The author, meeting the Taiwanese ambassador to Viet Nam.

 

A long, long time ago, fifty years to be exact, I was invited to visit Viet Nam for the second time. I knew that I was due for a second tour and had previously requested an assignment as an adviser. I was hoping for an assignment to the Vietnamese Military Academy in the III Corps area in the Central Highlands. My previous assignment had been in the Highlands, the climate was more temperate and I knew the geography better.

When I got to the Military Assistance Command, Viet Nam (MAC-V) Headquarters in Saigon my request didn’t make much difference. I would be assigned where there was a vacancy requiring my Military Occupation Skills (MOS). I was a captain in the Signal Corps and could do pretty much any field job, Signal Corps wise. I got my assignment as the adviser to the Division Signal Officer of the Seventh Division, Army of Viet Nam (ARVN) in Dong Tam, in the Mekong Delta.

My day job was learning everything that Lt. Col. Chu, the Division Signal Officer, could teach me, which was a lot, about the communications they were using. In addition I was on a roster with the other non combat captains, the Chemical, Quartermaster, Ordnance, Military Intelligence and associated captains that would be flying night reconnaissance (Night Hawk) in our Area of Operations (AO). That job consisted of a helicopter ride, sitting in the back seat with a Vietnamese counterpart and a door gunner with an M-60 machine gun. I would fly about once every 5-6 nights, looking for activity in our AO.

 

Lt. Col. Chu

 

We had a sister chopper with a xenon searchlight that flew with us. The light ship was to fly lower and search the area along the roads and canals, hoping to find a target. The gunship that I was in would fly 180 degrees away in a higher orbit to insure the light ship never illuminated us. In the event we found something of interest the pilot of the gunship would point it out to me on the intercom, I would tell my VN counterpart, he would radio back to The Operations Center (TOC) and request permission to shoot. The TOC kept track of all the friendlies in the area and would then give us permission to engage or not. All this administrative goings on would take several minutes.

On my first flight I met the gunship pilot ,who was also a captain, and the light ship pilot. We got our briefing of what was happening in our AO. I had never flown at night and this would be a new experience . We got up in the air, cruised around and followed some canals here and there. Then the light ship reported camp fires on the ground and suspected Viet Cong (VC). My pilot was explaining that the VC would cook rice on a sand bar near the canal. As we flew around I saw the fire but didn’t see any people but the pilot was seeing the VC. I talked to my VN counterpart, told him the situation and he radioed back to the TOC and got permission for us to shoot.

The pilot was talking to the door gunner and the door gunner shot up the camp fires. We stayed on location, the pilot claimed there were two KIAs and asked me to confirm. I told him I didn’t see any bodies, he explained where they were and I still couldn’t see them. Then he explained that because I was new that was probably the reason I didn’t see them and convinced me that he was right. I then confirmed the two KIAs. The next morning at the daily command briefing it was announced that Night Hawk had two KIAs confirmed.

For the next several days something kept bothering me. I had confirmed something that I hadn’t seen. I reviewed the scenario, over and over in my head. It went something like this:

  1. Since we were the only ones with aircraft the VC would know any helicopter would be the enemy. They would have heard us coming in addition to seeing the searchlight sweeping the canal.
  2. Why would they have a fire in an open area? Could they be locals, farmers maybe?
  3. After hearing us, why would the VC stay in sight, since the canal had a canopy right down to the edge, they could have been under cover in seconds. It had taken us a couple minutes or more to get permission to shoot.
  4. Why couldn’t I see them if the pilot could?

I had no answers for those questions. Only I did have an answer. There were no VC, unless the fires were a decoy. There were no KIAs and I had lied. I didn’t like that answer but it was the only one that made sense. For the next few days it gnawed on me and I vowed I would never do it again. I rationalized that since no one had been hurt it wasn’t the most important thing, except to me.

The next few flights were routine, fly for an hour or two and not see anything. Kind of like going for a ride after dinner. A few weeks later we were up and the pilot saw what he said was a monkey bridge, some bamboo laced together and elevated over a canal. We got permission to shoot and I did see splinters flying, whether it was man made or blown down bamboo, who knows, but at least it existed . A few minutes later the pilot saw something that he said was a sampan submerged under water. He explained that’s what the VC does. I could see something and we blasted away, again splinters were visible. I gave him credit that time but it continued to raise questions in my mind. I wondered if the monkey bridge was not a decoy. I kind of smiled to myself, maybe that sampan had been shot up a few times before and was left there for us to find. In any case I confirmed two kills, a monkey bridge and a sampan.

Sometime later and a few more flights the pilot spotted a VC, we did the call back to the TOC, got permission to engage while the VC waited. The door gunner burned up some taxpayer funded ammo, the pilot asked for a confirmation of one KIA. This time I wouldn’t confirm, because I couldn’t see a body. The next morning at the daily briefing the briefing officer announced one KIA, not confirmed. The senior adviser, a full colonel, stood up, turned around to look at us and asked who was flying back seat. I told him I was and he asked why I didn’t confirm. I told him I didn’t see the body, he said OK and sat down.

 

Capt. Thang

 

Time passes and we’re getting our pre-flight briefing when the call comes in that a platoon of friendlies are taking fire. We ran to the helicopter, jumped in and headed out for the action and arrived on station in a few minutes. By this time the bad guys have disengaged and it’s pretty quiet. The friendlies report that one of the enemy has ran to a haystack in the middle of an open area, a dry rice paddy. The door gunner blasts the haystack and nothing happens. The gunship pilot goes down low level, something he was not supposed to do. He has an AK-47, he sticks it out the window and burns up a magazine at the haystack. Then he takes his 45 caliber pistol and does the same thing. Now we’re only a few feet off the ground and he shoots a couple hand held flares at the haystack, trying to set it on fire. No luck. We went back to the TOC and I reported him to the duty officer.

I rethought that whole scenario over, the VC had time to disengage and yet one hid in a haystack in the middle of a field. It didn’t make sense. What especially didn’t make sense was going low level and putting the helicopter and the five of us on board in danger. The pilot was relieved after that incident, the co-pilot probably ratted him out to his unit commander or maybe our senior adviser had had a discussion with the pilot’s commander. All of my subsequent flights bordered on boring, rarely an opportunity to light up a target and no more internal conflicts for me.

I was closer to my Vietnamese counterparts than to the American members of the team. We all worked in different areas, I rarely saw my rating officer and never in an official capacity. I worked daily with my counterparts, Lt. Col. Chu invited me to his home for dinner, to meet his wife and family. Capt. Thang, the Assistant Division Signal Officer, and I were about the same age and had a lot of good times together. When Viet Nam fell in 1975 I had a lot of concern for those that I had worked with, hopefully they got through everything and maybe made it to the US.

That tour as an adviser gave me a broader insight into myself and the war. It changed my opinions on a lot of things. The numbers that were being fed to the higher commands were not always accurate. A lot of the officers, myself included, were there to pick up a couple ribbons and get our tickets punched. A couple tours in Viet Nam would look good at promotion time. It worked for me.