THE DI AN DIARY--MEMOIRS FROM THE VIETNAM WAR/PART THREE: FROM RED ONE TO BLACK ONE

After a short while as Day Duty Tactical Operations NCO, I was asked to take a Vietnam survival-training course, which involved going on patrols, advanced map topography, and advanced U. S. and enemy weapon training. The duration was only a couple of weeks.  At this point I was still a “cherry” as I had not been exposed to patrol in the field. This was probably only about 8-10 weeks after I had arrived, and was expedited by the return of the regular Day Duty NCO, an E-7 Sergeant First Class. My time as an operator in the Tactical Operation Center appeared to be over, and I was assuming that after the course, I would be deployed to a Big Red One combat unit. The intense two week regimen just completed seemed to point to the conclusion.  I was both right and wrong.  

 I was personally thanked by Colonel John Carley, the Brigade Commander, and Sergeant-Major Demarinus for my work in the TOC, and they expressed that they were very pleased with my comprehension and execution of the duties required of a Brigade level Operations NCO. Though I had, at least temporarily, been a member of the Brigade Commander’s immediate operations staff, the time he took to give his accolades and thanks is a treasured memory and adds to the admiration I had and still have for him and his leadership.

  Sergeant-Major Demarinus continued the conversation in more detail after the Colonel’s departure.  He related that the current Night Duty NCO was short (his tour was winding down) and would be eligible for DEROS in a couple of months.  He further stated that they were satisfied that I could perform his duties on a permanent basis, but that they felt some time experiencing the daily rigors and trials of the “field” on patrols would be beneficial to the future plans they had for me. The majority of the firefights from ambushes occurred after dark, and he expressed that duty in a combat environment was a complimentary part of my Operational portfolio to move me at a future date to the night NCO slot being vacated.

                                                          

2nd Brigade, Big Red One Sergeant-Major Demarinus 1969

I was informed that I would remain attached to Dagger Headquarters as an Operator, only shifting to the field as an RTO (the unlucky guy getting to become an instant target while carrying a VHF/FM AN/PRC-25 radio) on a five-man LRRP (long range reconnaissance patrol) team. I was trading the Big Red One patch for the subdued Big Black One. I was told to think of this as another temporary duty, and that my return to Headquarters Tactical Operations was a certainty. All I had to do was become proficient as a patrol team member---and of course survive it!

I was apprehensive when we “geared up” for the first patrols from the Dagger School and those preparatory excursions were only overnights within a couple of miles of the base camp. My first time out with the recon team was a whole “nother” level.  As I headed to the chopper pad for my first recon, I was greeted by the Sergeant, the team leader, and he checked my gear again from head to toe.  He had already inventoried my "kit" and suggested adjustments the day before. A recon team leader has to be able to recognize and remedy the weakest link. Right then, that was me.

The staccato "whump" of the chopper blades added to the level of my anxiety.  I had always been "gung-ho" but no amount of training and personal commitment could prevent my heart from trying to burst through my chest before that first ride.

When the moment came to board, I prayed my legs would have the strength to achieve the task.  As the Huey lifted that first time, I remember thinking to myself, “try not to die today”. I had probably heard that sentiment used in a movie at some point in my life or read it in some book. Now it came so easily and effortlessly to a prominent place in my thoughts that I could easily imagine it repeating from the lips or coursing through the brain of millions of men over the course of history. From the first second I knew how important my role was to this team, and there were men depending on me to do it well. "No different than what my role had been in Tactical Command", I told myself. It was that imperative that I used to try to diminish my personal fears and I focused on that, imprinting it into the forefront of my thoughts; "These men's welfare and effectiveness depend on me".

Looking around at the men who would trust their lives to me, I to them, each to the other, there was no mistaking the tension and fears buried beneath forced laughter and dialog.  I remember wondering for a few moments what were they really thinking about? The mission?  The girl back home? Willing themselves not to soil their fatigues? Going over the mental checklist of weapons and gear? If these veterans were stressed, too, what reason did I have to be ashamed of my own beating heart and racing brain?  

My emotions coming out of that chopper the first time was something not easily conveyed.  Whatever else may have been occupying the neural pathways of my brain’s frontal lobe, they were gone now, cleared to allow total focus on what was about to happen and what I needed to do. It was supposed to be a cold LZ. Was there really any such thing?

Standing up to deploy from the Huey touching down in the clearing was a galvanizing slow dance...compelling, yet performed with overwhelming urgency, mind trying impossibly to encompass the ramifications and outcomes of the dance... swirling with the possibilities... both fearful and accepting of the conclusion. I had to be.

I have a love, hate, fear relationship with helicopters to this day.  No matter where I am or what I am doing, the sound of a helicopter in the distance will freeze me in my tracks. The sound of the large choppers, the whump, whump, whump, of the blades, is something that once heard up close and personal, can never be forgotten.  It registers in your brain as deafening--sound and wind emanating from the big blades hammering your body--ominous yet thrilling. The vibration of the machine as the blades rotate can be felt through every bone in the human body. It is experienced ever more defining and foreboding by the soldier in the epicenter of war.  It never goes away.  It remains with you forever. It has with me.

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From my memoirs: “The Huey takes us to the killing fields, but it also comes to take us away from the staccato of M-16’s and AK-47’s, the SKS carbines, the RPG’s, and the smell of smoke and gunpowder. And on those blessed recons of uneventful outcome, the first relaxed breath leaves the seemingly imminent portent of a sniper round or trip wire behind in the rice paddies and jungle below.  

The Huey may receive us into its bosom for the sole purpose of escorting us to a hot meal, an even hotter shower, a couple shots of Jack Black, and our cot.  It may be the Archangel on mighty wings rushing to save our life through a medi-vac “dustoff”  to a basecamp hospital--- or it may be giving us that last presaged high enveloped in the vortex of adulterous, humid wind tainted from fetid, rotting rice paddies and jungle, blowing across a damaged and mangled body one last time before the killing just doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does or ever will again”.

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A few years ago, I drifted off while watching a war movie with Sandy in our West Kentucky home during the early darkness of a summer evening.  The movie had a scene that included the distinct intermittent thumps of helicopter blades, I woke up at once from my reclining position to the overhead visage of our ceiling fan. I started to shake and cry uncontrollably, something that had never happened to me even during the real thing.  I had to leave the house and escape into a chair positioned outside next to the swimming pool where I could breathe deeply and focus my eyes on the expanse of the stars in the night sky. Sandy was close behind.  She had seen pent up anger and depression on occasion, knew of restless nights, but she had never seen me in the state I was in then.   

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In the days and weeks that followed my initiation to recon, I graduated from my cherry status and became proficient as both the conduit for communications and support, and as a recon team member.  It took some time for the men at first to give their total trust to the "rookie", but gradually my status within the team grew measurably.

Recon--On the Way 1968

Other than on very rare occasion, an officer seldom accompanied the patrol while on mission. Externally, we did not exist outside of attachment to Headquarters, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. The team and its assemblage were the brainchild of Colonel Carley as a way to expedite communications and priorities and get more “eyes-on” in our zone of operations.  A 1945 graduate of West Point Military Academy, he was a master tactician and his proficiency for it was utilized by the Army throughout his career from an instructor to every rank and level, to operational oversight and priority assignments commanding troops in theaters of conflict.  His promotion to Major General was inevitable and well-deserved.

Major General John Terrell Carley

From the beginning, it was understood that this team was a temporary measure needed to handle the enemy build-up of troops and guerillas resulting from the ongoing TET offensive. The enemy was everywhere now.  We needed to be everywhere, too.

We were ordered not to fraternize with other headquarters personnel or discuss operations even with other Headquarters and Headquarters Company personnel outside of staff briefings and debriefings.  Looking back on this, I’m sure this was to protect the anonymous nature of our assemblage, as well as to secure privileged tactical and strategic information in a base camp that included Vietnamese labor and troops of the ARVN on a regular basis.

                               

Momma Sans waiting to begin their hooch cleaning duties Summer 1968

This was certainly not a typical LRRP team. I do not wish to give the impression that we were Rangers. Yet, all of the men other than myself were far from cherry and well-seasoned for long treks deep into enemy territory.  The Sergeant First Class leading the team was an experienced LRRP, on his 2nd tour, and a veteran and rare survivor of many patrols.  Life expectancy for a LRRP proved to be very short over the course of the war.  We were “number 4’s” in the slang of the day--the highest casualty category.

 In every sense of the concept, we were a group assembled to actually do recon and provide intelligence and forward observation. When we were on stationary night ambush it was usually a result of necessity from extended missions lasting several days. Though situations would develop that caused us to engage the enemy, we rarely sought those engagements.  Most of the time, our primary objective was to locate targets and provide the forward observation required to effectively call in strikes and reinforcements.

I was trained in intelligence, security, and communications. I had already had experience as a member of Colonel Carley’s extended staff and in headquarters operations. As the RTO I knew how he wanted things communicated and how to do so accurately and precisely. He had had time to verify my competence. I think that, as well as the future plans they had for me, were the chief reasons for my inclusion as the RTO of this LRRP team. Of course, on a five-to-six-man team, in actuality, every man was a rifleman, each with his own specialty.

As a Long Range Recon Patrol, we did what the words indicate...often deep into what we knew to be territory unfriendly to anything wearing the fatigues of an American soldier. We interrogated villagers with the assistance of a "Kit Carson" scout and usually an officer from Psychological Operations or another G-2. A half dozen times we were deployed as the “village seal” securing escape routes while hut to hut interrogations were conducted by Psych-Ops and a squad of riflemen.  A typical flyer offering rewards to villagers for information of enemy locations or weapon caches is pictured below.  This one is from my personal collection that I saved and brought back home with me.

 

We sought out weapons and rice caches and radioed back to Headquarters Operations for disposition when we found them. If the course of action was determined to be further observation by the team, hoping for V.C. to appear to claim the supplies, we went into ambush/observation mode.  If further attention by our team was not what was ordered, It was never long before a chopper arrived to collect the weaponry, and to burn or redistribute the rice to “friendlies”.  When we came upon tunnels, after due time observing traffic and receiving the “go ahead”, we let Operations know we were initiating a “fire-in-the-hole” (pulling the pins on a couple of grenades and tossing them in).  We scouted terrain for enemy presence, our primary function, and served as point for major troop movements in one instance, my most eventful time as a LRRP team member in regard to the number of enemies engaged and my personal mortality.

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Commonly after firefights involving one of the battalion platoons, there were blood trails left by retreating enemy wounded. When "sitreps” at the morning headquarters staff meeting determined these were to be pursued, we did the long leg follow up work where “tracker teams” trails went cold, and the dogs had done all they could. Demand for enemy body count was the imperative of the day.

Typical sit-rep, usually several from each of the battalions submitted to Dagger HQ Operations Command each day.  A corresponding sitrep from the Operations team handling the communications and tactical response employed would be used to determine what  follow-up was necessary. My collection.

Occasionally we would serve as protection for Engineers during defoliation (agent orange) operations. When primary recon was our agenda though, we would be taken by helicopter to an LZ (landing zone) and we would do what the mission required, and then usually recon our way by foot back to the base camp. After a few days in our fatigues soaking up sweat and mud, I’m sure they could smell us coming. Dirt and grime were crusted and layered upon our faces and arms like a second skin.

We always had a designated emergency PZ (pickup) zone if the need presented itself.  If conditions to evade being over-run became a necessity and we were required to split-up, or if the chaos of a firefight led to separation, each man was on his own to rendezvous at the emergency PZ.

Our footprint was small. We were ghosts under the jungle canopy and amidst the tall grass. We would pass through the small hamlets and villages and disappear again into the indigenous flora and fauna. There were nights when steady rain pounded our poncho hoods relentlessly like fingers of both hands strumming on a desktop.  It was maddening, and who would think you could get so cold in such heat and humidity?

Stealth and the competence of each soldier kept us alive through a couple of brief but intense firefights, in discovering and observing the enemy amid the elements of monsoon, rice paddy mud, foot rot, jungle heat approaching 105 degrees or more, and turbid rivers. We dodged green Bamboo Vipers and other deadly snakes, picked and burned off leeches that miraculously dropped from trees as well as swam in every size of muddy water, and kept somehow from going absolutely nuts from the swarms of mosquitoes.

I was told that my time in this environment would be only a couple of months, and that proved to be true.  Try, if you can, to imagine life of the true heroes of this war that served a full year in these conditions, and others that came back for second and third tours in these arenas of carnage--never to be recognized for their oblations, willingly abdicating any notion of praise from the country that called them to war--that called them to be hunters of men.  These warriors of blood and mud, of monsoons, heat and pestilence were among the finest ever to carry our standard.  The majority were under 22 years of age.  I was proud to know and walk in the company of some of them. 

RTO SP4 Keith Ragan Unloading after Recon 1968

Authors Footnote: As I write these memoirs, I'm sure the few that are interested enough to actually read them will wonder about specific details of firefights and events that are synonymous with combat and war. That was never my intent of my sharing. In truth the writing for me is a means of releasing a burden, a form of self-healing if you will. I'm sure in some way it is also an attempt to seek understanding from those who could not, would not endeavor to sanction our service and sacrifice at that time in our country's history. Writing in detail about personal injury and the blood of combat would be at odds with that intent. Between time in the headquarters tactical operations bunker, the forward base camp, and the duration of my time on recon, suffice it to say that I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to share some part of our lives during the year of TET.