debuts on CBS with Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker, a New York loading-dock worker who spews ethnic slurs, but also shows a kind side, as the series confronts political and cultural controversies with a bluntness that shattered the norms of TV comedies.

Jan. 17 The Baltimore Colts of the American Football Conference edge out the National Football Conference’s Dallas Cowboys 16-13 in Super Bowl V, filled with interceptions and fumbles. The “Blunder Bowl” MVP was Dallas linebacker Chuck Howley, who nabbed two interceptions.

20

Jan. 31 NASA launches Apollo 14’s Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell to the moon. Shepard made golf history Feb. 6 when he sent two balls across the lunar landscape with a 6-iron head on an aluminum rod designed to collect soil samples. The crew returned to Earth Feb. 9.

VIETNAM

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Feb. 9. Carly Simon’s self-named debut album is released. The album’s “That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be” climbed to No. 10 in the pop charts, and Simon received a Grammy Award in 1972 for best new artist.

Feb. 15 For the first time the federal holiday created in 1885 to honor George Washington’s birthday is celebrated not on Feb. 22 but on the third Monday in February, dubbed Presidents Day by some state governments and retailers, but still officially Washington’s Birthday.

Feb. 28 Jack Nicklaus wins the PGA Championship in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, becoming the first player to win golf’s four major tournaments twice. The other tournaments are the Masters, British Open and U.S. Open. (In 1978, Nicklaus completed his third “grand slam.”)

Jan. 1 Amid plans to end the draft as American involvement in Vietnam winds down, the U.S. Army begins Project VOLAR, “volunteer Army,” to study posBATTLEFRONT sible changes in policies and practices that would increase the appeal of Army service. Initial tests to determine the attractiveness of various changes were conducted with existing troops at forts Benning in Georgia, Carson in Colorado and Ord in California.

Jan. 17 Lt. Gen. Do Cao Tri leads 300 heliborne paratroopers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam on a raid to rescue 20 American prisoners of war thought to be held at a Viet Cong camp in eastern Cambodia. No POWs were found, but 30 Viet Cong were captured.

There were no ARVN casualties.

Feb. 8 In Operation Lam Son 719, ARVN troops cross into Laos at the northwestern corner of South Vietnam. The invasion was directed at North Vietnamese Army bases and supply depots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. U.S. forces assisted the operation with helicopter airlifts, artillery fire and airstrikes—but no ground troops.

The Lam Son 719 operation will continue until late March.

Feb. 10 Riding in a South Vietnamese helicopter to cover Lam Son 719, photojournalists Larry Burrows of Life magazine, Henri Huet of The Associated Press, Kent Potter of United Press International and Keizaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek are killed when their UH-1 Huey is shot down over Laos. Seven South Vietnamese soldiers also died in the crash.

Feb 23 South Vietnamese commander Tri, ordered by Saigon to take charge of the troops in Lam Son 719 as the operation begins to falter, dies in a helicopter crash in Tay Ninh.

JAN. 1: SHUTTERSTOCK; JAN. 12: CBS VIA GETTY IMAGES; JAN. 17: WALTER IOOSS JR./SPORTS ILLUSTRATED VIA GETTY IMAGES; JAN. 23: GUY ACETO COLLECTION; JAN. 31: AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES; FEB. 9: GUY ACETO COLLECTION; FEB. 15: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; FEB. 28: MARTIN MILLS/GETTY IMAGES

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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THE LOST BATTLE OF LIMA SITE 85 A DESPERATE FIGHT AT A BASE THAT DIDNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T OFFICIALLY EXIST

By Don Hollway

22

VIETNAM

VIEP-210200-LIMA85-BW.indd 22

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I

n February 1968 the headlines out of Southeast Asia were all bad: North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive, the battles of Hue and Quang Tri, the siege of Khe Sanh. In one week, America had suffered its highest casualties of the war. And that wasn’t even the whole story.

There was another military disaster in early 1968 that would remain unreported for many years. Nearby in “officially neutral” Laos, 3,000 communist troops converged on a handful of American civilians at a top-secret 5,800-foot-high mountaintop base 15 miles from the North Vietnamese border.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Richard Secord first saw Phou Pha Thi—its name means “Sacred Mountain”—in 1966. “The place was right out of a travel poster,” he recalled. “The crest ran northwest to southeast straight out of a lush valley filled with opium poppies waving scarlet in the breeze.”

Several thousand feet below the mountain’s razorback ridge raged an unacknowledged “Secret War,” pitting communist Pathet Lao rebels backed by North Vietnam against the U.S.-supported royal Laotian government, which received assistance from CIA paramilitary advisers, Thai mercenaries and fighters from the Hmong mountain tribes. High overhead American bombers flew routes to and from North Vietnam.

Secord, attached to the CIA, oversaw installation of radar on Phou Pha Thi’s peak to guide those bombers, at night and in all weather, to precise drop points as far away as Hanoi. “To get the best accuracy, the ground station

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In the mountains of northern Laos, the CIA set up radar sites to assist American bombers headed toward North Vietnam. One of those was Lima Site 85, staffed with discharged Air Force members from the 1st Airways and Air Communications Service SquadronMobile posing as civilian workers because neutral Laos was off-limits to the U.S. military.

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U.S. Ambassador to Laos William H. Sullivan, here in Washington with national security adviser Henry Kissinger, didn’t want U.S. troops at Lima 85 because that would violate Laotian neutrality.

from the Air Force and re-employed as civilian contractors by Lockheed Aircraft Corp. They were former “U.S. servicemen with critical skills posing as civilian contractors on a volunteer basis,” Secord said. All personnel wore ordinary American street clothes and were issued Lockheed company IDs. “We felt we were elite,” admitted one of the airmen who switched to Lockheed and thus became ex-Air Force Capt. Stanley J. Sliz, the site day-shift coordinator, “and I still do believe that everybody up there was a special individual. We thought we were going to shorten the war because we could bomb the North during monsoon season.”

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[radar] had to be as close as possible to its targets,” he said.

During the Secret War, the CIA dotted Laos with covert bases for Air America, a U.S.-government-owned airline that secretly delivered supplies to the Hmong fighters. Bases with paved airstrips were designated L for Lima (and the initial letter in “Laos”) and those with unimproved airfields as LS, Lima Sierra (the initial letter in “site”). At LS-85 atop Phou Pha Thi, there was no room for a runway at all. The CIA cleared a 700-foot dirt strip on the lower slope to supply the crew of a secret “tactical air navigation” beacon, or TACAN, on the crest.

The U.S. ambassador to Laos, William H. Sullivan, reluctant to further violate supposed Laotian neutrality, forbade American troops to defend the Lima 85 radar site despite an enemy response that was sure to come. On his initial survey of the site in July 1966, 7th Air Force mission coordinator Lt. Col. Robert C. Seitzberg gave its crew “six months if they were lucky.”

Lima 85 eventually received some 150 tons of material. The base and pedestal for the 8-foot radar dish alone weighed a ton. There were power generators and fuel tanks, frequency converters, various tactical radios and antennae, a weather station, a helipad, a command bunker, two 12-by-9-by40-foot steel containers for living quarters and operations, and a clapboard shack for a latrine. Everything was airlifted in by helicopter. All this construction and activity did not go unnoticed by communist forces around Phou Pha Thi. “We had intended and planned for a long time “We felt we to liberate the Pha Thi area,” wrote Maj. Do Chi were elite.

Ben of the North Vietnamese Army in a 1996 Everybody Vietnamese-published book about the raid. “In up there was 1966, in addition to sending a reconnaissance ela special ement to prepare the Pha Thi battlefield, [Northwest Military Region headquarters] gave particindividual. ular attention to developing and training a sapper We thought [commando] team that would practice deep penwe were etration and methods of attacking targets atop going to karst [limestone] mountains.” shorten the At the end of September 1967 Lima 85 received a handpicked crew officially discharged war.”

n Nov. 1, 1967, the new radar went online. It tracked Air Force F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bombers out of Thailand and B-52 Stratofortress bombers out of Guam, regardless of night or bad weather, computed solutions for ideal bomb release points and relayed the guidance. Over the next few months, Lima 85 would direct 507—about 27 percent—of 1,899 bombing missions over northern Laos and North Vietnam.

Aerial reconnaissance soon revealed the enemy response. “North Vietnamese workers were clearing brush and leveling terrain in an attempt to build a motorable road in the direction of Phou Pha Thi—a dagger aimed at the heart of Site 85,” Secord said. “If it was allowed to get within 15 kilometers [about 10 miles] of the installation by the time the dry season commenced next spring, artillery could be brought up to blast the facility off the map.”

Hmong commander Gen. Vang Pao placed 800 of his men between the road head and the mountain, with 200 more posted on the mountaintop, backed by 300 Thais. As a guerrilla force unable to match the enemy army in strength, the Hmong unit’s job was to detect and delay any attackers only long enough for the Americans up top to destroy the installation and airlift out.

“We had been watching the Song Mai military district in North Vietnam west of Hanoi for months,” Secord said, “waiting for the slowly massing battalions to make their move. We even knew the number of the units and the names of their commanders: two regiments of NVA regulars, about 3,000 troops—one of infantry and one of artillery drawing 85 mm divisional field guns.

When it decided to take the field, it would be the

TACAN beacon

Generators Operations

Path to landing zone

Lima Site 85 was perched at the top of this peak. A radar dish, camouflaged in the photo upper right, was used in targeting American bomb strikes on Hanoi.

The site also contained an assortment of buildings, including an operations center and housing.

Maintenance and communications Latrine

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Living trailer

The Fight at Lima Site 85 March 10-11, 1968

In the fall of 1967, the CIA established a radar station on Phou Pha Thi, “Sacred Mountain,” in Laos to guide American bombers flying from Thailand and Guam for attacks on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam. The base, staffed with 19 Americans, was attacked on the night of March 10-11, 1968, by an estimated 3,000 North Vietnamese soldiers.

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Air America, in existence 1946-76, was an airline owned by the U.S. government and used mainly to secretly support CIA missions. But not all operations were covert. Air America also delivered food and supplies to civilians and transported refugees.

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the ex-captain, recalled. “We could see them on the other mountains around us. We could see them through binoculars looking back at us.”

Over the first 10 days in March, Lima 85 directed only three bombing raids into North Vietnam but called for 230 within roughly 15 miles of Phou Pha Thi for the base’s own defense.

Five more radar technicians were brought in, raising the crew strength to 19 and allowing for 24-hour operations to maintain the bombing runs on North Vietnam and protect the base itself. Yet this barely slowed the enemy road builders’ progress. “We’d knock off a bulldozer or tractor and another would arrive the next day to take its place,” Secord remembered. “Burned-out ‘Cats’ [Caterpillar tractors] littered its shoulder, like locust skins, but the road kept coming.”

Lima 85 could have been evacuated before the NVA reached the base, but military planners decided against it. On March 9, a CIA assessment concluded: “The length of time which seven enemy battalions can be tied down in an assault on Site 85 will significantly affect the enemy’s ability to exercise other aggressive attack options in northeast Laos.” The U.S. military had its hands full with Tet and didn’t need those seven enemy battalions employed elsewhere. Orders came down direct from Washington to hold the site “at whatever cost. It is of vital importance.”

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Air America

largest concentration of heavy artillery observed in Laos since the siege of Dien Bien Phu against the French in 1954.”

On New Year’s Eve 1967, communist forces shelled Lima Site 11, just 5 miles north of 85. Ten days into 1968 the Hmong drove off an enemy probe at the foot of Phou Pha Thi. Two days later Lima 85 was showered with grenades, mortar-shell bombs and rockets launched from a pair of Sovietmade North Vietnamese Antonov An-2 biplanes.

Air America Capt. Ted Moore, piloting an inbound helicopter, couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the biplane: “It looked like World War I.” Moore, in his faster but unarmed Bell 212 (a civilian UH-1 Huey), chased the Antonovs as his crewman, flight mechanic Glenn Woods, leaned out the side door and fired an AK-47 assault rifle.

Both biplanes crashed into the trees short of the border. One was felled by Woods’ rifle. The other was knocked down by heavy ground fire. This curious little dogfight was the CIA’s first air-to-air victory—and is thought to be the first and only time a helicopter shot down an airplane.

At the end of January 1968, the NVA and Viet Cong began the Tet Offensive, a mass of simultaneous attacks on towns and bases throughout South Vietnam. Although not direct targets of the offensive, the bases in Laos also were in danger.

“We knew that the enemy was coming,” Sliz,

KEITH WOODCOCK

An Antonov An-2 biplane dropping bombs on Lima 85 was spotted by a CIA-operated Air America helicopter and shot down with an AK-47 assault rifle, as depicted in this illustration.

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KEITH WOODCOCK

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he communists were not planning an allout assault on Lima 85. “We saw that it would be difficult to use a large attack force and difficult to develop firepower,” admitted Do Chi Ben. “However, if we used a small sapper force and appropriate tactics, it would be possible to achieve success.”

The NVA assault platoon consisted of 40 soldiers from the 41st Special Forces Battalion under the command of 1st Lt. (later Lt. Col.) Truong Muc. All had undergone nine months of specialized training in mountain climbing and scaling cliffs. Late on the afternoon of Sunday, March 10, they took position at the foot of Phou Pha Thi. At shift change that evening the base commander, ex-Air Force Lt. Col. Clarence F. “Bill” Blanton called a meeting in the operations shack.

“He said that we were in dire danger and perhaps we could still get some choppers in that evening to evacuate or we could go ahead and drop bombs and get out at first light,” recalled radar operator and ex-Air Force Staff Sgt. John G. Daniel. “We all decided to stay and continue our mission.”

Daniel felt so secure that he fired up a charcoal grill to cook steaks for everybody. “There was only one way up to the radar and the path was guarded,” he said, but it was a misplaced sense of security. “Just as we were getting ready to break off [from work for the day], this loud explosion occurred outside the door,” Sliz recounted. An enemy shell had landed right on Daniel’s grill.

“Steaks were flying everywhere,” he said.

NVA artillery blasted at the mountaintop for an hour and a half. The TACAN beacon, a 105 mm howitzer and the command bunker were hit.

The living quarters were riddled with shrapnel.

Sliz and his day shift crew took their sleeping bags and M16 rifles and sought shelter elsewhere.

Ex-Staff Sgt. Jack C. Starling, a TACAN specialist, remembered, “We took cover on the opposite side of the mountain from where the [enemy artillery] rounds were hitting. Most of them went right over us.”

As night fell a C-130 Hercules flare ship arrived to illuminate the valley for F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers and A-26 Invader attack aircraft to pound the enemy gun positions. The enemy barrage trailed off, although scattered gunfire could be heard below where the Hmong ground force was engaged. No Americans were wounded, and the radar was undamaged. Blanton and his night shift went to work calling in airstrikes, but Sullivan in the Laotian capital of Vientiane made the decision to evacuate at first light. Secord and his CIA cohorts in Thailand spent the night arranging air cover for the pullout.

Communist soldiers in a posed photo attack with an SKS carbine, AK-47 assault rifle and grenades in South Vietnam, much like they did in their assault on Lima 85.

Meanwhile, Muc and his NVA assault platoon did what the Americans all thought impossible—climbing Phou Pha Thi in darkness. By 3 a.m. they were on top of the ridge and positioned to assault the helipad, the communications shed and radar. The North Vietnamese planned to attack at dawn, but squad leader Trinh Xuan Phong’s cell bumped into a concealed Thai guard post at about 3:45 a.m.

“All of a sudden, we started hearing machine gun fire and hollering from the Vietnamese,” Starling remembered. “It looked to me like there were probably a couple hundred of them out there and no Thai Army. Now I was scared.”

The attackers immediately fired rocket-propelled grenade launchers (B40 Vietnamese-made Russian RPG-2 launchers) into the generators and radar center. Blanton and his crew ran outside and came face to face with the attackers. As generator repairman and ex-Staff Sgt. Bill Husband later told Sliz: “Blanton said, ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ and reached for his wallet so he could show these guys his Lockheed service ID and that’s when they shot him.”

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he enemy was already overrunning the helipad and cutting off the only path down the mountain. There was no way out. Sliz, Daniel and a few others knew a hiding spot. “We sneaked down the mountain about 20 feet to a cave,” Sliz said. The cave basically was just a rock overhang on a ledge with a sheer drop to the valley floor. “There were five of us in that F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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little hole, with barely enough room for two. It wasn’t the greatest spot.”

Above them NVA commandos were already mopping-up. Starling and exStaff Sgt. Willis R. Hall, a cryptographic technician, took cover in the jumble of rocks on the summit. Starling returned fire with an M16 until it jammed.

“Me and another guy [Hall] were laying side by side,” he said, “and these two Vietnamese came down on where we were and jumped over him and landed on my ankle. I had been hit earlier by sniper fire, in the leg. When they jumped over him, they turned around and just opened up on him.

How they missed me I’ll never know.” Starling saw the enemy finish off Blanton and his men and begin looting the bodies. He played dead. “At that point I figured I was dead.”

Down on the rock ledge, Sliz’s crew chief, A hairex-Chief Master Sgt. Richard “Dick” Etchbergraising cater, prepared to make a last stand. “Etch was and-mouse watching the trail above,” Sliz remembered, firefight “and whispered, ‘Stan, there’s people coming!’ ensued at I said, ‘When they get close enough, shoot.’ So he did. Almost immediately all hell broke point-blank loose. They opened up on us from all over, range in the throwing grenades and firing their AK-47s.” little arena Ex-Staff Sgt. Henry G. Gish and ex-Tech. on top of Sgt. Donald K. “Monk” Springsteadah were Phou Pha killed almost immediately. Sliz and Daniel were both wounded. At one point a grenade Thi.

TOP: JTF-FA;

A Defense Department agency that searches for the remains of missing Americans began making trips to Phou Pha Thi in 1994. One of the investigators is rappelling down the face of the mountain. BELOW: Atop the mountain during the war an Air America helicopter hovers over Lima Site 85.

bounced onto their ledge. They only survived by rolling Gish’s body onto it. Sliz said, “When I came to, pieces of Hank were all over me. But the rest of us weren’t killed.”

At the command bunker near the helipad, CIA case officer Howard Freeman, an ex-Special Forces noncommissioned officer who had arrived at the site the Friday before, ventured out with a shotgun and a handful of Hmong to reconnoiter the summit, which was wreathed with smoke from the burning generators. Freeman nearly walked into an NVA commando coming the other way around the operations shack. A hair-raising, cat-and-mouse firefight ensued at point-blank range in the little arena on top of Phou Pha Thi. One Hmong was wounded. The rest fled with him.

Alone, Freeman surprised a pair of NVA soldiers in a machine gun nest and shot them both in the back. He was hit in the leg and withdrew under the smoke of a white phosphorus grenade.

Seeing no survivors, Freeman made his way back to the bunker and told ex-Sgt. Roger Huffman, who was in contact with the support aircraft, to call down an airstrike on the site.

On the ledge Etchberger was the only man unhurt, returning fire with his M16. “Dick never got hit during this time and was directing me on what was taking place and what to do,” recalled Daniel, who used their only radio to raise a pair of inbound A-1E Skyraider fighter-bombers.

“Dick and I decided that we needed them to drop their ordnance on top of the hill as there was no evidence of life there, except for the ones shooting at us.”

Sliz told them he agreed with that decision.

“We’re goners anyhow, so you might as well do it.”

The Skyraiders swooped in to dump full loads of cluster bombs, scattering hundreds of tennisball-sized grenades over the mountaintop. “It was like setting off a string of firecrackers, only a thousand times magnified,” Sliz said. “It was a horrendous noise. After a while everything was deathly still. I thought I had gone deaf after the A-1’s dropped their bombs. I couldn’t hear a thing, just the ringing in my ears.”

As the smoke drifted off and the dust settled, rescue choppers moved in to pick up anybody still alive. A Huey hovered over the rock ledge and lowered a hoist. Etchberger helped Sliz and Daniel onto it. When Husband, with shrapnel wounds up and down his left side, limped past for the chopper, Starling—unable to walk—called out: “Tell them I’m here!”

Together, Husband and Etchberger were last up the line, tumbling aboard the Huey just as it

began taking groundfire. Etchberger, who so far had come through unscathed, had just grabbed a seat when he was struck by a bullet coming up through the bottom of the helicopter. He died en route to Thailand. More Hueys set down at the helipad to pick up Freeman, Huffman, CIA officer Bill Spence and several wounded Hmong.

Husband told everyone that Starling was still on the mountaintop.

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tarling was plucked off Phou Pha Thi by chopper at about 9:45 a.m. “It seemed like 20 hours,” he recalled, “but it was only five or six hours. I just stayed there and kept still because I didn’t have anything to protect myself with.”

He was the last of the seven American survivors pulled to safety.

The 12 men left behind were presumed dead— the largest single-day loss for Air Force ground operations in the Vietnam War. One more, Skyraider pilot Maj. Donald E. Westbrook, was shot down and killed during efforts to bomb and destroy the remaining facilities at Lima 85. The communists claimed that they had killed 42 men, including Hmong and Thai defenders. They reported that only one of their 3,000 men had been killed, with two others slightly wounded.

Phou Pha Thi was never retaken. On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and in November called it off entirely.

The Americans lost at Lima 85 were all awarded posthumous Bronze Stars. Freeman, who survived, received the CIA’s Intelligence Star, the agency’s third-highest award. For his selfless actions to save his teammates, Etchberger was posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross and ultimately the Medal of Honor, presented in 2010 after the battle at Lima 85 finally was acknowledged by the U.S. government.

In 2005 the remains of several American bodies were recovered where the enemy had thrown them—on a ledge 540 feet below the summit. The fate of the rest has been the subject of rumors, government denials, freedom-of-information searches and lawsuits ever since.

“The disaster at Phou Pha Thi is a shocking story,” Secord said, “a bitter pill that was tough enough for me to swallow at the time. It gets no sweeter in the telling. Still, it’s a story that must be told, if only to let those who paid the final price rest a little easier.” V

Don Hollway wrote “Flaming Flattops” in the August 2020 issue. He lives in central Pennsylvania.

TOP: Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger, shown in 1968 before going to Lima 85, received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the fight.

ABOVE: A memorial honoring the 12 men who were killed is unveiled at Maxwell Air Force Base’s Gunter Annex in Alabama on March 12, 2018.

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A heavily reinforced bunker protects Marines at Khe Sanh in March 1968 during a 77-day siege by the North Vietnamese.

Such protection was crucial for the baseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s combat operations bunkers that were the command and communications nerve centers of the battalions stationed there.

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KHE SANH UNDER SIEGE THE VIEW FROM THE 3RD BATTALION, 26TH MARINES, COMBAT OPERATIONS CENTER

By Dick Camp

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he Khe Sanh base was on a plateau in the northwest corner of South Vietnam just south of the Demilitarized Zone dividing it from North Vietnam and about 6 miles from the Laotian border. The base was intended to block enemy infiltration from Laos and serve as the western anchor of a linear barrier containing manned fortifications, minefields and sensors stretching from the South China Sea to Laos, a line known as “McNamara’s Wall,” a reference to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the barrier’s chief proponent.

The base’s perimeter consisted of bunkers and trench lines that stretched roughly in an oblong circle surrounding a 3,500-foot runway large enough to land C-130 Hercules cargo planes. Several thousand yards from the perimeter, hills 881 South, 861, 861A and 558 figured prominently in the defense of the base. Approximately 6,000 Americans defended the base

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t approximately 4 a.m. on Jan. 21, 1968, I stood watch as assistant operations officer in the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment’s combat operations center at the Khe Sanh Combat Base shooting the breeze with Maj. Matt Caulfield, the battalion’s operations officer.

I remember handing him a C-ration cup of coffee when we heard heart-stopping words come over the radio speaker from a lieutenant on a nearby hill: “We’re being overrun!” Caulfield grabbed the radio handset and demanded, “What the hell’s going on?”

perimeter and the hill positions.

In January 1968, the North Vietnamese Army cut the overland supply route to Khe Sanh, leaving the base totally dependent on aerial resupply.

At the same time, the NVA surrounded the base with upward of 20,000 battle-hardened soldiers, supported by heavy artillery, rockets and mortars.

The 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, had been airlifted to Khe Sanh in mid-December 1967 and assigned an approximately 3,000-yard-long slice of the northwest defense perimeter, known as the Red Sector.

“They [the regiment] didn’t have any room for us,” recalled 1st Lt. John T. Esslinger, executive officer of the 3rd Battalion’s Company M. “So they sent us outside the wire to the west a little bit…we build sort of an add on, an annex to the base. We extended the wire and dug our holes and that’s where we lived.”

The 3rd Battalion’s combat operations center was in the only grove of trees in that portion of the base. The battalion logistics officer had been able to bribe a Navy Seabee into digging a rectangular pit with his front-end loader. The pit, some 12-feet deep, 8-feet wide and 20-feet long, was just large enough to accommodate the battalion commander, his staff and radio operators, together with about 15 to 20 men.

The operations center was “roofed” with 2-inch-thick perforated aluminum planks (intended to be runway matting), reinforced with crushed rock, expended artillery shells and layers of sandbags, making the overhead cover at least 5 feet thick. This would easily protect us from NVA mortar fire. Unfortunately, as the siege progressed the NVA brought in heavy artillery—122 mm and 152 mm guns, as well as 122 mm rockets—along with 120 mm and 82 mm mortars. A final layer of 2-inch plywood sheets was placed 6 feet over the entire roof area.

Once a 152 mm shell landed on the hardened crushed rock main road running through the base. I was told to survey the resulting hole to determine what the battalion should do to protect itself. I stared at the huge crater, 6 feet deep and 8 feet in diameter, compared it to our small entrenching tools and reported jokingly to the battalion executive officer that we should surrender!

As a further protective measure our battalion instituted a policy that no vehicles were allowed into the grove of trees—only foot traffic was per-

BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES (2)

TOP: On Hill 881, about 4 miles west of Khe Sanh, Marines use a scope and map to detect North Vietnamese units and spot target sites for U.S. aircraft. BOTTOM: Marines inside the base haul sandbags to their bunkers.

L Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment

1st Battalion, 13th Marines, Artillery Command Post

1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment

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3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, Combat Operations Center

Army Forward Operating Base

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Company C, 3rd Medical Battalion 26th Marine Regiment Fire Support Coordination Center

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The Siege of Khe Sanh

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mitted. We were concerned that NVA observers on the high ground might spot vehicular traffic and identify the area as a command post. Finally, a general purpose tent and camouflage netting were erected over the operations center.

From this underground bunker, the command group and staff—battalion commander, executive officer, operations officer, intelligence officer— directed the widely dispersed rifle companies. Company I and two platoons of Company M occupied Hill 881 South; 2 miles east Company K and two platoons of Company A, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, held Hill 861; and 500 yards to the east Company E, 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines held Hill 861A. Those three hills, along with the 3,000-foot-high Dong Tri Mountain, Hill 881 North and Hill 558, dominated the Khe Sanh Plateau and would enable the regiment to control the high ground overlooking the base. Com-

Khe Sanh

The Marine position on the top of Hill 861, hit first in the Jan. 21 North Vietnamese attacks, is shown in the photo below left. The airstrip at Khe Sanh, below right, is littered with aircraft that were destroyed by enemy fire.

In the dark early morning on Jan. 21, 1968, North Vietnamese Army troops attacked a company from the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, holding the high ground on Hill 861 in defense of the nearby Khe Sanh Combat Base. The attack was repelled, but Jan. 21–April 8, 1968 later in the morning, NVA artillery began shelling the base. Enemy fire pounded the base and the hills on its outskirts for 77 days until air and ground forces of a joint Marine, U.S. Army and South Vietnamese operation broke the siege on April 8. The combat operations center of the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, was in the northwest portion of the base.

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1st Battalion, 26th Marine Regiment, Combat Operations Center

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pany L of the 3rd Battalion defended the combat base’s Red Sector, tying in with the 1st Battalion of the 26th Marines on the right flank and the U.S. Army’s forward operating base on the left.

The battalion combat operations center maintained radio communications with the hill positions, as well as the 26th Marines regimental command post and supporting arms radio networks. A hand-lettered sign was placed above the radio operators’ bench. During the day, its wording was turned toward the dirt wall of the bunker and not visible, but at night the sign was turned over and revealed a tongue-in-cheek response to F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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ed to breach the wire in front of Company L. They came under fire, and 14 bodies were observed being dragged away.

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n Hill 861, as sounds of small arms and machine gun fire, explosions and muffled shouts filled the air in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 21, K Company’s executive officer, 1st Lt. Jerry N. Saulsberry (call sign Kilo 5), responded to the “What the hell’s going on?” question Caulfield had asked from the combat operations center. “We’re being overrun!” Saulsberry shouted.

The major spoke to Saulsberry in an unbelievably soothing voice to calm him. However, things went wrong when Caulfield decided to finish his instructions with some football team rah-rah, saying, “OK, Kilo 5, take the ball and run with it!”

The lieutenant must have been still too anxious to comprehend Caulfield’s use of the cliche or had trouble hearing amid the gunfire and explosions.

“Did I hear you say ‘run,’ sir?” Saulsberry asked.

Caulfield shouted into the handset: “Hell no! I was just trying to encourage you to hold on.”

Saulsberry was in charge of Company K because the company’s commander, Capt. Norman Jasper, had been seriously wounded by a rocketpropelled grenade in the first minutes of the attack and was out of action. The company first sergeant was also wounded by the same rocket.

The company gunnery sergeant had been killed.

The artillery and air officers in the combat operations center requested assistance from the 26th TOP: Col. David E. Lownds, the Khe Sanh base commander, Marines’ Fire Support Coordination Center, in the conducts a briefing in February 1968. MIDDLE: A crewman on a 105 middle of the combat base, which we called “downmm howitzer at the base tosses the shell casing of a fired round. town ground zero.” Within minutes the regiment’s BOTTOM: Soviet-supplied North Vietnamese 122 mm artillery guns fire a volley, purportedly during the siege of Khe Sanh. direct-support artillery battalion, 1st Battalion, 13th Marines, was in contact with Company K’s Cpl. Dennis M. Mannion, an artilleryman attached to the company to direct the support fire. “I started calling in target numbers [pre-planned artillery targets] on the ridgeline 500 yards to the west…I pulled the rounds as close as I could get them…I fired as many rounds as the 105s [howitzers] at the combat base could give us.”

Company I on Hill 881 South also began firing in support. “Our two 81 mm mortars fired several hundred rounds on that slope,” Capt. Bill Dabney, the company commander, reported. “The mortar tubes became so hot that the gunners cooled them the imminent threat of an NVA ground assault: “Tonight’s the Night.”

Sometime around 1 a.m., Jan. 2, a Company L listening post reported six with water, then fruit juice, and finally by urinating NVA had just crept by. A reaction force was sent out and, together with the on them. It smelled a bit rank in the gun pits!”

The regimental fire support coordinator, Lt. Col. listening post men, swept the area. They discovered five NVA and killed them. The five were officers and may have been performing a reconnais- John A. “Band of Steel” Hennelly, directed radarsance for a ground assault. An enemy captive later reported that an NVA guided planes to drop ordnance on suspected NVA assembly areas around Company K’s hill position. lieutenant colonel was one of the dead.

The night of Jan. 21 several NVA “sappers,” an elite assault force, attempt- Just before dawn two A-6 Intruder planes dropped

Marines at Khe Sanh scamper for cover as North Vietnamese shells fly into the base.

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ROLLS PRESS/POPPERFOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

TOP: CHRISTIAN SIMONPIETRI/SYGMA VIA GETTY IMAGES; MIDDLE: AP PHOTO; BOTTOM; AKG-IMAGES/PICTURES FROM HISTORY

56 500-pound bombs on a likely assembly area, which not only dampened the enemy forces’ assault but also forced them to break contact.

“What the hell’s going on?”asked Caulfield in the operation center.

“We’re being overrun!”

Saulsberry on Hill 861 shouted.

t 5:30 a.m., on Jan. 21, just after the enemy had been driven from Hill 861, the NVA unleashed a terrifying artillery and rocket bombardment on the Khe Sanh base, beginning a 77-day siege. Enemy shells hit all around the operations center. Others hit the 1,500-ton ammunition dump on the eastern end of the runway, setting it off with a thunderous roar and sending unexploded ordnance hurtling through the battalion area. The solid thud of a 30-pound shell striking the ground in the darkness was unnerving. Making matters worse, the regiment’s supply of tear gas was blown up and the chemical saturated the air, forcing everyone to wear gas masks…at least those who still carried them.

In the following weeks, the entire combat base and the hill positions were hit all hours of the day and night by various combinations of mortar, artillery, rocket and recoilless rifle fire.

The NVA attacked Company E of the 2nd Battalion on Hill 861A at 4 a.m. on Feb. 5. A sapper unit armed with Chicom grenades (long-handled grenades modeled after those made by Chinese communists) and bangalore torpedoes (metal tubing filled with explosives) preceded an infantry attack by approximately 200 troops. Companies I and K of the 3rd Battalion supported Company E with 81 mm and 60 mm mortar fire, which helped disperse the enemy. By 6:30 a.m., Company E had beaten back the attack

using small arms and aggressive hand-to-hand combat. Seven Marines were killed and 24 wounded, while the NVA lost 109 killed.

On Feb. 15, between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., the NVA struck the base with 1,307 artillery and rocket rounds. A seemingly unending succession of casualties had to be evacuated to Company C, 3rd Medical Battalion, at downtown ground zero.

For most of us, the only protection was to burrow deeper into the plateau’s red clay.

Intelligence reported the North Vietnamese had placed heavy artillery, Soviet-made 130 mm and 152 mm guns and 122 mm rockets, across the border in the Co Roc Mountains of Laos. Our operations center was on a straight line from the NVA fire, and the rounds came right overhead before exploding somewhere in the middle of the base. Occasionally a “short” round impacted the battalion area.

On one memorable occasion, the battalion tactical network came alive with the warning from Company I on Hill 881 South: “Arty, arty, arty, Co Roc Mountain, 220 degrees.” Company I, some 4 miles west of the base, was first to hear the round and broadcast a warning over the radio network, which many units monitored. Sirens and horns sounded all over the base, giving everyone several precious seconds to find cover— F E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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often the margin between life and death. The warning got to be Pavlovian. At the first note all hands scrambled for cover.

I wondered where that SOB was going to hit.

Suddenly there was a terrific explosion, the generator lights went out, and thick dust filled the operations center. Everything went deathly quiet.

The heavy stench of the shell’s cordite explosive material permeated the air. Someone shouted, “Is everybody OK?” After verifying there were no casualties, Caulfield and I went outside and saw a gaping hole in the operations center’s tent covering, which was also perforated by shrapnel. About 4 feet of the center’s roof was gouged out. The bunker had taken a direct hit from a heavy-caliber round, which hit the plywood and exploded, then took 36

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s the siege developed, the NVA blockaded the road into the base.

Supplies could be delivered only by cargo aircraft. Initially, the supply planes were primarily C-130 Hercules and C-123 Provider transports. However, in mid-February the runway closed after a Marine KC130 was struck by anti-aircraft fire and crashed, killing six Marines onboard.

Using an alternative delivery method, the Air Force air-dropped containers into a zone in front of the battalion lines. Every morning, a team from the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, swept the drop zone to ensure the NVA hadn’t moved in during the night. We could see the drop zone from the operations center.

Supplying the outlying hill positions required an innovative approach because the NVA ringed them with anti-aircraft weapons. After several helicopters were shot down, the 1st Marine Air Wing instituted “Super Gaggle,” an air task force consisting of eight to 16 resupply CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, accompanied by about a dozen A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft and four Huey gunships flying cover, a Marine KC-130 to refuel the aircraft and a TA-4F Skyhawk with a “tactical air coordinator” in the back seat to orchestrate the entire affair.

In a typical “Super Gaggle” mission, a TA-4 flew first to Khe Sanh on weather reconnaissance. When it reported favorable conditions, the other aircraft launched from various bases in northern South Vietnam. The A-4s took off from Chu Lai en route to Khe Sanh. The helicopters departed Quang Tri, en route to Dong Ha, where supplies waited. After picking up

THIS PAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: AP PHOTO

There were 205 Marines killed between Nov. 1, 1967, the beginning of a Marine operation against North Vietnamese Army forces in the Khe Sanh area, and March 31, 1968, as the siege of the base was ending, according to general Marine Corps records.

However, Navy chaplain Ray Stubbe, after extensively researching losses during the same period, put the number of Marines killed at 274. There are an array of tallies for the NVA deaths, ranging from 10,000 to 15,000, according to official public estimates. A once-classified report from Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, estimated 5,550, with 2,000 due to ground action and 3,550 from air and artillery forces. —Dick Camp

out part of the roof. If the plywood had not detonated the shell, the round would have penetrated the bunker’s roof—and everyone in the close confines of the space in the operations center would have been killed from shrapnel or concussion.

Two unconscious Marines lay just outside the entrance of the tent. Later we learned that they were about to enter when the shell exploded. Fortunately, the angle of the blast was away from them. Neither was hurt except for minor burns, scratches and headaches. Upon coming to, one looked up and remarked, “Don’t mean nuthin,” which was a standard sarcastic response to truly frightening combat experiences.

Others weren’t so lucky. One day a radio operator had to make a “head call.” Another man took his place. After a long interval, someone took notice and asked about the man who went to the latrine. It turned out the Marine had stepped out of the bunker just as an incoming round hit close to the operations center. He was wounded and evacuated before we even knew what had happened. On another day, a mortar round clipped several Marines close to the entrance of the operations center.

Everyone adopted what we called the “Khe Sanh Shuffle” or “Khe Sanh Two-Step.” Just about anyone who was walking above ground held his helmet under an arm so it would be easier for him hear an arriving shell. All of us kept an ear cocked toward Laos in the west, where most of the NVA artillery was positioned.

Our senses were finely tuned. We would stand around talking with our helmets tucked under our arms until someone said, “Shhh” or “Stop talking.” If nothing more was heard after a few seconds, the conversation resumed. If there was “something” in the air, everyone suddenly dashed for cover. It was automatic. If someone started running, everyone joined in.

As a result of the close calls, the battalion executive officer and I established a second combat operations center in an old above-ground bunker some distance away. We remodeled it, adding more sandbags and digging it deeper—much deeper! We occupied the bunker at night, but during the day maintained watches in the primary operations center.

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A Navy F8 Crusader fighter jet fires rockets at enemy forces in the hills around the Khe Sanh base.

THIS PAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE TOP: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: AP PHOTO

their loads and carrying them underneath in especially designed cargo slings, the helicopters began the short trip to Khe Sanh flying on instruments and then letting down through a hole in the cloud cover.

Just before the helicopters arrived, four A-4s struck enemy positions with napalm and two others saturated anti-aircraft positions with tear gas from spray tanks. About 30 seconds before the helicopters’ final approach to the designated hills, two A-4s laid a smoke screen on both sides of the planned flight path. As the helicopters flew in behind the smoke, four more Skyhawks carrying bombs, rockets and 20 mm cannons suppressed known and suspected North Vietnamese gun positions.

As soon as smoke was laid, helicopters from Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron HMM-364, the “Purple Foxes,” would appear with the sling loads brought from Dong Ha—10 birds in two strings of five just above the smoke.

They flew parallel to the hill, usually to the south since wind was usually from the north. They came into five zones on the hill, released their loads and beat

feet. One bird in the second echelon was designated to land in a zone that we would have ready, drop off mail and replacement Marines, and pick up casualties. Only two CH-46s fell to enemy fire during the “Super Gaggle” missions. In both cases, the Hueys picked up the crews immediately.

On April 8, Operation Pegasus, an overland and air assault mission involving the Marines, U.S. Army and South Vietnamese troops, broke through the North Vietnamese encirclement and lifted the siege. The 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, had some unfinished business, however. On April 7-8 the command group and Company L were airlifted to Hill 881South to prepare an attack on Hill 881 North. Shortly after midnight on April 14, all four of the battalion’s companies advanced against the hill under a massive 2,000-round artillery barrage. At 2:28 p.m., the Marines raised the Stars and Stripes over the smoking hilltop. The capture of Hill 881 North was the 3rd Battalion’s last battle in the Khe Sanh area. V

Dick Camp retired from the Marine Corps in 1988 as a colonel after serving 26 years. He served in Vietnam 1967-68 as an infantry company commander and aide de camp to Maj. Gen. Raymond G. Davis. Camp, who lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, has written 15 books and more than 100 articles in military magazines.

A Marine unit moves toward Khe Sanh on April 7, 1968, while a tank provides road security, during Operation Pegasus, which forced the North Vietnamese to end their siege.

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AWM COURTESY HARDY BRYAN PHOTOP02060.074; CREDITS

PHOTO CREDITS

This view shows the harbor at Cam Ranh Bay circa 1967, the year before the communist Tet Offensive. The harbor was a major supply center for U.S. and allied troops in South Vietnam. Heavy damage to the port or supplies stored there would have severely hindered military operations throughout much of the war zone.

TET WATER BATTLE

THE NORTH VIETNAMESE PLOT TO BLOW UP A TANKER AT CAM RANH BAY

PHOTOP02060.074; AWM CREDITS COURTESY HARDY BRYAN

PHOTO CREDITS

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By Hardy W. Bryan

fter a quiet, uneventful Christmas truce in 1967, I looked forward to the customary January truce for Vietnam’s Lunar New Year holiday, Tet, which would begin on Jan. 30, 1968. I was a 27-year-old newly promoted captain in the 262nd Quartermaster Battalion at Cam Ranh Bay and the duty officer on Jan. 30. The battalion commander, Lt. Col. Billy A. Spinks, was attending a unit or private function. I drove my jeep to the headquarters of South Korea’s 9th Infantry Division, the “White Horse” Division, deployed around Cam Ranh Bay to protect the peninsula. I wanted to see if the Koreans planned to conduct any actions after the truce and needed our support for those operations.

Listening to an intelligence briefing that U.S. officials provided to the Korean division, I heard that a North Vietnamese underwater demolition team was in the area and targeting an oil tanker tied to the Cam Ranh Bay jetty.

Did I hear that startling intel right? Yes, I had. Had any similar warning been issued by the Cam Ranh Bay Support Command? No. Was there a time frame for such an attack? None was given.

To fully grasp the seriousness of that threat, it is important to understand the significance of Cam Ranh Bay to the war effort and the disaster that would occur if the communists blew up an oil tanker in the harbor.

The Cam Ranh peninsula juts southward into the South China Sea to the east and the sheltered bay on the west, forming the finest natural deep-water port in Southeast Asia.

During the Vietnam War, the peninsula was spanned north to south by the 6th Convalescent Hospital, the Cam Ranh Bay Air Force Base, an ammunition storage area, steel storage tanks and the Cam Ranh Bay Support

Capt. Hardy Bryan of the 262nd Quartermaster Battalion at Cam Ranh Bay learned that the North Vietnamese planned to blow up an oil tanker in the harbor.

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Supply ships dock at the busy naval port in Cam Ranh Bay. The Cam Ranh peninsula contained many facilities central to the U.S. war effort in Vietnam, including an ammunition storage area and steel fuel storage tanks. BELOW RIGHT: A jetty stretching from ship to shore transported fuel through pipes to a tank farm.

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was assigned to the 262nd Quartermaster Battalion in November 1967 after graduating from the officer’s POL course at Fort Lee, Virginia. At Cam Ranh Bay, I served as the battalion’s intelligence officer and was detailed to work with the operations officer. Aside from maintaining control of a few classified documents, no vital security functions required my attention.

A few times weekly, I took my jeep across the pontoon bridge to the mainland and attended the U.S. briefings given to the White Horse Division staff. I wanted to see if the Koreans planned to conduct operations in the area, which meant we

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COURTESTY HARDY W. BRIA; MAP: JON C. BOCK

U.S. and allied forces in Vietnam were heavy users of petroleum, oils and lubricants, shortened to POL, which came in many forms. There were four types of bulk fuel: JP-4 AND JP-5: two kerosene-based jet fuels for cargo planes, fighters and helicopters; the most used fuel in Vietnam. JP-5 is less volatile than JP-4 and was primarily used by the Navy, especially on aircraft carriers, where ignited fuel is particularly dangerous.

DIESEL: for trucks and other vehicles; the second most used.

MOGAS: like you put in your car; third most used.

AVGAS: for piston-driven aircraft engines; least used.

launch of Operation Market Time in 1965. The operation set up a surveillance force of naval vessels that would protect more than 1,000 miles of the South Vietnamese coast to stop enemy supply ships from slipping into the country. In Cam Ranh Bay, “patrol craft fast” vessels, commonly called swift boats, were always on patrol in the port and around ships at anchor in the outer harbor.

Market Time forces had never before been challenged in the bay. Nor did the Korean White Horse Division ever have to contend with a ground attack directed at Cam Ranh Bay. Troops stationed there were considered so safe that weapons and ammo were kept in unit arms rooms. Few perimeter bunkers were manned as there was little reason to fear a ground attack or indirect fire from shore, sea or air.

HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

A Fuel Primer

Command, which managed Cam Ranh depot and all logistics in the Central Highlands. The depot consisted of warehouses, outdoor storage areas, port operations and related units.

The storage tanks were filled with POL, the military’s abbreviation for petroleum, oil and lubricants—basically the fuels necessary to keep any modern war machine running.

Bulk and packaged POL was received, stored and distributed in Vietnam by three POL battalions: one near Saigon at Long Binh, another at Da Nang in the north, and the 262nd Quartermaster Battalion (POL), “the Lifeline to Victory,” in Cam Ranh Bay. The 262nd Battalion comprised the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, the 524th Quartermaster Company (POL Operating), the 525th Quartermaster Company (POL Depot) and the 360th Transportation Company (POL truck). The 524th was responsible for removing bulk POL from commercial tanker ships tied up to the jetty and pumping the fuel through two 6-inch-diameter pipelines to the tank farm. The 525th operated a packaged-product warehouse, a drum yard, a POL staging area at the Cam Ranh Bay air base and five helicopter refueling facilities in the Central Highlands. The 360th operated three platoons of 5,000-gallon tanker trucks that hauled fuel throughout the area. The air base was supplied via a direct pipeline from the tank farm.

A key component of port security was the strong U.S. Navy presence established with the

Air Force compound area

SOUTH C H I NA SEA Air Force ammo facilities

Airfield

Joint ammo facilities

Ammo pier

PELIKAN Army port facilities

CA M RANH BAY

Tank Farm Army logistics depot Compound

Army compound

Cam Ranh Bay January 1968

COURTESTY HARDY W. BRIA; MAP: JON C. BOCK

HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

Cam Ranh Bay, about 200 miles north of Saigon, was one of the U.S. military’s largest transportation and supply hubs during the Vietnam War. Military installations stretched from one end of the peninsula to the other.

It was an inviting target during the communists’ January 1968 Tet Offensive.

would need to provide POL supplies for the involved units.

After the Jan. 30 briefing where I learned about the NVA underwater demolition team, I drove back to my battalion as fast as possible. After negotiating the one-way-at-a-time bridge and waiting 30 minutes to get back across, I made a beeline for battalion headquarters and arrived about 3 p.m., finding it even sleepier than when I left.

I observed a tanker—the Pelikan, a Shell Oil Co. ship—on the jetty pumping a type of jet fuel designated JP-4. There was always a high demand for that product, and it had been awhile since a tanker with JP-4 docked.

I made several attempts to contact my battalion commander, executive officer and operations officer to relay the unsettling intelligence I had heard.

Despite making continuous radio calls and sending runners, I was unable to contact any higher-ups. I was the only officer on duty at headquarters and totally out of contact with my superiors.

Although some details of the intel report were clear, the planned time for the attack was still a mystery. It would probably occur at the end of

Demilitarized

Zone

S O UTH VI ETNAM Cam Ranh Bay Saigon

the truce, but what if it happened sooner? I wondered if it could happen that night. I scanned our operating procedures twice but found no guidance—not even the procedure for moving a ship.

I knew it took about two hours to stop pumping fuel and get a ship off the jetty. If I was going to move the Pelikan, I needed to proceed immediately since it was getting late in the afternoon.

Without hesitation, I assumed sole responsibility and issued the order to move the Pelikan to the outer harbor.

That order prompted many actions. The tanker had to stop pumping. Fuel lines had to be shut down and disconnected. Rope handlers and tugboats needed to be ordered. The ship’s captain had to be briefed. Coordination with the harbormasF E B R U A R Y 2 0 21

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was nothing I could do. Spinks’ jeep roared up to the building. He hopped out wearing civilian clothes, rushed in and demanded: “What is going on?” I told him of the threat and what I had done to move the Pelikan. He was furious. I had apparently done the wrong thing. I explained that we had been constantly trying to reach him, but that thin excuse got me nowhere.

“Capt. Bryan, don’t you know Cam Ranh Bay has never been attacked?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied.

“Capt. Bryan, are you not aware we are in a period of truce?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Capt. Bryan, don’t you know we are critically short of JP-4?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“And you still moved the ship?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Capt. Bryan, don’t you ever move another ship again.”

Spinks turned to the noncommissioned officers on duty and asked if the Pelikan could be brought back to the jetty immediately. They told him no. Night movements of ships were prohibited for safety reasons.

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COURTESY HARY BRYAN (3)

ter’s office was required. More guards needed to be put on the ship, and that required an increase in the number of drop lights so the guards could see in the water. We also had to get radios and frequencies to contact Market Time.

I was understandably scared—not so much of the enemy but of the battalion commander, who would be furious. I had never done anything like this before, nor moved a ship from the jetty. I knew I would be labeled an alarmist, but I did what I thought had to be done. When the commander of the 524th Quartermaster Company got word that I had ordered more guards to be placed on the ship, he did not want to comply and said he would call the battalion commander. I replied: “Please do! I’ve been trying to reach him.” He was a more senior captain.

When he, too, was unable to locate battalion commander Spinks, he rounded up his troops and posted them on the ship. I went to the port to brief the Pelikan’s “I had captain, saw the troops board and ensured the never done operation was going well. anything I returned to battalion headquarters and like this found myself in deep trouble. Spinks had obbefore, nor served the Pelikan being pushed away from moved a the jetty by the tugboats. He contacted me on the radio and demanded to know what was ship from happening. I offered to go to his location and the jetty... explain my decision, since it could not be said I did what I over the radio. Spinks ordered me to stay at the thought had headquarters. He was on his way. to be done.”

I expected a turbulent meeting, but there

TIM PAGE/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

South Korean soldiers watch over captured Viet Cong prisoners in 1966.

Bryan was attending a U.S. intelligence briefing for a Korean division assigned to protect the Cam Ranh peninsula when he learned about the planned North Vietnamese attack on an oil tanker.

Becoming even angrier, Spinks turned to me and ordered me into his office. He followed me in and slammed the door shut. He repeated his questions and accused me of hurting the war effort. He said he did not want one of his officers to take such actions on their own. After a long period of shouting, he relieved me of my duties, sent me to my quarters and told me I would be sent back to the States the next morning.

Men in a drum yard position a device that can pick up six drums at once. BELOW: A tank farm stores fuel that was piped from a ship and is waiting to be piped to the air base.

COURTESY HARY BRYAN (3)

TIM PAGE/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

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knew my Army career was over. Although I might not have been immediately released from active duty, the efficiency report Spinks was likely to render would have ended any prospects for advancement. The Army did not need officers who cannot perform under combat conditions and therefore I was certainly of no use to the military, he had told me.

My mind raced as I headed to my quarters.

The commander was correct in all that he said. I knew those issues and had weighed them when I decided to move the Pelikan. I had never known an officer relieved of his duties “for cause.” Now I was one. How would I face my family and friends? What would I do with my life?

I drifted off to sleep and woke at my usual early hour. I grabbed a towel and my flip-flops and went to the communal shower, a frame, tent-covered structure with showerheads in the ceiling. There were three other men who had just come off the night shift, probably from the Support Command headquarters. I overhead one of them remark that a ship got hit during the night.

It was now Jan. 31. I sat on my cot, unsure of what was in store. Would Spinks charge me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for taking unauthorized and unprecedented action?

I thought it a real possibility. What could the charge be? Would there be a court-martial?

However, by noon, no one had come to get me.

As I walked 3 or 4 miles to the battalion headquarters, I noted more activity on the roads than normal. This was strange given the truce. By the time I got to the battalion office, I was dripping with sweat. I really did not want to face the commander, the executive officer or the operations staff.

To my surprise, the operations section was a beehive of activity. Men were on phones and radios, shouting orders, asking for inventory figures, ordering aircraft so we could fly POL supplies and having meals brought to the office. This was everything one would expect in a crisis. I saw the Pelikan had returned to the jetty and another tanker was moored alongside it.

I quickly learned that all hell had broken loose

over Vietnam in the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 31, as the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong launched the main thrust of their Tet Offensive (premature attacks had occurred on Jan. 30).

There was heavy fighting everywhere in the country. The U.S. Embassy had been attacked and was reported to be in the control of enemy forces. The VC and NVA had thrown everything they had into the assaults, and we were initially taking a beating.

The other two POL battalions, in Saigon and Da Nang, were unable to issue fuel, leaving our

Aviation fuel transported in 500-gallon “bladders” is being prepared for air shipment. An attack that set off a series of explosions and fires at the volatile facilities of Cam Ranh Bay would not only have caused catastrophic damage to critical supplies but also would have been a propaganda coup for the enemy.

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select another target. When the would-be saboteurs got halfway across, swimming amid the night lights on the ships at anchor waiting to be unloaded, they spotted the Pelikan. Their revelation was aided by the extra drop lights I had ordered so our troops could see anyone approaching the waterline.

Like moths to a flame, the frogmen swam the 7 or 8 miles to their target. When they got to the Pelikan, the swimmers discovered they had lost the devices to fasten six bombs onto the side of the ship. Exhausted and facing a wall of steel, they gathered around the anchor chain and began tying the bombs to it.

The guards heard them and opened fire. Within minutes, swift boats swarmed the Pelikan and dropped depth charges in the water. Five frogmen were killed. One was captured. The prisoner provided the information about their failed attack.

Meanwhile, the NVA’s active bombs remained tied to the anchor chain. The Navy summoned the explosive ordnance detachment, but the bombs went off before the unit arrived. Exploding about 6 feet underwater, the bombs blew a hole in the bow of the ship where paint was

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COURTESY HARDY W. BRYAN

battalion as the only source of POL in Vietnam.

When the No one told me to go to work. I just joined the frogmen action. I saw commander Spinks in his office. arrived to During the many times he came out giving orders or seeking data, he did not speak to me. carry out But he did not kick me out of the building, eitheir sinister ther—he was too busy with other matters. We work, they were experiencing the highest-ever demand noticed for JP-4, and I had sent away the very ship that something was resupplying the vital fuel for U.S. aircraft. missing. The Yet that had turned out to be a good thing.

At midnight, six NVA frogmen had swum Pelikan had to the jetty to destroy the Pelikan with explodisappeared. sives. They knew it was moored and pumping JP-4. They also knew that the tide was outgoing, which would spread the burning fuel throughout the port facilities.

The flames from the Pelikan could have reached piers with as many as eight ships tied up discharging cargo. Even if the fire did not destroy the other ships, the flames and detonations would have caused a tremendous loss of lives and ruined the docks and materials-handling equipment operating there—a near total destruction of the port.

However, when the frogmen arrived at the jetty to carry out their sinister work, they noticed something was missing. The Pelikan had disappeared. The frogmen turned and started back across the bay. They had been specifically ordered to blow up and sink the Pelikan and didn’t have the freedom to

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Crewmen unload ammunition from a ship at the U.S. Naval Support Facility at Cam Ranh Bay in July 1969. The military complex at Cam Ranh was a major storage center for ammo as well as fuel.

stored but completely missed the JP-4 fuel. If the captain of the Pelikan had simply let out more anchor cable, the bombs would have been moved even farther away from the ship and have caused less or no damage.

COURTESY HARDY W. BRYAN

U.S. NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

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t daybreak, the ship returned to port and resumed offloading. To speed up the process and get the Pelikan’s damaged section above water, a second ship was moored alongside and took the JP-4 into its tanks. The Pelikan’s captain and crew were anxious to unload and leave.

Even though the 262nd Quartermaster Battalion was now sending fuel by aircraft all over Vietnam, the crisis did not subside until the other POL battalions resumed operations and the most intense fighting ended in March. Communist forces made some early spectacular gains, but they were temporary and came with tremendous losses. We encountered losses, too, but in the end the Tet Offensive was a huge military defeat for the enemy.

The NVA came close to knocking all three POL battalions out of service on the first day of their offensive. Had the attack on Cam Ranh Bay been successful—if the Pelikan had been on the jetty— the resulting explosions and fire would have been a greater public relations victory for the enemy than penetrating the embassy grounds.

The Cam Ranh port escaped destruction because a junior captain acted on the intelligence he heard and took the right action. The battalion commander never mentioned anything to me again about moving the Pelikan, nor did he fulfill his threat to end my career.

On the other hand, I received no recognition, nor was there any complimentary mention of my action in my efficiency report. If anyone at the Support Command asked why the Pelikan was moved, I never heard of it. None of the soldiers placed on the ship were recognized for their actions either.

Not knowing all official procedures, I had moved the Pelikan without any authority to do so.

I did not know that only the Cam Ranh Bay Support Command could order a ship to be moved.

That explained why I could find nothing in the battalion procedures manual about moving a tanker—we had never moved one! V

Two months after the attack, Lt. Col. Billy A. Spinks appointed Hardy W. Bryan to command the 525th Quartermaster POL Depot Company.

He retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel and resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.

TOP: The Pelikan, docked alongside the tanker Chevron, suffered damage to its bow from North Vietnamese bombs attached to the anchor chain. The explosions, which occurred 6 feet underwater, blew a hole in a paint storage area but missed the jet fuel stowed onboard.

ABOVE: A close-up of the damage to the ship’s bow.

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Capt. Sheldon Kushner, right, an Air Force doctor, treated patients at a hospital in the Mekong Delta through a U.S. military program established to improve Vietnamese health services.

With him is Ned Jenkins, a pilot in the Air Force forward air patrol, which had personnel stationed in the town where Kushner’s medical team worked. When Jenkins visited with Kushner in the hospital he wore medical scrubs.

A SURGEON’S VIETNAM STORY DR. SHELDON KUSHNER AND A TEAM OF OTHER MILITARY DOCTORS PROVIDED MUCH-NEEDED CARE TO SOUTH VIETNAMESE CIVILIANS

By Mary Jane Ingui

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s a young boy growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, during the late 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Sheldon Kushner, a 26-year-old U.S. Air Force captain, never envisioned that he would be a trauma surgeon for civilians in South Vietnamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mekong Delta, an experience that changed his life. He saw the horrors of war but believes his tour of duty in Vietnam made him a better doctor when he returned to the United States.

The war was heating up during the time Kushner was in college and then medical school at the University of Alabama. Under the Berry Plan, a Defense Department program permitting students to complete medical school and residency before serving their military obligation on active duty, he was scheduled to enter the Air Force following his internship. After completing basic training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas, he was stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, serving as a general medical officer. While there, Kushner learned he would be going to Vietnam.

In March 1968, Kushner arrived at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base near Saigon. He was loaned out to the Army and sent to Vinh Long province on the Mekong River to serve on a team participating in the

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he Vinh Long hospital had only one Vietnamese doctor, Basci Gian, who rejected any training offered by Americans and often engaged in what Kushner and his colleagues considered unethical and substandard medical practices. As with our military role in South Vietnam, the role of MILPHAP was expected to be temporary. It was assumed that eventually the South Vietnamese would be solely responsible for these programs. That never happened.

The Vinh Long MILPHAP team, Unit 558, consisted of three doctors, including Kushner, two civilian nurses who were in Vietnam for an 18-month training program, 15 Army medics, Army Special Forces soldiers, Air Force forward air patrol pilots and CIA operatives who advised the Vietnamese in covert activities.

Serving with Kushner was Fred Seaman, a pediatrician in his late 20s. He served as commander of the MILPHAP team and provided care to the Vietnamese children who were sick or recovering from operations, but usually

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Military Provincial Health Assistance Program, or MILPHAP, created to improve the health of Vietnamese civilians.

A modern nationwide health care system did not exist in the 1960s in South Vietnam, so the U.S. government stepped in and funded a variety health care programs during the war. MILPHAP was one of those programs. The others included the Medical Civic Action Program (MEDCAP), with doctors who visited villages; a Dental Civic Action Program (DENTCAP), providing dental treatment to the Vietnamese; the Veterinarian Civic Action Program (VETCAP), with U.S. Army veterinary personnel treating sick and wounded animals, vaccinating cattle and providing advice on feeding and caring for livestock; and the Civilian War Casualty Program (CWCP), which cared for Vietnamese with war-related injuries.

MILPHAP was a hospital-based program established in 1965 to train local doctors and deliver more sophisticated care. It was created by U.S.

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, the organization in charge of American combat forces, and AID, the Agency for International Development, to improve the health of Vietnamese civilians. The first MILPHAP team was set up in November 1965. By May 1968, there were eight Army, seven Navy and seven Air Force teams. By 1970, teams existed in 25 of Vietnamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 44 provinces.

The goal was to develop an independent, self-sustaining health service program in South Vietnam. More specifically, MILPHAPâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission was to provide medical care and health services to Vietnamese civilians, develop the surgical skills of the Vietnamese doctors and train hospital staff workers.

COURTESY DR.SHELDON KUSHNER

The hospital where Kushner treated patients in Vinh Long had only one Vietnamese doctor. The American staff included three military doctors and two civilian nurses performing surgeries in an operating room that frequently was at full capacity.

surgical unit and worked closely with Kushner, in charge of male surgery. Her husband assisted in surgery, did minor procedures, performed cast work and helped with whatever else had to be done. McComb, who was in charge of female surgery, worked closely with Ba Tam, the head nurse on the female post-op unit. Other personnel included three Vietnamese translators, two women and one man, who helped the American doctors understand their patients’ needs.

The American compound, where the MILPHAP team lived, was in the city of Vinh Long, the provincial capital, whose population was about 40,000. The compound was a converted old hotel built during France’s colonial rule of Vietnam.

There were American guards posted at all times throughout the compound, which housed about 160 people. They shared this responsibility with Vietnamese guards.

“We lived in a very dangerous area,” Kushner explained. “Nothing was completely secure, which is why we had to have guards.” The Americans worried about people on motorcycles who would ride past the MILPHAP compound and throw explosives at the guards. There were several such incidents during Kushner’s tour of duty.

Kushner (front row, third from left) sits down for a photo with other members the Vinh Long medical team in the Military Provincial Health Assistance Program. Local Vietnamese team members included an X-ray technician, the head nurse and translators.

COURTESY DR. SHELDON KUSHNER

COURTESY DR.SHELDON KUSHNER

didn’t perform surgery. The other doctor was James Gordon “Mac” McComb, also in his late 20s. He and Kushner performed most of the surgeries. The whole team shared in the care of patients after surgery.

One of the nurses, Marcella O’Connor, oversaw the operating room. She kept up with supplies and equipment, ordering whatever was needed, and taught the Vietnamese how to sterilize medical instruments and package and store equipment. The other nurse, Jackie Ventura, took care of post-operative children and other sick kids in the pediat- This article on Dr. Sheldon Kushner ric unit and worked closely with Seaman. was adapted from The medics assisted in surgery, sutured small lacTrauma and erations, removed dead or infected tissue from Tenacity in Vietnam: A wounds, irrigated post-op wounds, set broken Surgeon’s Story bones in casts and changed dressings when needed.

by Mary Jane Medic Bill Grover had a particular talent. It Ingui, seemed that whatever the medical team needed he Ph.D., 2017 could get. Grover once told Kushner: “Doc, while you are over here, if there’s anything you need, just tell me; I’ll get it for you, but never ask me where I got it or to take it back.”

One night on the way back to the compound, Kushner complained, “Just once I’d like to have a T-bone steak.” A few nights later, the doctor found 200 T-bone steaks in his room! More crucially, Grover was able to round up medical supplies that were scarce in places like Vinh Long, communities at the far end of a long supply chain. “If it were not for Grover, a lot of people would have died,” Kushner acknowledged.

Other invaluable help came from a husband and wife team—Ong Thoai, called Charlie Brown, an X-ray technician for the hospital, and his wife, Ba (Mrs.) Houng, the head nurse. Ba Huong was in charge of the male post-op

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ushner’s daily routine began after breakfast, at around 6:30 a.m., when he arrived at the Vinh Long city hospital, a 400-bed facility built by the French in the middle of the downtown area. There were three operating rooms. Each could accommodate about three patients at a time. Seabees, the Navy’s construction units, had built those facilities before Kushner arrived in Vietnam. The hospital beds consisted of straw mats often put together so four or five patients could rest after surgery. Crowded conditions were the norm.

On most days, there were 30 to 40 patients in the hospital needing care. Kushner worked 14hour days, six and a half days a week, performing about six surgical procedures a day. Many of his patients were local civilians with injuries from bombings, small-arms fire, rockets, mortars, land mine explosions, booby trap explosions and na-

TOP: DICK SWANSON/THE LIFE MAGAZINE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES) BOTTOM: TANGO IMAGES/ALAMY

TOP: Civilian doctor William E. Owen and Army medic Alfred A. Anderson conduct examinations of Vietnamese children.

ABOVE: Air Force Capt.

John R. Vydareny vaccinates a young Vietnamese woman against plague during a Medical Civic Action Program visit to a village near Phu Cat Air Base in central South Vietnam.

Civilians suffered from war-related injuries in addition to health problems caused by living conditions in an underdeveloped country.

palm burns. The munitions had been deployed

by Viet Cong guerrillas, the Americans and the South Vietnamese. There were no North Vietnamese soldiers in the province, only Viet Cong.

Kushner, who wrote often to his wife, described the scene in an Aug. 26, 1968, letter: “I walked into the hospital this morning and found 41 new war casualties. Where in the hell do you start? I did 5 major cases, Fred Seaman did 2 and we still have many left. This was all the result of a mortar attack last night. Would you believe that I did a saphenous vein graft to repair a cut axillary artery? I don’t know if it will work, but I tried.

Only time will tell.”

Other wounds were to be expected among people living along waterways or in towns surrounded by rural countryside and dirt roads. A patient might arrive with a crushed leg, a head wound from a truck tire or infant growth issues.

The medical team would also see patients with burns that resulted from jet fuel looted from a nearby base and used as household fuel.

Kushner discovered that his internship at the University of Alabama Medical School had provided only minimal preparation for work as a trauma surgeon. None of the doctors had extensive experience with surgery, yet they were expected to operate on abdomens, brains, blood vessels and more. They also did many skin grafts because of napalm burns.

Each brought his own medical experiences to the circumstances that existed in Vinh Long, and together the doctors devised “medical protocols” they believed would work best for their patients as they tried to save lives and limbs under almost impossible conditions, far different from those in American hospitals and clinics. For example, Kushner and McComb chose not to do thoracotomies (opening the chest) because they did not have the equipment. Such surgery was extremely dangerous for the patient when the doctors did not have respirators or chest suction devices at their disposal.

Given their unfamiliarity with wounds and injuries rarely or never seen in medical school, the three American doctors would have to make tough decisions on which civilians could be helped. This practice was also applied in other hospital and combat areas in Vietnam and meant separating patients into three groups: those who could survive without immediate treatment; those who could survive if their wounds were treated immediately; and sadly, those who were so severely injured that they would most likely die despite treatment.

The triage conditions also affected staffing de-

cisions. “Medical assignments were loose,” Kushner said. “You put people where they were needed when you came in that day.”

COURTESY DR. SHELDON KUSHNER

TOP: DICK SWANSON/THE LIFE MAGAZINE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES) BOTTOM: TANGO IMAGES/ALAMY

ABOVE: Kushner performs a surgery in the Vinh Long operating room. He performed 200 surgeries each month, typically six a day. LEFT: Vinh Long city was at the far end of the medical supply chain, which made the doctors’ work more difficult. In addition, there were the disruptions of rockets and mortar fire.

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ack of medical supplies was another serious problem. Kushner and his team had only ether for anesthesia, and there were no muscle relaxants, which made surgery more difficult because the doctors had to fight stiff muscles. Antibiotics were limited to penicillin and chloromycetin, adequate for treating infections. The medical team did not have access to a blood bank. Sometimes blood could be obtained from a patient’s relative, but the team soon discovered that the Vietnamese population felt un-

comfortable about blood transfusions, an unfamiliar procedure in their culture.

When blood was available, the team had no means of determining the type and cross-matching it, so Kushner and his team had to improvise.

They discovered that if the donor’s blood did not clump when mixed with the patient’s blood the donor blood was generally safe to use. They had no access to blood substitutes, such as plasma, and there was always a need for intravenous fluids.

At times the hospital would receive useless supplies that just piled up outside, such as dextrose, used to increase blood sugar in people with diabetes or hypoglycemia. Few patients treated in the Vinh Long trauma hospital would have those conditions.

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espite the rough conditions, minimal supplies, lack of help and local customs, Kushner and his colleagues served patients to the best of their abilities. Kushner’s letters to his wife reveal deep concerns about the devastating effects the war had on the civilians in Vinh Long and his ability to help his patients. It was frustrating to be in a position where he had to perform surgeries that were often unfamiliar to the MILPHAP team and work with locals who were skeptical of modern medical procedures, either because they didn’t understand them or had never experienced them.

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at full capacity, so the doctors and staff frequently worked in unsanitary conditions. Because Kushner’s knowledge of various surgical procedures was limited, he used audiotapes made at the University of Alabama Medical School and medical books to get information about unfamiliar procedures. Tom Graue, one of the medics, helped Kushner on one occasion, when “we had to remove a bullet from a woman’s brain, and while he read the textbook, telling me how to do it, the operation went well.” It was unavoidably “on-thejob training.”

The overwhelming number of surgical procedures, about 200 a month, took its toll on Kushner, both physically and psychologically.

He recalls being sick most of the time with gastroenteritis, viruses or colds. He lost 20 pounds during his year in Vietnam. The food he ate was not very good or nourishing, and he had trouble sleeping. He often heard rockets and mortars from his compound at night. Once Kushner and others in the compound had to vacate the premis-

es because of an attack.

“A sadder After three months in Vinh Long, Kushner sight I don’t wrote home in a letter dated May 13, 1968: “I believe I am doing 2 to 3 to 4 major op cases a day and have ever many, many minor procedures. This afternoon, they brought in 14 9-year old kids, whose seen. I just school was blown up. 7 were dead and one died wish I knew shortly. A sadder sight I don’t believe I have more and ever seen. I just wish I knew more and that I that I could could do more for these kids.” do more for Writing to his wife on Aug. 26, 1968, Kushner shared his frustration by saying: “Today these kids.” was hell and again I spent all day in the operating room and I just wonder how many more people are going to be injured here. I see this every day and I still can’t believe it.” Kushner did so much surgery on gunshot wounds, injuries previously unfamiliar to him, that he could tell just looking at the wound what type of weapon was used.

AP PHOTO

In an example of the widespread reach of U.S. military health services, Lt. Mary Huepers opens a bottle of alcohol to treat a Vietnamese villager during a MEDCAP visit to Ky Hoa Island off the coast of South Vietnam on Nov. 28, 1969.

COURTESY DR. SHELDON KUSHNER

AP PHOTO

He and his team relied on tenacity, ingenuity and creativity to help their patients survive.

Kushner attributed such qualities to his internship experience in Birmingham, Alabama, which provided him with the medical knowledge to confidently respond to situations he faced in Vietnam, yet there remained the real challenge of not knowing enough and wanting to do more for his patients.

Practicing medicine in an underdeveloped country during wartime also exposed the doctors to medical problems not seen in the United States. About six months into his tour, on Sept.

10, 1968, Kushner was sent to check out a possible epidemic of smallpox in a remote Vietnamese village, far from Vinh Long, that had been hit by the Viet Cong on Sept. 9. He was taken there by helicopter and noticed an airfield close to the border with Laos. When he asked why the airfield was there, Kushner was told that it was to protect our military presence in Laos, where officially there were no U.S. troops. After his investigation, he concluded that the village didn’t have any cases of smallpox.

Another unusual incident occurred on Nov. 12, 1968. While at the compound, Kushner received a note from one of the nurses at the hospital. It stated: “Dear Dr. Kushner, we receive a 13-year old female who was injured rectum by water buffalo here at 16.00 … Will you please come?” Kushner rushed to the hospital to take care of the problem, even though he had finished work that day.

One particular case involving a 7-year-old boy named Loc was especially memorable and tragic.

On July 1, 1968, Loc’s mother carried him into the hospital. The boy’s legs were mangled and gas gangrene was visible. Kushner performed two above-knee amputations. With surgery and antibiotics, Loc survived.

The doctor recalled: “I became very attached to this youngster and taught him some English and read to him when I could find time. My mother sent him toys that always brought a smile to his face. The Navy Seabees built him a wheelchair. We were able to obtain artificial legs for Loc, and with the help of crutches, he was able to walk. After he was released, Loc’s mother brought him to the hospital to see me from time to time.”

Because he only worked a half day on Sundays, those afternoons were spent relaxing. Kushner would often play tennis on a court not far from the hospital. Sometimes he read Stars and Stripes,

The Montgomery Advertiser (sent by his father) or The New Yorker magazine. He also enjoyed talking with colleagues at the compound, which had a bar that was a gathering place where they played card games and on occasion saw movies.

In March 1969, Kushner’s tour in Vietnam was over. After a 30-day leave in Alabama visiting his wife, parents and friends, he was assigned to Patrick Air Force Base on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where he finished his military service. He served as a general medical officer and lived near the base in an apartment with his wife.

Looking back on his service in Vinh Long, Kushner, of course, regrets that he could not save every patient. Even so, the experience had rewards.

In spite of the MILPHAP team’s limited training and resources, “we did a lot of surgery and saved a lot of people’s lives,” Kushner said. “We filled a great humanitarian need.” V

Mary Jane Ingui has a doctorate in American history and has taught at the university level. She lives in Sebastian, Florida, and has written, as a news correspondent, several articles about veterans.

Kushner shares in the joy of a young boy, Loc, walking on artificial legs. Loc lost both legs above the knee due to gas gangrene. Kushner performed the amputations and helped get the prosthetics.

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By Tom Edwards

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Although dwarfed by the skyline of downtown San Diego, the Navy aircraft carrier turned floating museum USS Midway occupies a commanding place in the harbor. The Midway was commissioned a week after World War II ended, but played a major role in Vietnam.

PHOTO CREDITS

PHOTO CREDITS

ears ago I drove past the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Midway with a friend shortly after it was permanently docked in San Diego as the USS Midway Museum.

During my four years in the Navy I was a swift boat maintenance and repair electrician in Vietnam and subsequently stationed on the USS Sperry, a supply ship for submarines, at San Diego’s Ballast Point. I glanced at the massive aircraft carrier and said, “Whoa, that sure is a huge ship!” During my friend’s 20year career in the Navy he was a pilot with many landings on the flight deck of carriers. Looking at the ship, he answered, “That sure is a small airport!”

Named for the decisive June 1942 Battle of Midway in the Pacific during World War II, the carrier was launched on March 20, 1945, and commissioned Sept. 10, 1945, eight days after Japan’s formal surrender.

The ship was decommissioned April 11, 1992. Built by Newport News Shipbuilding Co. in Virginia, the Midway hosted an air group of about 130 planes shortly after it was commissioned.

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MIDDLE: The largest carrier when World War II ended, Midway is smaller than its successors, but dominates the marina around it.

ABOVE: Operating in the South China Sea in October 1965, Midway displays the added angled deck that extended its usefulness.

The ship’s crew totaled about 4,000 officers and enlisted men.

The ship is 1,001 feet long and powered by 12 boilers turning four Westinghouse steam turbines to provide a propulsion of 33 knots (38 mph). The Midway was the largest ship in the world until 1955. The carrier underwent numerous upgrades as it adapted to the jet and nuclear ages. These included a lengthened deck, installation of advanced radar and more sophisticated weapons. The number of aircraft on the flight deck was reduced to 100 from 130 after determining the reduced number could be coordinated more efficiently.

In a 1947 test of new technology, the Midway launched a captured German V-2, the first large-scale rocket fired from a moving platform. That success was a catalyst for naval missile operations. Two years later, the ship launched a modified P2V-3 Neptune capable of carrying a 9,000-pound atomic bomb, proving that airplanes loaded with atomic bombs could be based on aircraft carriers.

Over 10 years, the Midway made seven deployments in European waters as a part of the Atlantic Fleet. After work at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard from June 1955 to September 1957, the Midway returned to service with its home port in Alameda, California, near San Francisco. In April 1962, the carrier departed on a Far East tour to Korea, Japan, Tai-

TOP: TOM EDWARDS; MIDDLE: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Lights illuminate the Midway’s massive bridge or “island” in the early evening.

TOP: TOM EDWARDS’ BOTTOM: GETTY IMAGES

TOP: TOM EDWARDS; MIDDLE: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTOM: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

wan and the Philippines.

Midway’s operations in Vietnam began in March 1965 with airstrikes over North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder. On June 17, F-4B Phantom IIs from the carrier’s Fighter Squadron VF-21 shot down two MiG-17 fighters, the first official aerial victories against the North Vietnamese. On Jan. 12, 1973, another Midway-based F-4B scored the last aerial victory in the war when it downed a MiG-17 over Haiphong, North Vietnam, killing Senior Lt. Luu Kim Ngo of the 923rd Fighter Regiment. That F-4B bearing the names of its crew, Lt. Vic Kovaleski and Lt. j.g.

Jim Wise, is on the Midway flight deck today.

Also on display is a UH-1 Huey helicopter armed with machine guns and rockets. Hueys occasionally deployed from the Midway to provide cover for small Navy patrol craft, “swift boats,” plying inland waterways. Other aircraft on the flight deck include an RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance plane, an A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft, an EKA-B3 Skywarrior multi-mission aircraft and an F/A-18 Hornet fighter painted to resemble a Russian MiG, an F-14 Tomcat fighter, an A-6 Intruder attack aircraft, an EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare plane with radar-jamming equipment and a C-1 Trader cargo plane.

The Midway museum offers an opportunity to see an SH-3 Sea King anti-submarine helicopter (which could be armed with torpedoes) that played an important role outside the war zone. It was used to recover Apollo astronauts after their spacecraft landed in the ocean. It also served as the president’s “Marine One” helicopter.

The scene inside the Midway’s command center—the “bridge”—gives tourists a rare glimpse of the machinery used to maneuver such a huge ship. Interestingly, the primary helm control used to turn the Midway’s rudders and steer the ship is a rather modest-size brass wheel.

The now mannequin-occupied engine control room is stuffed with instruments and communications equipment that controlled the engineering plant and regulated the amount of steam going into the turbines.

After nine months off the coast of Vietnam, the Midway returned to the United States in November 1965. The ship was decommissioned in 1966 for an expensive four-year overhaul at a San Francisco shipyard. The work included expansion of the flight deck and the installation of new electronic systems.

The Midway went back to Vietnam in May 1971, relieving USS Hancock in the Gulf of Tonkin, and returned to Alameda in November 1971.

The ship was underway again in April 1972 for

A mannequin crewman signals for a launch off the museum’s deck while an F-4B Phantom II with the markings of the fighter squadron VF-21 “Freelancers” sits ready for ... the next visitor.

a third deployment after the March 30 “Easter Offensive” invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnamese forces. The Midway’s aircraft played a major role in the U.S. effort to stop the flow of North Vietnamese troops and supplies into the South. In May, aircraft aboard the Midway joined those on other carriers to drop mines into the waters of North Vietnam’s major ports. During summer 1972, bombers launched from the Midway struck sites in North Vietnam during the Operation Linebacker air campaign.

The Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King helicopter on the Midway’s deck served as President Richard Nixon’s Marine One and was used to retrieve astronauts returning from space.

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The Midway sailed home to Alameda after President Richard Nixon announced a ceasefire on Jan. 15, 1973, during negotiations in Paris for a peace treaty. The Midway and its Attack Carrier Air Wing 5 received a Presidential Unit Citation from Nixon recognizing their “excellent teamwork and dedication and sustained superior performance” in Vietnam from April 30, 1972, to Feb. 9, 1973.

The Midway wasn’t in the U.S. long. In September 1973, the ship left Alameda for a new home port in Yokosuka, Japan, where it arrived in October. It was the first American carrier with its home port in a foreign country.

In April 1975, as South Vietnam was about to fall to a fast-moving takeover of the country by the North Vietnamese, the Midway was once again in Vietnamese waters as it participated with dozens of other ships in Operation Frequent Wind, an effort to evacuate thousands of Americans and South Vietnamese working closely with U.S. personnel. The evacuees were flown by helicopters to the American ships.

TOM EDWARDS (3)

ABOVE: In this display of the throttle board in the engine room, what looks like brass steering wheels are actually controls to special valves called throttles, which regulate how much steam goes into the turbines to cause them to turn.

RIGHT: Mannequins stand in for sailors in the main engine control room. LOWER RIGHT: All quiet in the bridge, the Midway’s command center.

TOM EDWARDS (2)

TOM EDWARDS (3)

The Midway’s sprawling hangar deck is full of aircraft and other displays, including, at right, a theater that shows a film recounting the World War II battle in the Pacific that gave the aircraft carrier its name.

Over two days, the Midway’s big H-53 transport helicopters flew more than 40 sorties and carried more than 3,000 Americans and South Vietnamese refugees to safety.

In a most dramatic incident of Operation Frequent Wind, South Vietnamese air force Maj. Buang-Ly flew out to sea in a small propellerdriven Cessna O-1 Bird Dog with his wife and five children inside, hoping for the best. He had never landed on an aircraft carrier before, not even seen one. He saw the Midway and headed in, but the flight deck was filled to capacity with helicopters. To provide landing space for Buang, the Midway’s commanding officer, Lawrence Chambers, the first African American captain of a carrier, ordered several helicopters pushed overboard. Buang landed successfully. A replica of his plane is on the Midway’s hangar deck. (The original is at the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.)

The USS Midway Museum opened to the public on June 10, 2004, at the Broadway Pier in San Diego. Attendance for the first year was 879,281— twice the expected number.

There are 60 carefully restored exhibit areas.

The 10 acres of displays include 30 restored aircraft on the hangar deck and flight deck. Venturing below deck, visitors can see crew living spaces, mess halls, a chapel, laundry services and other sections of the ship.

Guided tours provide insights into the com-

mand center for flight operations and other ship systems from bow to stern. Flight simulators give you an opportunity to experience air combat in a 360-degree view, and you can roll, spin and loop.

Other tours will bring you up to speed on flight deck operations.

The Battle of Midway Theater has 90 seats for showings of the “Voices of Midway” film, which tells the story of the World War II battle. The very extensive Midway Museum Research Library is available to researchers. Although the library doesn’t lend books, many of its resources are digitized and can be downloaded for free.

In May 2007 the USS Midway Museum received the Preserve America Presidential Award from President George W. Bush. The award is on display in the library. V

Trip Tips Midway Museum Location: 910 N. Harbor Drive, San Diego Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Sunday (last admission: 4 p.m.)

Price: Varies by age, $26 maximum; veterans $10 Food: Midway Marketplace on the hangar deck offers a self-service menu. Phone: 619-544-9600 Website: www.midway.org Advice: Plan on visiting for several hours at least. Check website for COVID-19 restrictions.

Tom Edwards is a freelance writer/photographer in Forest Lake, Minnesota. He thanks Karl Zingheim, USS Midway Museum staff historian, for his invaluable and frequent assistance.

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DOWNED AIRMAN’S NIECE DIGS INTO THE PAST

What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family’s Search for Answers

By Jessica Pearce Rotondi The Unnamed Press, 2020

60

Jessica Pearce Rotondi is the granddaughter of a World War II airman shot down and held prisoner by the Germans. She is also the niece of a U.S. Air Force AC-130H Spectre gunship crewman who went down with his plane in Laos during a night reconnaissance mission in 1972 and was never heard from again. Her grandfather and uncle—along with her mother and herself—are the subjects of Rotondi’s first book, What We Inherit: A Secret War and a Family’s Search for Answers, a compelling account of the family’s long struggle to get answers about the fate of Uncle Jack Pearce.

Rotondi, a writer and editor, also deals with the devastating impact of the 2009 death of her mother, Linda Pearce Rotondi, who took up the cause of accounting for her brother Jack Pearce. The story also includes an account of grandfather Ed Pearce’s service in World War II, his frustrating quest to learn Jack’s fate and her own emotional journey to Laos in 2013 seeking the place where the AC-130H went down in the MEDIA jungle more than 40 years earlier.

After Ed Pearce retired as a DIGEST Pennsylvania state trooper in the early 1970s, he strongly protested the Air Force’s dismissal of what he believed were valid reports that Jack Pearce and other crewmen survived the crash and were taken prisoner either by communist Pathet Lao troops or the North Vietnamese Army. He became active in the National League of POW/MIA Families, and his efforts to find the truth about son’s last flight became a full-time job.

He even flew to Laos in 1973 on his hunt for an-

swers. The World War II veteran died in 2005.

His daughter Linda exhibited the same determination as she continued her father’s search: As a 22-year-old student in Paris in 1975, she confronted Laotian and Vietnamese diplomats at their embassies to demand information about her brother.

In 2009, Jessica Rotondi discovered a trove of letters as well as redacted official reports and newspaper clippings her mother had collected, and it was her turn to take up the cause, despite the fact that bone shards discovered at the crash site in 1986 were later identified by the Army’s Central Identification Lab in Hawaii as Jack Pearce’s remains. In 2008, the family had held a funeral with full military honors for the airman at his hometown Milford Cemetery in Pennsylvania after coming to terms with the fact that he likely had died in the Laotian jungle.

The last third of the book consists primarily of Rotondi’s compelling travel narrative of her trip to Thailand and Laos accompanied by a close friend.

“I want to know what really happened to Jack that night after his plane went down,” she quotes herself telling her friend Liz when they arrived in Laos. “Whether or not the rumors of Americans being held prisoner in Laos were true.”

The story proceeds to an unsurprising yet moving conclusion. In the book’s final paragraph, Rotondi writes that Jack Pearce “was trying to become his father” when he volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam to be a Special Operations Squadron gunner.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; INSET: COURTESY JESSICA PEARCE ROTONDI

Jack Pearce, inset, was shot down over Laos in 1972 while serving on the crew of an AC-130 gunship, similar to the aircraft shown here at Ubon Royal Thai Air Base. His father, sister and niece spent decades trying to determine what happened to him.

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“I had spent the past four years trying to become my mother,” Rotondi continues.

“What neither of us perhaps realized was that we can’t relive things for the people that we love; all we can do is try to understand them, love them, and know when to let them go.”

—Marc Leepson

Vigilante!

A Pilot’s Story: 1,200 Hours Flying the Ultimate U.S. Navy Reconnaissance Aircraft

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Originally the Mach-2 piéce de résistance in a Cold War line of U.S. Navy nuclear bombers capable of operating from aircraft carriers, the North American A3J Vigilante did not last long in what proved to be an ill-conceived role. The delivery system involved shooting bombs out the back, a feature incorporated into a lessthan-exact, somewhat toylike plastic version that model-maker Monogram rushed into the hobby shops while the pre-production YA3J was still undergoing tests.

As with many warplanes through history, however, another use was found for the erstwhile bomber. One of the largest aircraft to fly off a carrier deck went on to distinguished service as a Navy reconnaissance plane. Making a career of going in harm’s way while surviving primarily on its speed, the “Vigi” or Vije” suffered the highest loss rate of any U.S. Navy aircraft.

Vigilante! A Pilot’s Story: 1,200 Hours Flying the Ultimate U.S. Navy Reconnaissance Aircraft is a comprehensive account of the Navy’s closest equivalent to the U.S. VIE-210200-001 Historical Tours.indd Air Force’s Lockheed SR-71 Military reconnaissance aircraft. The Vigilante also has a personal connection to the author. Retired Navy Cmdr. Robert R. “Boom” Powell flew the plane during his second tour in Vietnam and had ready access to the experiences of colleagues in the small, proud Vigilante community.

—Jon Guttman

MEDIA-DIGEST.indd 61

THE LAST JAPANESE HOW MANY TIMES SOLDIER HAS THEFROM DESIGN WORLD OF THE WAR U.S.IIFLAG SURRENDERED CHANGED? IN THIS YEAR 27, 31, 36 or 40?

- 1945 - 1947 - 1950 1 - 1974 For more,search visitDAILY QUIZ For more, WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ at HistoryNet.com.

MAGAZINES/QUIZ HistoryNet.com

ANSWER: 1974. PRIVATE TERUO NAKAMURA, A TAIWANESE NATIONAL,27.

ENLISTED IN THE JAPANESE ARMY IN 1943.

ANSWER: THE CURRENT DESIGN HAS BEEN IN HE HELD OUT ON 1960 MORTAI IN INDONESIA HE WAS CAPTURED PLACE SINCE WHEN THE FLAGUNTIL WAS MODIFIED IN DECEMBER 1974. EARLIER THAT YEAR, HIRO ONODA, WHO TO INCLUDE THE 50thFINALLY STATE. SURRENDERED. HELD OUT INHAWAII, THE PHILLIPINES,

12/21/20 9:51 AM

Damaged by a 1966 fire on the carrier Oriskany, A-4E Skyhawk attack planes are parked on the flight deck. The ship’s aviators were part of Air Wing 16, one of the air war’s most distinguished units.

Bloody Sixteen: The USS Oriskany and Air Wing 16 during the Vietnam War

By Peter Fey Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2020

62

The Tailhook Convention of Navy aviators in September 2001 was the genesis of Peter Fey’s meticulously researched book about Carrier Air Wing 16’s participation in bombing missions over North Vietnam from 1965 to 1968. At the meeting the author, then a young naval aviator, met retired Navy Capt. Wynn Foster, a legendary A-4 Skyhawk pilot known within Tailhook circles as “Captain Hook.”

A squadron commander in summer 1966, Foster led an attack against a North Vietnamese gasoline storage facility protected by heavy antiaircraft artillery. A 57 mm shell shattered his cockpit, severing his right arm at the shoulder.

Foster managed to retain consciousness and use his left hand to maneuver the crippled aircraft to the Gulf of Tonkin where he ejected. Fortunately, the U.S. destroyer that rescued him had a doctor on board. A prosthesis gave Foster his Captain Hook moniker, and his exploits enshrined him in naval aviation lore. Foster’s story was Peter Fey’s inspiration for his excellent book, Bloody Sixteen: The USS Oriskany and Air Wing 16 during the Vietnam War. USS Oriskany and Air Wing 16 made three deployments between April 1965 and January 1968 during the Operation Rolling Thunder bombing campaign over North Vietnam. During 1965, the carrier spent 141 days on the line and

lost 23 aircraft. Cmdr. (later Vice Adm.) James Stockdale, head of the carrier air wing, was shot down on Sept. 9, 1965, and became a prisoner of war. Highly decorated before his capture, Stockdale was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroic leadership during nearly eight years as a prisoner.

He was part of the fraternity of carrier pilots described by American author and journalist Tom Wolfe as having the “Right Stuff.”

The Oriskany’s second deployment, from May 26 to Oct. 26, 1966, was cut short by a disastrous fire. By then it had already sustained 25 aircraft shot down. The Oriskany was first of three aircraft carriers to suffer devastating fires during the Vietnam War. Mishandling magnesium flares caused the conflagration. After eight hours the fire was finally extinguished, but not before 44 men perished, including 24 pilots.

The ship limped to the repair yard at Hunters Point in San Francisco. Due to the shortage of carriers and the operational tempo of the air war, the Oriskany was needed back on station in Vietnam as soon as possible. Workers labored 24/7 for six months to repair the aging vessel. Meanwhile commanders faced the daunting challenge of replacing experienced pilots and training reconstituted squadrons.

By the time the Oriskany returned to the Gulf of Tonkin, the air war had heated up and North

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Carrier’s Aviators Embodied Ethos of “The Right Stuff”

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NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Vietnam’s air defense system was much more sophisticated. AAA was now integrated into the target-acquisition radars controlling the surface-to-air missiles. As a consequence, Air Wing 16 lost half of its aircraft, 39, and a third of its pilots during 122 days of combat from June 1967 to January 1968. Twenty aviators were killed or missing, and seven were taken prisoner, including Lt. Cmdr. John McCain, the future U.S. senator. The Oriskany’s losses were the highest of all air wings, accounting for 20 percent of the Navy’s total losses in 1967.

Fey recounts the aggressiveness and heroism of the wing’s pilots, including Cmdr. Bryan Compton, who led Skyhawk Attack Squadron VA-163, the “Saints.”

McCain later described Compton as the “bravest man I ever knew.” Compton and Lt. Cmdr. James Busey, the squadron’s operations officer, were awarded the Navy Cross. Busey retired as a four-star admiral and served as vice chief of naval operations. Another “Saint,” Lt. Cmdr. Denis Weichman, flew 625 combat missions, the most of any naval aviator during the Vietnam War. Weichman, who retired as a captain, had more than 1,000 arrested carrier landings to add to his laurels.

Although the book focuses on air operations and aviators, Fey excoriates Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for his emphasis on the “sortie rate,” the number of combat missions flown during a given period, as a measure of aviation effectiveness. That metric, similar to the “body count” reports that ground combat units in South Vietnam were required to render, put aviators at risk.

During the Oriskany’s 1967 deployment, there was an acute munitions shortage.

The manufacturing base could not keep pace with the expenditure of bombs. To maintain the high sortie rates McNamara wanted, aircraft were launched with only partial loads of ordnance or old,John defective VIE-210200-002 Black.indd bombs dating from World War II. It is unfortunate that by the time Bloody Sixteen was first published in 2018 many of the veterans who distinguished themselves in the hostile skies over North Vietnam had already died, including Weichman and Captain Hook. They would have been proud of Fey’s fine recap of those perilous days.

—John D. Howard

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In this book, you will find over 2,500 acronyms, jargon, slang expressions, and lingo brought to you by Vietnam servicemen who showed remarkable insight into their own generational place in history. Much of this created language came about as a way to help these warriors excel in battle, or came about as a way to help them cope emotionally with the everyday horrors of the war. Some were just made up to entertain each other.

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FRENCH MEDEVAC PILOT FLEW INTO ENEMY FIRE FOR RESCUES

By David T. Zabecki Valérie André is a medevac helicopter pioneer—and the first woman to fly a helicopter in combat. For her service in Vietnam she was decorated with the Legion of Honor, the National Order of Vietnam and the Croix de Guerre for valor in foreign operations. She is the first woman to become a general in the French military.

André, born in Strasbourg in 1922, was a member of the French Resistance in World War II. During her time as a medical student after the war, she learned to fly fixed-wing aircraft at a local flying club. In 1948 she graduated from the University of Paris with a medical degree and qualified as a neurosurgeon. By that time the French were deeply inHALL OF volved in a war with the Viet Minh independence movement in Vietnam, and there was a severe shortage of milVALOR itary doctors there. André joined the French army as a captain, underwent parachute training and was assigned to Saigon as a surgeon at the Coste Military Hospital.

All too often, the wounded reached care far too late, taking days and sometimes even weeks to be transported from jungles to a military hospital.

While André was in Saigon in 1950, she witnessed a demonstration of a Hiller 360 helicopter (forerunner of the American OH-23 light helicopter) configured as an air ambulance, with two externally rigged stretchers. Recognizing the potential of battlefield aerial medevac, André fought the military bureaucracy to return to France to train as a helicopter pilot. Back in Vietnam in 1951, she became one of the first three helicopter medevac pi-

64

David T. Zabecki is editor emeritus of Vietnam magazine.

EVERETT COLLECTION HISTORICAL / ALAMY

VALÉRIE ANDRÉ

lots, along with Adjutant (Master Sgt.) Henri Bartier and Capt. Alexis Santini—whom she married in 1963.

From 1951 to 1953 André flew 129 combat medevac missions in northwest Vietnam, rescuing 165 wounded soldiers. On two occasions she parachuted into the field to treat wounded soldiers in need of immediate surgery. In December 1951 André flew in the face of ground fog and heavy anti-aircraft fire to reach the besieged French outpost at Tu Vu on the Black River. On the ground she performed emergency surgery on the most pressing cases and then flew the most seriously wounded to Hanoi, two at a time. In 1952, André assumed command of the helicopter unit at Gia Lam Air Base in Tonkin province.

She also flew medevac missions at Dien Bien Phu. The Vietnamese called her “the woman who comes down from the sky.”

In the early 1960s André served with French forces fighting an Algerian revolution, flying an additional 236 combat missions.

As a major she served as the medical chief of the 23rd Helicopter Squadron, flying Sikorsky H-19 and H-34 transport helicopters and Alouette 2 light helicopters. She also served as the chief medical officer at the Reghaïa Air Base. By the time André was promoted to Medical Corps colonel in 1970, she had a total of 3,200 flight hours.

In 1976 she was promoted to Médecin Général, becoming the first female general officer in the history of France. In 1981, she was made Médecin Général Inspecteur, the senior-ranking medical officer in the French military and a major general. André was one of the founding members of the French National Air and Space Academy in 1983. Now 98 years old, she lives in Paris.

Over the course of her long career André was awarded the Croix de Guerre five times, the Cross of Military Valor twice, the Aeronautical Medal and the Volunteer Combatant’s Cross for her service in World War II. In 1987 André was the first woman to receive the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit. In December 1999 she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest honor in France and a distinction bestowed on only eight other women, including a 2014 presentation to her Indochina War contemporary, nurse Geneviève de Galard, the “Angel of Dien Bien Phu” at the 1954 battle that ended French rule in Vietnam. V

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