“Land leeches couldn’t penetrate your clothing to get to you; they had to crawl through your boot blouse, your fly, your beltline, your shirtfront, or your collar to get to your bare skin. Before we infiltrated, we would always apply a heavy application of leech repellant to those areas of our uniform where leeches could penetrate, but it would wash off after several days in the rain, and it had rained on us every day so far. After a land leech gained access to your bare skin, they would apply a strong natural analgesic to deaden the pain, and then they would shove their heads deep into you and gorge themselves on your blood. A land leech the diameter of matchstick when it crawled onto you would quickly grow to the thickness of your thumb. The slightest pressure on one of the little gluttons would cause them to explode leaving a large splotch of blood on your uniform as if you had been shot, but that would kill the leech and that, in its self, was a problem. When a leech got on you, and fed, you had to make it pull its head out before you killed it or its head would remain forever inside you. To this day, you can tell who was a Project Delta recon man, and who wasn’t, by the number of still visible leech cysts around his belt line. A spot of insect repellant or a lit cigarette would usually cause a leech to pull its head out and un-attach its self from you, and I asked myself again, ‘Where in the hell was Grit?’
“I could now feel leeches crawling down my collar, but my SOP didn’t permit picking land leeches while inside a danger area, so I just lay there. Water leeches weren’t that bad. You only got them on you when you were in the water, and when you got out of the water you picked them off and you were done with it, but a damned land leech would follow you home and crawl in bed with you. Given a choice, a recon team would never RON in a wet area infested with land leeches, but sometimes we had no choice in the matter and would have to spend the night picking leeches off one another.
“Finally, there was movement on the opposite stream bank. In my peripheral vision and through the thin screening of ferns, I saw Grit slide down the opposite bank, slowly walk to the middle of the stream about ten feet from me, stop, take out his canteen, bend over and start to fill it. That in its self pissed me off, but when the two LLDB slid down the bank together, walked over to Grit, stopped and also began to fill their canteens in the middle of the stream it was more than I could stand, and I intended to chew their asses right there in the middle of the stream.
“I raised up on my forearms, turned my head so I could clearly see them and said in a rather loud voice, ‘Hey!’ and that was as far as I got with their ass chewing. I was looking into the startled faces of three NVA soldiers as they dropped their canteens and went for the AK-47s slung around their necks. A very hasty ‘fight or flight’ decision had to be made and I selected flight, as there was no way I could have swung my CAR-15 through 45 degrees of ferns and engage them before they raised their AK-47s up to engage me. I might have beaten one of the three, but one out of three just wasn’t good enough at that range, so I rolled over and fell into the gully on my left as the top of the mound I had been lying on exploded from the impact of a hail of bullets that flung mud, dirt, and debris all over me. I brought my CAR-15 up to engage them when they came over the mound, but they never did. Bullets continued to strike the top of the mound and beyond, and two grenades went off in the stream. Then there was the usual silence that came after a firefight when the only sound to be heard was the crying and moaning of the dying and the wounded.
“The crying and the moaning was coming from the stream, so I raised my head above the mound and saw the three NVA now lying in the middle of the stream either dead or dying. I saw my LLDB counterpart jump up, run to where the point man was lying and they both disappeared into the wood line. I joined them, and we took up a position where we could observe the opposite bank. We knew the three NVA now dead in the stream had come from the opposite bank, but we didn’t know if there were any more NVA over there or not. We didn’t know if the three NVA had been alone or if they had been the point element of a larger unit. We didn’t know if Grit and the two LLDB were still over there and alive or if they had been overrun by the NVA. We had no communications with them and had no way of knowing their status, so we just lay there and waited for what would happen next.
“If there had been an engagement on the other side and our three team members had prevailed, they would soon be crossing the stream, but if the NVA had been successful, the NVA would soon be sliding down that bank. If it were our team members who came off of the bank, we would be there to cover them, but if it were the enemy, we would be there to kill them. After a few minutes, we saw movement on the opposite bank, and much to our relief our tail gunner slid down, crossed the stream and joined us, followed by Grit and then the assistant tail gunner. I moved the team away from the stream and to a hilltop that could be easily defended, and we then attempted to sort out what had just happened.
“Grit told me that when I had slid down the stream bank and started to cross the stream, he had heard the three NVA coming up behind them. He said the three NVA had halted in the tall grass just a few feet to his right, and they had observed the opposite side for several minutes before, one at a time, sliding down the bank into the stream. The NVA were in his direct line of fire with where he knew I was lying in the ferns, and he couldn’t shoot them without fear of hitting me. But as soon as they began to fire on me, it no longer mattered that I happened to be in his line of fire, so he emptied a twenty round magazine into their backs…and into where I had been. While Grit was reloading, the two LLDB with him had thrown two M-26 fragmentation grenades into the stream for good measure. Although one of the NVA groaned for a few minutes, all three had been killed almost instantly.
“As in all contacts with the enemy, there had been valuable lessons to learn, or to relearn, from this engagement. First of the lessons to be relearned, of course, was that a recon team’s SOPs must be followed at all times while in the hole even if it happened to be a dry hole. If the LLDB had been religiously following our SOPs all along, I would never have mistaken the enemy for my team members when the enemy made an unexpected appearance. Danger flags should have immediately popped up in my mind when I saw men come off the opposite bank and they were not following my team’s SOP for a stream crossing.
“But, to me, the most disturbing thing that had just happened was that I had, for a moment, doubted Grit’s competence and dependability, and he had never before given me reason to doubt him. Grit was a solid, dependable, and highly competent recon man, and I had been extremely fortunate to have him on my recon team, but I had just doubted him and it had almost cost me my life. The moment Grit had failed to follow our SOP, I should have known something had gone bad wrong, and the only thing it could have been was that the enemy had somehow entered into the equation. I could write it off as a temporary lapse in judgment brought on by the leeches I had been lying in, or I could admit to myself it was a serious character defect I really needed to work on.
“There had also been another way of looking at it. If I had immediately recognized those three NVA crossing the stream, I would have had no choice but to shoot them before they reached the other side and saw me. Just as I had been in Grit’s line of fire, so was he in mine. Grit, in his position on top of the stream bank, only had a thin screen of grass for cover, and if I had fired most of a twenty-round magazine, point blank, into those three NVA, I would have probably hit Grit several times. If that had happened, Grit would have probably been killed, and I would have had to live the rest of my life with the knowledge I had killed my partner.
“Still yet, there is another explanation for the outcome of this brief engagement if I tell you SSG William R. (Grit) Pomeroy, Jr. was, and still is, a deeply religious man and a devout Christian. At the end of his tour in Vietnam, Grit left the Army, attended Divinity School, received a Degree in Theology, and returned to the U.S. Army as a Protestant Chaplain. Grit served as a Chaplain with Special Forces units and ministered to countless Special Forces soldiers during their time of spiritua
l need for the next thirty years. Lieutenant Colonel William R. Pomeroy, Jr. retired from the Army a few years ago at his last assignment as the 20th Special Forces Group Chaplain. To me, there is little doubt but that God made one of His infrequent appearances in that streambed that day to save one of His favorite servants and just happened to inadvertently save my life in the time of it.
“My team was back together again, no one had been even slightly wounded, and I was glad to see the LLDB were back to following our SOPs. Whether those three NVA had only been three unlucky hunters, or whether they had been three very amateur trackers would forever remain unknown. Whoever they were, one must pity them for how they departed this world. A filthy, bearded, wild-eyed, leech covered apparition had risen up from the ferns at their feet, shouted at them, scared them out of their wits, then disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, and then they were shot dead from behind. None of us knew exactly what had just happened, but at least everyone now knew this wasn’t a dry hole. I looked up at the Coroc cliffs towering over us and could almost hear them say, ‘I told you so.’
“I had already radioed the FAC and reported my recon team had become separated because of enemy contact during a stream crossing, and the FOB had launched a recovery operation that was inbound at the time. I had no way of knowing how many NVA were now in the area, but I did know we had been detected by the enemy, and our location in the AO had been compromised, so I called the FAC, reported my recon team had linked up and asked him to relay my request to the FOB for an emergency extraction. We moved to a small clearing on the top of a hill, and a short time later we were extracted by ladder.
“On the flight back to the Mai Loc FOB, the recovery NCO told me word had just been received that Project Delta was closing down and all personnel would soon return to Nha Trang for reassignment. As it turned out, this would be my last recon patrol with Project Delta, and it had almost been nothing more than a dry hole to remember. But as it was, this patrol had made the last contact with the enemy any Project Delta recon team would make, the last enemy soldiers killed during the war by Project Delta had just been killed on this patrol by the future Chaplain of the 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne), and as such, it had been a most appropriate way to end my tour of duty with Project Delta.”103
Operation Delta Dagger II was the final operation of Project Delta’s history. The original operation called for continuing OPCON to the 101st Airborne to identify enemy troop concentrations, travel routes and base areas. The operation ran from June 24 through noon on June 30, 1970. On Thursday, June 25 the 2nd Platoon, 4th Ranger Company was inserted for a one day mission. While preparing an extraction LZ a Vietnamese Ranger detonated an undetermined type mine killing two Rangers and wounding three. The BDA Platoon conducted a one day mission on Friday, June 26 without incident. The 1st Platoon, 5th Company, 81st Airborne Ranger Battalion conducted the last operation in Project Delta’s history. It was a one day operation and terminated upon completion of the mission.90
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Boots on the Ground: The history of Project Delta Page 29
