The Vietnam Reader (4 page)

Almost nine years later, in line with Train’s interest in new developments, he had indicated that he would accept an assignment with Special Forces. I met him at Fort Bragg just after he had moved down Gruber Avenue from the 82nd Airborne Division to Smoke Bomb Hill, the Special Warfare Center.

It was obvious to those close to Train that he did not accept wholeheartedly the doctrines of unconventional warfare. But President Kennedy’s awareness of the importance of this facet of the military had made unconventional or special warfare experience a must for any officer who wanted to advance to top echelons.

As Train and I chatted and drank our coffee my interest grew in whether this dedicated officer was going to change and how he would operate in the guerrilla war in Vietnam.

“So you want to go to Phan Chau?” Train asked.

“I’d like to see Kornie in action,” I said. “Remember him at Bragg? He was the guerrilla chief in the big maneuvers.”

“Kornie has been one of the Army’s characters for ten years,” Train said sternly. “Of course I remember him. I’m afraid you’ll get yourself in trouble if you go to Phan Chau.”

“What do you mean by trouble?”

“I don’t want the first civilian writer killed in Vietnam to get it with my command.”

As I expected, Train was going to be a problem. “You think I stand a better chance of cashing in with Kornie than with some of the other A teams?”

Train took a long sip of coffee before answering. “He does damned dangerous things. I don’t think he reports everything he does even to me.”

“You’ve been here for three weeks, Colonel. The last B team had him four months. What did Major Grunner say about him?”

Fenz, a Special Forces officer for six years, concentrated on his coffee. Train gave me a wry smile. “The last B team was pretty unorthodox even by Special Forces standards. Major Grunner is a fine officer; I’m not saying anything against him or the way he operated
this B detachment.” Train looked at me steadily. “But he let his A teams do things I won’t permit. And of course he and Kornie were old friends from the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany.” Train shook his head. “And that’s the wildest-thinking bunch I ever came across in my military career.”

Neither Fenz nor I made any reply. We sipped our coffee in silence. Train was one of the new breed of Special Forces officers. Unconventional warfare specialists had proven their ability to cope with the burgeoning Communist brand of limited or guerrilla wars so conclusively that Special Forces had been authorized an increase in strength. Several new groups were being added to the old 1st in Okinawa, 10th in Bad Tölz, Germany, and the 5th and 7th at Fort Bragg.

New officers were picked from among the most outstanding men in airborne and conventional units. Since every Special Forces officer and enlisted man is a paratrooper, it was occasionally necessary to send some “straight-leg” officers to jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, before they could attend the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg prior to being assigned to a Special Forces group.

This new group of basically conventional officers in Special Forces were already beginning to make their influence felt early in 1964. Lieutenant Colonel Train was clearly going to be a hard man to develop into a “Green Beret—All the Way!”

I broke the silence, directing a question at Major Fenz. “When can you get me out to Phan Chau?”

Fenz looked to Train for guidance. Train smiled at me wryly. “We’ve got to let you go if you want to. But do us all a favor, will you? Don’t get yourself killed. I thought you’d had it on the night jump in Uwarrie …”

He turned to Fenz and told him the story. “They dropped our teams together on the ten-day field training exercise.”

Fenz nodded; the ten-day field training exercise was a bond shared by all Special Warfare School graduates.

“The School picked us a drop zone in Uwarrie National Forest near Pisgah—that was something else. It was a terrible night,” Train recalled. “Cold. And the wind came up before we reached the DZ. An equipment bundle got stuck in the door for six seconds so we had
to make two passes. Our friend here was held at the door by the jump master and was first man out on the second pass. We were blown into the trees over a mile from the DZ. I got hung up, had to open my emergency chute and climb down the shroud lines to get on the ground. We had three broken legs and several other injuries on that DZ.”

Train looked at me and smiled. “Our civilian, of course, came out best. Landed in a field the size of the volleyball court, threw his air items in the bag and helped pull his team together.”

I looked out the window across the rice paddies where every peasant could be and probably was a Viet Cong. “At least they didn’t have shit-dipped pungi stakes waiting for us in North Carolina,” I said.

Train frowned briefly at my language. “I guess you and Kornie will get along fine, at that. As I remember, you pulled a few tricks on that exercise that weren’t even in the books.”

Fenz took this as his cue to volunteer the information that there was an Otter flying down to Phan Chau that afternoon with an interpreter to replace the one killed a few days before on patrol.

“You might as well take it,” Train said. “How long do you want to stay?”

“Can’t I just play it by ear, Colonel?”

“Certainly. If it looks like there’s going to be serious trouble I’ll get you evacuated.”

“Negative! Please?”

Train stared at me; I met the look. Train gave a shrug. “OK, I’ll go along with you, but I still don’t—”

“No sweat. I don’t want to get myself greased any more than you do.”

“OK, get your gear together. Got your own weapon?”

“If you could lend me a folding-stock carbine and a few banana clips, that’s all I need.”

“Fenz, can you fix him up?”

“Yes, sir. The Otter takes off at 1300 hours.”

“One thing,” Train cautioned. “Kornie is upset because we transferred two companies of Hoa Hao troops from his camp on orders
from the Vietnamese division commander, General Co. You know about the Hoa Hao?”

“They’re supposed to be fierce fighters, aren’t they?”

“That’s right. They’re a religious sect in the Mekong Delta with slightly different ethnic origins from the Vietnamese. General Co didn’t like having two companies of Hoa Hao fighting together.”

“You mean with coup fever raging, he was afraid the Hoa Hao might get together and make a deal with one of his rival generals?”

“We try to keep out of politics,” Train said testily. “General Co’s reasoning is not my concern.”

“But it would concern Kornie to find himself on the Cambodian border in the middle of VC territory suddenly minus two companies of his best fighting men.”

Train snorted in exasperation. “Just don’t take Komie’s opinions on Vietnamese politics too seriously.”

“I’ll use discretion in anything I say,” I promised.

“I hope so.” It sounded like a threat.

Looking down at the sere-brown rice paddies, I felt a sense of quickening excitement as the little eight-place single-engine plane closed on Phan Chau in a hilly section along the Cambodian border. Across from me sat the thin, ascetic-looking young Vietnamese interpreter.

I thought of Steve Kornie. His first name was Sven actually. He was, at forty-four, a captain, as compared to Train, who was a lieutenant colonel at thirty-nine.

Kornie, originally a Finn, fought the Russians when they invaded his native land. Later he had joined the German Army and miraculously survived two years of fighting the Russians on the eastern front. After the war came a period in his life he never talked about. His career was re-entered on the record book when, under the Lodge Act of the early fifties, which permitted foreign nationals who joined in the United States Army in Europe to become eligible for U.S. citizenship after five years service, Kornie enlisted.

In a barroom brawl in Germany in 1955, Kornie and some of his more obstreperous GI companions had committed the usually disastrous error of tangling with several soldiers wearing green berets with
silver Trojan horse insignias on them. The blue-eyed Nordic giant, after decking twice his weight in berets, finally agreed to a truce.

Suspiciously he allowed these soldiers, who in spite of their alien headdress proclaimed themselves Americans, to buy him a drink. In his career with several armies he had never fought such tough barehanded fighters. As the several victims of Kornie’s fists and flathanded chops came to, shook their heads, found their berets and replaced them on their heads, it became clear to Kornie that they were asking him to join their group. To his surprise and horror he discovered that one man he had knocked over the bar was a major.

Before the evening was over Kornie discovered the existence of the 10th Special Forces Group at Bad Tölz, had given the major his name, rank and serial number, and had been promised that he would soon be transferred to the elite, highly trained, virtually secret unit of the U.S. Army to which these men in green berets so proudly belonged.

When Special Forces realized the extent of Sven Kornie’s combat experience and language capabilities, the commanding officer at Bad Tölz believed his claim that he had gone to the military college for almost three years in Finland, although his academic records had been lost in the war and he could not prove his educational qualifications. Kornie was sent to Officer Candidate School, and Special Forces was waiting to reclaim him immediately upon graduation. He performed many covert as well as overt missions in Europe as a Special Forces officer, several times on loan to the CIA, and finally, having reached the grade of captain, he was shipped to the 5th Special Forces Group at the Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg.

In his early forties he knew his chances of ever making field grade were slim. For one thing, while in uniform he had killed a German civilian he knew to be a Russian agent with a single punch. Extenuating circumstances had won him an acquittal at his court-martial; nevertheless the affair was distasteful, particularly to conservative old line officers on promotion boards. There was also Kornie’s inability to prove any higher education.

Sven Kornie was the ideal Special Forces officer. Special Forces was his life; fighting, especially unorthodox warfare, was what he lived
for. He had no career to sacrifice; he had no desire to rise from operational to supervisory levels. And not the least of his assets, he was unmarried and had no attachments to anyone or anything in the world beyond Special Forces.

My thoughts of Kornie and speculations as to what fascinating mischief he would be up to were interrupted by the interpreter.

“Are you posted to Phan Chau?”

I shook my head, but he had an explanation coming. I wore the complete Special Forces uniform, the lightweight jungle fatigues and my highly prized green beret which an A team had given me after a combat mission.

“I will visit Phan Chau for maybe a week. I am a writer. A journalist. You understand?”

The interpreter’s face lit up. “Ah, journalist. Yes. What journal you write for?” Hopefully:
“Time
magazine? Maybe
Newsweek? Life?”

He couldn’t disguise his disappointment when he learned what a free-lance writer was.

We were getting close to Phan Chau. I recognized the area from several parachute supply drops I had flown to familiarize myself with the terrain.

The little Otter began circling. Only a few miles off I could look into Cambodia, the border running down the middle of the rough, rocky terrain. A dirt landing-strip appeared below and in moments the plane was bumping along it.

I threw my combat pack out on the ground, and when the small plane had come to a complete stop jumped out after it. I saw a green beret among the camouflage-capped Vietnamese strike-force troopers milling around, and went up to the American sergeant and told him who I was. He recognized my name and mission, but I was surprised to hear Kornie wasn’t expecting me.

“Sometimes we can’t read the B team for half a day,” the sergeant explained. “The old man will be glad to see you. He’s been wondering when you were coming.”

“I guess I missed some action this morning.”

“Yeah, it was a tough one. Four strikers KIA. We usually don’t get ambushed so close to camp.” The sergeant introduced himself to me
as Borst, the radio operator. He was a well-set young man, his cropped hair below the green beret yellow, and his blue eyes fierce. I wondered if Kornie had collected an all-Viking A team. Anything unusual, with flair and color, would be typical Kornie.

“The old man is working out some big deal with Sergeant Bergholtz, he’s our team sergeant, and Sergeant Falk, intelligence.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Schmelzer?” I asked. “I knew him at Bragg last year while you were all in mission training.”

“He’s still out with the patrol that was ambushed. They sent back the bodies and the wounded, and then kept going.”

Sergeant Borst picked up my combat pack, carried it to the truck, and threw it in back with the strikers and the new interpreter. He motioned me into the front seat, looked behind to make sure the mounted .30-caliber machine gun was manned, and drove off as soon as the Otter was airborne.

The low, white buildings with dark roofs which rose above the mud walls of Phan Chau, and the tall steel fire-control tower were visible from the airstrip. Beyond them, directly west, loomed the rocky foothills which spilled along both sides of the Vietnam-Cambodia border. There were more hills and a scrub-brush jungle north of Phan Chau. To the south the land was open and bare. The airstrip was only a mile east of the camp.

“This the new camp?”

“Yes, sir,” Borst answered. “The old one next to the town of Phan Chau was something else. Hills on all sides. We called it little Dien Bien Phu. Here at least we’ve got some open fields of fire and the VC can’t drop mortar fire on us from above.”

“From what I hear, you’re out of that old French camp just in time.”

“That’s what I figure. They’d clobber us in there. When this one is finished we’ll be able to hold off about anything they can throw at us.”

As we drove into the square fort, with sandbagged mud walls studded with machine-gun emplacements and surrounded with barbed wire, I could see men working on the walls and putting out more barbed wire. “Do you still have much work to do?”