The Ether Zone: U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment B-52, Project Delta

by Morris Ray

  Roderick’s team pulled together in a tight circle to whisper about their alternatives, aware they had to move soon or be annihilated. It appeared the only escape route was over the cliff into the bamboo grove; they hadn’t a clue as to what might be waiting—rocks, punji pits, booby-traps, the enemy—all possibilities. Once a decision was made, without hesitation, Smyth went first. Budd paused, then winked at Roderick and led the two remaining Montagnards over the edge. Roderick, covering their rear, positioned himself to jump when a grenade went off behind him, helping him complete the act. He landed hard, thankful he wasn’t dead or didn’t have any broken bones; but his body ached for days afterward. He sustained a wound to his left wrist when the grenade exploded, but it wasn’t serious enough for him to be evacuated to the States. As a souvenir, he still wears that dark bit of blue shrapnel in his wrist.

  Bruised but safe, they wanted to put as much distance between them and the enemy as possible. After thirty minutes of sprinting with sixty-pound rucksacks, exhausted and dehydrated, they finally paused to call for a helicopter and extraction. Since there was no suitable nearby LZs, they were told to expect extraction by rope ladder. As the chopper approached and hovered at forty feet, Roderick remained behind to cover the others as they laboriously climbed. He was the last one up, and just as he started his ascent, he caught sight of several VC closing in at the edge of the LZ. One-handed, he pointed his M16 and fired off three rounds; it was all that remained of the 450 rounds of ammo he started with.

  When asked if he received a Purple Heart for the shrapnel in his left wrist, he laughed softly and held up his arm. “For this little thing? Hell, I was back in the field in a week.”

  Within a few months, Roderick was out with Smyth and Budd when he was wounded again, under circumstances he now laughs about. After being chased across a rice paddy by a hostile force, he lost his balance and sprawled forward as though pushed from behind. Leaping up quickly, he was off again when he detected a warm oozing wetness in the seat of his pants. Keeping up his pace, he wiped his hand across his buttocks and held it up to observe the red dampness. Heaving a sigh of relief, he was immensely grateful he’d only been wounded. What if it hadn’t been blood? How could he ever explain in the Delta Club that he’d shit his pants? A wound in the butt, no matter how embarrassing, was bad enough—but it was a much easier thing to explain than loss of bodily control. He caught some ribbing anyway, but not nearly as bad as if he’d messed his pants.

  Roderick sustained yet another wound before he left Project Delta, this time through his right elbow. His aging body still carries lead from those wounds, and although he has no Purple Hearts to show for them, it doesn’t bother him. It never even occurred to him to ask for one.

  “We all got wounds and injuries,” Roderick said. “We’d simply drink a beer and ignore them for the most part, unless it was a really serious wound that required evacuation. We usually just put on a field dressing or band-aid and were told to quit belly-aching.

  “In other words,” Roderick’s eyes twinkled, “in Delta you didn’t get a John Kerry Purple Heart. You just expected a body leak for a while and were told ‘Suffer through it, buddy—have another drink.’”

  Roderick remembers the terrain as being extremely difficult. Mostly it was dense, compact, triple-canopy jungle and steep mountains. When the fog hung heavy and low, it was easy to stumble into the enemy without warning. He had only the highest praise for the gutsy chopper pilots who flew under those conditions.

  He recalled that after an operation, no one ever bragged about their enemy kills, nor discussed the mission. What went down in the field was private among those who shared it. He admitted many of the guys were heroes. While praise was always bestowed on others, humility and a lack of self-aggrandizement were accepted traits; never did he imply he’d done anything particularly brave, noteworthy or heroic.

  “There were no braggarts in Delta. All we wanted when we got back was to have a few beers and enjoy each other’s company before time to go out again. We were more than buddies, like...brothers.”

  His voice soft, he said, “No, closer than brothers. That’s what I remember the most about being with Delta—the camaraderie—we never spoke of it. The brotherhood endures to this day.”

  Roderick recalled that among his most difficult tasks was having to pack and ship a fallen comrade’s affects home, as with Archer and Stark; those memories still bother him. With a voice still deep and strong, it is easy to tell how he could have been a member of this famed group.

  In his sixties, William C. “Bill” Roderick’s hair is touched with gray, and his movements are more measured and careful, but he remains tall and lean; his physique is much as it was in 1966 when he was a young Project Delta warrior.

  * * * * * *

  Maurice Brakeman had been on another mission the day Roderick was wounded and rotated back to the States. While it was Roderick’s last mission, it was Brakeman’s first. “Brake” was then the FNG, tacked onto a team led by SFC Smyth. Sergeant First Class Strick and three Vietnamese Special Forces personnel were the others. They all inserted onto a ridgeline at last light and had moved a mere fifty yards into the black jungle before darkness forced them to halt for the night. A trail intersected the small LZ, leading the team to set up an RON position beyond it. Strick and Smyth, with the radio, moved a few meters to one side, while Brakeman, with the three VN, remained on the other. It was raining, the ground was soft and soggy, the air musty, and, as usual, leeches were everywhere.

  As the evening breeze shifted, it wafted the most horrific, putrid smell he’d ever encountered. Even to a FNG, it was undeniably the stench of rotting corpses—human or animal. It didn’t matter. They were all stuck there for the night. Using a wet handkerchief or a headband to cover their noses, two of the Vietnamese became nauseated, only adding to their misery. The stench was so powerful it permeated their clothing and skin. Whatever was rotting, it was very close.

  Then they heard it. Someone—or something—was moving along the trail. Footsteps could be heard trudging down the trail between the two groups. It sounded large, and like a lot of...whatever it was. The VN personnel were scared stiff, but to Brakeman the sounds were a quandary. Unlike the squishing of sandals or boots treading on the damp jungle floor—these were more like sucking noises. Besides, they heard no whispered commands, no rattle of equipment and no lights. It would be impossible to move in that black jungle with so little noise, and with no illumination. The VC often moved at night, but they used torches. The sounds continued throughout the night and the small recon team froze in place, unable to move for fear of detection by this unknown entity.

  The long-awaited dawn arrived and the mystery was finally revealed. The trail between them had been churned up—by pigs. As the team moved along the ridgeline toward their objective, the reason for all the traffic became apparent. Fifty meters to the left of the trail, a shallow grave and the remains of enemy corpses lay in the mud. The stench, while overpowering, never seemed to bother the pigs one bit. They grunted as they rutted in the mud, occasionally squealing with delight as they turned up a fresh corpse. Brakeman observed bones sticking up through the freshly churned mud—a hand here, a foot there—the scene would stay with him a lifetime.

  * * * * * *

  Sergeant First Class Gary Nichols spent four years with Delta, carrying the heavy PRC-25 radio on every mission. He smiled as he said, “It really wasn’t all that heavy and because of it, I was never alone. It seemed everyone wanted to stay with me, no matter what happened.”

  The PRC-25 was a recon team’s lifeline. Without the radio a mission might be more of a one way trip than they frequently were anyway. Nichols credits his survival to the Delta men and their camaraderie.29

  “We were closer than brothers and after all these years, still are. Their attitude in a wartime atmosphere set them apart from others I’ve ever served with. Never did any selfishness, fear or personal concern interfere with risking their life to assist a t
eammate.”

  By Nichols’s recollections, Project Delta had it all; just traveling to work and living through each day was exciting—it might cost you your life—yet the sheer excitement was unmatched. He remarked that the anticipation was a “hoot,” but once on the ground, the adrenalin rush was remarkable. Nothing could compare to the sensation of stalking others while being stalked, and of being on missions so secret it was difficult to convince those who had sent you of what you had seen. Tongue-in-cheek, Nichols offered, “I believe our mission documents should’ve carried the highest security classification, ‘Burn Before Reading.’”

  He retold what happened in 1969 when Roy Sprouse and Burhl Cunningham were running recon missions near the Rock Pile. They reported 125 loaded NVA trucks heading south across the DMZ. The Marines met this intelligence with skepticism and disbelief.

  In recalling his first recon mission, Nichols remembers he left the Delta “Hilton” late, with SFC Richard “Buddha Belly” Delany, Roland Marque and Earl Sommeroff in tow. (Later, Sommeroff would be killed near the Laotian border.) During the first day out they confronted a Bengal tiger and two Viet Cong—by far, the tiger was the more intimidating. Later, Marque and Sommeroff detected a hidden trail, followed it and glimpsed an NVA unit eating lunch. A short distance away, an NVA radioman squatted on a rucksack with his rice pouch. Marque took a notion to capture him. He spent a lot of time crawling close enough, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and picked him up, his radio and rucksack too, and ran like hell, while the entire NVA unit chased after them.

  In the confusion, Marque became separated; for two days he was alone, despite his HT-1 radio and prisoner of war to keep him company. It was on this operation the HT-1 began to be referred to as “the little black box nobody listened to.” Although he claimed to have called continuously, he never once made radio contact; however, he did manage to bring back his prisoner.

  About Marque, Nichols said, “After that, he’d been pretty hard to live with.”

  During Nichols’s next operation, Dennis Hapman and Edgar Morales, retreads from the 101st Airborne Division, joined him. The team was making good time before stopping for a break in a thick bamboo grove at the base of a steep hill. Suddenly, the distinct sound of a crowing rooster floated toward them from higher up. Nichols recommended retreating into the valley; the dense bamboo was making movement impossible, and they’d certainly be detected if they continued. The VN Warrant Officer disagreed, arguing they should continue forward and up the hill. Their VNSF point man sided with Nichols, claiming the orders stupid and steadfastly refusing to budge. The discussion became quite heated as they lobbed loud obscenities. The angry WO had just pushed the point man aside and taken a few steps when all hell broke loose. He was instantly hit in the head and chest; the point man was hit in the head. Blood, guts and bamboo splinters flew.

  The small patrol returned fire as Nichols quickly checked on the downed WO and NCO. While the Warrant Officer was clearly dead, their point man was still alive, but critical—although much of his head had been blown off, he still breathed. The others, splattered with blood and bits of flesh, mainly sustained small cuts when nicked by the flying splinters. They all looked appalling, but miraculously none of the others had been hit in the hail of bullets. Nichols quickly gained control of the team, moved them back into the jungle and toward a previously selected rally point, while calling for extraction. Standing by, the 1st Ranger Company was immediately dispatched to assist them, and to retrieve the dead officer.

  SFC Walter “Doc” Simpson (left) and SFC Gary Nichols (center) preparing to infiltrate. (Photo courtesy of Gary Nichols)

  * * * * *

  During Nichols’s four years, he counted numerous close calls, but none quite like the day his recon patrol arrived at an LZ for extraction after a fruitless three days out. Tired and dirty, he could almost taste the cold beer and steak awaiting him in Nha Trang. Unfortunately, they’d both have to wait. While his team hadn’t made enemy contact, it was apparent some others had by the ruckus in the hills. In the distance, they knew a ferocious firefight was ongoing. They were informed all assets were being diverted to assist the Rangers, in heavy contact with a much larger enemy force. The LZ they’d chosen was in a large overgrown rice paddy. They set up security, hunkered down and waited. As usual, Nichols stayed close to his radio for news about their chopper, with an eye on his assigned perimeter. Suddenly he glanced up, straight into the muzzle of an SKS rifle held by a Viet Cong soldier. Time stood still—as did Nichols’s heart.

  Staff Sergeant Ken Eden turned and instinctively cut loose with his M-16, blasting the VC. Apparently, he’d fled the firefight with the Rangers and just happened to stumble upon them. Carrying two rifles, he strode across the open rice field and into the recon team’s position without detection. Concerning Ken Eden’s actions, Nichols remarked, “There will never be enough words to thank him.”

  Nichols had worked recon for ten months straight when he was offered one of two positions: either the Recon Supervisor job held by the departing Doc Simpson, or Joe Singh’s job as Road Runner Supervisor. He decided to take Singh up on his offer. The Road Runners were mercenary Montagnards from all ethnic tribes who performed some of the most hazardous missions assigned to a four-man unit. Dressed in enemy uniforms and armed with enemy equipment, they moved at will on well-traveled trails and supply arteries deep inside enemy controlled territory, gathering intelligence on enemy units and caches, as possible targets. If discovered, they had only a slim chance of getting away with their lives, yet they returned time and again for this mission—their casualty and attrition rate was enormously high. Nichols held the Road Runner Supervisory position for sixteen months, and then returned to Recon for the duration of his time with Project Delta.

  Nichols greatest honor was MAJ Charles Allen’s recommendation for a direct combat commission. Allen also made the offer to Chuck Odorizzi and Bill Walsh. While Odorizzi and Walsh accepted, Nichols, already on the E-8 Master Sergeant’s list, declined. Upon his retirement, he held the Army’s highest enlisted grade, Command Sergeant Major.

  * * * * * *

  In January 1966, MAJ Charles Beckwith, seriously wounded during Operation Masher, returned to the United States. (He would later be called upon to form the famous Delta Force, and lead the Iranian hostage rescue attempt.) Following Beckwith’s departure, MAJ John V. Keefe commanded Project Delta for a brief two months, then, in March 1966, LTC John S. Warren assumed command, remaining four months, followed by LTC John Hayes.

  28 In 1966, the 1st Mobile Guerrilla Force LRRP Platoon operated in A Shau Valley for more than a month. The Platoon leader and Platoon sergeant, SFC Henry “Hank” Luthy, reported tanks, which was viewed with skepticism. The NVA eventually overran the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei using tanks. Hank Luthy went on to become the Special Operations Command Sergeant Major.

  29 Gary Nichols. “Personal Reflections.” Detachment B-52 (Project Delta), 1966-1970. www.projectdelta.net/nichols_story.htm

  THIRTEEN

  Team Viper: “We’re Hit, Bad!”

  IT RAINED HARD THE DAY OF 29 November 1966, the sky gray and overcast. Six camouflaged men lugging rucksacks and automatic weapons made their way along the flight line toward a waiting Slick. There was no small talk or banter as they moved toward the idling chopper—their blackened faces calm and reflective. Each man exuded an air of confidence, innate capability. They’d done this before. This was Team Viper, Norm Doney’s old recon team. With a ping of regret, Doney watched them load; he should be going—he was scheduled, but then at the last moment he had been reassigned as NCOIC of Recon Operations, albeit against his will. The shift was actually a promotion of sorts, wellearned, too; yet in his mind, he was still Recon—he wanted to stay. Perhaps it would be for the best. The interlude would give him time to change things he’d been fretting about—like eliminating those despised rope ladders that were either always breaking or causing his men to fall.

  Team Viper consisted
of SGT Russell Bott, SFC Willie Stark and four tough Vietnamese Special Forces personnel. They loaded onto the waiting chopper, oblivious to either Doney’s concerns or the pummeling rain. Doney had no way of knowing the small group would be dropped onto a flat, room-sized plot in the mountainous jungle on the wrong side of the Laotian border or that only half would return.