In the early spring of 1968 Colonel Jack Warren, CO of CCN, assigned me to command CCC while I was a major. That didn’t last very long, as Lieutenant Colonel Frederick T. Abt was assigned to command CCC. I took over as his DCO and served as troop commander.
One mission during my tour as DCO consisted of a company of about a hundred ‘Yards and 6 or 8 USSF. Their mission was to occupy a particular hilltop and interdict vehicular traffic on a branch of the Ho Chi Minh trail. The company was inserted several klicks away from the hill and it took a couple of days to move to the target area.
One afternoon right after lunch, the CO sent for me to come to the TOC. When I got there he explained. “They are on the hill, but say they cannot accomplish the mission. They are only 300 yards from the road, but they can’t see it. The jungle is so thick they say they doubt they could even hear vehicles on the road.”
Col. Abt wanted things to happen, and quickly. “Get on your gear and go straighten this mess out.”
“You mean me?” I asked.
“Yep. Go get this show on the road.”
Shortly before sundown I stepped off a chopper in the small LZ on that hilltop and assumed command of the operation. I had just enough time to get a quick look at the defensive perimeter before dark. The troops had dug in and had light overhead cover using bamboo covered with dirt over the perimeter bunkers. That night the NVA tried to throw us off that hilltop, but AC47 “Spooky” and AC130 “Specter” aircraft gave us close air support and held them off.
At daylight, I saw that indeed we could not see the road from the hilltop. In fact, we couldn’t see more than about 10 meters in any direction, and that was where the troops had cleared fields of fire.
I called the USSF together at about 0630. I told them, “Have your troops chow down and be ready to move out at 0800.”
“Where are we going?” one sergeant asked.
“Well, since our mission is to stop traffic on that road, and since we can’t stop traffic on the road from here, we are going to move down to the road and set up a road block.”
If I had put a handful of fire ants in their jock straps, they couldn’t have reacted any quicker or more loudly. “Major, we can’t do that. There must be at least a battalion of those (expletive deleted) down there.” That was the most repeatable and kind-spirited comment I heard in the next few minutes.
After a decent interval to allow them to convince me that it was a big mistake to move down to the road, I gave in. “OK, I’ll agree with you on one condition,” I said. “If I can stand on this hilltop at sundown today and see 100 meters of the road, we will not have to go down there tomorrow morning.”
I have to confess that I had no intention of leaving that hilltop and exposing our meager force to certain destruction. My ace in the hole was that no one knew that but me. One indelible lesson I learned in Ranger training is that we are capable of so much more than we think is possible when we are given sufficient motivation. What I was trying to do was to motivate them to do something they had up to now thought was impossible.
Within minutes of dismissing them, a couple of dozen machetes were ringing loud and clear in the jungle on the side of the hill facing the road. Within a few minutes, I heard a shouted “Fire in the hole,” followed by a tremendous explosion and a huge crash. I ran to see that a big tree had been felled by a 40 pound cratering charge. Soon it sounded like a class exercise day on the demolition range. The troops were blasting trees, chopping undergrowth, sweating and cursing and urging the ‘Yards to greater effort. It was clear that the ‘Yards were also anxious not to have to go down onto the road the next morning.
There was frantic activity that day. At sundown I stood on the crest of the hill and could clearly see about 300 meters of road.
We stayed on that hilltop for other five or six days, interdicting vehicular traffic using air strikes, 175 mm artillery, and direct machine gun fire. We were eventually extracted when we found out that the NVA were beginning to move a large number of 12.7 mm heavy machine guns and at least one 37 mm anti-aircraft gun close enough to our position to shoot down our resupply and extraction helicopters.
There were two other incidents that happened during our stay on that hill I want to tell you about. The first concerns a helicopter. It was on a resupply mission bringing in ammunition and water. The pilot came in low and fast. When he was almost over the LZ, he stood the ship on its tail to stop it so he could set it straight down. The problem was that he over-torqued it, but no one realized it at the time; we thought something had broken. Over-torquing means that he pulled back on the collective so hard that it took more power to turn the rotors than the engine could produce. When that happened the main and tail rotors slow down. When the tail rotor slowed, it no longer developed enough lateral thrust to keep the ship pointed where the pilot wanted it to go. The whole ship began to spin and fall straight down. We ran from the LZ as quickly as we could, expecting it to crash and burn before our eyes. By some great stroke of luck the ship set down hard on the edge of the LZ and came to a stop without self destructing. The crew climbed out, snatched the radios and guns, and boarded the next chopper home.
Now there we were with a helicopter setting almost directly on some of our perimeter bunkers. I wasn’t very happy about it, but there was nothing I could do. After dark that night, I received a radio message. The aviation battalion commander had ordered that I was to burn the chopper so it would not fall into NVA hands.
I thought about it for not more than a millisecond or two. Burning that chopper right in our perimeter would light us up like New Years Eve in Times Square. It would be so hot we would have to abandon part of our perimeter for several hours, not to mention the possible explosion if the fuel tanks exploded. And in addition to all that, I had a problem torching several hundred thousand dollars of helicopter that looked just fine to me. I was more concerned that incoming fire would ignite the chopper. I radioed back, “If you want the chopper burned, send someone else out here to do it, because I won’t.” I didn’t really think that anyone would rush right out there to do it, and I was right.
You might wonder why I wasn’t court martialed for disobeying an order. One thing you learn in the field is that nothing succeeds like success. The next morning, the first chopper brought in a new crew for the downed ship. They climbed aboard, cranked it up and flew it out with no trouble at all. I guess my punishment for disobeying the order was that the aviation battalion commander never did thank me for saving his helicopter.
The other incident was tragic. Our operations usually included several VNSF and a sprinkling of Vietnamese troops in addition to the ‘Yards. By some odd quirk of fate, there were no VNSF and only one Vietnamese trooper on this operation.
Just before dark each evening we put listening posts out in front of our positions. The patrols consisted of one SF leader and two or three little guys. They set up claymore mines and stayed quiet. As the NVA began to creep toward them through the jungle, the patrol would blow their claymores and beat feet back inside the perimeter.
When you go out in front of your own defensive position at night, you must be very careful. If this activity is not carefully planned and executed, your own troops may fire on you. The leader of each patrol would count his troops out through the lines and count them back in when they returned. When he gave the all clear, anything else out front was fair game.
One of the patrol leaders selected his troops, and counted them out through the defensive perimeter. They moved to their assigned spot and set up to wait for the NVA. Unknown to the leader, the lone Vietnamese trooper, without telling anyone, wandered out after the patrol. He must have stopped short of the listening post, because the leader never knew he was there. When the patrol fired their claymores and came back in, the leader counted his troops and gave the all clear. None of us knew that the Vietnamese trooper was outside the perimeter, so anyone outside the position was enemy.
A fire fight soon erupted in that area. The ‘Yards in the bunkers were giving as good as they were getting. Right in the middle of the fire fight, that lone Vietnamese trooper stuck his head up in front of the firing port of one of the ‘Yards’ bunkers and said something in Vietnamese. They responded exactly as they had been trained. We didn’t know until we began policing up the area the next morning that one of our own had been killed by mistake. Some people might call that a friendly fire incident. No such thing; any fire coming your way is unfriendly.
Thirty years later, I attended a disabled veterans meeting. I struck up a conversation with Joe McCammond, and while sharing war stories with him, found out that he was one of the enlisted SF troops on that operation. He was one of the SF troops doing listening post duty. Joe eventually transferred to the Marine Corps and retired as a captain. I have since had the privilege to recommend his outstanding son, Patrick, for appointment to the Naval Academy.
(Patrick McCammond, Joe’s son, is now in the Naval Academy to graduate in 2008. The only other youngster that I ever recommended for appointment to a service academy was Ron Ladnier, son of CSM Richard Ladnier, one of the old timers. Ron is now a USAF BG in charge of the hurricane Katrina relief efforts for the USAF. Richard, now deceased, and Alice lived about 5 miles north of Gulfport, MS, and survived Katrina with moderate damage.)
Copyright 1999
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