A Shau Valor

by Thomas R. Yarborough

  With overall American troop strength down to 280,000, the vaunted 101st Airborne Division no longer found itself participating in far-ranging enemy hunting expeditions near the Laotian border. Instead, the Screaming Eagles transitioned into a concept dubbed “Dynamic Defense” by MACV. The 101st actively participated in Operation Jefferson Glenn, a joint campaign with the 1st ARVN Division designed to shield the coastal lowlands of Thua Thien Province by concentrated patrolling of enemy rocket belts along the eastern edge of the mountains. The most westerly move in the operation occurred when the 1st Brigade of the 101st feigned a thrust toward the A Shau, stopping at Fire Support Base Granite, nine kilometers east of Ripcord.1

  By the end of January the remaining 101st brigades moved north to bolster the defenses of Quang Tri Province, while many ARVN units stood down for the Tet Lunar New Year. January 27th heralded the beginning of the final sign of the Chinese zodiac, the Year of the Pig. Individuals born under that sign were said to be compassionate, diligent, and generous, but they had a tendency to be overly trusting and naïve, thus easily drawn into traps. The soothsayers even predicted enemy ruses during the year; ARVN senior commanders, secret plans in hand, hoped to spring their own colossal trap against their foes from the North in spite of the fact that the South’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, had been born under the sign of the Pig. As the initial step in executing that trap, the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade, 5th Mechanized Infantry Division, launched Operation Dewey Canyon II on January 29, moving from Vandegrift Combat Base along Route 9 toward Khe Sanh with an armored cavalry/engineer task force. The 5th Mech was to clear the way for the move of 20,000 South Vietnamese troops along the highway to reoccupy 1,000 square miles of territory in northwest South Vietnam and to mass at the Laotian border in preparation for Lam Son 719, the invasion of Laos.

  Planning for Lam Son 719 actually began in early December 1970, when General Creighton Abrams and the MACV staff convened a secret meeting with their South Vietnamese counterparts to discuss the possibility of an ARVN cross-border attack into southeastern Laos. Detailed planning for the attack fell into the lap of the XXIV Corps commander, Lieutenant General James W. Sutherland, Jr. The operation would consist of four phases: during Phase One, the U.S. 1st Brigade of the 5th Mech would push out along Route 9 and reopen it all the way to the old Khe Sanh combat support base. Next, a strong ARVN armor/infantry force would pass through the American positions on the border and strike into Base Area 604, its ultimate target the vital crossroads of Tchepone, some 25 miles into Laos. In Phase Three the plan called for ARVN troops to disrupt or even completely destroy this vital staging area on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Finally, before the beginning of the southwest monsoon in May, the South Vietnamese force would backtrack to the east along Route 9 or south through Base Area 611 to exit through the A Shau Valley.2

  ARVN units participating in Lam Son 719 crossed the border into Laos at 7 a.m. on February 8, 1971, right on the heels of a massive artillery barrage and a dozen B-52 Ark Light sorties. While the 1st Armored Brigade task force pushed due west along Route 9, the ARVN 1st Infantry Division, considered the best in the South Vietnamese Army, leapfrogged via helicopter to temporary firebases along the left flank of the main advance. Simultaneously, the elite ARVN 1st Airborne Division combat assaulted into key terrain on the north side of Route 9. The operation represented the acid test for Vietnamization. Due to the Cooper-Church Amendment passed in late December, a move born from the antiwar backlash following the Cambodian incursion, U.S. ground troops, including American advisors, were prohibited from entering Laos. Lam Son 719 was an all ARVN show—except in the air. The 101st Airborne Division was tasked to “provide helicopter support for all U.S. and ARVN units committed to the operation, on both sides of the border.” For security reasons, the Screaming Eagle aviation units only learned of the actual mission on February 7 when the assistant division commander, Brig General Sid Berry, briefed the assembled aviation commanders on the invasion of Laos. One shocked battalion commander mumbled to himself, “I’ll be a son of a bitch. I thought we were going into the A Shau.”3

  Under the command of Lieutenant General Hoang Xuan Lam, Lam Son 719 made good progress until February 12 when Lam’s troops slammed into a large contingent of NVA forces, forces who, unlike in Cambodia, stood their ground and fought. Supported by Soviet PT-76 and T-54 tanks, as many as five NVA divisions—including the 304th, 308th, and 320th—used massed ground attacks to isolate individual firebases before wiping out ARVN units piecemeal. The South Vietnamese quickly went from the offensive to the defensive. By the first of March over 40,000 NVA soldiers—twice the number of ARVN troops—were attacking General Lam’s units strung out along and beside Route 9. Besides ravaging ARVN positions with tanks and long-range artillery, the enemy employed vicious antiaircraft fire to decimate helicopters attempting to reinforce and resupply the South Vietnamese troops who depended on the 101st’s airmobile assets for their very existence. In addition to automatic weapons, the enemy deployed twelve triple A battalions with over two hundred 23, 37, and 57mm antiaircraft guns. The effectiveness of those guns shocked everyone when, on March 3, a battalion from the 1st ARVN Division air assaulted into LZs near Tchepone. In a single day enemy gunners shot down 11 helicopters and damaged 44 others.4

  Those same enemy gunners had equal success against F-4 Phantoms. On February 25, Major Richard K. Somers from the 366th Tactical Fighter Wing at Da Nang was on his fourth bombing pass at 1,000 feet when ground fire struck his cockpit. His backseater ejected, but Major Somers never got out of his aircraft. At approximately 4 p.m. that same afternoon, over the same target, a burst of green tracers from a .51 cal machine gun hit a second Phantom. The two pilots ejected just before their aircraft exploded in a fireball and crashed. Both were rescued three days later.5

  Like a giant sponge, Lam Son 719 continued to soak up men and equipment. Internal bickering among senior ARVN commanders also muddied the command and control lines since two of the generals with units involved actually outranked General Lam. As Henry Kissinger described it later, “The operation, conceived in doubt and assailed by skepticism, proceeded in confusion.”6 By late February it became obvious that General Lam had underestimated his opponent on two crucial points: the speed at which Hanoi could reinforce its units in Laos, and the ferocity of their counterattack. When he finally achieved his objective at the bombed-out crossroads at Tchepone, General Lam, concerned about a rout, disengaged and started the deadly return to the border, again via helicopter. Earlier thoughts about turning south and carrying the battle into the A Shau were summarily dismissed. While a few units carried out their missions admirably and with valor, the 1st Airborne Division, the showpiece of Vietnamization, performed ineffectively and entirely failed in its flank security mission. Adding to the worsening drama, the highly regarded Vietnamese Marines abandoned key positions without much of a fight, although other accounts had them battling valiantly at LZ Delta. At any rate, the retreat was on. Mobbed by frightened ARVN troops, some helicopter crews resorted to greasing the skids of their Hueys to prevent panicky soldiers from clinging to them during the evacuation process. Yet in spite of the dire situation, dangerously overloaded American UH-1 Hueys and CH-47 Chinooks shuttled back and forth to hell holes named LZ Lolo, Liz, and Sophia Two, the valiant chopper crews keeping at it until they dropped from exhaustion or from enemy ground fire.

  For the ARVN troops fighting for their lives along Route 9, close air support was vital to keeping the enemy forces at bay, but extremely heavy antiaircraft fire took its toll among the pilots attempting to help. On March 6, enemy gunners poured a stream of white-green tracers into the right wing of an A-1H on its ninth pass, causing the aircraft to burst into flames. The pilot ejected and was picked up by a Jolly Green rescue helicopter. Ten days later a 37mm gun brought down a FAC working airstrikes over an allied unit. The O-2 Skymaster nosed into the ground, killing both crewmen. And on March 22, a flight of F-100s attacked four NVA tanks on Route 9. Capt Peter
G. Moriarty was on his first pass when a .51 cal machine gun found the range. The Super Sabre crashed before the pilot could eject.7

  At the height of the evacuation on March 18, as ARVN positions were being overrun, U.S. helicopters ran a deadly gauntlet of fire to save the allied soldiers. During one particularly harrowing mission, Cobra pilots Captain Keith A. Brandt and co-pilot Lieutenant Boffman A. Brent from D Company, 101st Aviation Battalion, repeatedly flew through the lethal fire, leading Huey after Huey into hot LZs. The two pilots, call sign Music 16, remained over the besieged 88-man ARVN unit all afternoon, refueling and rearming three times. On the doomed Cobra’s last run, NVA antiaircraft fire exploded around the AH-1G. Brandt’s Cobra shuddered and he radioed, “I’ve lost my engine and my transmission is breaking up. Goodbye. Send my love to my family. I’m dead.” Then, Music 16 exploded in a ball of fire and crashed in the trees.8 By the time Lam Son 719 ended, many other American fliers had suffered a similar fate: 215 KIA with 38 MIA. U.S. aviation units lost a total of 168 helicopters shot down and another 618 damaged.9

  By March 24 the last ARVN troops had been lifted out of Laos, and all that remained was the withdrawal from the border back to Dong Ha and Quang Tri. And as in all major battles, the leadership trumpeted the notion that our side had pulled off another lopsided victory. In a televised speech on April 7, President Nixon told the American people “the South Vietnamese demonstrated that without American advisors they could fight effectively against the very best troops the North Vietnamese could put in the field … Tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded.”10 Not to be outdone, President Thieu addressed the survivors of the invasion and claimed that the operation in Laos was “the biggest victory ever.”11 The reality was that Lam Son 719 played out as an incredibly costly and humiliating evacuation for South Vietnamese forces—as Winston Churchill remarked 30 years earlier following the tragedy at Dunkirk, “Wars are not won by evacuations.” Tactically, the assault into Laos had sputtered to a halt when determined NVA forces routed the best the ARVN had. The operation amounted to an unmitigated disaster for the ARVN, decimating some of its best units and destroying their confidence and morale. Furthermore, it became clear to the pragmatists that Vietnamization had not prepared the South Vietnamese military to the point where it could effectively stand on its own and challenge the NVA mano a mano, especially in traditional enemy strongholds like Base Area 604.

  Approximately 30 miles south of Base Area 604 and Tchepone, an unpublicized but particularly violent part of Lam Son 719 played out in a top-secret battle along the west wall of the A Shau. In anticipation of an ARVN withdrawal through the infamous valley, SOG inserted several of its reconnaissance teams to tie down enemy forces and gather intelligence. One of those teams, RT Intruder, was led by Captain Ronald L. Watson. Known to his men as “Doc,” Watson, a Military Intelligence officer with a PhD from Stanford University, seemed an unlikely sort to run one of the most dangerous clandestine missions in the U.S. Army. Nevertheless, he pushed ahead with his plan to check out as a One-Zero so he could write a book on the subject, perhaps replicating T.E. Lawrence’s famous wartime memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a blueprint for guerrilla warfare in the twentieth century. In short order Doc Watson won over the doubters in SOG; they quickly recognized that he had the intellect of a scholar, the soul of a poet, and more importantly, the heart of a warrior. To some he did, indeed, conjure up visions of Lawrence of Arabia.

  On the morning of February 18, Doc Watson loaded RT Intruder aboard two UH-1s at Phu Bai for the short flight to the A Shau. The team included Sergeant Allan R. “Baby Jesus” Lloyd as the One-One, Sgt Raymond L. “Robby” Robinson as the One-Two, and five Bru Montagnard mercenaries. By coincidence, SFC Samuel D. “Sammy” Hernandez and SFC Charles F. “Wes” Wesley had wandered into the tactical operations center (TOC), only to be ordered to accompany RT Intruder to evaluate them for an upcoming special mission. As the two men gathered their weapons and equipment, Wes cursed Sammy and said, “See, I told you we shouldn’t go down to the TOC. I was in the A Shau Valley as a platoon sergeant with the 101st back in 1968. All the bad guys in the world are in that valley.”12

  The Hueys inserted RT Intruder into a rocky clearing on a ridgeline overlooking the southwest rim of the valley, just across the border in Laos, and once the choppers departed, the team hunkered down to give their ears a chance to attune to jungle noises. Then the arduous trek began: RT Intruder took three hours to cover 300 meters. Shortly after moving out and crossing the border back into Vietnam, the team heard signal shots to their right and left, indicating that the enemy was aware of their presence. Threading their way slowly through the wait-a-minute vines and heavy underbrush, RT Intruder literally stumbled across a major high-speed trail easily large enough to handle truck traffic. The overhanging tree boughs had been tied together, making the road virtually unobservable from the air. Also strung out beside the road were a dozen strands of communication wires, indicating a major line of communication. As Doc Watson studied the trail, one of the Bru on the left flank signaled “people coming”; a fiveman NVA porter crew came into view. From their ambush positions the team opened fire, killing two NVA while the others abandoned their loads and fled into the dense jungle. Watson and his men quickly gathered up the enemy booty, and since the shots clearly compromised their location, he called the nearby Covey FAC to arrange an immediate extraction.13

  Orbiting just east of the valley, Covey 275, 1st Lieutenant James L. “Larry” Hull, piloted his O-2 toward RT Intruder. Although new to the Prairie Fire operation, Hull was eager to help—he felt the connection deeply. The invisible bond between that team on the ground and that FAC circling above was beyond explanation. People like Larry Hull would break every rule and take any chance to help a reconnaissance team. When the action turned super-hot, the One-Zero never gave a second thought to friendly machine-gun fire or rockets kicking dirt up at his feet, as long as it came from one of his Prairie Fire FACs. That mutual respect and commitment formed the lifeblood of SOG operations in the secret parts of Laos.

  The SOG troops evidently saw something of themselves in Larry Hull because they idolized him, partly as warrior and partly as mascot. For reasons known only to them, the Green Berets decided the young, blond lieutenant reminded them of “Woodstock,” the small yellow bird from the Peanuts cartoon strip who became best friends with everyone’s favorite beagle, Snoopy. They called him Woodstock, and the name naturally stuck. Sitting in Woodstock’s right seat was Sergeant First Class Jose Fernandez, a brand new Covey rider on his very first mission. When Jose and his pilot headed for Hill 1528 on the west wall, both men agonized about the rapidly deteriorating weather along the ridgeline. Jose summed up the situation when he commented to Larry, “Nothing is ever easy in the A Shau.” With that terse observation they waited, mostly in silence, for the extraction helicopters to arrive approximately 30 minutes later.

  Three Hueys from A Company, 101st Aviation Battalion, contacted Covey 275 and moved into position to extract RT Intruder. Known as the Comancheros, the crews displayed nerves of steel, hovering at treetop level in the clouds while moving forward a few feet at a time attempting to locate the SOG team in the dense jungle below, knowing that at any moment NVA troops close by could blast their vulnerable birds out of the sky. With no LZ available, the first Comanchero hovered and dropped an aluminum ladder out the troop door. Sergeants Robinson and Wesley, along with two Bru, snapped their rucksacks to the first rungs of the ladder, then climbed up and snap-linked themselves to the rickety, swaying contraption. In the thin mountain air and high altitude, the Huey struggled to lift the heavy load of men and equipment, inadvertently dragging the ladder through the trees. The struggling UH-1 was just seconds away from crashing when the four dangling team members jumped off the ladder, a split second before the crew chief cut it loose from the overloaded chopper. Strangely, Robby and Wes landed right on top of the NVA they had just killed. As they ran back to the team’s perimeter, a second H
uey approached, dangling four long ropes anchored to its floor. This time the two Green Berets and the two Bru attached the ropes to their STABO rigs, a nylon harness with two snap rings at the shoulders. Referred to as “coming out on strings,” in time-critical situations with no LZ available, the STABO harness might be a team’s only option, and if done correctly, three or four men could hook up to the ropes and be lifted out at the same time, leaving the team members’ hands free, enabling them to fire their weapons. As an added bonus, a wounded or unconscious troop could be extracted with no danger of slipping off the rope. Once hooked up to the “strings,” Robby and Wes gave the crew chief a thumbs up and away they went, dangling precariously in the open as the Huey sped them to safety. Almost immediately another Comanchero pulled out the three remaining Bru. Only Doc Watson, Baby Jesus Lloyd, and Sammy Hernandez remained on the ground.

  Unfortunately, the rescued men were not out of danger. When the Huey with Robinson and Wesley dangling beneath it arrived at Phu Bai, the pilot approached the landing pad too low, inadvertently dragging the suspended men through the camp defensive perimeter concertina wire, cutting them to ribbons. In the process of being dragged, Robby Robinson hit a metal engineer stake used to hold the razor sharp concertina wire in place; the stake drove deep into his leg. After landing, another chopper evacuated Robby to the 95th Evac Hospital while a second lifted Wes and the two Bru to the SOG compound. It was then that they learned the fate of their teammates on RT Intruder.14