Saving Bravo

by Stephan Talty

  In the early 1980s, Norris joined the Hostage Rescue Team, considered the elite of the elite, as one of its founding members. Later he became a “shooter” on the Salt Lake City SWAT team. “You heard stories about him,” says James Gagliano, a former FBI agent. “I was a young New York City SWAT member training at Quantico. We were dangling on ropes out of a Huey and the Salt Lake team was training at the same time. This one guy comes down a rope and he’s just so strong and wiry. I said to one of my friends, ‘Who’s that guy?’ And he’s like, ‘That’s Tommy fucking Norris. If you two ever cross paths, you better bow and genuflect.’” With that, says Gagliano, “I had to meet him. I went up to him that night at the bar and introduced myself. He could not have been more gracious.”

  Early in 1985, Sikh terrorists began plotting to assassinate the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, during his visit to the United States that summer. They went looking for an American who could not only kill the young leader but also provide them with training, machine guns, grenade launchers, fake passports, and C-4 plastic explosives for a “military expedition” back to India. The men wanted to start a revolution. The stakes were quite high: Gandhi’s mother, Indira, had been murdered by Sikh terrorists the year before, and her murder had set off violent riots that claimed the lives of three thousand people. Another assassination of a Gandhi could lead to massive unrest.

  The conspirators finally found their assassin, an Alabama man referred to in court documents only as “A.” This individual was introduced to the Indian men as an expert in guerrilla warfare and “someone with experience in the use of explosives and automatic weapons,” which all happened to be true. The would-be killer met with the men in a New York hotel room, where the extremists made it abundantly clear how serious they were: not only did they want the American to shoot Gandhi, but they also wanted training in how to bomb bridges and hotels in India, attack government buildings, and blow up a nuclear power plant. When A inquired exactly how much C-4 plastic explosive they’d need, the men told him enough to bring down something the size of the Brooklyn Bridge and a thirty-six-story building. The men even asked if A could get them chemical weapons.

  A, of course, turned out to be Tommy Norris, who was working deep undercover. (Perhaps his quite noticeable facial scars helped convince the Sikhs that he was, in fact, a real-life killer from the Alabama hinterlands.) FBI agents were listening in as the men talked and, after two more meetings, swooped in to arrest the terrorists. Gandhi completed his visit to the United States without incident, and the “assassin” slipped back into the shadow world. The FBI refused to confirm or deny that A was the legendary ex-SEAL who’d saved Gene Hambleton.

  Through it all, he remained unimpressed by the myths that had grown up around him. Once, when he was working out of the Coeur d’Alene office of the bureau, he flew to Washington for a dinner for Medal of Honor recipients but forgot the medal itself. Norris called the office and asked another agent if he would go to his house, pick up the five-pointed star, and FedEx it to him. The agent climbed up to Norris’s attic and found the medal where Norris said it would be—sitting in an old shoebox. Many recipients display the award prominently in their homes. Not Tommy Norris. “The medal does not belong to me,” he said once. “It belongs to all the soldiers over there that fought and lost their lives.”

  Now retired from the FBI, Tommy Norris lives in Idaho.

  Nguyen Van Kiet stayed with his commando unit when the Americans left. As the North Vietnamese closed in on Saigon and the regime of Nguyen Van Thieu fell, he narrowly escaped a bombardment at Cat Lai, just outside Saigon, and boarded a ship crowded with sailors and soldiers. The sudden collapse of the South Vietnamese defenses allowed Kiet no time to find his family—he had a young wife and child—and he was forced to leave them behind. Even if he’d been able to reach them, his status as a South Vietnamese special operations sailor would most likely have doomed his loved ones to years of shame and physical suffering. “I did not want anyone to know they were related to me,” he said.

  Kiet and other South Vietnamese Navy men steered their ship out into the Saigon River and headed toward the Philippines, nearly a thousand miles away across the South China Sea. They joined up with other large and small boats to form a flotilla of refugees moving east. “We were sad,” he said. “It was really hard for us to leave our families.” At one point, as the boats made their way toward Subic Bay, an American naval officer boarded the ship and asked the evacuees to lower the South Vietnamese flag. The men and women gathered around and saluted as the yellow flag with its three horizontal red stripes—signifying the nation’s three geographical regions—was brought down. “We knew then that we had no country.”

  Kiet eventually ended up in a refugee camp in Guam, joining thousands of other Vietnamese men, women, and children who were awaiting resettlement in America as part of Operation New Life. After three months, Kiet was flown to Camp Pendleton in California and then moved north to Washington, where he found a job in a sawmill.

  The sea commando was every inch the hero that Norris was, but as a foreign national, he couldn’t receive the Medal of Honor. Instead, the US military awarded him the Navy Cross, the highest honor possible for a non-American service member. The diminutive sailor attended a ceremony at a naval base near Seattle, where a high-ranking officer read out the citation: “Due to Petty Officer Kiet’s coolness under extremely dangerous conditions and his outstanding courage and professionalism, an American aviator was recovered after an eleven-day ordeal behind enemy lines. His self-discipline, personal courage, and dynamic fighting spirit were an inspiration to all; thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and the Naval Service.”

  Worried about his family in Vietnam, Kiet kept news of the award private. If the communist authorities there learned what he’d done for an American soldier, they might have punished his family severely. There were only three men in the room that day: Kiet, the Navy officer, and Tom Norris, who stood next to his friend as he accepted the Navy Cross. It was Norris who’d recommended Kiet for the honor.

  Kiet learned some English and became an American citizen about seven years after arriving in the country. But for more than a decade, he was afraid to write or call his wife and children, who were living in the town of Di An, about twenty miles north of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. “I believed if I didn’t make any contact, they would be OK.” The reports that filtered out were grim. “They lived very poor and very hard with the communist regime. They tried selling pieces of furniture, one by one, to get food.”

  After eleven years at the sawmill, Kiet came down with a severe cough caused by the dust from cutting wood planks. Following an operation, he moved to Seattle and went to work for Boeing as a mechanic. In 2005, Norris, Darrel Whitcomb, and the FAC Harold Icke, who’d taken part in the Hambleton mission, returned to Vietnam to film a documentary on the rescue. Kiet was also invited. But contacts in the Vietnamese community told him that if he returned to the country, he wouldn’t be allowed to leave again. Kiet asked Norris and the others to see what they could do to help his daughter. The veterans visited the US embassy in Ho Chi Minh City and met with a diplomat there. The man listened to the story and immediately went to work. Shortly after, Kiet’s daughter flew to the United States and was reunited with her father.

  In November 2000, Kiet attended a gathering of Southeast Asia rescue veterans at Nellis Air Force Base, just north of Las Vegas. Gene Hambleton was there, and he recounted the story of the eleven-day ordeal to the rapt audience. At the end of his talk, Hambleton spotted Kiet standing on the far side of the stage and walked over to embrace him. “Thank you for rescuing me,” he said.

  Kiet lives in Seattle with his second wife, Thuy, and their extended family.

  The Air Force has taught the rescue of Gene Hambleton to its recruits as an example of the maxim that, even in a technological age, courageous men are still necessary. The operation is also used to train soldiers who’ll be involved in rescue missions
how to think on the ground, what mistakes to avoid. And the myth of the rescue has grown over the years, passed down among airmen and others along with legends such as “Ripley at the Bridge” and the story of the downed Black Hawk in Mogadishu. Its component parts—the SAM’s impact, the creation of the golf code, the journey to the river—each receives its moment, but it’s Tommy Norris and Nguyen Van Kiet’s crossing into enemy terrain that people tend to dwell on.

  Over the years, the two men have been asked the same questions over and over, mostly by those who’ve never served: Was the mission worth it, eleven lives to save one? What, after all, is the value of a single human life? The two struggle to explain that, for them, the question is bewildering. It is as though one world were talking to another. “It’s not the value of one life,” Kiet finally exclaimed to one interviewer. “It’s the principle that we as warriors, as comrades, will never leave our fellow soldiers behind enemy lines.”

  When the armored personnel carrier brought Hambleton to Dong Ha on the afternoon of April 13, 1972, journalists swarmed around the survivor, shouting out questions about the mission. After the airman was loaded aboard a chopper, one reporter turned and found Norris, dressed in his olive shirt and jeans, standing quietly off to one side. As it happened, this was the same overzealous dude who’d appeared at the bunker the day before, hoping to get an exclusive on the rescue, before Norris chased him off. Now the journalist brought his microphone up and said to the exhausted SEAL that he must be hoping never to go on such a mission again.

  Norris had reverted to his shy-young-cleric manner by then, and he gave an almost embarrassed laugh at the question. (“I couldn’t believe this guy,” he admitted later.) But his response wasn’t especially gentle. He looked at the reporter and replied that, if he thought he could get another American out, he would go back into the badlands that very night.

  Acknowledgments

  My gratitude to all those touched by the Bat 21 mission who spoke with me or helped me in my research: Nguyen Van Kiet, José Astorga, Bill Henderson, Mary Lou Giannangeli, Robert Giannangeli, James Giannangeli. Brad Huffman, Hayden Chapman’s sisters Beth, Carol, and Jean, Lee Kulland, Karen Wallgren, Leona Hauge, Ashley Kulland, Tim Alley, Buzz Busboom, Ty Crowe, Doug Brinson, Dennis Armstrong, Pam Forrest, Sharon Fitzpatrick. Martha Lorin Walker, Butch Hammond, Trent Wicks, Gus Evans, Rod Curry, Larry Potts, Joel Eisenstein, Paul Davis, Sandra Kolb of the United States Air Force, and Sharon Edgington at the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

  Thanks to Bruce Nichols and Ivy Givens at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Scott Waxman and Ashley Lopez at the Waxman Agency.

  Special thanks to Jim Flessner, Donna Cutsinger and Mary Ann Anderson, sisters of Gwen Hambleton, who never failed to respond to my neverending questions with grace and humor.

  Appendix A

  Chronology

  SEPTEMBER 4, 1971: Lieutenant Colonel Gene Hambleton arrives at the Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in northeast Thailand to begin his tour in Vietnam.

  MARCH 30, 1972: The North Vietnamese launch the mua he do lua (red fiery summer), a significant mechanized attack on South Vietnamese and US forces. The Americans term the campaign the “Easter Offensive.”

  APRIL 2, 1972: Hambleton and five other crew members aboard an EB-66C aircraft are shot down over South Vietnam. The rescue operation commences minutes after Hambleton makes contact with a FAC orbiting over the crash site.

  APRIL 2: First Lieutenant Byron Kulland and his crew aboard Army helicopter Blueghost 39 are shot down while trying to retrieve Hambleton. Three airmen are killed. José Astorga escapes the wreckage but is immediately captured by NVA soldiers.

  APRIL 3: Captain Bill Henderson and First Lieutenant Mark Clark, aboard an OV-10, are shot down near Hambleton’s location. Clark takes cover, while Henderson is quickly captured by NVA troops.

  APRIL 4: A-1 and F-4 aircraft conduct airstrikes near Hambleton’s position. Planners consider other options, including waiting for the NVA invasion force to move on past Hambleton. Several are seriously damaged.

  APRIL 5: Bad weather continues. No rescue missions are launched.

  APRIL 6: The Jolly Green 67 rescue crew attempts to pick up both Clark and Hambleton. The mission fails and the entire crew is killed when the craft is struck by enemy fire and crashes. General Creighton Abrams orders that no further rescue attempts be made by helicopter.

  APRIL 7: No search and rescue forces launch. Planners meet to review the situation and to consider alternative methods of saving Hambleton and Clark.

  APRIL 7: Air Force First Lieutenant Bruce Walker and USMC First Lieutenant Larry Potts, flying in an OV-10, are shot down over the DMZ area. Potts is not heard from again; Walker makes radio contact and begins escape and evasion maneuvers.

  APRIL 7: USMC Lieutenant Colonel Andy Andersen calls Major General Winton Marshall and requests a meeting regarding the rescue situation.

  APRIL 8: Marshall and Andersen meet in Saigon, and the general green-lights Andersen’s overland rescue plan. Andersen makes contact with a Navy SEAL, Lieutenant Tommy Norris, and asks him to serve as tactical leader on the operation. Norris agrees.

  APRIL 9: Andersen, Norris, and their team fly to Ai Tu Combat Base and brief General Vu Van Giai on the mission. They then move on to Dong Ha and are briefed by the commander of the First Armor Brigade before continuing on to their forward operating base on the banks of the Mieu Giang River.

  APRIL 10: Mark Clark enters the river and begins swimming downstream toward the rescue team.

  APRIL 10: Gene Hambleton begins his overland journey to the Mieu Giang. On the way, he’s forced to kill a North Vietnamese man who confronts him with a knife.

  APRIL 11: Norris, Petty Officer Nguyen Van Kiet, and other commandos locate Clark and bring him to the forward operating base. Hambleton reaches the Mieu Giang River. At dusk, he enters the water and begins swimming downstream.

  APRIL 11: The team’s forward operating base is struck by a North Vietnamese rocket and mortar attack. Andersen and many of the team members are wounded or killed. Andersen is retrieved by an armored personnel carrier and brought to a military hospital.

  APRIL 11: Norris, Kiet, and two other commandos set out to locate Hambleton. They venture over a mile upriver but fail to find the airman and return to base.

  APRIL 12: Two of the South Vietnamese commandos refuse to go after Hambleton that night. Norris and Kiet disguise themselves as Vietnamese fishermen and paddle upriver in a sampan. They find a dangerously malnourished and weak Hambleton and, after several encounters with enemy troops, bring him back to the forward bunker.

  APRIL 12: Hambleton is taken by armored personnel carrier to a waiting helicopter and flown to an American base for treatment.

  APRIL 18: Bruce Walker is killed by a Vietcong soldier after eleven days on the ground.

  Appendix B

  Walker and Potts

  The story of the pilot Bruce Walker and USMC First Lieutenant Larry Potts, who were shot down on April 7 while flying an artillery spotting mission just east of where the Bat 21 rescue was unfolding, quickly branched off from the rest of that operation. The full narrative is told here.

  Larry Potts’s road to the war was rougher than that of many of the airmen he would serve with in Vietnam. Born in Smyrna, Delaware, he was the product of a home broken by the early death of his mother. After her passing, Larry’s truck driver father found it difficult to raise his children while earning a living on the road, and so the family split up. A few of the children ended up with relatives, others in foster care. “They were scattered all over,” says Larry’s nephew Trent.

  Losing their parents and their home caused some of the Potts kids to go badly astray, at least in the eyes of the black middle-class families of Smyrna. A few of the kids got in trouble with the law or ended up dropping out of school. But Larry went to the home of his aunt Louise, who was known in her family as a “stern woman.” Louise was a God-fearing, strict authoritarian with a college degree who brooke
d no mess whatsoever. “She put her all into him” is the how the family phrases it. And Larry came out right. More than right, in fact.

  Track and field, church, choir, studies, dinner with Aunt Louise and her husband, Samuel—the young man didn’t have a minute to spare for any kind of foolishness. Larry didn’t drink or smoke or even cuss much. He didn’t, as far as anyone could remember, even have a serious girlfriend until much later. No time! He was Aunt Louise’s child, an honest-to-God choirboy, with his Buddy Holly glasses and his ramrod posture and serious nature. The whole family had their eyes on him. Some remarked that he seemed more like a young preacher than a warrior. “Very conservative, very intelligent, neat, clean, proper, well-groomed, well-mannered,” said one Smyrna kid who took Larry as a role model. “He was one of the most well-respected young men ever in that town.”

  In fourth grade, Larry met Butch Hammond from the nearby town of Milford. They were both black, short, and tough. “He was like my twin,” Hammond says. Years later, the two enrolled together at Delaware State University. Money was tight; sometimes Larry had to hitchhike the twelve miles from Smyrna to Dover, where the university was located. One day he and Butch decided to drive to Philadelphia and take the Marine Corps entrance exam, purely on a lark. They thought for sure they’d flunk it and it would be a story to tell their friends. After they finished, an officer came outside, gave the pair a look, and said, “Well, you two didn’t set the world on fire. But you passed.”