Death in the Jungle (36 page)

Eleven days later, on January 26, 1968, I was with Bravo Platoon on the USS
Jennings County
, which was an LST (Landing Ship Troop) anchored on the Bassac River about two thousand yards northwest of Dung Island. The island was Communist controlled; therefore, our ships sat a quarter of a mile outside of recoilless rifle range from the island. Also aboard the ship was a platoon from SEAL Team 2, along with a couple of Seawolf crews and five PBR crews.

As I joined the two six-man squads from SEAL Team 1 and fourteen-man SEAL Team 2 platoon on the ship’s flight deck for a mission briefing at 1200 hours, led by Lt. (jg) Demo Dick Marcinko, I reflected for a minute on the past several days and our previous four missions on Dung Island. We’d blown up a VC blockade that had been built across a river to stop PBRs from passing through; we’d fired at sampans and junks on a pitch-black night and hit who-knows-what; and MM1 Martin and I had killed two VC in a sampan as it had drawn to within fifteen feet of us. I also thought about the somber fact that four SEALs had been killed in Vietnam in just the previous fifteen days; actually, all had been killed in an eleven-day period. SN Roy Keith had been killed on January 11 by small arms fire at Ba Xuyen. GMG1 Arthur Williams had been killed in the
Mekong on January 18 by small arms fire. LCDR Robert Condon of UDT-12 had been killed instantly in a Mekong River ambush when a VC B-40 rocket had hit him in the head. ADR2 Eugene Fraley had died on January 21 at My Tho when a booby trap he was setting had accidentally detonated. Death had struck down four good men in a hurry. I wondered who would be next, aware that it could easily be me.

I turned my attention to Mr. Marcinko as he ran us through the details of the day’s operation. He told us we were going to patrol along a canal into an area populated by many Vietnamese families living in their hootches. Our intelligence people reported that somewhere in the locality was a POW camp where a U.S. Army sergeant had been held since 1961. We were to search for the camp and the American soldier. That information got my adrenaline flowing, as it was the kind of mission every SEAL dreamed about: rescuing a fellow warrior from the enemy. The risk involved was higher than usual due to the fact that our squads would be visible and exposed as we would investigate all of the hootches in broad daylight.

When the briefing concluded, the two squads under Mr. Van Heertum’s command and the SEAL 2 platoon, led by Mr. Marcinko, boarded five PBRs and headed down the Bassac River toward Dung Island. Two Boston Whalers with 125-horsepower Mercury outboard engines and an LCPL-MK4 traveled with us. With this mission recognized as a particularly dangerous one, we were not lacking in support.

After a short ride, the boats journeyed around the western side of Dung Island on the Song Hau Giang. Six miles down the river, we turned east on the Khem Lon, which swung southeast after one thousand meters. A trip covering two klicks brought us to the mouth of a small stream called the Rach Gia, which was our insertion
point. Mr. Marcinko’s platoon inserted on the left bank of the waterway, while Mr. Van Heertum’s twelve men were dropped on the right bank.

With the water between us, the two groups of men began advancing upstream in skirmish lines. I was positioned on the right flank with Martin and DiCroce, two teammates who had served with me at Nha Be. Bad Girl was in my hands, with her double barrels pointed ahead, ready for action.

I was instantly awestruck by the beauty of the jungle as we moved forward, as that was the first time I’d been on Dung Island in the daytime. There were coconut palm trees everywhere, and there were irrigation canals crisscrossing in front of us every ten yards. The canals were six-foot-deep ditches, about fifteen feet wide and flowing with water that was two feet deep. At each canal, we staggered our skirmish line so that only a couple of men dropped in and out of the ditch at a time. This was done for security purposes.

Between the canals I found a dozen spider traps, holes measuring four and a half feet deep and twenty inches in diameter, covered by a camouflaged, thatched lid. Enemy soldiers could hide in the spider traps, waiting for us to walk past before popping open the roofing and shooting at our backs. Those traps gave me the creeps, and my finger felt the M-16 safety to make sure it was on safe.

As I climbed out of the third canal with my eyes peeled, I saw several hootches in the trees just ahead on the opposite side of the canal. Then my ears picked up the laughter of children. When the rest of my squad came up beside me, I signaled them concerning the village.

Mr. Van Heertum moved us to the next canal, which we crossed quickly. We patrolled through a flock of domestic chickens, and as we entered the settlement, four
Vietnamese children stood and stared at us from beside the nearest hootch. They appeared to be four to seven years old and quite obviously poor, though they were relatively healthy looking. Their faces, though, expressed sheer terror, and I thought the kids were too scared to move. I didn’t blame them in the least, for the twelve of us looked like a child’s worst nightmare come to life.

While the others faced the hootch in the skirmish line, DiCroce and I checked around the outside perimeter of the thatched hut. Finding nothing in back but a wandering pig, we returned to the front and entered the dwelling. My eyes adjusted to the dimmer light and I saw two old women cowering in a corner.

“Toi xem choi,”
I said to them, assuring them that we were just looking around. DiCroce pointed at a small bunker built out of logs and mud in the opposite corner of the hootch. We checked it out, finding no one in it, then we exited the hut.

“Just two old women and a bunker for protection against machine gun and rocket attacks,” DiCroce informed Mr. Casey, who was the Second Squad leader.

“Okay,” said Van Heertum, “let’s keep searching for the POW camp.”

As our skirmish line moved toward another hootch, I glanced back at the four children who had been watching us. They saw me look, and this time they ducked into the hootch we’d searched, and they disappeared.

The growl of a dog caused me to jerk my head back to the front. I laid my eyes on a medium-size mongrel, mangy and black, which stared at me from twelve feet away. I braced myself to hit him with my rifle stock should he charge, but he chose to turn and trot away, looking back a couple times with a sneer on his ugly mug.

A few seconds later, our squads were surrounding another
hootch. DiCroce and I went in and searched the dwelling, being careful not to bother anything. Having negative results, we walked back outside and reported to Bos’n Casey and Van Heertum. They had us continue ours stroll through downtown Rach Gia.

As we advanced toward another hootch, through a menagerie of ducks, dogs, and pigs, a group of women and children noticed us from the other side of the main stream. As they visibly tensed in alarm, one of them saw Mr. Marcinko’s platoon approaching from downstream. That sight caused them to quickly but quietly disperse and disappear in various directions.

My attention was diverted to my right as I heard Martin and DiCroce call out simultaneously, “VC!” I swung my weapon in the direction of three men who were coming out of a huge hut about seventy meters away, but I couldn’t shoot because Martin was in my field of fire. I ran up beside Martin and DiCroce.

Instinctively, the three of us spread out in a skirmish line facing the three VC, all of whom were carrying rifles. Martin opened up with his Stoner machine gun first. Instantly, the VC reacted; one dove back into the hut and the other two started running in opposite directions. I aimed Bad Girl at the man dashing to the right and squeezed the M-16 trigger. I had the weapon set on full automatic, so every round in the 20-round magazine pursued the runner like a mad hornet flying at breakneck speed. The only problem was that the magazine emptied in one and half seconds, which was so quick that if the rifleman’s aim was off target in the least, every bullet would miss. As I saw the gook still sprinting for all he was worth, I knew I’d blown it.

“Dammit!” my brain screamed as my shooting finger reached for the grenade launcher trigger. I took careful aim and fired a 40mm HE round at the VC as he
dropped into an irrigation ditch. The round exploded on the bank of the canal.

While I inserted a second magazine into place in the M-16, Martin sprayed the other fleeing man with his machine gun. The VC was still running when I joined my teammate in firing at him. A second later, the man, looking like he was hit, disappeared into a canal. DiCroce fired a 40mm HE round from his M-79 after the guy, which blew on the far bank.

Martin turned his machine gun on the large hootch and let loose with a barrage as I ran ahead to the next canal and jumped in. I plowed through the water in the bottom and scurried up the bank closest to the hootch. Sticking Bad Girl over the top, I fired the M-16, now on semiautomatic, at the thatched hut while Martin advanced and joined me in the canal.

When Martin rested the Stoner on the bank and started firing, I climbed out of the ditch and ran in a crouched position to the next ditch. As quick as I could, I threw my weapon over the ridge and covered Martin’s advancement.

We leapfrogged in this manner until we were hiding in a canal only seventy-five feet from the entrance of the big hootch containing at least one enemy soldier. DiCroce and Clann, who was toting a Stoner machine gun, had advanced to the canal behind Martin and me.

The large hootch was at least thirty feet by twenty feet and made of intertwined palm fronds. I pointed Bad Girl at the front wall beside the door and caressed the XM-148 trigger. With a light squeeze, a 40mm round smacked into the wall and detonated. To my astonishment, the thatched roof collapsed, and the front and side walls fell completely over, revealing a large bunker made of mud, logs, and sticks. The hootch was not a hootch at all, but a huge, camouflaged hideout.

I fired another 40mm HE round at the bunker, and
DiCroce did the same from the next canal. The explosions didn’t even shake the structure.

As Martin blasted the bunker with a burst of machine-gun fire, I moved a few yards to my right and looked forty-five meters down an intersecting canal. There I spotted the body of the VC whom Martin and I had shot. He was lying half in, half out of the water. I raised my weapon and shot the body twice with M-16 rounds to make sure the man was dead.

“Cover me!” I barked at Martin, then I started down the canal toward the body. Wading through the ditch water, I splashed my way to the lifeless enemy. I bent over and reached into the water beneath the man’s chest. My fingers found the barrel of a rifle, and I jerked a Russian-made, bolt-action rifle out from under the body.

With DiCroce and Clann firing at the big bunker and two smaller bunkers nearby, Martin appeared on the bank of the canal. I handed the confiscated weapon up to him and got busy searching the dead man’s pockets. I found nothing at first, but then I discovered a couple of ammo clips.

Meanwhile, Claim’s Stoner and DiCroce’s M-79 were working overtime, and with the grenades exploding to my left, the noise was earsplitting. I grabbed the dead man’s right arm, intending to turn him over in order to perform a hasty search of his front pockets for any documents. I no sooner began lifting than an enemy grenade blew up fifteen to twenty yards to my left in the canal.

A burning sensation struck me in my upper left arm between my collarbone and my biceps, causing me to wince and drop the body. I looked toward the pain and found a hole the size of a dime in my shirt.

“I’m hit!” I exclaimed to Martin, who was unscathed by the blast.

“How bad?” he wanted to know, his face showing concern. I rotated my shoulder in a tight circle to check
it. There was some pain, but nothing to write my congressman about.

“I’ll live,” I replied.

“Not if we don’t get outta here!” Martin blurted. “Mr. Van Heertum is frantically motioning for us to return.” We began to carefully move back toward our teammates. I saw that Martin was still carrying the Russian rifle along with his Stoner machine gun. The rifle would be one less weapon in an enemy soldier’s hands, provided we made it off Dung Island alive.

DiCroce and Clann fell in behind us as we went by them in the ditch. The four of us bypassed five intersecting canals before choosing to turn and scamper down the sixth one toward Mr. Van Heertum’s position.

“Smitty’s hit in the shoulder,” I heard Martin say to Mr. Van Heertum as they met one another.

“I’m okay,” I assured them as I came to a stop next to the two worried men. “It’s just a small piece of shrapnel.”

“Smitty took some shrapnel,” Van Heertum informed Chief Blackburn, the corpsman. I pointed at my wound and shook my head.

“No big deal,” I stated strongly. “I can continue.”

Mr. Van Heertum shook his head back at me. “No way! The VC are leading us into a trap! We’re gonna withdraw!” His voice was excited but firm. He turned toward his squad to initiate a retreat from the village. While Van Heertum gave the orders, Chief Blackburn slapped a bandage over my wound.

“Are you ready?” the lieutenant asked in our direction. After a nod from the corpsman, he had all of us move back to the main stream. As we withdrew, there was no gunfire from either side. There was only the sound made by the walking of twelve swamp warriors in single file and the incessant barking of a dog, which grew fainter by the minute.

When a Boston Whaler came roaring up the stream, I felt like doing some bitching myself after Mr. Van Heertum told me he had radioed the boat to medevac me. The rest of the men were going to stay put and wait for Mr. Marcinko’s platoon to show up on the other side of the stream, then they’d patrol out to the Khem Lon and the mouth of the Rach Gia for extraction.

Feeling guilty, I climbed aboard the Boston Whaler. The coxswain reversed the bow of the boat, and without ado we roared down the waterway. As we went, I took a final look at the coconut palm trees and the beautiful jungle I was leaving behind, realizing I might not see such a sight in broad daylight again for a long time. And again, I pondered what I’d done in this once-serene place: I’d taken part in someone’s death. But better him than me. The fact was that I had almost joined the dead man in the canal where he had lain. One of his buddies had done his very best to blow my brains out after I had blown out his buddy’s brains. Such was the nature of war. Some tried but died, and some somehow succeeded and survived.