A sergeant I will call Willard was assigned to Dak Pek and showed up on a chopper one day with no advance notice. The team was at full strength, so I was puzzled, but happy to have another hand. The team sergeant interviewed him, and I overheard part of the conversation. He was instructed that if he had a single drink of any alcoholic beverage he would be sent on a one-man patrol to Hanoi. My curiosity prompted me to ask the team sergeant about it later. I then found out why Willard appeared so suddenly on our door step.
Mang Buk was a small camp with half an A team in B team’s area of operations. The ‘Yard tribe that inhabited that area was under the command of a chief that was a virtual king among the ‘Yards. Willard had been assigned to Mang Buk.
The HT-1 was a portable AM radio that had quite a range, and under the right conditions one could use it to communicate between Mang Buk and the B team in Kontum. One afternoon, the commo sergeant on duty in the B team commo shack monitored a partially garbled message from an SF trooper on the HT-1, who reported that he was under attack and was defending himself as best he could. He said he had downed a couple of the enemy, but they were still coming at him. It was apparent that he was not able to give a full report during the heat of the battle, but he needed reinforcements. The commo sergeant alerted the operations officer, who contacted the camp at Mang Buk to find out what was happening. Strangely, they didn’t know! They had no patrol out at that time, and they didn’t know who had called in on the radio.
There was quite a scramble to find out who had called in, and there was even some speculation that the Viet Cong had sent a message hoping to lure us into an ambush. It took some time before the mystery was solved.
Willard was a bachelor who had developed an unusually good rapport with the ‘Yard chief. The chief had a daughter who developed a mutual attraction with Willard. While sampling the nam peh jug in the chief’s village, Willard decided to marry the chief’s daughter, and the chief agreed!
Before the ceremony could be organized, Willard, now quite full of nam peh grabbed his rifle and HT-1 and staggered off. Soon, he was under attack, and fought back as best he could, calling for help on the HT-1. He killed a half dozen or so before help arrived. The only problem was that the “enemy” turned out to be the chief’s herd of water buffalo.
The chief was reported to be after Willard’s hide with a vengeance. The B team was able to get a chopper to Mang Buk to extract him before the chief found him. The B team was authorized to pay damages to the chief for his loss, and Willard was sent to Dak Pek, safely out of the chief’s reach.
Copyright 1999
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