JFK (40 page)

The Viet trooper took one look at the American Green Beret soldier of the Special Forces “A” Team who was sleeping in a native hammock nearby. He knew that after two minutes the flickering red light would cease automatically. On so many other occasions when the American had been out in the village drinking beer with the other “A” Team members and with the young girls of the “White Dove Resistance Sisters,” he had let other warning lights flicker out without sounding the alert. He realized that the Pandora’s box problem caused many red-light alerts. He knew, too, that some elders, eager to flaunt their powers before the villagers, would push the button to bring out the helicopter patrols.

He understood that the desperate villagers, half-crazed by starvation and by bandit raids, were often “spooked” into pushing that glaring red eye on the Magic Box. And he knew that even when attacks were real, the Magic Box did not save the villagers. It simply brought on more retaliation, the dreaded wrath of a war of recounter in which the aggressor creates his own enemy. By the time the forces got there, the village would have been burned to the ground. The people would have been killed or be hiding in the forest, so that when the “avengers” arrived the chances were better than even that the villagers would be miscast as the enemy anyhow.

They appeared to be “enemy” on both sides, and the general rule was to shoot at anyone who ran, regardless of who that person might be. From such a “rescue” the villagers had but one alternative, and that was to flee with the refugees and become “Vietcong,” or “enemy” in their own homeland.

The trooper wrestled with these thoughts. Just then the American rolled over in the hammock and his rifle, which had been leaning against it, fell to the floor. He leaped to his feet. The Vietnamese trooper snapped into action and pointed to the glowing red alert signal, the warning from the Magic Box in Grid Code 1052, the Rhade village of Thuc Dho.

The Green Beret veteran of Fort Bragg’s stern indoctrination grabbed the single-sideband radio mike and called Division Alert. In minutes, sirens sounded and engines began to roar. Truckloads of South Vietnamese Special Forces—the elite civilian, CIA-trained troops of Ngo Dinh Nhu—roared off into the early-morning quiet of Ahn Lac Air Base.

Helicopter maintenance crews readied the ungainly craft. Twenty pilots dashed to the briefing room. Twenty crews were being assembled. This one was going to be all-out; it was the first attack reported from the Rhade zone.

Intelligence had predicted a vast enemy buildup in the area, including a reportedly heavy preparatory movement on the trails of Laos. The dread border of Cambodia was seen to be a beehive of activity. Everything pointed to a massive National Liberation Front/ North Vietnamese masterstroke against a new attack zone.
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The enemy must be stopped now with a resolute counterattack.

As the semitropical dawn burst in all its pink brilliance over Ahn Lac, twenty helicopters stirred up a hurricane of dust as they prepared for the convoy flight to Thuc Dho. Six of the choppers were gun carriers; the remaining fourteen carried 140 armed troops. As the briefing ended, the pilots were told that the refueling stop would be at Thien Dho because the loaded helicopters could not fly a greater than one-hundred-mile radius mission without refueling. The entire flight would be convoyed. This meant that cruising speed would be fifty-five knots for the cargo craft to assure the ability to autorotate safely to the ground in the event of engine failure at the planned “nap-of-the-earth” flight level. In convoy, with formation and linkup, this would mean an average out-and-back ground speed of twenty-five to thirty knots. Therefore, the returning choppers would RON (Remain Overnight) at Thien Dho after hitting the target.

The 280-mile round trip with midpoint touchdown at Thuc Dho and out-and-back refueling would take two days. This meant twenty choppers to take 140 men 140 miles in two days. Cheap for the price of avenging the attack on Thuc Dho? Hardly!

The Village Self-Defense Network helicopter force was an incredible organization. Each helicopter could carry ten armed men one hundred miles in one day. With a one-hundred-mile radius for the helicopter and a convoy speed of twenty-five knots, it would be four hours each way, for a total of eight hours in the air.

Since army/civilian helicopter maintenance was operating at a commendable 49 percent in-commission rate, it took no fewer than forty choppers to assure the availability of twenty for the Thuc Dho mission. The forty helicopters were supported by two aviation companies of about two hundred men each, a total of four hundred men.

These companies were in turn supported by a supply squadron and a maintenance squadron of two hundred men each. And all of these squadrons were supported by housekeeping units, transportation units, base-defense units, fuel-storage units, and fuel-delivery units. Never before in the history of warfare had so much been expended to accomplish so little as was being demonstrated by sending 140 fighting men in response to the flashing red light of the Magic Box of Station #1052.

While the chopper convoy was en route to Thuc Dho, advance-scout aircraft were dispatched to reconnoiter the area for a landing zone. This is no small task in this kind of country. The rotor blades of each Huey are fifty-five feet long. A helicopter must touch down on level ground, since any unequal or nonlevel touchdown, one in which a comer of the landing gear touches first, creates a destructive situation as a result of the dislocation of the center of force around the vertical axis of the craft.

The Huey is built especially strong to resist any uneven landing force, but fully loaded, with the rotors whirling at full power, the strain can be dangerous. Spotter aircraft must find an area large enough to accommodate several Hueys at a time, to assure the protection of massed firepower in the event of an ambush and to reduce costly fuel consumption.

By the time the choppers had refueled at Thien Dho and were back in the air, scout aircraft were able to report a landing site at an abandoned farm a half mile from Thuc Dho. It was estimated that three choppers could touch down at one time, in trail. It was also reported that although smoke was still rising from the village, there had been no enemy action against the spotter aircraft and no enemy sighted. Two troop choppers and one armed Huey had maintenance troubles and were forced to remain at Thien Dho. The remaining twelve troop-carrier choppers skimmed the earth at about fifty-five knots as the five gunships weaved across the course to Thuc Dho at full speed.

In the direct sunlight of early afternoon, the airborne force arrived at Thuc Dho. The spotter aircraft fired smoke flares to mark the landing zone. The gunships hovered over the area, ready to suppress any movement below with direct machine-gun fire. Meanwhile, the convoy began to form a circle around the zone as the first three choppers settled into the field to disembark thirty men.

Then, quickly, the choppers leaped upward, whirling dust and straw into the air, just before the next three Hueys landed with the next wave of troopers. These pilots were experienced and wasted no time. Crewmen saw to it that the silent South Vietnamese Special Forces elite troops jumped out immediately. The crewmen, too, were experienced and recalled stories of earlier days when untrained troops had to be ordered out at the point of a gun and a few well-placed kicks. In the commotion and difficulty of this maneuver, the second and third choppers of the third wave had touched blades as they neared touchdown. Both machines had disintegrated.

As the last wave settled on the field, two circling gunships opened fire into the high grass near the forest. This was the opening action. The troopers on the ground flattened out and fired rapidly and blindly. The spotter aircraft lobbed flares to mark the hostile target. The circling, unarmed Hueys began to back away. At that instant, two of them dropped back to the ground. Old hands recognized the pattern!

When the old H-19s were being used over the rice fields of the Camau Peninsula, the natives had learned that a crude bow held by the feet of a man lying on his back in the grass could be most effective against low-flying choppers. The arrow was a heavy stick that trailed wire, rope, or even a vine. Since the rotor is the most vulnerable part of the helicopter, this crude weapon, fired to “hang” this hazard in the air, brought down many a chopper. First reports indicated engine or rotor failure, since there was no gunfire or other hostile action observed.

The remaining gunships were nearly out of ammunition, and all the choppers were low on fuel, so the convoy, now down to thirteen Hueys, left the surveillance to the spotters and sped back to the refueling base.

At Thuc Dho, 120 men, plus a few injured Huey crewmen, were pinned down in the high grass. Gunfire from the ambush site was sporadic. Sixteen of the 120 were of a Green Beret “A” Team. The radio man was in contact with the spotter aircraft, which directed them to the village. Here in the smoldering ruin of grass huts there was not a sign of life. Even the half-starved dogs were gone. With only a few hours of daylight left, the “A” Team lieutenant placed his troops into defensive positions for the night. Thuc Dho had been regained. The Magic Box had proved its value.

In the early-morning hours when the first word about Thuc Dho had been relayed to the Division Combat Center, it was also relayed to USMACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command—Vietnam) Headquarters in Saigon.

Here all Village Self-Defense Forces information was collated into a report that was sent directly to the Pentagon. With the twelve-hour time differential, the Pentagon and the intelligence community were able to compile all data relayed from Southeast Asia into an early-morning briefing for the President and his immediate staff.

This material from intelligence sources, Combat Center input, U-2 and satellite reports, a master weather report, and certain domestic information were put together at the prebrief in the Command Center in the Joint Chiefs of Staff area at the Pentagon.

Thus the day begins for official Washington. The briefing of yesterday’s events sets up today’s work and tomorrow’s operations. Intelligence input replaces diplomacy and advance planning as the source of “things to do.”

However, on this special day in early December 1960, there happened to be some new faces at the prebrief. They were the secretary of defense designate and certain of his transition staff. The alarm from Thuc Dho was mentioned quite routinely by an army officer at the early-morning prebrief. The secretary of defense designate, absorbing the first flavor of Vietnam, requested full elaboration on this action at the briefing the following day. This special highest-level interest was duly noted by all service chiefs and their attending staff members. During the day a flood of messages filled the air to and from Saigon, placing top priority on the action at Thuc Dho.

The army arranged for a full supply and manpower buildup for the area. The air force announced heavy surveillance and bombing of all supply lines to Thuc Dho through Laos and the northern routes. Thuc Dho appeared in all news releases. Helicopter reinforcement and supply became a maximum effort.

Meanwhile, Green Beret “A” Team troops established their base, set out the area perimeter, and sent South Vietnamese Special Forces scouting teams to establish contact with the “enemy.” The efforts of these elite troops were ineffectual. The “enemy” had slipped away. A few elderly villagers, along with young children, were found cowering in holes and huddled in the forests.

When interrogated concerning the attack and the whereabouts of the village patriarch and the able-bodied men, the captives stared in ignorance. Most of all, they were confused when asked about the “enemy.” They kept referring to the “Viet Kha”—the Vietnamese term for “beggars”: the refugees—but the overzealous interpreter translated this to mean the Vietcong. This confirmed for the eager lieutenant that he had stumbled upon a major Vietcong encampment.

The lieutenant radioed along this valuable information, plus the routine body count, enriched to include those killed by bombardment and napalm. At this early stage of the operation, confirmation of any casualty figures was not required. The lieutenant estimated the enemy strength as a reinforced battalion or perhaps a regiment. All the dead were Vietcong. They had to be.

It was from such on-the-spot information that the briefing material was prepared by Saigon to be sent to Washington. Sensing the military’s concern with this action as a result of the secretary designate’s request, the intelligence community stepped up its own input.

Although it was no secret, it was not generally known that Ngo Dinh Nhu’s elite Special Forces were under the absolute control of the CIA. Since they were, it was in the interest of the intelligence community to assure that the role of these elite troops be at least the equivalent of the U.S. Army’s. Saigon’s CIA headquarters outdid itself building up all information available about Thuc Dho. The U.S. Army Special Forces “A” Team, all Fort Bragg trained, were bona fide army soldiers, but their commander, a rather unorthodox major, was a CIA man on an army cover assignment.

Along with South Vietnamese Special Forces officers and civilians under cover of the South Vietnamese Army, this major was among the first to reach Thuc Dho in the early wave of more helicopters on the second day.

The Pentagon prebrief was prepared, as usual, using data gathered from sources all over the world. Information on space, from the Congo, from India (where border skirmishes presaged later troubles)—all such data except that on Cuba—was kept to a minimum. The key item on the agenda was Thuc Dho. Extra chairs were placed in a second row around the polished walnut table behind the military chiefs for the CIA and Department of State guests in the Command Center.