A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  Approaching Route 165 near Chavane, Laos, the Sea Stallions began taking heavy ground fire. Bullets ripped through the floor of one bird, wounding three Montagnards. In spite of the intense fire, the Marine choppers successfully landed on a large LZ and disembarked the Hatchet Force. At that point a running gun battle erupted, one that lasted for three days. The first firefight occurred only a quarter of a mile from the LZ. Amazingly, in the middle of the fight the raiding force heard telephones ringing. Upon further investigation they discovered a huge bunker complex over 500 yards long containing thousands of 122mm and 140mm rockets. McCarley had his men blow up their find. The Hatchet Force then continued moving and fighting throughout the remainder of the day and night, and by morning nine of the sixteen Americans had been wounded, along with an even larger number of Montagnards.53

  To evacuate the most seriously wounded, McCarley again called on the Marine CH-53s. Before being able to load any casualties aboard, however, the first bird was hit by an RPG that did not explode, but the fuel tank ruptured, forcing the big chopper down about five miles away. The second CH-53 took a number of .51 cal rounds and also made a forced landing. A third helicopter rescued both crews.

  To keep from being surrounded, Capt McCarley kept his force trekking west. With over two dozen wounded, the Hatchet Force medic, Sergeant Gary M. Rose, patched them up and kept them moving. Throughout the ordeal, Covey FACs from Pleiku directed dozens of airstrikes around the raiding party, using A-1s from Da Nang and F-4s to pummel enemy positions with bombs, CBU, and strafe. On the second night a B-40 rocket impacted just meters from Sgt Rose, knocking him off his feet and inflicting wounds throughout his body. Ignoring his own injuries, Rose struggled to his feet and continued to administer medical treatment to the other wounded soldiers. All through the night and into the next day, the NVA pounded the allied force with a continuous barrage of B-40 rockets and mortars, yet despite the deadly volleys falling around him, Sgt Rose displayed a calm professionalism as he remained in the open administering medical treatment to countless men. Sergeant Rose, though exhausted and wounded, refused evacuation until all other casualties were safely out of the area. For his extraordinary heroism, Gary M. Rose was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.54

  On September 13 McCarley’s men routed an enemy platoon in a sharp firefight and then overran a huge base camp containing many maps and hundreds of pounds of documents. The raiders continued moving west, hauling their wounded and the stash of NVA documents. Since the Covey overhead observed massive enemy reinforcements moving in on two sides, the decision was made to get out. As the CH-53s landed in a large field of elephant grass to extract the raiding party, Cobras and A-1s pounded the surrounding area with ordnance, including CBU-30 tear gas cluster bomb units. The Marine choppers landed, protected by the devastating might from the air umbrella, and lifted out the entire Hatchet Force. The highly successful mission had, however, been costly. Three Montagnards had been killed; 33 were wounded, along with all 16 of the Americans. During the fighting, the Hatchet Force killed 144 NVA, with almost 300 more estimated to have been KBA—killed by air. Eugene McCarley and three of his NCOs were nominated for the Silver Star.55*

  During the month of September, the Air Force also had its share of bizarre encounters around the A Shau. On September 23, a flight of two F-105s attacked the same river ford in Base Area 607 where RT Moccasin had fought its way out ten days earlier. Hit by 37mm fire during the strike, the pilot of Dallas 01, Capt John W. Newhouse, guided his burning aircraft out of Laos before ejecting over the northeast corner of the A Shau, just east of Ripcord. Landing on the bank of a streambed, the pilot sank up to his armpits in the sticky mud. When a 101st OH-6 Loach could not pull the pilot free, the orbiting FAC called on the services of an Air Force Jolly Green. Fifty-five minutes later, in an area crawling with enemy soldiers, the big HH-53 finally freed the very fortunate Capt Newhouse and flew him to Da Nang. Ironically, the A Shau had claimed the last of 169 F-105s lost during the war by the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing.56

  In early October the battle against North Vietnamese forces in the A Shau experienced a significant reversal when the 1st ARVN Division abandoned FSB O’Reilly, about seven kilometers northwest of Ripcord. Eerily similar to the Ripcord siege, the two-month-long battle at O’Reilly had once again pitted the NVA 324B Division against the ARVN’s 1st Regiment in another standoff. After 92 enemy artillery barrages and numerous infantry probes against the firebase, the ARVN troops evacuated the fortress, ostensibly due to the onset of the northeast monsoon. Whatever the reason, the occasion marked the last time a major allied unit ventured into the Valley of Death.

  As the 1st ARVN Division left the east side of the valley, SOG continued its dangerous mission by inserting a team into Base Area 611, due west of the village of Ta Bat. Late on the afternoon of October 5, a Prairie Fire Covey FAC, Capt Evan J. Quiros, monitored an emergency transmission from the One-Zero of RT Fer-de-Lance, Staff Sergeant David “Babysan” Davidson. Already a legend within SOG, 23-year-old Babysan had been running recon for three years and had even made a night combat parachute jump into Cambodia. Now, when Babysan advised his FAC that he had heavy enemy movement around his team, it was clear he was in the center of a very precarious situation. With no chance of slipping in under the heavy weather that shrouded the hills and mountain peaks on the west wall of the A Shau, Evan Quiros set up an orbit over the approximate location of the RT, hoping the sound of his circling OV-10 would keep the enemy off balance long enough for the team to make a run for it. After exhausting most of his fuel, he had no choice but to return to Quang Tri for gas.

  Launching out of Quang Tri at dark, Evan returned to the team’s general location using a fix he had plotted on his TACAN. As he approached, his blood ran ice cold when he heard a voice whispering over the radio. In a hushed tone, the One-One, Sergeant Fred A. Gassman, asked Evan to mount an emergency extraction. What was left of the seven-man team was in heavy contact on three sides and low on ammo. He whispered that Babysan had been shot and had fallen over a cliff.

  Faced with unworkable weather and darkness, Quiros knew a rescue was out of the question, but to keep the team’s spirits up, he told them to keep their heads down while he armed up his HE rockets. Counting on a big dose of luck, he began firing blindly through the low cloud deck, praying his rockets would explode close enough to break the contact without hitting the team. The first few salvos landed well south of the target area, exploding harmlessly in the thick jungle; directions from Gassman based strictly on sound proved to be ineffective. Finally, the gutsy One-One realized the hit-or-miss tactic would not work. In a perfectly calm voice he said to Evan, “Covey, we’re out of ideas and time. Got any suggestions?” At first the Covey FAC could not think of a positive answer to the hopeless question. Then he recalled that a few of the teams carried small portable radar beacons. Keying off that signal, sophisticated sensors aboard an AC-119 Stinger gunship could lay down a deadly wall of mini-gun fire, theoretically to within just a few yards of friendly troops. It was their only chance. Quiros told the trapped team, “I’ve ordered up a Stinger gunship. You’ve got to hang on another 45 minutes. In the meantime, I want you to get your beacon set up.”

  His voice heavy with dejection, Gassman replied, “No good. The One-Zero had the mini-ponder on him. He’s somewhere down on the rocks below us.”

  The FAC shouted, “Your best bet is to find that beacon. You’ve got to retrieve that beacon!”

  After the truth of Evan’s words sank in, the One-One answered, “I’ll give it a try. Here goes nothing—wish me luck.”

  Evan Quiros continued to circle in the darkness for several long minutes, hoping beyond hope that the courageous Green Beret below would find the all-important radar beacon. When his radio receiver finally crackled, Evan’s heart sank into his boots. In a quivering, weak voice, Fred Gassman said simply, “I’ve been hit—and in the worst way.” There were several groans then the radio went dead.57

  The foll
owing day a SOG Bright Light team launched a search for RT Fer-de-Lance.* During the attempted insert, however, the supporting A-1s—call sign Spad—had taken a lot of ground fire, and a few of the rounds must have found their mark. The Spad pilot, Major John V. Williams, Jr., was advising the FAC, “The cylinder head temp is off the charts, and she’s starting to smoke. I’m gonna have to get out.”

  The Covey answered, “I copy, Spad Lead. If you can, stay with her until we cross the border and clear the A Shau. That way we’ll have a chopper waiting for you when your feet touch the ground.”

  Seconds after that transmission, John shouted, “Okay, I can’t wait. I’m punching out.” A long pause followed, then the Spad wingman chimed in, “John, get out of it! Get out now!”

  “I can’t. The Yankee [ejection system] didn’t work.”

  “Don’t you have anything?”

  In a low-pitched, angry-sounding voice, Williams replied, “I don’t have a damn thing.”

  The orbiting FAC, in a cool voice, talked to the rapidly descending A-1. “Spad Lead, try to go for the pass between those two ridges directly in front of you. You’ve got a good glide going. Hold her steady on a heading of about 120 degrees. Looking good.” Then the Covey’s voice jumped up about three octaves. “Lead, no! No, for Christ’s sake. Back to your right! To your right!”

  When quite near the ground, the A-1 plunged into a vertical dive and then exploded in a great sheet of orange flame, followed by a swiftly rising column of black smoke and thin white plumes of exploding ammunition. Somebody else came up on frequency. “He went in. Big fireball on the east wall. Negative ‘chute.”

  Everyone in the package saw it. Bright orange-red flames consumed a football field-sized area just below the rim of the small ridge on the A Shau’s east wall. A pall of sooty black smoke floated straight up above the inferno. The Covey FAC was still in control but obviously shaken by what he had witnessed. When he talked on his FM radio to another Covey in the area he sobbed, “If he’d just stayed on that heading. He had it made. Why didn’t he listen? He just went into a left bank and held it. He wouldn’t listen to me. Why didn’t he listen?”58

  SOG managed to recover John Williams the following day when the Spad commander, Lt Colonel Melvin G. Swanson, jumped on a helicopter and joined the Bright Light team in retrieving his pilot’s remains. There was barely time for a short memorial service before the top-secret reconnaissance teams suited up again for more missions into the A Shau; operational requirements mercifully left no time for extended grieving.59

  For the remainder of 1970, U.S. and ARVN mainline units stayed clear of the Valley of Death, just as they had during the period 1966 to 1968. Following Ripcord and O’Reilly, the NVA pushed more troops than ever into the valley, all of them better armed, better supplied, and ready to fight, but there was nobody there to oppose them—nobody except SOG.

  The only headline-grabbing event involving Special Forces occurred on November 21, not in the A Shau but at a small village 23 miles west of Hanoi. Former SOG commander Colonel Arthur “Bull” Simons led 56 Green Berets on a daring mission to Son Tay to rescue 61 American POWs believed to be held there under brutal and primitive conditions. The Son Tay raiders pulled off a textbook mission, but they departed without a single POW; all the prisoners had been moved prior to the raid. Incredulously, just hours before the raiders departed from Thailand on the mission, Defense Intelligence Agency analysts learned that the POWs had been relocated, yet the raid on Son Tay launched anyway on the outside chance that a few of the men might still be in camp. While the mission was clearly a tactical success, it proved to be a painful intelligence failure. Called Operation Kingpin, the Son Tay raid ironically mirrored American campaigns throughout the entire Vietnam War: undeniable valor, ingenious planning and execution, but the operation failed to achieve the goals that the command authorities in Washington had set for it.

  By the end of 1970, enemy domination west of the A Shau was so complete that SOG chose to stay clear of the deadly area along Route 922, known as Target Oscar Eight. Seventh Air Force, however, kept a watchful eye on that key infiltration point. The enemy’s interlocking antiaircraft defense in the area proved to be as formidable as ever, as the crew of Stormy 03, an F-4 from the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at Da Nang, discovered on an armed reconnaissance mission on December 2. Their aircraft shredded by intense ground fire, the crew ejected at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet. The crewmen landed about a mile apart on a rolling, muddy ridge full of trails. When a Nail FAC located them, he called in the Jolly Greens, but as was typical around the A Shau, the cloud deck was so low that the big rescue helicopters could not find a way under the 300-foot overcast and into the rugged terrain. Following several aborted attempts, the Jollies backed off while an Army medevac UH-1 dropped below 200 feet and snaked its way into Oscar Eight. Piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Steven S. Woods, Dustoff 509 located the backseater’s parachute and then established radio contact with the downed crewmen. After four hours on the ground in one of the most dangerous areas in Laos, both crewmen were hoisted aboard Dustoff 509. For the fortunate Phantom crew, a potentially disastrous situation terminated in a happy ending, in large part due to the efforts from everyone involved in a perfectly executed SAR. The only visible evidence remaining to mark the scene in Oscar Eight were two parachutes draped in the tops of the trees and the shattered wreckage of a five million dollar F-4E.60

  To show their appreciation for rescuing two of their own, the Gunfighters at Da Nang threw a wild party for the crewmembers of Dustoff 509. The Army medic recalled the evening:

  The party was hard to forget … a Hall filled with food that us Army Fly Boys don’t see! … roast beef, turkey, potatoes, jello, salads and only God knows what else … the Champaign we had to chug-a-lug (which I haven’t touched since that time) … the wheel barrow with the gold balls that were hung on our zippers by a Lady in a flight suit … saying we had BRASS BALLS …61

  To close out its year in the A Shau, CCN inserted a team into deadly Base Area 611 on Christmas Eve. The mission turned tragic on the 28th when the supporting FAC and his Covey rider ran afoul of the valley’s always-dangerous guns and weather. Flying an OV-10 Bronco, Captain James L. Smith, accompanied by Staff Sergeant Roger L. Teeter, maneuvered his aircraft around the far northwest corner of the A Shau in an attempt to reach the team, completely socked in by a low overcast of clouds. The team reported radio contact with the Covey overhead at 12:40 p.m., but because of the low cloud deck there was no visual contact. On one of the passes they heard several long bursts from what sounded like a 14.5mm ZSU heavy machine-gun. Approximately one minute later the team heard the distinctive turbo prop engines increase to full power, followed by two muffled explosions. The One-Zero estimated the map coordinates, based strictly on sound, to be about three kilometers northwest of his position, and according to that plot the explosions were near a steep cliff socked in by mist and fog. The missing crew remained undetected until January 8 when another Prairie Fire Covey located the wreckage of their OV-10. A Bright Light team was inserted into the crash site, and after two hours of searching they recovered the bodies of Jim Smith and Roger Teeter. There were no indications that the enemy had been at the scene of the crash.62 Like so many of the other losses in and around the A Shau, there was no plausible reason other than guts and valor that could explain the sacrifice of yet two more American lives in the Valley of Death.

  *The raid on Chavane remained classified and lay dormant for almost 30 years until a mind-boggling controversy erupted in 1998 when television’s CNN aired a story about Operation Tailwind called Valley of Death. Based on an interview with a disgruntled former SOG team member, the televised segment alleged that the true purpose of the Tailwind mission was to eliminate a group of Americans who had defected to the enemy. In the process of taking them out, SOG had ordered the use of deadly Sarin nerve gas. It also claimed that over 100 civilians had been killed. In effect, the CNN story accused SOG and the Pentagon
of war crimes, including genocide. Three weeks later an internal investigation by CNN admitted that the reporting was deeply flawed; a public retraction was aired and apologies made. The two producers of the program were fired outright and the on-air reporter received a reprimand. None of the CNN allegations were true, but the intimations forever placed a tainted legacy around Operation Tailwind and the brave men of the Hatchet Force who went “in harm’s way” to carry out the incredibly daring and dangerous mission.

  *The remains of David Davidson and Fred Gassman have never been recovered. For years Hanoi continued to deny any knowledge of the two men, but after normalization of relations in 1995, American researchers found pictures in Hanoi’s files of Davidson’s body taken at the scene of the firefight where he died. NSA/DIA intercepts indicated that Gassman may have actually been captured alive.

  chapter

  9

  A SHAU FINI: THE NINTH YEAR

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time.

  —T.S. ELIOT

  “Back burner” characterized MACV’s attitude about the A Shau Valley in 1971. While always a perennial American concern in I Corps, recently re-designated Military Region I, the Valley of Death, after eight years of tough fighting, had evolved into an imbroglio with no cogent strategy or viable solution. At least half a dozen different military operations had been launched against the formidable enemy bastion, all with mixed results varying from temporary headway to not any. Consequently, on the planning staffs at MACV, XXIV Corps, and the 101st Airborne Division, especially in the aftermath of the controversial battles at Hamburger Hill and Ripcord, few if any jumped at the chance for another crack at the old nemesis, the A Shau. At least one component in that reluctance could be attributed to Vietnamization, where along with the escalating drawdown of American troops, other priorities and reduced forces dictated the operational focus in Military Region I—and that focal point no longer included the “Ah Shit Valley.”