A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  Because of adverse publicity generated by the press coverage surrounding Hamburger Hill, MACV clamped a tight lid on any news concerning Hill 996 and Operation Montgomery Rendezvous. The tactic ultimately proved to be unnecessary since attention on the home front was riveted on the Apollo 11 moon landing, not on Vietnam. A month later, when Montgomery Rendezvous ended on August 14, the campaign, its accomplishments, its sacrifice, and its associated valor never even made the news, either print or television. The youth of America were completely captivated by an iconic cultural/generational phenomenon: the Woodstock Music Festival. Interestingly, the loudest, most boisterous applause from the nearly 400,000 attendees went to Country Joe and the Fish when they performed their anti-Vietnam anthem, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag.” Many in the huge audience joined in the signature chorus:

  And it’s one, two, three,

  What are we fighting for?

  Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,

  Next stop is Vietnam;

  And it’s five, six, seven,

  Open up the pearly gates,

  Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,

  Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.

  While Woodstock may have created a symbol for the youth of the time and defined a turning point in American pop culture, it essentially served as a protest message through song—a message filled with anti-war sentiment, anti-establishment reaction, a pro-drug mindset, and radical individualism. Yet in spite of the hoopla and publicity surrounding the Woodstock Music Festival, the message reverberated among the already converted. In Vietnam the war continued, but at a different pace.

  On September 24, 1969, the 3rd Brigade’s command post at Ta Bat closed and moved back to Camp Evans. By October 1 the entire 101st Airborne Division had left the valley, and with it the earlier plan to make the A Shau “Screaming Eagle Country,” which became yet another aborted attempt to subjugate “the place from the beginning of time.” The 101st left behind an airstrip, Route 547, and dozens of closed firebases—should the men of the 101st ever need to return. With changing priorities and Vietnamization, however, the 3rd Brigade redeployed along the DMZ to fill in for the departing 3rd Marine Division, while NVA units, battered and bruised though they were, quietly and efficiently set up operations and reclaimed the A Shau Valley. To many Americans, hawk and dove alike, the battles, bloody and obscene, made no sense. As one reporter asked, “When the war is ended, what will be the significance of Hamburger Hill, of Hill 996?”

  Adding to the unrest, the anti-war movement captured national headlines when it staged the ‘Mobilization’ peace demonstration in Washington, one of the largest anti-war protests in U.S. history. Then, in mid-November, support for the war in Vietnam took another nosedive when investigative reporter Seymour Hersh broke the story of an atrocious war crime and cover up. In Quang Ngai Province, about 80 miles south of Da Nang, a platoon from the Americal Division had murdered at least 347 South Vietnamese civilian men, women, and children; equally upsetting, the U.S. Army had covered up the atrocity for 18 months. The horrific episode will forever be remembered as the My Lai Massacre. In the wake of My Lai, memories of Hamburger Hill and the A Shau Valley were conveniently shoved to the collective back of American conscious thought. But the men who fought in the A Shau remembered—they would always remember.

  chapter

  8

  RIPCORD: VALOR IN DEFEAT

  Never send a battalion to take a

  hill if a regiment is available.

  —GENERAL DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

  Almost without exception, Americans transitioning into the year 1970 would never have associated the name “Daniel Boone” with covert operations in the Vietnam War. Some might have remembered the name as an iconic frontiersman and hunter from 18th century American history, but most probably recognized the character from the television series Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker and running from 1965 through 1970. Had the public known about the Studies and Observations Group’s (SOG) top secret cross-border raids into Cambodia codenamed “Daniel Boone” (eventually changed to Salem House), the political backlash and anti-war furor may well have paralyzed the entire nation.

  Still reeling from reaction to Hamburger Hill, MACV began the year 1970 by maintaining a lower than normal public profile, especially where combat activities were involved; the impression conveyed—whether true or not—was that its heart was no longer fully in the fight. Rather than mount aggressive operations on the offense, most units focused on security roles near cities, towns, major roads, and around key military installations. All the while, U.S. troop drawdown continued: by the beginning of 1970, troop strength had dropped from a high of 543,000 to 428,000. While the de-emphasis on American combat involvement was without a doubt linked to Vietnamization, the unspoken but very real truth included political pressure to hold down casualties as a means to appease the increasingly powerful anti-war movement. One way to accomplish that aim involved employing “black ops” clandestine organizations like SOG, whose units operated in total secrecy and without the attendant scrutiny of the media—or Congress.

  MACSOG’s secret missions into Cambodia began in the fall of 1967 as an attempt to stem the flow of troops and supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a locale known as the tri-border area, the point opposite Kontum Province where the borders of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia briefly touched. The tri-border area, designated Base Area 609, had developed into a major sanctuary and transshipment point for VC and NVA forces, and the long-sought authorization to cross into Cambodia gave birth to top secret Operation Daniel Boone, whose purpose was to “reduce infiltration of personnel and material and to collect intelligence.” A secondary rationale for Daniel Boone included the objective of obtaining confirmation that NLF and NVA forces were indeed using neutral Cambodia for military operations against South Vietnam. The reconnaissance teams of SOG got the job.1

  One of SOG’s first missions of 1970 into Cambodia occurred on January 5, when Staff Sergeant Franklin D. Miller led RT Vermont into Base Area 609 in search of enemy base camps. Stealthily moving into Cambodia only several hundred meters south of the Laotian border, Doug Miller’s nine-man team immediately ran into trouble when the point man tripped a cord across a trail, setting off a booby trap explosion that seriously wounded four team members. Knowing that the enemy in the vicinity had been alerted by the blast, SSgt Miller hastily bandaged the wounded and ordered the second in command to move the battered team to a nearby hilltop; Miller remained behind in position to cover the withdrawal.

  Within a few minutes SSgt Miller observed a 40-man platoon moving toward his location. Taking on the entire unit with his CAR-15, Miller single-handedly repulsed two determined attacks by the numerically superior enemy force and caused them to withdraw to regroup. After rejoining his team he established contact with a FAC and arranged the evacuation of RT Vermont. However, the only suitable extraction location in the heavy jungle was a bomb crater some 150 meters from the team location. The 24-year-old Green Beret reconnoitered the route to the crater and led his men through the enemy controlled jungle to the extraction site. As the evacuation helicopter hovered over the crater to pick up RT Vermont, the enemy launched a savage automatic weapon and RPG attack against the beleaguered team, driving off the rescue helicopter. SSgt Miller led the team in a valiant defense which blunted the enemy in its attempt to overrun the small patrol. Although seriously wounded with a slug in his left arm and with every man on his team a casualty, the Elizabeth City, North Carolina native moved forward to again single-handedly meet the swarm of hostile attackers. From his forward exposed position Doug Miller, wounded and outnumbered 40 to 1, courageously repelled two more attacks by the enemy platoon. His valor saved the lives of his team and allowed a friendly Bright Light team to reach RT Vermont and effect a rescue just across the Laotian border. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Staff Sergeant Franklin D. Miller was awarded
the Medal of Honor. In keeping with the deception involving cross-border operations, Miller’s citation specified that the action had occurred in Kontum Province, South Vietnam.2

  While sharp firefights continued to occur throughout Vietnam, other events dominated the headlines in early 1970. The Chicago Seven, indicted on a series of riot charges stemming from the 1968 Democratic National Convention, were found not guilty of conspiracy but were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The anti-war movement became outraged when all seven men were sentenced to five years in prison and fined $5,000 each; the sentences were overturned two years later.

  The population in Vietnam, north and south, focused on the cultural and spiritual observance of Tet. February 6, 1970, marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year, along with the annual promises of a celebratory truce, which each side only observed if convenient to them and then accused the other of violating. Tet ushered in the Year of the Dog, and according to Chinese astrologers, influential people born under that sign were always in danger of being too uncompromising or stubborn in their views. The Dog could also be too intense in its ideals and tended to forbid exceptions in any circumstance. The soothsayers, however, went on to say that in the Year of the Dog, compatibility among warring leaders offered promise. For example, North Vietnam’s Le Duan, General Secretary of the Central Committee after Ho Chi Minh’s death in 1969, and born in the Year of the Sheep, showed a high degree of compatibility with someone born in the Year of the Pig, namely President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam. On the other hand, as a Sheep, Le Duan was least compatible with someone born in the Year of the Rat: President Richard Nixon. Whether the astrologers got it right is still subject to interpretation.

  As Tet 1970 came and went, the war ground on with a headlong rush to get ARVN units into the battle and American divisions out of the country. In and around the A Shau, the only units operating were SOG reconnaissance teams working the west side of the valley, while 101st LRRP teams ventured into the valley itself and worked the east wall. But in the air, helicopters from the 101st Aviation Group regularly flew over the always intimidating Valley of Death, and on February 19 three Cobra gunships from C Battery, 4th Battalion, 77th ARA, known to one and all as the “Griffins,” found out firsthand why the A Shau had never been a healthy place for helicopters. At approximately 2 p.m., as the three Griffins patrolled the west wall of the valley searching for targets of opportunity, they found themselves caught in a wicked crossfire with at least two .51 cal machine guns spitting out streams of tracers. Just inside Laos and due west of Hamburger Hill, several rounds slammed into the Cobra flown by the Griffin battery commander Major Craig H. Leyda and his copilot, Chief Warrant Officer Loren W. Gee. The blinking master caution light on their instrument panel indicated that the oil transmission line had been hit—the two pilots had about a minute to get the bird on the ground before the transmission would freeze up. In a remarkable bit of flying, Leyda managed to settle the dying bird into a large stand of tall bamboo only 300 meters north of the gun that had brought them down.

  Inside the second Cobra, Chief Warrant Officers John P. Carter and Edwin D. Billet sized up the precarious situation. It would take a rescue Huey at least 20 minutes to arrive on station, and with the area crawling with bad guys, the pilots realized their friends on the ground did not have that much time. Further complicating matters, Carter and Billet were already dangerously low on fuel, but throwing caution to the wind, they decided to go for a pickup. Although the Cobra only had two seats in tandem for the pilots, there were several documented cases of rescued crewmen sitting outside on the ammo bay doors. While the third Cobra attacked the machine gun positions, John Carter jettisoned his inboard rocket pods and guided his bird to a soft landing on the rim of a bomb crater. Just as Leyda and Gee scrambled on to the ammo bay doors, Carter’s emergency fuel low-level light flickered on and the pucker factor soared astronomically—they had about 15 to 20 minutes of fuel to make a 20-minute flight to their base. With superb flying skill and a large dose of luck, John Carter and Ed Billet safely deposited their two fortunate passengers back at Camp Evans. For their daring and valor, both men were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.3

  Yet another Cobra rescue mission involving Ed Billet occurred one month later on March 19, when an indigenous SOG team on the west wall was overrun by a large NVA counter-recon platoon; the only survivor was a single Montagnard trooper. When the supporting Kingbee helicopters could not navigate under an intimidating 300-foot ceiling, one of the orbiting Griffin AH-1G Cobra gunships decided the lone survivor could not be left to his fate. With James E. Mitschke in the front seat and Billet in the back seat, the two Griffins ran a gauntlet of heavy small arms fire to land their Cobra in the A Shau Valley near the frightened team member. Jim opened his side canopy, unstrapped, and climbed halfway out of the cockpit to open the ammo bay door for the small man to sit on. In a panic, the Montagnard instead raced full speed and dived head first into Mitschke’s cockpit. Jim recalled that the soldier had been out for four or five days, smelled awful, and kept repeating, “Daiwe [Captain] number one!” With the scared little man sitting on his lap in the cramped, narrow cockpit, Jim Mitschke flew his extremely fortunate passenger back to LZ Star with the canopy half open.4

  And the dangerously bizarre helicopter missions into the Valley of Death kept right on coming. On March 21, 1970, a Marine UH-1E gunship from HML-167 Squadron flew in support of a SOG RT inserted into Base Area 607 in the southwest corner of the A Shau. The Huey was over the extremely rugged jungle-covered mountains approximately three miles west of the Lao/South Vietnamese border when it was struck by enemy ground fire and plunged into the jungle below.5

  That violent crash heralded the incredible survival saga of the co-pilot, 1st Lieutenant Larry D. Parsons. While supporting the SOG team, Lt Parsons’ Huey, call sign Eagle Claw, was riddled by .51 cal fire from multiple machine guns around the team’s position. From low altitude, the bird nosed over and slammed into the jungle in a fiery explosion. According to the team and crew of a second Huey, the resulting explosion was so catastrophic that they determined nobody could have possibly survived the crash. Therefore, no search and rescue operations were initiated due to the location of loss and the fact that for deniability purposes, these top-secret missions in Laos simply did not exist as far as the schedulers and mission planners were concerned. Additionally, because the other flight crew observed no signs of survivors in or around the crash site, 1Lt Robert E. Castle, 1Lt Larry D. Parsons, Sgt David Gonzales, and SSgt Thomas W. Underwood were listed as KIA/BNR—body not recovered. According to other members of Squadron HML-167, when the helicopter went down everyone was prepared to fly back into the Valley of Death to find their friends. This included Marine recon team personnel who were ready to accompany the aircrews in order to secure the area for a SAR operation. Instead, they were told, “there was no way anyone could have lived through the crash” and headquarters was not willing to risk the possibility of losing other aircraft and personnel “just to recover bodies.”6

  On impact Lt Parsons was miraculously thrown clear of the cockpit engulfed in flames; he suffered third degree burns to his arms and legs and a nasty wound to his left arm. Searching the burning wreck, he found Lt Castle dead, but he saw no signs of Sgt Gonzalez or SSgt Underwood in the wreckage or in the surrounding area. Realizing that the crash had attracted the attention of all enemy troops in the area, Larry Parsons found a secure hiding place in the nearby jungle, venturing out only at night. When he departed the crash site, Parsons took some survival pen flares with him and over the next several days fired them at two different flights of helicopters that passed close to his location. Unfortunately none of the aircrews saw his signals. Over the course of his evasion, Parsons heard enemy patrols moving through the jungle and successfully dodged them, but on occasion he heard enemy shots being fired, probably attempts to flush him out of his hiding place.

  On April 9, 19 days after Parsons’
shoot-down, a flight of ten helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division was inserting another SOG team just west of the Huey’s crash site. As they flew over the rugged terrain on their way in to insert the team, a crewman aboard the last aircraft spotted “someone in a small clearing, waving something” at them. The aircraft commander relayed the information to the flight leader who immediately turned around to check out the situation and set up for a possible extraction. The pilot of the last Huey reported that he saw a person on the ground who appeared to be a white male with a beard and wearing a flight suit and that he was “in” to pick him up. The lead aircraft commander responded with “be careful, it may be a trap.” As the chopper settled into a nearby clearing, Larry Parsons recalled that he had reached the end of his rope. He had no flares left, he was starving, and surrounded by the NVA. He decided to go for broke and ran out into the open field waving what remained of his map in the hope of attracting attention. The brave Huey crew landed under enemy small arms fire, grabbed Larry Parsons and rapidly exited the clearing as the enemy continued to blaze away at the helicopter. When the flight returned to base, the crew counted 34 bullet holes in their fuselage, but Larry Parsons’ harrowing ordeal in the A Shau Valley was over.7

  Some 400 miles to the south, a game-changing event occurred in Cambodia. By 1970 the nationalist and anti-communist sensibilities within Cambodia indicated that Prince Norodom Sihanouk, long-time head of state, and his policy of semi-toleration of Viet Cong and NVA activity within Cambodian borders, had become exasperating if not unacceptable. Sihanouk, espousing a policy of neutrality—regarded by many as “neutrality of the left”—had negotiated a secret arrangement with Hanoi whereby large sections of neutral Cambodia were opened to the North Vietnamese for troop movements and weapons shipments. In actual fact, the penetration of Cambodia by Vietnamese communist forces, complete with their logistic systems, took place along two separate axes. The first was across the Vietnamese borders with Laos and South Vietnam in Base Area 609, while the second was through the Iron Triangle by way of the port of Sihanoukville on the Gulf of Thailand. All the while Sihanouk looked the other way as Hanoi infiltrated 65,000 NVA/VC soldiers and their equipment into his country.8