by James Estep
“You believe that, Top?” I said angrily. “Who the fuck is he to question one of my soldiers? And who the fuck made him keeper of Uncle Sam’s artillery stockpiles?”
“Now, take it easy, sir,” the Bull said, trying to calm me—the two of us reversing roles on this occasion. “The XO’s all right. Sometimes can’t find his ass with both hands, but he’s all right. Probably just trying to answer the divarty commander’s mail. Don’t let ‘em get to YOU.”
“But shit, Top, what’s the great concern? I’ll bet they routinely fire these missions at a bunch of old tank hulls back at Sill trying to impress some fat congressman or civilian aide, and here we’re at war and they start counting rounds on us!”
“Well, you’re right there, Six. If the divarty commander is so goddamn interested in seeing where his precious rounds impact, why don’t he come and sit his ass on the 506 one night ‘stead of living in the lap of luxury back there at English!” he said, beginning to bristle.
“Right, Top!”
“I mean, just who the fuck is he to be questioning my commander!” he continued, his anger intensifying.
“Uh … right, Top, but actually we don’t know if he even … It’s just like I said the other night. These fat fucks sit back there in their secure fire base, eating their goddamn steaks and drinking their goddamn booze while snuffie here …”
“Whoa, Top. Let’s not get into another discourse on living conditions and the haves and have-nots, okay?”
He paused, smiled, and said, “Yeah, guess not. Guess we’ve pretty much covered that ground, huh?”
We sat in silence for a while, hearing only the low rushing sound emanating from the company’s radios positioned a short distance away.
“But shit, Six, I know I’m preaching to the choir in your case,” he remarked, picking up the conversation where we’d let it drop moments before. “Hell, you’ve paid your dues, what with this being your third tour and all. And I know you ‘green beanies’ suffered too, far as living conditions were concerned.”
I merely nodded.
“Well, what about it, sir? Was it worse out there with Special Forces than it is here with us?”
“No, not worse. Sometimes, in some ways, it was better. I mean as far as living conditions go.” Then, reflecting on it, I added, “And sometimes, in some ways, it was worse. But mostly, it was just different.”
“Yeah, different. I know what you mean there,” he responded. “At least here we got the whole fucking Cav behind us when we get into something. Whereas you all had what? Twelve men, brave and true, and a campload of gooks with no red leg or nothing else to back you UP.”
“Kind of like that.”
“Where were you anyway, sir? Not here in II Corps? You know they got a team over in Happy Valley.”
“No, not here. First time, back in ‘62, there weren’t any ‘twelve men brave and true.” Back then I was a young staff sergeant stationed in Nha Trang, living a hell of a lot better than we’re living out here, Top.”
“Second time I was on the Laotian border, at earth’s end, not far from Khe Sanh.” I smiled, reminiscing. “You know, Top, this place was so isolated, we used to go to Khe Sanh for R&R.”
He grinned and asked, “What was the name of the place?”
“It was called ARO, although it beats the shit out of me why.”
Later that night, as I lay in my piece of Vietnam’s soil, my thoughts drifted back to those early years—so different, so young, so long ago.
8. Early Days Saigon, Vietnam: November 1962
The first of three four-engine C-124 Globe Master transport planes began its lumbering descent into Tan Son Nhut, the international airport located on the outskirts of Saigon, in the country of Vietnam, a country few of us aboard had ever heard of six months before. The descending Globe Masters carried an Army Special Forces element referred to by its planners as “Force 76T.” The seventy-six Green Berets aboard, however, referred to ourselves as the “seventy-six trombones,” which was also a song from the then-currently popular movie, The Music Man. The Force would exercise command and control over all Special Forces operational detachments, or “A” teams, serving in Vietnam, teams that were presently controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency and, in most cases, working with the country’s indigenous mountain, or Montagnard, tribes.
The C-124 taxied along Tan Son Nhut’s tarmac to the military off-load area, then shut down its engines and opened its massive cargo doors. The humid, hot, and sticky influx of air hit us like a sledgehammer. Our Vietnam experience had begun. It would affect each of us differently.
Some would rapidly grow to hate this country and everything about it—the climate, food, culture, deprivation, our mission, and most of all the country’s people. Others would fall in love with everything our colleagues loathed and in so doing develop symptoms of a Far Eastern disease referred to by French Foreign Legionnaires as “Yellow fever,” a love of the Orient in general and Indochina in particular.
We were quartered in an old and beautifully preserved French villa on the outskirts of the city just a hop, skip, and a jump from Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Actually, the officers were quartered in the beautifully preserved villa; the peons, myself included, were quartered in peasant hutches behind the lovely villa.
Our job was to understudy the CIA, which would eventually relinquish to us its control of the Army’s Special Forces in Vietnam. The code name for this transfer of responsibility was Operation Switchback, an operation that would take six months to complete.
Assigned to the command’s operations section, I quickly discovered that our CIA counterparts were very good at what they did. In supporting our field teams, the Central Intelligence Agency’s underlying philosophy was to ask the man on the ground what he needed to do the job and then see that he got it—without subjecting him to a lot of “first sign this in triplicate” hassle.
Most of these supplies were airlifted to outlying teams from our logistical support base in Nha Trang, and, within days of our arrival, that was where many of the “trombones” found themselves. The rest of us remained in Saigon.
Saigon was a beautiful city in the fall of ‘62, one of the most alluring in all of Asia—a pleasant mix of East and West, old and new, traditional and contemporary. I saw quite a bit of Saigon in those next couple of months. With the CIA still running the show, duties were not that taxing in our joint downtown TOC (tactical operations center), and since I didn’t go on shift until four in the afternoon, I had most of the day to wander about exploring the city. And getting off shift at midnight, I had another two hours’ play time before Saigon’s 2:00 A.M. curfew closed the bars.
Meanwhile, the “little war” in the high country continued as our widely scattered twelve-man Special Forces A teams went about enlisting Vietnam’s principal minority, the Montagnard, in the republic’s struggle against the Viet Cong. Many a Montagnard and many a Green Beret were dying in the process. But they were also succeeding in the central highlands at a time when there were few successes to boast about throughout the rest of the country.
With the passage of time the CIA surrendered its control of these teams, and we found ourselves with fewer leisure hours to roam the haunts of Saigon.
9. Nha Trang, Vietnam: February to November 1963
In February, with Switchback nearing its completion, we moved to Nha Trang, consolidating the seventy-six trombones at one location.
As was the case with Saigon, Nha Trang was a far different place in 1963 than would it be in the post-‘65 period, after our ground forces entered the fracas. When we arrived it was little more than a picturesque fishing village astride a sparkling white beach on the South China Sea.
We lived in tents at Long Van Air Base, a couple of miles south of Nha Trang. However, our TOC, in fact, the entire headquarters with the exception of the logistical support center, was located downtown in a former legionnaire’s barracks only a block or so from Marie Kim’s bar, a colorful establishment that in years
to come would serve as a gathering place for many a Green Beret migrating to and from his little piece of the war.
But we had little time to frolic in the waters of the South China Sea or lounge about Marie Kim’s bar. Instead, we worked feverishly on OPLAN 1-63, a plan designed to put many of our Special Forces teams in a border surveillance role. Finally, having completed and staffed the plan, we briefed it to everyone and his brother until it received a stamp of approval.
There were some, however, who privately harbored doubts concerning the plan’s feasibility in certain parts of Vietnam.
“You ain’t never seen terrain like that,” Sergeant Scuggs, one of the area specialist team leaders, commented, returning from an aerial reconnaissance of surveillance sites in I Corps. “I mean, it’s impossible to move through that shit! Pity the poor bastards who get stuck in that godforsaken place.”
“Where’s that, Sarge?” Pfc. Chester, one of his assistants, asked.
“Right here,” he said, pointing to a large map depicting prospective sites in I Corps. “On the map it’s called ARO, although Lord only knows why, ‘cause there’s nothing there. I mean, there ain’t nothing there. Just a hilltop in the middle of the jungle with nothing ‘round it far as you can see ‘cept more jungle. Ain’t no sign of life anywhere, no people, no water buffalo, no hutches, roads, trails, crops, nothing exept that godawful jungle. Like I say, pity the poor bastards who draw ARO as a duty site.”
Chester and I just shrugged our shoulders. Duty at ARO was of no interest to either of us. Little did I know that within two years I would be one of those “poor bastards” who, along with eleven other valiant souls, would spend long hours atop that hill and in the “godawful” jungle surrounding it, wondering what in the hell the Army could possibly have been thinking of in 1963 when it selected ARO as a border surveillance site.
But this was a challenge yet to be faced. In our downtown TOC on that bright and sunny day in 1963, looking at a “one over the world” planning map, ARO really didn’t look bad at all. Besides, a desolate hilltop 250 miles away was someone else’s problem.
Seasons change little in Vietnam. It’s always hot, sticky, and dry or hot, sticky, and wet, so the transition from spring, and then to summer, went unnoticed. By this time our daily duties in the TOC were more than merely routine; they were just plain boring. Plot, type, monitor, brief, file, and then … plot, type, monitor, brief, and file some more. We existed in a perpetual cycle of trivial administrative minute. Thankfully, our year in the Nam was rapidly drawing to a close.
In the evenings, there was little talk of anything other than that magic fall date when we would go “wheels up” out of Tan Son Nhut, winging our way back to the “land of the big PX.” One day, while we were busy plotting, typing, monitoring, briefing, and filing, my boss, Sergeant Fallow, casually asked if I’d like to see some action.
Tongue in cheek, I retorted, “What you got in mind, Al? One of them new electric typewriters?”
“Hey, Jimbo, I’m serious. Team in Cheo Reo, up in Phu Bon Province, is opening a new camp at Plei Do Lim.”
I nodded.
“Well, they’ve lost a couple folk to hepatitis and, what with being stretched between two locations, find themselves in need of a lightweapons man. Want to go up there and give ‘em a hand for a couple of weeks?”
“Hell, yes!” I enthusiastically responded. I was on my way to Cheo Reo that afternoon.
In addition to its twelve-man Special Forces A detachment, the camp at Cheo Reo was populated by a Montagnard strike force of Jarai, Drung, and Bahnar tribesmen. These tribesmen impressed me. As one of my adopted team members pointed out, other than providing them with a rudimentary knowledge of modern firearms and explosives, there was really little we could teach them. They were more adept at this type of warfare than we were.
Wearing only a loincloth and armed with a medieval crossbow, these primitive warriors could live and fight indefinitely in the country’s most impenetrable jungles. Moreover, they were unfailingly loyal to their Green Beret comrades, as they had been to our French counterparts during the first Indochina war. In both instances, the enemy, probably because he was Vietnamese, albeit Communist Vietnamese, had little success recruiting these tribesmen to his cause. Quite simply, the Montagnards, or ‘Yards, disliked all Vietnamese. Many of them found it incredibly fortunate that with the coming of the second Indochina war it was not only permissible to kill these descendants of the SinoMongol race that had pushed their ancestors into the highlands centuries before, but that their Green Beret “round-eyed” compatriots would pay them a monthly salary to do so.
During my brief stay with these hardened warriors and the professionals who led them, I helped out where and when I could, shuttling myself between Cheo Reo and the new camp at Plei Do Lim.
The two weeks passed all too quickly, and before I knew it I was back in Nha Trang—plotting, typing, monitoring, briefing, and filing. The boring routine would be broken once more before the end of my tour.
“Pack it up! We’re moving, lock, stock, and barrel,” Sergeant Fallow yelled. “And I mean on the double!”
It was early afternoon on the first day of November, and we were assembled in our downtown TOC as he and “Quick Draw” McDawe, returning from an emergency session with the colonel’s staff, charged through the door.
“Big fight going on in Saigon, maybe throughout the country,” Major McDawe, our operations officer, said, stuffing papers from his desk into a laundry bag. “Nobody knows what’s happening, but we’re moving to Long Van. No security here in Nha Trang, and we don’t want to get caught in the middle of this thing … uh … whatever it is.”
Of course Quick Draw, and most of the rest of us, knew there was more to it than that. We had been told throughout the summer months of the possibility of a coup, and we knew that President Ngo Dinh Diem’s palace guard, perhaps the only force that might remain loyal to him in the event of a coup, was the LLDB, Vietnam’s Special Forces and our counterparts. And that was what we didn’t want to get caught in the middle of.
Within a matter of minutes, we had everything loaded on trucks and were on our way to Long Van, where we set up operations in our alternate TOC, a sandbagged bunker. We stayed there for the next thirty-six hours or so as events in Saigon unfolded. Although we received some information from MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) and our Saigon liaison element, most of the news came to us via AP/ UPI teletype. Midday on the second day, the teletype printed out a message stating that the president and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had committed “accidental suicide”—rather difficult to do with one’s hands wired behind one’s back.
The celebrations then began, and for the next several days an atmosphere of controlled anarchy prevailed throughout most of the country, especially in the larger cities. The celebrations would not last long, however. By every measurable standard—economically, politically, and most assuredly militarily—the country’s fortunes would quickly take a turn for the worse. But by then I was on my long-awaited journey back home, to the land of round doorknobs and the big PX.
10. Fort Bragg, North Carolina: January 1964
Returning from that first stint in the Nam, I reported to the Fifth Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as ordered, only to discover I’d been reassigned in transit. My next stop was Infantry Officer’s Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, from which I was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry the following June. After OCS, I reported back to the Fifth Special Forces, whose group adjutant welcomed me with open arms.
“Got great news for you, Lieutenant. We’re on our way to Vietnam! Whole group’s going. We’re replacing all the A teams from Okinawa and the Seventh. Gonna be strictly a Fifth Group show from now on Assigning you to detachment A-104. Team’s in predeployment now, presently conducting area studies.” Then, after picking up a red-bordered folder stamped Secret and studying it a moment, he uttered his frightening pronouncement. “Your team’s going into
the northwestern part of the country. Place called ARO. Hummmm, never heard of it myself.”
Oh, no! I have!
11. ARO, Vietnam: January 1965
“Lieutenant, it beats the shit out of me why it’s called ARO,” Sergeant Grimshaw said grumpily but not unkindly. He was a senior sergeant of the Okinawa-based Special Forces detachment that had occupied this desolate hilltop for the past six months, a sergeant who was obviously anxious—as indeed was his entire team—to put both name and place behind him as quickly as possible.
“Don’t even know what the word means, if it means anything. Hell, maybe it’s Viet meaning ‘forsaken,’ or French for ‘wilderness.” Or maybe it’s Katu for ‘white man’s folly.” That would be more appropriate. No, sir, don’t know why it’s called ARO, and don’t care. But I do know if those numbnuts in Nha Trang expect you all to spend a fucking year on this hill, your whole team will be ‘looney tunes’ time you rotate! Hell, we’ve only been here half that time, and ain’t none of us quite right anymore. If we had to spend a year in this shithole, if you all weren’t replacing us now, we’d go bugfuck, completely bugfuck!”
“That bad, huh?” I said, standing next to him atop a bunker in my brand-new “been-in-Vietnam-all-day” jungle fatigues, the two of us overlooking the hilltop Sergeant Scuggs had so graphically described to Chester and me two years previously.
“Yeah, that bad. Listen, sir, you got briefings on this place at Nha Trang and Danang … uh … camp’s mission, surveillance strategy, and so forth, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, don’t believe a fucking word of it! I’ll give you the real skinny. First of all, our mission is interdiction, stop the flow of troops, arms, and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, right?”
He paused, so again I nodded.
