Comanche Six: Company Commander in Vietnam Read online

  Comanche Six. Vietnam Company Commander

  By

  James L. Estep

  Presidio Press Novato, CA

  Copyright 1991 by James L. Estep

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Presidio Press, 31 Pamaron Way, Novato, CA 94949.

  Typography by Prolmage Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For those who didn’t return, who, like the centurions and their soldiers, deserved betterfrom the republic they served.

  And especially for William “Billy” McCarty. He made us laugh, and we miss him.

  Preface

  This is a story of American soldiers who fought in a faraway place, for an elusive cause, for eleven long years.

  Historians now tell us our country’s military involvement in Indochina can be chronologically divided into three distinct phases. The early 1960’s was the period of the advisor, a period in which we tried to turn the tide in a relatively small insurgency, employing only a modest expenditure in men and material. This phase ended with the introduction of North Vietnam’s armies into the fray and the subsequent arrival of our ground forces in 1965. For the next three years, we sought to end the war by judicious use of our military might and would have probably succeeded in doing so had our national will not collapsed in the aftermath of the enemy’s 1968 Tet offensive. During the final and most costly phase, from the spring of 1968 until the Paris Accords were signed five years later, we simply looked for a way out.

  Many fine books tell the story of America’s soldiers at war in each of these periods; however, most provide only a snapshot of our country’s exposure to this the longest of its military struggles. Having served four tours of duty in Vietnam during the years from 1962 to 1973, I had a unique opportunity to study the war’s changing face as our part in it evolved from a low-level advisory effort to the massive employment of over half a million men, before once again becoming what was essentially an advisory campaign.

  Moreover, my postings as a Special Forces noncommissioned and commissioned officer, a U.S. rifle company commander, and an ARVN advisor provided a dimension of diversity other than time alone from which to observe our soldiers’ many-faceted participation in the conflict. I hope, therefore, to have succeeded in furnishing a broader appreciation of what some of these men experienced over the war’s long course, at the lowest end of combat’s spectrum—in the paddies, the plains, and the mountains of the Nam.

  Saying that, I should mention that although the book embraces four diverse tours and times, its main theme centers on service with the First Air Cavalry in 1967-68. This was the time of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap’s Tet offensive and the apex of the American infantryman’s involvement in the war. In short, it was the most exciting of the tours.

  Similarly, although it spans an eleven-year period, the book is by no stretch of the imagination a history of our involvement in Indochina.

  This is a true story, based on my experiences as I recall them. Many of the names herein have been changed to protect the privacy of those concerned. In like manner, the book’s quoted passages should not be looked upon as verbatim dialogue. Much of this dialogue is fictitious.

  Still, these or like conversations did take place, and the tone and tenor of what was said are as true to the spirit of those interchanges as memory will allow after a lapse of, in some cases, over twenty-five years.

  Unit designations of friendly and enemy forces are, as best as retrospect and research permit, those of the actual units involved.

  Infrequently, however, there are minor discrepancies in the numerical designations of supporting forces. The most glaring example of this incongruity is the multiunit Binh Loc operation described in chapter one. In this instance, to facilitate clarity and continuity throughout the book, I have intentionally identified participating adjacent units as being those that were at the time assigned to my parent headquarters in the Fifth Cavalry Regiment.

  Finally, radio call signs used throughout are, with few exceptions, those that were then in effect. However, there are some instances, again in the case of supporting forces, in which call signs are fictitious.

  In sum, this is the story of America’s soldiers in Vietnam. It is a story of victories and tribulations, fears and joys, laughter and tears.

  If in telling it I’ve offended any of those with whom I served, I apologize. Offense is certainly not my intent. You are the heroes of this work and of the nation that sent you forth to do battle on its behalf.

  You are, without question, far better men than those timid souls who refused to fight in that faraway place, so long ago.

  Prologue - Walter Reed General Hospital: March 1968

  What time is it? Nighttime. Has to be nighttime ‘cause it’s still dark, right? Right. Who’s mourning in the next cubicle? Very unmanly thing to do. Ah yes, it’s the Huey pilot fresh from a tour of duty in the decidedly unfriendly skies of the Nam, and he’s mourning because he has no legs! Well, welcome to the snake pit, my friend; you’ve done your full duty. “I wept because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Who said that? Who cares who said that, goddamn it, it’s not important! Demerol’s important.

  Leg’s on fire! Feels as if someone has pierced it with a white-hot poker, one that all the miracle healers of this exalted medical establishment are unable to dislodge. But they can quell the pain with a simple shot of Demerol. I’ll call the nurse and tell her I need a shot.

  Yeah, I’ll just politely say, “Nurse, nurse, I’m getting worse. Would you be so kind as to insert your magic needle into the attached IV and let that great destroyer of pain flow through my bruised and battered body, extinguishing the fire below?” But she’ll say no!

  She’ll say it’s not time yet and then, smiling sweetly, tell me to just “hang tight” for another hour.

  One hour, sixty minutes, three thousand and six hundred seconds.

  Don’t count them. Remove your watch and put it under your pillow.

  Good, now think of something else. Think of how fortunate you are; there’s still a foot attached to your leg. And hey, that’s a pretty unique occurrence in the “pit”! Think of the young lieutenant, so recently a whole and healthy warrior of the 173d Airborne, sleeping peacefully across the aisle from you. Between operations, he’s relatively, momentarily free of the animal pain. However, the animal will return with the next operation. He’ll lay with the animal pain again and again.

  God, he’s ugly! Blast must have hit him right at chest level, really messed up his face. But he’s still got his sight, and they’re building him a new nose. Got the makings of it transplanted on his forehead already. Looks kind of funny there with a nose hanging from his forehead to his stomach, sort of like an elephant with its trunk tucked into its belly button. Of course they know what they’re doing here; they’ll trim it up nice and neat when the time comes. Hope it takes, hope it works and never clogs, because, having no arms, he’ll have no way of blowing it. On the other hand, they can do wonders in physical therapy. If they can teach you how to pick up marbles with your toes, I’m sure they can teach young Dave there how to pick his nose.

  Unbearable! The goddamn pain’s unbearable! Got to have a shot!

  Wonder where the old woman is with her Fourteenth Street go-go girls and bottle of Wild Turkey. What was her name? Sweet Mary? Gentle Mary?

  Now she knows how to treat America’s wounded! Wish she�
�d come again tonight. Could leave her go-go girls behind, just bring the Wild Turkey. Yeah, that’s what I need, same as the first night.

  When was that, last night? Night before? Whenever. No more morphine, makes me sick and the pain remains. No, same as that first night, a double dose of the big D, a sleeping pill, and a touch of the old woman’s Wild Turkey… then just float away to never-never land.

  She’s coming! I can barely hear her soft-soled nurse’s pumps on the darkened corridor’s tiled floor, but my hearing is attuned to the sounds that signal the approach of she who bears the magic potion.

  Smiling down at me like the merciful angel she, for a fleeting moment, truly is, she gives me the shot. The magic flows through me, bringing in its wake peace. I ask her for a sleeping pill, but she says no, no more barbiturates.

  That’s okay; it’ll give me a few relatively painless, conscious minutes to think about the company, to wonder where they now are and what they’re now doing. Rumor says they’re about to sally forth to pull the Marines’ chestnuts out of the fire at Khe Sanh. Bet they do and wish I were with them. Wish I were there, CAR-15 in one hand, map in the other, sunburned, filthy and sweating, boarding a slick and flying into the unknown.

  God, I wish I were with them tonight!

  1. The Cav, Vietnam bound. September 1967

  The Southern Airways Columbus-Atlanta connector departed on schedule.

  Like most other uniformed passengers aboard the early morning flight, I was on my way to the “pearl of the Orient” Vietnam. Unlike most other uniformed passengers, I was on my way a third time.

  As the two-engine turboprop gained altitude, I felt a sudden yet familiar uneasiness, an ominous fear of the unknown mingled with a fleeting longing for the security of yesterday’s duties and the family that had just bid me farewell.

  Why? I asked myself. Why go back again? Two times should be enough for any sane man. And don’t tell yourself it’s because of patriotic fever, that you’re once again heeding the trumpet’s call. You’re not.

  Nor is it because America’s infantry is now in the fray and you, as a captain of infantry, should be in it with them. That’s not really it; you saw enough of that sort of thing last time around. Then why go again?

  You know the answer. It’s because you like it! Yes, it’s really that simple; you like the pace of combat, like that awareness of life that only it seems to induce. You like to feel that sudden surge of adrenaline when confronting the unexpected; you like the lack of routine, the opportunity to innovate, the hunting of animals who do indeed shoot back, the stark terror and brilliant splendor of a firefight … and you like watching boys grow into men virtually overnight and in most cases being better off for having done so. You like the fear of the unknown, and for that matter you like these familiar feelings of apprehension and remorse you’re now experiencing.

  It’s all part of it, and you like it all, don’t you?

  With a trace of a smile, I silently answered myself, yes, I really do.

  A flight attendant interrupted these philosophical wanderings, asking if I’d prefer coffee or juice before landing in Atlanta. I ordered tomato juice and then on the spur of the moment corrected myself, saying, “On second thought, put a little vodka in that virgin Mary, please.”

  Might as well enjoy the service while it lasts; there’s gonna be some long dry spells ahead.

  Reclining in my seat, drink in hand, my thoughts drifted back to that first trip to the Nam. Only five years ago? It seemed like a lifetime, and yet it seemed like only yesterday, but what a difference! There were no drinks served aboard that flight. In fact, there were few seats aboard those post-World War II, double-decker C-124 Globe Masters, three of which flew us in trail from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport about as quickly as we could have swum the distance.

  At the time I was a twenty-four-year-old buck sergeant in the Army’s Special Forces en route to a war that had not yet become a war, or, as Sergeant Fallow was fond of saying, “It may not be much of a war, Jimbo, but it’s the only one we got”; then winking, as if sharing a secret known only amongst those of us who wore the green beret, he would always add, “At least it’s the only one the American people know about.” Which was incorrect, of course, since in 1962 the American public didn’t know or care about our “only war” in Vietnam, much less any of the smaller covert altercations he was alluding to.

  Master Sergeant Al Fallow, my boss and mentor on that first tour … wonder whatever happened to him. Last I heard he was still somewhere in Southeast Asia doing his part for the CIA. I miss his endless philosophical quips and the way he related them to our “only war.”

  Although it was not much of a war as wars go, by 1962 it was taking its toll in Special Forces soldiers, many of them close friends.

  Yet death in combat was the exception, not the rule, in 1962. In fact, we saw more combat occur between different political and ethnic factions within South Vietnam than we experienced in our encounters with the Viet Cong (VC). We saw Montagnards we had trained to fight the VC turn instead on their South Vietnamese counterparts, we stood idly by as the country’s Buddhists set out to topple a government, and finally, sitting in a sandbagged bunker on a chilly November night in 1963, we learned that a president—who, on reflection, was probably the best hope for stability in his young republic—had “accidentally” committed suicide.

  It was in many respects a learning tour, as was the next; however, the differences between the two could hardly have been more profound.

  By 1965, our “only war” had literally exploded! Gone were the sixday work weeks and casual bus rides down to Cape Saint Jacques on Sundays; gone were greenback dollars, two-dollar whores, and tenpiaster beer LaRue. By 1965, prices had risen astronomically on everything except human life—it was still cheap, cheaper in fact.

  I began that tour as a young, and very inexperienced, second lieutenant assigned to a remote Special Forces encampment on the Vietnamese/Laotian border. Its name was ARO, which translated could only mean “end of the earth.” Located on an isolated mountaintop deep in triple-canopy, uninhabitable tropical rain forest, it sat on terrain that could not be defended, in an area that could not be resupplied or reinforced, astride a dirt airstrip upon which planes could not land. Actually, that’s not completely true, now that I think of it. One airplane, an Australian Caribou as I recall, did in fact land … and I suppose it’s still there, since no airplane ever took off from ARO. In the end, the most frustrating thing about ARO was our mission, a mission that could not be accomplished.

  The flight attendant’s announcement of our descent into Atlanta disrupted my thoughts. Good, I said to myself. Time to stop mulling over the past and start thinking about the future. After all, third time’s the charm, right? Next stop San Fran for a good meal, a night on Broadway, and then off to the land that God created during a coffee break.

  Early the next evening, along with 160 or so other soldiers and Marines, several Air Force personnel, and a single sailor, I boarded a chartered World Airways flight and followed the sun westward. It was a more comfortable and far quicker passage than the previous two had been. All of us were military, and all would be staying in the Nam. Most of us would return home whole in body twelve months hence, some sooner in pieces, and in the fall of ‘67 it was a statistical certainty that others would make the long flight back in flag-draped coffins.

  The flight crew, of course, was civilian and would not be spending a single night in the Nam. After dropping us off and picking up a load of Stateside returnees, they would fly on to spend their night’s crew rest in some four-star Tokyo hotel.

  There were no four-star hotels in Cam Ranh. Upon landing, the trip-long horseplay, laughter, and joking ended abruptly, replaced by an eerie silence. Finally, a young flight stewardess, who had boosted morale throughout our Pacific crossing, announced our arrival over the plane’s PA system.

  “Good morning! We have now landed at Cam Ranh Bay International, w
here the temperature is 101 degrees and climbing. Welcome to sunny Vietnam!

  Please remain seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop. On behalf of the captain and crew of World Airways, we hope you’ve enjoyed your flight and we hope we … we hope we can fly all of you back home again, safe and sound twelve months from.”

  Her voice broke, and she paused, apparently on the verge of tears. Then poignantly, almost bitterly, she said, “We hope you’ll be all rightdamn it.”

  As we were about to disembark, a young sergeant, who had befriended the stewardess during the long flight, remarked that the war had claimed a childhood friend of hers only weeks before. She was not at the aircraft’s door as we deplaned.

  Things happened quickly at Cam Ranh. Entering a screened inboundoutbound transit facility, we began filing past those who, having completed their year in the Nam, were about to embark on our plane for their flight back to the “world.” In doing so, we suffered their caustic remarks and catcalls.

  “Hey, cherry, Charlie’s gonna get ya!”

  “Raw meat, raw meat!”

  “Hey, cherry, only 365 more days. You’re getting short.”

  “Raw meat, raw meat!”

  “Hey, chaffy, might as well go and draw your body bag now, ‘cause you ain’t gonna make it.”

  And to the tune of Stephen Foster’s “Camp Town Races,” a couple of them sang, off key:

  Oh … your son came home in a rubber bag, doo dah, doo dah.

  Your son came home in a rubber bag, just the other day.

  Oh … you take his watch and I’ll take his coin, doo dah, doo dah.

  You take his watch and …

  Most of us shouldered these ungracious remarks in sheepish silence as we self-consciously shuffled past our outbound brethern, although a couple of my fellow passengers invited the returnees to go fuck themselves. In the interest of good military order, a somewhat hung-over major who had been aboard our flight pulled a young outbound captain aside and, not so very politely, asked that he exercise whatever leadership influence he might possess in quieting the “obnoxious cluster of people in uniform” surrounding him.