Racing Back to Vietnam

by John Pendergrass

  Before it got too late to travel from China Beach through the city and back to base without being robbed, harassed, or shot, we would squeeze into somebody’s truck and head out, refreshed by the opportunity to escape for one evening back into the world of medicine.

  FIFTEEN

  THE RESCUE OF COVEY 219

  March 3, 1972

  At times, the USAF can seem like a small world. You never know when or where you might run in to someone you knew from a previous assignment. Reunions can occur at the most unexpected places.

  I was at squadron headquarters one day when the word came in that an OV-10 pilot from the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron (TASS) who had been shot down over the Ho Chi Minh Trail and picked up in a daring rescue was returning to Da Nang. A successful rescue was always a time of great celebration; anyone not flying would head to the flight line to welcome home both the downed pilot and the SAR team that had risked their lives to save another comrade. These downed airmen were blessed; they had received all the gifts that life and luck could bestow. They were living proof that the Air Force would spare no risk to save someone who had been shot down.

  The aircraft landed, taxied, and parked, and Captain Mahlon Long, an old acquaintance from my Florida days, emerged. Long looked no worse for wear, despite having spent a full afternoon escaping and evading communist troops on the Trail before being hoisted out of the jungle at dusk by a rescue helicopter (and subsequently passing one of the best nights of his life at the bar of an Officer’s Club in Thailand).

  Long and I had both served with the 603rd Special Operations Squadron (SOS), an A-37 unit at Hurlburt Field. He was part of a squadron that generously took me in and introduced me to the world of flying. As so often happens in the military, Long went one way, becoming an OV-10 pilot, and I went another way, ending up as a flight surgeon with an F-4 squadron. We both left Florida within a month or two of each other, and we both eventually ended up at Da Nang. Since our base was so large, with numerous aircraft flying a variety of missions, our paths had never crossed until the day I saw him sipping from a bottle of champagne on the tarmac at Da Nang.

  The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a hornet’s nest in March of 1972. The North Vietnamese were moving armor, artillery, men, and supplies down the panhandle of Laos, preparing for the Easter Offensive that they would launch within the month. Long had also been busy; the previous day, he had put in a strike of Navy A-7s that destroyed a fuel dump, creating several secondary explosions.

  Long, whose call sign was Covey 219, was flying an OV-10 as a Forward Air Controller (FAC). His plane was a state-of-the-art observation and light attack twin engine turboprop aircraft. Unlike earlier FAC aircraft, the OV-10 had an armored cockpit, advanced communications, an ejection seat, and enough firepower to serve as close air support for troops in the field.

  Long was flying in the middle of the day, a few thousand feet above the ground, searching for targets, when he encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire. His plane was struck and began to spin out of control. Covey 219 came up on Guard, the radio frequency used for emergency communications, with a Mayday call. He received an immediate response from King, the orbiting HC-130 aircraft responsible for coordinating all SAR operations for downed airmen. It was a brief conversation—Covey 219 had just enough time to give his approximate location before ejecting barely one hundred feet above the ground.

  Had Long been flying one of the older FAC aircraft, he wouldn’t have made it. Thankfully, the OV-10 was equipped with a zero-zero ejection seat. Long pulled the ejection lever, and in less than two seconds he was rocketed through his canopy and into the sky.

  Covey 219’s chute had barely deployed when Long landed in a tree, knocking off his helmet and sunglasses and breaking his nose. He released his parachute harness, climbed down from the tree, and began to make the best of a truly bad situation.

  Long had landed in the thick of the Ho Chi Minh Trail at one of the worst times in the Vietnam War. He immediately started moving to the east, away from the enemy. After thirty minutes or so, he reached an area of dense trees and ground cover near the base of one of the karsts that ran all along the Laotian panhandle. These large, irregular limestone rock formations, often covered with jungle vegetation, are difficult to access and can be a good place to hide.

  By now, Long was running on pure adrenaline. Finally concealed in the ground cover, Covey 219 pulled out his survival radio to make contact with friendly forces. Anxious to establish contact, he pulled out the antennae of his radio with such force that it pulled free of the radio. Fortunately, he, like everyone who flew in Southeast Asia, carried two radios. Long had better luck with the second radio and was able to contact another Covey FAC flying in the nearby area.

  By this time, the SAR process was well underway. King launched a pair of HH-53 rescue helicopters and a flight of A1-E Skyraiders on alert from the Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base, located near the western border of Laos.

  The HH-53s, better known as Super Jolly Green Giants, are the most welcome sight a downed airman will ever see. Equipped with thick armor, extra firepower, and a couple of para-rescue men (PJs), the Jollys are able to hover over the pickup site, drop a jungle penetrator, send down a PJ if you’re wounded, and pull you into the sky. They work in pairs, with the “low bird” coming in for the pickup while the “high bird” hovers off to the side, acting as a decoy for ground fire, ready to come in if the low bird is shot down trying to make the rescue.

  The A1-Es, better recognized by their call sign “Sandy,” are a slow moving prop-driven aircraft designed near the end of World War II for use by the Navy. Their job is to secure the rescue area to allow the Jolly Green to safely pick up the downed airman. The Sandys are the perfect aircraft for an SAR mission; they are fitted with extra armor around the cockpit and carry four 20 mm cannons, plus a massive amount of other firepower. Able to fly low and slow and place ordnance accurately to within meters of a downed airman, the Sandys can loiter over a target for nearly eight hours.

  The SAR process takes time; the Sandys are slow and the Jolly Greens are even slower, and the Jollys need a Sandy escort for protection when flying to the pickup site. Covey 219 knew he wasn’t going anywhere without the Jollys, so he spent a long afternoon hiding and anxiously waiting for the SAR process to unfold.

  Once on station, Sandy One, the lead A1-E, became the on-scene commander directing the SAR mission. The flight of Sandys made repeated low passes, under heavy ground fire, trying to determine Long’s exact position. Covey 219 was able to vector the Sandys in the right direction, making sure that they got a close mark of his location.

  As darkness approached, the SAR reached a critical point. The team had pinpointed Long’s location, but the area hadn’t been neutralized; there was still sporadic ground fire around the downed airman. If the pickup wasn’t made soon, the rescue aircraft would have to leave the area and return at daybreak. There was little chance of Covey 219 surviving the night in hostile territory. Sandy One directed Long to dig in as best he could, the A1-Es were going to cover the entire area with Cluster Bomb Units (CBUs).

  With only the butt of his .38 revolver as a tool, Covey 219 dug and scraped like a man possessed, fashioning a shallow hole in the rocky soil. The Sandys dropped the shell-like CBUs, which opened in the air and released hundreds of bomblets that peppered the area with shrapnel. They followed up with a round of smoke bombs in an effort to screen the area from the enemy.

  The Jolly Green low bird moved in for the pickup and told Long to pull his smoke. Because of the darkness and the lingering smoke, Covey 219 activated his flare instead of his smoke, and the low bird dropped down and hovered over a jungle clearing not far from Long’s hiding spot. For Covey 219, the prop wash and the roar from the Jolly made the rescue seem like it was taking place in the middle of a hurricane.

  The Jolly dropped the jungle penetrator, a large cable with three arms folded inward on the end, designed to break through the jungle canopy. Covey 219 ran to the cleari
ng, careful to let the penetrator hit the ground to avoid a jolt of static electricity, pulled on the shoulder sling, unfolded the arms of the penetrator, sat down, and was winched into the air. Long later said the whole process was just like he had practiced in his survival school training.

  The Jolly Green crew pulled Long into the chopper, patted him on the back, and handed him a parachute to put on. Long’s first thought was, “Hey, I’ve been there and done that already.” The Jolly Green lifted off, taking heavy ground fire as it worked to gain altitude and egress from the area as quickly as possible.

  It had been a long afternoon for everyone involved. After an in-flight refueling, the Jolly Green crew landed at Nakhon Phanom, and the celebrations began. The SAR team had snatched another downed airman from near certain death or imprisonment. The champagne was opened; it was time to relax and celebrate.

  Long wandered around the flight line, thanking his rescuers, before someone placed him in the back of an ambulance and took him to the base hospital. He was in excellent shape, delighted to have made it through the ordeal with only minor injuries.

  Long was a local boy with more than nine months in country. After his plane landed upon his return to Da Nang, his squadron and many others were there to greet him. The champagne-fueled celebration was repeated a second time.

  At the time, I didn’t know who the rescued pilot was, but I recognized Mahlon as soon as he climbed out of his aircraft. We all wanted to hear his story; after all, a lot had happened since he took off from Da Nang the previous day. He described the incident in a calm, unflappable way, as if he were relating how his car broke down on the way to the grocery store. Everyone knew it had been a lot worse.

  Covey 219 received an extensive debriefing at Da Nang and was soon off to Hawaii for his R & R.

  March 2, 1972 was just one day in a long war. Captain Long flew another sixty-three combat missions before his tour ended. He went on to have a distinguished career as an Air Force officer. America’s involvement in Vietnam ended around one year after the rescue of Covey 219, but during that time, another nine OV-10s from the 20th TASS were lost in combat.

  Mahlon Long’s story, heroic in so many ways, was a common one during the Vietnam War. Thousands of aircraft were shot down during the conflict. Many men were killed, some were taken prisoner, but the return of every downed pilot was a cherished event. I regard those times when I gathered with others on the flight line to welcome a rescued airman as some of the best days of my life.

  SIXTEEN

  OPERATION GOLDEN FLOW

  Fall 1971–1972

  I had been at Da Nang just a few months when President Nixon announced a War on Drugs. The impetus for his declaration was the discovery of a high rate of heroin addiction among American troops serving in Vietnam. This was bad news for all concerned—an unpopular war was about to become even more unpopular.

  It all began around May 1971, when two congressmen—Robert Steele, a Republican from Connecticut, and Morgan Murphy, a Democrat from Illinois—returned from an official visit to Vietnam with the claim that fifteen percent of American soldiers were heroin addicts.

  This bombshell reverberated throughout the Nixon administration. All drugs were bad, but heroin was the worst of them all. The common image of the day saw heroin addicts as wasted, skid row criminals covered with needle tracks who committed heinous crimes to support their habit. Nixon was worried that a wave of freshly discharged soldiers would be shipped back to the United States and go on a crime spree to finance their drug addiction. This was trouble on two fronts: not only would public safely be jeopardized, but public support for the war would fall even further. Who could continue to back a war that was turning our young men into junkies?

  Nixon was determined to fight what became known as the “GI heroin epidemic.” In June 1971, the President went on television describing the scourge of drug abuse as “public enemy number one.” A special agency was created to fight the problem, with funds allocated for the detection and treatment of drug abuse. This was one of the few times in the history of the war on drugs that the majority of the funding went towards treatment rather than law enforcement.

  To be honest, none of us at the dispensary were shocked to hear the statistics on heroin use among soldiers. We knew that drugs and sex flourished right outside the gates to our base; you could buy pretty much anything you wanted in Vietnam for a little money. Still, we thought of it as more of an Army problem. Enlistment standards were higher for the Air Force, and even though many enlisted to avoid the draft, we were still an organization of volunteers, not conscripts.

  We also knew that, when it came to eliminating drugs in this area of the world, the forces of history were against us. The United States was trying to fight a problem that the European powers had a major role in creating. We were, in essence, forced to deal with some of the detritus of British and French colonialism. The British grew opium in India in the eighteenth century and began shipping it to China against the emperor’s will. They created a nation of addicts, as well as a lucrative source of income to buy the popular Chinese goods of the day, such as silks, tea, and porcelain. The French were no better, arriving in the nineteenth century and soon establishing an opium franchise that proved highly profitable for the colonial administration. By the time the French left Indochina in 1954, opium production was well-established in the Golden Triangle region of Laos, Thailand, and Burma. By 1969, the Golden Triangle region was harvesting one thousand tons of raw opium a year.

  Then, in 1970, one of the spurs to the GI heroin epidemic came about when the laboratories of the Golden Triangle began using a more sophisticated opium refinement process, one that allowed them to produce a higher grade heroin (90 percent pure or more). Production was booming, but the refined heroin still had to be moved to market in South Vietnam. Drug smuggling became a second job for many South Vietnamese officials, with customs, air force, army, police, and politicians all getting a piece of the action.

  America was in a bad spot. Supposedly, these were our friends and allies, so the U.S. officials said little about the drug smuggling and did even less.

  Prior to 1970, marijuana was probably the drug of choice for soldiers in Vietnam. It had always been common in Southeast Asia and was viewed as one of the pleasures of life, with none of the stigma found in the United States. Since the military leaders disliked drug use of any kind and since marijuana had a distinctive odor, was bulky to transport, and was easy to detect, the battle against marijuana had some limited success. Marijuana-detecting dog teams were used at most of the major bases and were found to be an effective deterrent.

  In fact, the fight against marijuana was so effective that some felt it may have led to more heroin use. Heroin was more difficult to detect. The common way to use it in Vietnam was to smoke it, but it could also be snorted or even taken by mouth (because it was so pure, there was no need to inject it). Usually a cigarette was rolled between the fingers and thumb, emptying out some of the tobacco. Heroin was then poured into the hollowed-out cigarette and the mixture was smoked.

  Vials of heroin were easy to purchase, and were readily available from the Vietnamese who worked on base, from children and teenagers who peddled them openly on the streets, and from any of the bars in town. It was difficult to travel in the city of Da Nang and not be offered drugs.

  Nixon’s War on Drugs started in June of 1971, but it wasn’t until the autumn of that year that the fight came to Da Nang. There was no real warning. One day, we came to work at the dispensary and were told that “Operation Golden Flow” was now underway.

  The concept was simple and effective. Before leaving Vietnam, all military personnel had to pass a urinalysis drug screen. If you failed it, you couldn’t go on leave, you couldn’t go on R & R, and you couldn’t be separated from the military. In essence, you were stuck in Vietnam. We all agreed that being forced to remain in country had to be one of the greatest deterrents to drug use ever created.

  The screening proced
ure was very accurate. The individual was identified by dog tags, ID card, and orders, and then observed urinating. The sample was checked to make sure it hadn’t been diluted and then checked with two separate procedures. The positives were then confirmed with gas liquid chromatography. If you had used drugs in the previous four days or so, this screen would pick it up.

  Most commonly, everyone was checked eight to ten days before their DEROS (Date of Estimated Return from Overseas). Random tests and checks of suspected individuals were also performed. In addition, there was an amnesty program that provided access to treatment without penalty. We had a general medical officer (not a flight surgeon), who probably indulged in marijuana himself, serving as the “amnesty Doc.” His office was often filled with airmen looking to come clean. Nonetheless, the biggest number of positives at Da Nang were detected during mandatory DEROS testing.

  Statistics for drug use in Vietnam are all over the place, but I think in general, our suspicions were correct: the Air Force performed much better than the Army. Something like four percent of the Army was positive, while slightly less than one percent of the Air Force screened positive.

  Drug use was never part of the fighter squadron culture. I can say with almost absolute certainty that no one who flew fighters used illegal drugs. Living in the squadron hootch was a bit like living with your in-laws; everything you did was common knowledge and open to constructive criticism. There was no place to hide. A special effort was also made to make sure that the enlisted men who worked on the flight line were clean. On two occasions during my tour, an airman working on the Phantoms tested positive for drugs. In less than a week, the offender was shipped home with a general discharge. On the flight line, there was zero tolerance of drug use.