by Robin Moore
“But they are children—” the major screamed.
“Major,” Colonel Tex said slowly and distinctly, “if you have special requirements on what kind of wounded VC POW’s you will accept, why didn’t you fly out to Lua Vuc yourself this morning and make the decision on the spot?”
I didn’t try to hide my grin as I regarded the sputtering Viet major.
“Maybe you have some explanation I can pass on to Vietnamese corps headquarters why not a single Vietnamese intelligence officer went on this official mission to Lua Vuc?
“I realize,” the colonel went on, “that Lua Vuc was not secure this morning, with much Viet Cong groundfire reported over the past three days. But would that stop an intelligence officer from performing his duty?”
Angrily the little Viet major saluted Colonel Tex, who easily returned it. Followed by his retinue, the intelligence officer got into his jeep which, with a clanging of gears and jack-rabbit start, sped away from the helicopter ramp.
Colonel Tex watched them go. “Let’s get out of this hot sun,” he said to me. “I want to hear about the whole thing and then we’ll go over to see Doctor Francis. Civic Affairs has already given him the money to enlarge the facilities of the orphanage.”
“Will they get good treatment at the hospital?”
“They’re going to a USOM hospital. All personnel there are under American supervision.”
In a dark, cool hangar, over a Coke, I asked whether any Americans would get into trouble over this.
His eyes were not placid now. “A flap like this, Special Forces men conspiring to deliberately circumvent Republic of Vietnam regulations is what a lot of straight-leg colonels and generals—” Colonel Tex smiled sheepishly. “Well, even if I never did get to be a jumper, I’m not a leg at heart.”
He finished his Coke and put it in the rack. “Yes, a lot of conventional types who’d like to put Special Forces out of business would jump on this if they had the chance. We could all get relieved, from the B-team commander down to the last sergeant on Locke’s team.”
“Fortunately,” he said, “I don’t think we have to worry this time. That Viet intelligence crew is scared of only one thing more than physical danger, and that’s loss of face.”
Colonel Tex started for the jeep. “Let’s get on over to the hospital and see how Doctor Francis is coming along. He promised to get our wounded Viet Cong POW’s settled—for the next ten years or so.”
9
The Immodest Mr. Pomfret
1
Skin ships are the number one morale factor to the Special Forces men who patrol the mountainous jungle terrain of Vietnam. These unarmed helicopters flown by United States Army Aviation pilots on medical evacuation missions have saved the lives of hundreds of Americans wounded in vicious jungle fighting.
I suppose no less than two dozen Special Forces men who were on A teams coordinated by the B detachment in Da Nang asked me to say hello to Mr. Pomfret for them when I visited I Corps, the northernmost military command of South Vietnam. The Special Forces professionals invariably said the same thing: “As long as Chief Warrant Officer Pomfret is flying his skin ship out of Da Nang, I’ll go back to ‘Eye’ Corps for another tour.”
When I met Chief Warrant Officer Pomfret in the Army Aviation ready room I was expecting to see a man just a little larger than life. It was much the same as when I met my first Special Forces man back from combat wearing his green beret; it took a while to realize he didn’t stand nine feet tall and have the strength of ten men. He just studied and trained harder than most soldiers and happened to be a brave man. Mr. Pomfret just knew his machine better than most other helicopter pilots and was a very brave man.
Pomfret was lean, bright-eyed, had thick sandy hair and looked to be in his forties although he was actually younger. Lines caused by hours of agonizing concentration worked their way from the comers of his eyes to the comers of his mouth. Yet as he sat in the ready room he had the cheerful expression of a man doing what he knew best. A red-headed 1st lieutenant sat beside him. I introduced myself and mentioned a few names of friends Mr. Pomfret had hauled out of bad situations.
“Old Wop Pascelli?” Pomfret reminisced delightedly. “How is that tough little bastard? How’s his gut?”
“Good as new,” I answered. “He told me to tell you he’s coming back just as quick as he can get his old lady on Okie to release him.”
“Wop Pascelli.” Pomfret shook his head. “Son of a bitch. The VC’s got him with a round right in the gut,” Pomfret told the young red-headed lieutenant who regarded him with undisguised worship. “The goddamned round hit his belt buckle, glanced into his web belt, opened up his belly, and jammed a hunk of belt right into the wound. And what did that little bastard do? He got on the radio and called in a med evac for himself, a wounded LLDB sergeant, and a couple of shot-up strikers. Holding his gut in with one hand he made the strikers cut out an LZ, then he directed me in, helped the other wounded guys aboard, got on himself and that was it for him—he passed out cold. When I went to the hospital to see him a week later, he tried to steal his clothes and get me to smuggle him back to his A team.”
“That was Pascelli,” I agreed, and then got my first confirmation of the rumors that modesty was not one of Mr. Pomfret’s failings.
“Those are the greatest guys in the world,” Pomfret said. “I don’t know what the hell would happen to them if it wasn’t for me. There isn’t another son of a bitch I really trust to go out there when it’s really rough.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Except maybe for you, sir.”
The lieutenant—whom Pomfret introduced as Nichols—beamed at the praise. “The lieutenant here is the only skin-ship man I feel sure enough of so maybe I can go home to the States and sleep nights. Two consecutive tours, two years I put in because I don’t want them Special Forces guys left out there when some dickhead is afraid to go get them. But now—” he grinned at Nichols. “My old lady is going to love you, sir.”
A telephone rang and an Army Aviation captain answered. Pomfret was on his feet immediately and walked over, watching as the captain located on the huge map behind his desk the coordinates being given him over the phone.
“Major Sullivan,” the captain said, “I can’t ask a pilot to go out there. The ceiling’s dropping fast, it’s almost 1700 hours. Marine Aviation won’t send in an H34 even with fighter escort . . .”
The captain’s voice trailed off and finally with a curt, “Yes sir, he’s right here,” handed the telephone to Mr. Pomfret.
The warrant officer listened to the commanding officer of the Special Forces B team for a few moments. “His only chance is to get out tonight?” he repeated quietly. Then: “OK, I’ll try and get him, sir.” Another pause, then: “Sorry sir, I can’t wait for you to get over. I’ll be in the air in five minutes.”
“Lieutenant Nichols,” Mr. Pomfret said as he hung up the phone, “do you want to go out near Kham Don with me? A captain hit bad on a patrol. Chest wound. The medic out there with him thinks he can pull through if he gets into an operating room in the next two hours.”
“Let’s go!”
“I can’t get gun ships for you, Mr. Pomfret,” the captain said. “Nothing should be flying into those mountains now. You get started up the wrong valley you’ll never make it.”
“Sir, I know every valley from here to Laos. Lieutenant Nichols and me will do OK. And as for gun ships? We can’t afford to lose another Huey. Bad enough I’m going.”
“Mind if I ride along?” I asked.
Mr. Pomfret gave me a hard look, quickly followed by a friendly smile. “Sure. The more the merrier.”
Mr. Pomfret had the HU21b turbojet going in moments. His crew chief and door gunners were standing by. As the chopper began to lift into the air I glanced at my watch and was surprised to see that indeed only five minutes had elapsed from the time Pomfret had finished talking to Major Sullivan and marked the LZ on his map until we were airborne.
Sitting in the
middle of the long back seat I pulled a helmet over my head so I could hear the radio and intercom conversations. Pomfret and Nichols had slipped into their armored vests just before going aloft; now I did too.
“OK, Lieutenant, you take it,” Pomfret said over the intercom. “I’ll just watch.” Nichols acknowledged and headed out toward the mountains. The late afternoon sun was low and the heavy dark cloud cover looked ominous ahead. We bore right into the mountain range. “Follow the river, and where it splits off to the north, that’s the valley we follow.”
Once in the mountain range the ceiling was so low that it was like flying through a tunnel. There was no chance to come up and see where we were. The two door gunners were alert, although there wasn’t much they could have done to counter enemy fire from the VC-infested mountainous jungle terrain below.
Mr. Pomfret and Lieutenant Nichols flew the skin ship through one valley after another, turning left and right almost as though we were driving along a road. And the ceiling continued to drop on us. Forty-five minutes out of Da Nang, Nichols said we should be sighting the LZ any time if the coordinates were correct. Ten minutes later Mr. Pomfret, looking out at the terrain only a few hundred feet below us, called over the intercom, “There they are, Lieutenant. Jesus, what an LZ! Looks like it’s cut on the side of a hill.”
Then, over the radio I heard the call from the LZ.
“Pickup, Pickup, this is Jaybird. Do you read?”
Pomfret acknowledged as Nichols maneuvered the chopper for a landing. The door gunners held their heavy M-14 rifles ready for instant use on full automatic fire.
I heard Nichols calling now. “Jaybird, this is Pickup. Is the LZ secured?”
“Now Lieutenant,” I heard Pomfret’s midwest twang cut in, you know these here LZ’s are never secure. Why make the guys lie to us?”
There must have been no more than six or seven hundred feet between the overcast and the ground below. We’d be in groundfire range all the way back.
“Put her in, sir,” Pomfret was saying. “You got it made now.”
The LZ looked impossible to me, there must have been at least a 25 degree slope. I couldn’t see how Pomfret or Nichols could land. I could see an improvised litter with a man on it being held by a U.S. Special Forces man and a montagnard.
I watched, holding my breath, my stomach churning as Nichols gently lowered into the hillside LZ, the front of the ship pointing at the top of the slope.
“Sir,” Pomfret was saying, “last couple of these you did were number one, almost as good as I do myself.”
Nichols didn’t answer as we settled in. Then, over the radio I heard a high pitched ping of static and then another. If you knew what to listen for you could tell when a bullet hit the metal skin of a chopper.
“Don’t pay any attention to them, sir,” Pomfret was saying evenly. Another ping came over the earphones and I saw a small piece of the ship’s skin open up above one of the door gunners as a round went through. The door gunners were firing now, although the noise of their shooting was muffled by the rotor blades. Lieutenant Nichols, looking out his side window, had lowered the Huey so that the front of its two runners, which served as landing gear, were resting on the ground; the rest of the ship hovered a foot and a half to two feet above the slanting LZ. Instantly the litter to which the captain was securely tied was slipped onto the floor of the chopper. All the men I could see were firing everything they had at the VC’s, who had lain in wait for the helicopter they knew would come in. The door gunners hauled the litter safely into the interior of the plane, jammed new magazines into their rifles and put out heavy fire into the VC positions.
Instead of plopping up immediately, the HU21b took off skimming the trees running away from the VC fire. Then it slowly ascended until our rotors were cutting the soup above us and Nichols made it full speed out of the valley, both door gunners crouched, scanning the jungle now a mere five hundred feet below.
For forty minutes we made our way out of the maze of valleys. Looking ahead one would think the chopper was going to crash into what looked like a solid wall of jungle, but always another valley opened up. Finally we came to the big river and just as darkness closed in, we made out the lights of Da Nang.
Pomfret leaned back—I could almost hear him sigh over the interphones—and then he said the words that probably were the highest praise Lieutenant Nichols would ever hear in his life: “Yes, sir, Lieutenant, I’m ready to go home now, just as soon as they’ll cut my orders.”
2
Back in Da Nang I heard the news that Captain Tom Harvey had made major. There is one thing we all love dearly around the Army and that is a pisswilliger of a promotion party. Like all promotions Tom’s was way overdue.
Tom had an A detachment primarily engaged in surveillance on the Laotian border and for months I had been promising to visit him and go on a patrol with his strikers. A promotion party out on the border sounded unusual, so I stocked up on good bourbon whisky at the PX and requested transportation from the B team to Major Harvey’s camp, Quam Duc.
An enthusiastic Australian captain, learning the adviser business from U.S. Army Special Forces, came along with me. There was a patrol scheduled, Captain Ian Frisbie told me, from Quam Duc north along the border to fix a site for a new Special Forces camp where he would be attached for several months. One day, the Aussie assured me, the Americans would be able to turn over a large part of the counterinsurgency work in Southeast Asia to the Australians.
Frisbie and I, combat packs on our backs, were deposited on the perforated steel-strip runway at Major Harvey’s isolated montagnard strike-force camp. A truck drove up and Sergeant Milt Raskin, the team’s chief medic, hopped down to greet us. He had a security group of eight montagnards in back, pointing their weapons out at all numbers of the clock. Frisbie and I threw our gear up with the yards and jumped in front.
Major Harvey greeted us in front of the headquarters bunker of Quam Dug and as I shook his hand I noticed he was still wearing his captain’s bars. Just then an LLDB lieutenant came up to him.
“Dai-uy, the camp commander ask you come see him.”
“What’s this Dai-uy?” I started to say. “It’s Major Harvey.”
Harvey shook his head at me and raised a cautioning finger to his lips. Taking Frisbie and me aside, he said, “My counterpart, Captain Ling, does not know I’m a major. We have worked so well together, one Dai-uy to another, that I don’t want to change things. And I used to think we were rank conscious.”
“No promotion party in the mountains,” I said resignedly. “I brought in two full quarts of Jim Beam.”
Harvey grinned broadly. “No sweat getting rid of that. We go out day after tomorrow. No reason we can’t all do away with one bottle tonight. Captain Ling developed a hellofa taste for bourbon in the States.”
“Don’t tell me you are blessed with a good camp commander.”
“The new LLDB colonel is the best thing that’s happened in this war,” Harvey asserted. “He’s out kicking ass and taking names everywhere. He found Ling for me and that stud is a tiger.”
Harvey eyed the bulge in my pack. “Now, you piker, how about a little of that celebration?”
On the second day of the patrol we were hit lightly. Major Harvey, Sergeant Raskin, Captain Frisbie and I were walking between the two platoons which made up the patrol. Lieutenant Duong, XO of the LLDB team, was walking near the point of the first platoon when the VC ambush was sprung on us. Instantly, Duong charged the Communists. All casualties were up front and the ambushers quickly beaten off.
One of our montagnard strikers was killed. That VC-sympathizing montagnards had staged the ambush was evident when we saw that the dead man had gotten it with a bamboo arrow launched from a crossbow. The arrow pierced a leather wallet, drove through the chest close to the heart, and the point came out our tribesman’s back. Two other strikers suffered gunshot wounds, one seriously in the right side of the chest, the other, strangely, in the leg. Ordinarily mo
ntagnard VC shoot high. Major Harvey decided that somewhere in the vicinity there must be a hard-core North Vietnamese cadre training the montagnards they had persuaded or terrorized into fighting for them.
Now we had two wounded men who could not go on. The dead man was another problem. His brother and several close relatives were members of the strike force. It was imperative to them to get the body get back to the village for burial; had the two wounded men been able to walk the rest of the patrol, the dead man’s relatives would have carried the body the remaining five days to get it back to camp. Having been on patrols when this happened I did not relish the prospect of the stench of a corpse decomposing day by day.
Because Special Forces men are entirely conversant with tribal mores and superstitions, and because their respect for montagnard traditions enable them to command the loyalty of the tribesmen, Major Harvey knew there was only one course open to him now. The patrol searched for a partially clear piece of flat land that could be cleaned off quickly for a helicopter LZ. Half a mile from the ambush such a site was found. While Raskin worked over the wounded, one platoon deployed itself around the LZ and the other went to work cutting out all trees and obstacles. Harvey contacted his A-team XO by radio, gave him the map coordinates of the LZ and requested immediate medical evacuation.
As we waited tensely for the helicopter to come in, Harvey gave the Aussie some pointers on our situation.
“This is about as tough a bind as you can get in out here,” he said to the intent Frisbie. “By now the VC know we have wounded and must evacuate them—if we don’t, we’ll have one hellofa time ever getting these yards to go out on patrol again.”
Harvey studied the sky, heavy with clouds. “It’s only 1300 hours and already the cloud cover is dropping. The choppers will have to follow valleys into us, staying under the overcast all the way from the eastern edge of the mountains.”
He surveyed the terrain in our immediate vicinity. “The VC will be trying to sneak in on us as close as they can. The best we can do is hold them a hundred meters away from the LZ. If the goddamned choppers get in here fast, we’ll probably be OK. The VC might get in a lucky shot from outside our security, but it will take them a while to bring in heavy machine guns. That’s why you have to get these med evac LZ’s set up fast and get the choppers in and out before the VC can set up the heavy stuff and clobber them. That’s what the Communists are really after when they hit us in a small ambush. Inflict casualties and the choppers will come in. Knock one down and it’s a major VC victory.”
