Death in the Jungle (5 page)

The 4th Platoon’s swimmer line was to run perpendicular to the beach and out to sea for five hundred yards. There was a swimmer stationed at each of the twenty-five-yard markers on the line. The beach party
would control the movement of the swimmer line by using two flagpoles to ensure swimmer alignment and to signal the swimmers, once they were lined up, when to take a sounding with their lead-line. In good weather, calm seas, and low surf, the admin recon was a lot of fun. However, when conditions were like those at Chu Lai, it was very dangerous. We had a terrible time getting ourselves and the swimmer line just to the two-hundred-yard mark. Actually, we never got through the surf zone because it extended much farther than five hundred yards. The waves were spaced so closely together that there was no chance to take a sounding and record the reading on our slates, much less keep a straight swimmer line.

When we ran into a very powerful rip tide, some of us were forced to abandon the swimmer line and go out to sea with the current until we could swim away and down the coast several hundred yards. Only then could we return to the beach to regroup. We fought the elements for about four hours until several men got entangled in the swimmer line and had to inflate their life jackets to keep from being drowned in the surf. Reluctantly, we had to admit that we couldn’t complete the recon. However, we were thankful that no one was hurt badly or drowned.

In late February ’67, we returned to Subic Bay for a few days before returning to Coronado and the beautiful Silver Strand. In the meantime, we concentrated on getting our parachute, demolition, and diving requalifications up to date.

One Saturday we were jumping with the NAS Cubi Point Skydivers sport parachute club. I was given permission to jump a new “Para Commander” for my fifth freefall and my sixteenth jump overall. We were jumping from an UH-2B helicopter into the Subic Bay trap and skeet range. The jumpmaster, MM2 Moki Martin,
and I went up to six thousand feet together. Martin and I had started out freefalling together at the small airport near Lakeside, California, during the summer of ’66. We hadn’t made a freefall since then. Both of us were a bit nervous but determined to joke and grin at each other in spite of the butterflies in our stomachs. I was to go first because I was jumping the Para Commander. When I was motioned to exit by the jumpmaster, I immediately leaped out with my back arched, arms and feet spread out wide in the “frog” position. I stabled out and enjoyed the scenery, occasionally glancing at my altimeter.

As I neared three thousand feet, I visually checked my rip cord’s position with my right hand. When I did, my body dipped to the right and I spun rapidly clockwise. To stable out, I simply put my right arm back even with my left.

When my altimeter’s needle reached three thousand feet, I reached in with my right hand and pulled the rip cord, being careful to not lose it, which would have cost me a case of beer.

I waited and waited, and the parachute failed to open! My reserve was located in front of my stomach exactly like the military reserve was when jumping the T-10 at Jump School and the T-10 with the Tojo modification in UDT and SEAL Teams. I doubled over, gripping the reserve with my left and the rip cord with my right hand. My body flipped upside down with my butt pointing at the ground. I pulled the reserve, and the next second I was sitting in the reserve saddle. It opened incredibly fast, followed by the Para Commander, which gradually inflated. Then I had two canopies over my head. I was slowly swinging around and around until I landed in the high grass between the skeet range and the hillside.

Martin’s and the jumpmaster’s jumps went well. We grabbed three more chutes and went back up for another
thrill. While we were gaining altitude in the helo, the wind came up suddenly without our knowing it. We weren’t using smoke grenades for wind indicators on the DZ (drop zone) because it wasn’t an official military jump, and being young and dumb and a little on the cocky side, we figured we could handle just about anything.

Again the jumpmaster put me out first. I was jumping a steerable, twenty-eight-foot military surplus canopy with the double-L modification. I pulled at twenty-five hundred feet with my chute opening just fine, but when I looked down at the ground, I noticed that the jump-master’s spot was off by a couple hundred yards.

I immediately faced into the wind and looked between my Cocharan boots to check my drift speed. I was drifting across the road from the skeet range, passing over the spare sixteen-inch gun barrels for the battleship USS
Missouri
, and rapidly moving toward the Kalaklan, commonly called Shit River because of the open sewage it carried away from the town of Olongapo.

As I neared the river, it appeared I would miss the high power lines by about a foot, but I would definitely hit an open metal shed about midsection. I was considering pulling my capewell releases to plunge to the ground, but before I could make a decision my feet hit a high power line.

It was a shocking experience and reinforced my hatred for wires. There was a loud pop and sparks flew everywhere when my feet hit the line. I was also paralyzed from the waist down. My parachute canopy hung over the high power lines, suspending me about twenty-five feet from the ground. I hung there, stunned.

Gradually, I realized what had happened. The base had to cut off the electrical current and get a large cherry
picker to reach me. Jim Girardin rode the cherry picker forks up in the air and released me from the parachute.

I was taken to the hospital, where the doctor examined me. The current had entered my feet, traveled up to my waist, and exited through my butt. The bottoms of my feet and the back part of my buns were blistered. If the current had continued up and through my heart, I would have been instantly killed.

I remembered an old Irish proverb that said, “A man that’s born to hang will never drown.” Now I knew what that meant. Within two hours, I was back to normal with no aftereffects other than the blisters.

The Navy doctor asked me to what unit I was assigned. I told him UDT-12. He looked at me with a grin and said, “Get out of here. You guys are too much.”

We were only too glad to leave. We headed directly for the Navy Enlisted Men’s Sampaquita Club for a few San Miguel beers. In a short time Moki Martin, Jim Girardin, the guys, and I were boasting and reminiscing of the day’s excitement and experiences. We didn’t have much time to do a lot of thinking; we were too busy having fun!

We departed Subic Bay, Philippines on 3 March by a Navy C-117, and arrived at NAS North Island, Coronado, California, on 8 March ’67. Within two weeks, about half of us were assigned to SEAL Team 1.

Our first week with SEAL Team 1 was spent getting moved into the SEAL barracks, getting our personal records turned in to admin, medical records turned in to medical, drawing our operating gear from supply, getting assigned to Foxtrot Platoon, being issued personal weapons, et cetera.

The next week, we (Foxtrot Platoon) began the six-week course of SBI (SEAL Basic Instruction) that involved weapons familiarization and training, small unit tactics, prisoner handling, map and compass, SOPs
(Standard Operating Procedures) that included hand signals and individual responsibilities, rappelling, emergency extraction by McGuire rig, operational insertion and extraction by helicopter, boat, and parachute, emergency first aid, uses of ordnance, et cetera.

Our weapons training took place in the Chocolate Mountains on the Navy Bombing Range at Siphon ten of Coachella Irrigation Canal and the Beal Well area. We fired the 57mm and 75mm recoilless rifles, 60mm and 81mm mortars, M-60 and Stoner machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers, M-16/XM-148 combination rifle and grenade launchers, .30-caliber BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle), Thompson and M3A1 (“grease”) submachine guns, Swedish-K submachine guns, Browning .30- and .50-caliber machine guns, and silencers.

Most of our squad and platoon training missions took place on the Alamo River, which drains into the Salton Sea, and other marshy terrain that was very similar to the Rung Sat Special Zone (RSSZ) in the South Vietnamese delta that was just a few miles southwest of Saigon.

One particular night we were given a mission that took us across a muddy flat of the Salton Sea. The mud was bottomless in places and impassable by walking. We soon learned that we had to lie down in the mess and pull ourselves along with our hands and knees. It was exhausting.

It took us all night to get across that muddy flat. We were covered with mud from head to toe. Our weapons were caked and filled with the salty muck, but we learned many lessons that night. We had gotten only a taste of what we would be experiencing in the Rung Sat Special Zone (RSSZ).

When we returned to Siphon ten, we bathed and cleaned our weapons in the Coachella Canal.

We remained at Siphon ten for a couple of weeks, concentrating heavily on weapons training. We spread
sleeping bags under the desert ironwood trees and grabbed a few hours of rest when we could.

The last week, Foxtrot Platoon was given an ORI (Operational Readiness Inspection). The Cadre (SEAL Team 1 instructors) had us running all over the prickly Chocolate Mountains and the mucky Salton Sea, blowing up enemy targets with explosives, capturing specific individuals, rehearsing area and point ambushes and reconnaissance, and in general, doing RP&B (Rape, Pillage, and Burn). We were beginning to work smoothly as a platoon, and also as a squad, when we split up. Each man was beginning to feel comfortable and confident with his responsibilities and how he fit into the platoon. And every man knew exactly what the other men’s responsibilities were.

It was at this point that our instructors began teaching us the art of flexibility applied to contingency planning (when the enemy had gained the element of surprise over us). The key was to take the unexpected and turn it into victory. Continuous training in immediate action drills prepared us to respond instinctively and aggressively and for the best chance of survival. For example, if we were to patrol into an enemy ambush, our immediate response would be to charge directly into the midst of the ambush, thereby changing a defensive action into an offensive action, that is, direct assault against the enemy. If we could pull it off, we were winners; if not, then the enemy would surely hold us in great awe and respect for our courage. Even in death, it was good to be a winner.

We gradually became more confident as a fighting unit because we knew we could count on the Navy Seawolves, Navy Boat Support Unit personnel, and others to respond to our cries for help or reinforcement. In other words, we would use our strength against the enemy’s weakness, neutralize the enemy’s strength, and
conceal our vulnerability. The enemy had a larger force, but we had superior firepower, and/or maneuverability. Because we were a small, offensive unit, we always had to try to seize and hold the initiative. Without going into all of the elements of war, our strengths were due to our good leadership, up-to-date training, state-of-the-art equipment, and teamwork. Take away any one of the four, we would be in trouble.

The last three weeks in July ’67 were spent at the Army’s Jungle Warfare School at Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone in Panama. It was an excellent school, staffed by U.S. Army Special Forces personnel.

There, Foxtrot Platoon was used primarily as point element for company- or battalion-size operations. During one evolution, we were to E&E (escape and evade) the enemy from point
A
to point
B
. Naturally, the “enemy” consisted of Special Forces staff members. We were given all day to complete the course. All of Foxtrot ran the distance and none were captured. However, one sergeant was hot on my trail, and got close enough to get a hand on my right shoulder, when I dove into a creek. I swam to the other side and kept on moving. I hadn’t forgotten the lessons learned at Devil’s Elbow on the Colorado River during UDT Training.

We learned how to make comfortable shelters (called bohios) from a mosquito net, poncho, and inflatable mattress. We learned how to cook coatimundi, boa constrictor, iguana, sea foods, et cetera, and how tasty their flesh was.

The highlight of the trip occurred when a sergeant said I could have a small boa constrictor for a pet. All I had to do was reach into a cage where a fifteen-foot mama boa lay with several hundred babies, each twelve inches in length, wiggling all together in one bundle. I couldn’t back out, as SEAL Team 1’s image was at stake. I reached down into the mass of squirming evil
and came up with none other than Bolivar. He and I became fast friends. I simply put him into my pocket and smuggled him back to Coronado.

When we returned to the Silver Strand, we had just one week to get our gear packed to leave for Vietnam.

On 7 August, Foxtrot and Alpha Platoons departed for Vietnam on board a Navy C-117. Foxtrot Platoon members were as follows: Lt. Stanley S. Meston (OIC), Lt. (jg) Francis E. Schrader (AOIC), PR1 Richard A. Pearson, MM2 Harlan W. Funkhouser, BT2 Michael E. McCollum, HM2 William L. Brown, RM2 Gary R. Smith, SM3 Leslie H. Funk (Katsma), ADJ3 Mitchell L. Bucklew, ADJ3 John F. Flynn, BT3 Ivan C. L. Moses, AMH3 Ray E. Markel, and SA Vernon L. Dicey. Alpha Platoon members were as follows: Lt. (jg) Joseph DeFloria, Lt. (jg) Nelson, PHC James M. Cignarella, PT1 Gerald M. “Ace” Bowen, Phillip L. “Moki” Martin, QM2 Talmadge W. Bohannon, SK2 Gouveia, HM2 Mahner, BM3 Al “Apache” Williams, RM3 Byrum, ICFN Guidry, and SK2 Ronald A. Ostrander. Even Bolivar, my snake, enjoyed the trip. I took him out of my field jacket pocket and let him crawl around in my lap and on Funkhouser’s neck while he was asleep.

All went well until we reached Barbers Point Naval Air Station on Oahu. One of the crewmen had snitched to U.S. Customs that there was a snake on board. We were not allowed to depart the plane until we had been questioned and searched by Customs. Naturally, I denied having a snake with me because I knew my teammates wouldn’t give me away.

Finally, the Customs men gave up the search and departed. Apparently, Hawaii didn’t have snakes. And they didn’t want any.

Mr. Meston, my platoon officer, came over to me afterward and asked, “Where is that damn snake?”