by Eric Meyer
Four Vietnamese came hurtling through the door, we hit them with short bursts from the machine pistols and then ran through the door into a narrow passage. Two more Vietnamese were standing with pistols pointed towards us, we cut them down with short bursts from the MP38s. A side door was open and we could hear footsteps running away from the building.
“They’ll be going for reinforcements, we need to hurry, let’s find Le Van Dao.”
Burr nodded, we started checking the doors that led off the passage. He opened one and a Vietnamese aimed a pistol at him, I cut the guy down with another burst and we ran in. Dao was there, tied to a wooden chair. He was in a bad way, bruised and beaten, but at least he was alive. We untied him and almost carried him out of the building. We ran across to the Cessna as several bursts of automatic fire sprayed over our heads. Woltz was prone on the ground, sheltering behind the wheel of the aircraft.
He took aim and fired several times, the gunfire stopped.
“We’ve got him, get in the aircraft, we need to get moving,” I shouted.
We climbed aboard, I started the engine and began taxiing to the downwind end of the strip. A voice was shouting in my headset that we had to wait for clearance, meanwhile, a Toyota truck with half a dozen heavily armed Vietnamese was speeding towards us. I estimated our speed and distance, we weren’t going to make it.
“Guys, you need to deal with that truck,” I shouted.
They nodded. Burr used the butt of the MP38 to smash two of the back windows of the Cessna to give them a firing slot for their guns.
“Sorry, Jurgen,” he shouted.
“I’ll put it on your bill, now finish them, they’re coming in fast.”
Burr hosed the truck down with the sub-machine gun, emptied the clip and snapped in another. Woltz poked his rifle out of the broken window and took careful aim, the truck lurched as one of the tyres was hit. He fired again, and again. The incoming fire that threatened to overwhelm us had slackened, finally the sniper hit the driver and the truck slewed around and tipped over, throwing dead and dying to the ground. We reached take-off speed and I rotated the Cessna off the runway, we were airborne. The headset still babbled incessantly, the controller outraged that we had taken off without clearance. I made a note to telephone him in the near future and find out how much he wanted to forget it. I still had an airline to run after this operation was over.
It took us just over an hour to get back to Tan Son Nhat. I landed and we taxied to the hangar. Cady came out and peered in.
“Good work, Hoffman, we’re all ready to go, you can transfer Mr. Le to the Junkers.”
“Certainly, Captain, your two men had something to do with it as well, you know.”
Oh, yeah,” he looked at Burr and Woltz, “good work men, let’s snap to it, we’ve got a way to travel.”
I don’t know who he was trying to impress, but he was failing dismally with his men, already I could see he was becoming a laughing stock. That could be a liability in a dangerous situation, but in the meantime dealing with it was going to be difficult. The ideal situation would be for him to break a leg before we started, but that was not likely to happen, I’d dealt with officers like him before, no doubt his men, all Sergeant’s and Warrant Officer’s ranks had experience of officers like Cady too. We helped Dao over to the Junkers, it was still inside the hangar. Paul had packed it with enough fuel drums to top up the tanks when we got to the North, enough at least to get us back south of the DMZ, where we could refuel at Hue. The wooden crates that Cady’s men had brought were there too, they were all marked, AR15 assault rifles, two Browning M60 light machine guns, grenades, demolition explosives, even food rations. Another large crate carried a single Browning .50 calibre heavy machine gun.
“He thinks he’s going to fight a war,” a sergeant with the name Russo on his breast pocket said to me with a smile. Weapons Sergeant Joe Russo, the man who would be responsible for taking charge of this arsenal.
“Yes, it seems that way,” I replied. “We’ll have trouble getting off the ground with all this lot. Sergeant, doesn’t he realise that if we have to use this amount of weaponry, we’ll have lost already? How are we expected to carry it if we have to abandon the aircraft?”
Russo shrugged. “I know that, you know that, but he doesn’t. The name’s Joe, by the way.”
I shook his hand. “Jurgen.”
Joe Russo was a wiry, slightly built man of about twenty seven. Cropped hair, almost bald, like most soldiers in the U.S. army his small build concealed a body that was all muscle. He was dark, betraying his Mediterranean ancestry.
“Don’t you worry, Jurgen, we’ll manage to keep him in check, we’ve had worse,” he hesitated. “We’ve had better too, most of our officers are good men, this one, well, I think his daddy is related to a congressman or something. He wants this tour to put on his resume for when he goes back Stateside.”
There was the noise of a diesel engine, Johann drove our old John Deere farm tractor into the hangar, jumped down and hooked the hitch up to the drawbar of the Junkers. Paul sat in the cockpit as Johann slowly towed it out of the hangar and turned it to face the runway.
I found Cady going over his mission plans in my office. “We’re ready to go, Captain.”
“Uh, yeah, ok, Hoffman. I’m going over the mission brief one last time. Do you want me to run you past everything?”
“Captain,” I replied gently, “Paul and I have been there before, we’re fine. When we get near, we’ll call Le Van Tri on the frequency he gave us and he’ll give us further coordinates for the landing field. As soon as we’re overhead he’ll light it up for us. I think it might be a good idea to load the men and go.”
“Right, yeah.” He seemed oddly hesitant, not something I would have expected in a Special Forces officer.
“Look Hoffman, I think I’d better go over to MACV and see if any last minute changes of plan have come in.”
I had it now. He was scared, terrified of going behind enemy lines for the first time. Maybe that was understandable, but a lot of people were depending on him to see this mission through, my wife Helene included.
“Cady!” I spoke to him as loudly as I dared. He looked up at me. “Look, we go now or not at all, if you waste time going over to MACV it’ll be too late, you’d better have your excuses ready for General Harkins. What’s it going to be, do we go or not?”
His men had come into the office and were watching him curiously. He stared at them and back at me. Then he squared his shoulders, as if something had clicked in his brain. “Let’s go then, mount up.”
Paul already had the three engines running, I distributed the soldiers around the cargo bay and went forward to the captain’s seat. Paul looked over at me.
“A heavy load with all of that junk, we’ll need a good take-off roll.”
“Yes, you take her up, Paul. I’ll take a look at the charts for the Hanoi district.”
I flicked on the tiny map light and began poring over the maps even before the aircraft took to the air. There were only a limited number of fields we could land on, I hoped that Le Van Tri had chosen a good one without too many potholes and obstacles. Still, we were carrying his son and the Junkers was a sturdy aircraft, built for operating out of rough, temporary fields, so I saw no reason for concern on that front. We droned north towards Hue and the DMZ, by the time we reached it the sky was dark.
*****
'I refuse to play the role of an accomplice in an awful murder. According to a few immature American junior officials—too imbued by a real but obsolete imperialist spirit, the Vietnamese regime is not puppet enough and must be liquidated.'
Madame Nhu
'The Dragon Lady'
The room in the Saigon Presidential Palace was magnificent, furnished in the most expensive and exquisite manner. The short man looked around the room and thought for the thousandth time how wonderful were the trappings of power. He could and did have the ear of the most powerful man in the free world. At a word
from him armies marched and people quaked in fear. Especially the traitors. Who could he trust here? Madame Nhu, his brother’s wife, known to many as The Dragon Lady, was the official First Lady of the Republic of South Vietnam. But she had enemies, so many enemies, she seemed unable to adopt even the most basic understanding of world politics. Ngo Dinh Thuc was the Archbishop of Hue and also his brother. Carrying the torch of his beloved Catholicism throughout Vietnam, he also had amassed enemies, not least amongst the country’s majority Buddhists. Ngo Dinh Nhu, another brother, head of the Republic’s Secret Police. Was he planning a coup? Already, Diem had survived two coup attempts, who would be next to try it? And Nhu, of course, was a known opium addict, patently unstable. Lastly, there was ARVN General Duong Van Minh, his most trustworthy general. Diem had bowed to demands to allow the ARVN to avoid the most dangerous contact with the rebel Viet Cong. As Duong has pointed out, what was the point of defeating the Viet Cong if the army was so demoralised and alienated that it turned on its leaders, including Diem himself. They all needed watching, Diem knew, every single one of them.
“Mr. President, the Americans are protesting that our army fought like cowards at Ap Bac,” Madame Nhu snapped out suddenly.
General Duong looked sullen. Everyone here knew why the ARVN was encouraged to avoid military contact, even if it could not be openly admitted. “There were Americans there too,” he said, “it made no difference.”
Nhu giggled suddenly, Diem made a mental note to speak to him about his opium consumption. He rang the bell and a servant came in quietly. “You may bring my jasmine tea now.”
The servant bowed and left, he came back within moments carrying the President’s tea on a silver tray.
“Two Americans were captured in the North recently,” Madame Nhu continued.
Diem took his tea from the servant and looked up at his first lady. “Were they soldiers or spies?”
“Hanoi says they were spies,” Nhu giggled again as he spoke, “but they always say that, they’d have said that if they were nuns,” he giggled yet again. Diem became more irritated.
“What are the Americans doing about it?”
“I understand they’re sending in a rescue mission tonight,” Madame Nhu said.
The servant bowed and left the room. Back in the kitchen, he hurriedly wrote a note and gave it to a maid who was about to go off duty.
“We must pray for their success,” the Archbishop of Hue said pontifically.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Diem agreed.
He wondered when it would be time to speak to his brother about the armed Catholic militias that were reportedly terrorising the Buddhist population of the Republic. Still, many of his people were converting to Catholicism, so perhaps it was best to leave things as they were. A Catholic South Vietnam would be a magnificent legacy to leave, especially if it meant the end of these hideous Buddhists and communists.
“Nhu, find out what you can about this American rescue mission, find out what would benefit us most, success or failure,” his brother nodded.
Diem continued, “General, there will be no change to our strategy for the time being, if the Americans are not happy, let them deal with it, they have plenty of troops, they can always send more. Our army needs to be protected and nurtured against the day when they are really needed.”
General Duong bowed, “Yes, Mr. President, very wise.”
“Good, that’s settled,” the President looked harsh. “Now, I hear that the Buddhists are still refusing to pay their taxes and are even disobeying orders to show more respect to Catholic shrines. It must not continue. Nhu, see to it.”
The head of the secret police smiled and looked at his wife, the Dragon Lady.
“It shall be as you say, brother, Mr. President.”
* * * * *
Chapter Five
“It seems, on the face of it, absurd to think that a nation of 20 million people can be subverted by 15–20 thousand active guerrillas if the Government and people of that country do not wish to be subverted. South Vietnam is not, however, a highly organized society with an effective governing apparatus and a population accustomed to carrying civic responsibility. Public apathy is encouraged by the inability of most citizens to act directly as well as by the tactics of terror employed by the guerrillas throughout the countryside.”
Joint Statement - Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense and Dean Rusk, Secretary of State
“Gentlemen, we are now leaving the DMZ, you may like to know that you are now overflying the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”
A few minutes before we had taken the Junkers down to five hundred feet, crossing the DMZ as low as possible and hopefully out of sight of North Vietnamese radar. We were flying on instruments, almost blind, relying on pinpoint navigation to thread our way between the hills and valleys of North Vietnam. I’d gone back into the cabin to alert the men. Russo had a transistor radio playing, turned up loud over the noise of the engines. A song called Soldier Boy, by the Shirelles was playing. I wondered if that boded well for the mission or not. He turned down the volume and they all looked at me as I explained our situation.
“Although we’re off their radar, we need to be ready for anything. Remember, the peasants like to take pot shots here at low flying aircraft, they usually assume that they are from the South. We don’t know about the possibility of the North Vietnamese Air Force flying night fighter patrols, so we need to stay alert. If we have to make an emergency landing, well, bear in mind that everyone in this country will be more than glad to turn us in to the local militia, that’s if they don’t shoot us first. I need to get back to the cockpit now, we’re entering a mountainous region and the navigation is going to be tricky.”
“Try not to fly us into a mountain,” Frank Burr joked. No one laughed.
“I’ll bear it in mind,” I said as I went forward.
It had started to rain heavily, visibility was becoming extremely poor, the wind had also come up strongly, the windscreen wipers were struggling to keep the screen clear. Schuster was flying the plane with one eye on the instruments and the other trying to catch glimpses of the terrain below us when the sheets of rain cleared for a few moments, although there really was little to be seen. Occasionally we came out from under the cloud base and the wan moon tried to light up the countryside, so that we could just make out grey shapes of mountains slipping by us. We took advantage to drop even lower and navigate through the valleys, below the height of the surrounding hills. Then the cloud came over and we had to ascend. I checked the chart.
“You need to take her up to three and a half thousand feet, Paul, the mountains here start to get higher.”
He nodded and pulled back on the stick. The aircraft pointed her nose steeply upwards as we quickly gained height to clear the nearby hilltops. “We’ll show on radar at this height,” he said to me quietly.
“Yes, but we’ve no choice if we’re to avoid flying straight into the mountainside,” I replied.
We flew on for another fifteen minutes, I checked the chart and looked down, the cloud had thinned.
“You can take her down again, we passed the mountain range, five hundred feet should be fine.”
He pushed the stick forward and we descended rapidly. “I can see lights up ahead, we’re coming up on some sort of town.”
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was a dark country at night, most of the countryside without electricity, even the towns were limited in their use of power and there were no street lights. The sight of half a dozen lights almost certainly meant a good sized town or a military installation. As we neared the lights, I saw a stream of fairy lights twinkling towards us. Tracer.
“Paul, bank right, take her up higher,” I shouted, but he’d already seen it and was hauling on the control column.
We went back up to two thousand feet and disappeared in a bank of heavy cloud. But we were now visible on radar. We flew on, hour after hour, playing cat and mouse with the North Vietnamese defences. So far,
we’d not seen the lights of any other aircraft, a night fighter would finish us.
I checked the map again, we were coming up on Hanoi. We were down to treetop level again, so we couldn’t see the lights of the city, but I knew we were quite close. I had Le Van Tri’s frequency so I warmed up the radio and called him. He answered straight away, after all, we were carrying his son, he wouldn’t be taking any chances. He gave us a map reference and told us to look for nine lights arranged in an arrow. That would be the leading edge of our landing field. I told him about twenty minutes, then the radio went quiet, neither of us wanted to be picked up by the North Vietnamese. We were heading for a field midway between Hoa Binh and Son Tay, normally used by smugglers, twelve miles outside Hanoi. As we were well within range of their inner air defences, I knew that we’d only have a limited time to find the airfield before they picked us up and came to investigate.
“There,” Paul pointed ahead, about a mile away. Nine lamps, laid out in an arrow, by a rare streak of luck we had flown straight to our intended destination.
“A good omen,” I said, but I was thinking of Helene. This needed to work for her, somehow I knew that if I could pull this off she was going to recover. It was a weird feeling, as if I was a psychic, but I knew in my guts, in the blood of my Teutonic ancestors, that somehow it was true.
Paul looked at me briefly but didn’t reply, he was concentrating on preparing the Junkers for landing. I ran back to tell the soldiers to prepare for an imminent landing, then back forward to assist. There was a strong crosswind blowing, the aircraft rocked from side to side. I called out the altitude and air speed, he had to keep his attention focussed totally on the lights.
