Legend

by Eric Blehm

  Tornow confirmed with Wright that the team was at the correct insertion point and undetected, then initiated a high, lonely orbit to monitor the mission far below. Nearly half of his ten months in Vietnam had been with B-56, and these clandestine recon missions were the most fulfilling of his career. He held the SOG (Studies and Operations Group) brotherhood in the highest regard, and while he wasn’t on the ground beside them, he was their overwatch, their lifeline, and he felt responsible for their safety. But his ability to provide it was severely handicapped the moment they crossed into Cambodia. Per the current rules of engagement, if a team was compromised or fell under attack across the border, they could only call for helicopter extraction with helicopter gunship support. Under no circumstances could they call in support from fixed-wing aircraft such as fighters, bombers, or the C-130 gunships.

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  The majority of the missions that had infiltrated Cambodia before 1968 had used small reconnaissance teams of six to twelve men crossing the border on foot and penetrating less than a half mile. By early 1968, a few teams had been taken in by helicopter, but almost none had gone this deep. Tornow knew of the teams that had simply vanished into this no-man’s-land and that the men were not reported as prisoners of war. He knew the code—that Wright, Mousseau, O’Connor, and the CIDG would not allow themselves to be captured. They would fight to their deaths protecting one another.

  —

  THE TEAM lay silently in the jungle on the northern edge of the clearing, each member watching a section of the enemy’s backyard. Some of the men were responsible for monitoring the clearing; the others faced the shadowy unknown beneath the triple-canopy ecosystem spreading out before them like the edge of the world.

  The uppermost layer of the canopy, the tallest trees, topped one hundred feet, their branches soaking in the sunlight that filtered down to the second canopy of tree-sized ferns that required less sunlight. The lowest canopy of vines and tangled, thorny “bush” was the darkest. In addition to the enemy, it concealed all manner of dangerous fauna, from poisonous snakes to man-eating tigers to monkeys. In fact, the .22 caliber silenced pistols recon men carried to kill, or incapacitate and capture, enemy soldiers on the trail served a double purpose of shooting the male monkeys whose screeches could pinpoint their position.

  The team waited, hearing little more than the creaking of tree branches and a gecko’s repetitive geh-ko, geh-ko. After a half hour, when it appeared that the helicopters had not attracted any enemy activity, Wright and Mousseau reviewed the map. If the intelligence report was accurate, there would be a small foot trail approximately one hundred yards to their south, beyond the far side of the clearing. The trail angled east to west-southwest through the thick jungle about three-quarters of a mile before intersecting a well-maintained section of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  The team moved out to circumvent the northeast end of the clearing, with Bao at the point and Mousseau just behind him. Wright was in the center behind Tuan, and O’Connor was toward the rear with another CIDG as the rear security “tail gunner” for the column. It was slow going as they, quietly as possible, pushed and picked their way through the dense vegetation. After nearly fifty yards of slow, hot bushwhacking they passed a gully that offered a little cover in the otherwise flat, spongy ground.

  Fifty yards beyond the gully, the team reached the foot trail. Now a decision had to be made: follow the trail, opting for speed, or take the more tedious route through the jungle, opting for concealment. Both routes would ultimately reach their main objective, the gravel road, where they would set their trap to capture an NVA officer or, if the opportunity presented itself, to hijack a supply truck; the question was whether they would reach it in one hour or several.

  The plan to steal a truck was at best theoretical: target a supply truck traveling alone or trailing far enough behind a convoy to not be seen in a rearview mirror. A bend in the road would be required for concealment; a bend in the road with a side road, preferably heading east, would be ideal. One member of the team, a CIDG, would act as if he were injured, carried or helped along by two other CIDG, who included Tuan. The trio would emerge from their hiding place and start hobbling down the road, with Tuan hailing its driver for help. The driver, and if need be, passenger, would then be incapacitated.

  A year before, the commander of SOG—Chief SOG Jack Singlaub—had requested the inclusion of tranquilizer darts in the rules of engagement to “incapacitate enemy prisoners ambushed on the Trail,” he later explained. “Washington denied the request, saying such darts were risky because, without knowing the subject’s exact body weight, we might administer a fatal overdose. Therefore, the darts were unnecessarily ‘cruel.’ ” Singlaub tried to convince Washington that “a bullet…was infinitely crueler than a tranquilizer dart, and that, given a choice, the NVA soldiers in question would no doubt vote for the dart. But they held their ground.”

  And so Wright’s team would “incapacitate,” deciding on the spot to capture or kill the driver and potential passenger with a bullet or two fired from a silenced pistol. The team members would dispose of the body or bodies, or bind and blindfold the prisoner(s), drive the truck off the road, and conceal it. Then, according to O’Connor, “we’d have a moment of discovery” as to how, exactly, they were going to get the truck back to South Vietnam—either by driving it or hoisting it with a heavy-lift helicopter.

  This was all distant speculation. First the team had to make it to the road undetected, and there was work to be done along the way—mapping the network of suspected concealed paths and reporting any enemy encampments or movement.

  After ten minutes, Wright signaled O’Connor forward. He whispered that Mousseau had spotted a small group of people moving toward them along the trail. “Watch the rear,” Wright said, “and be ready to reverse in case of trouble.”

  —

  A BIG part of SOG’s mission in Cambodia was PSYOP—psychological operations devised to demoralize and cause the NVA and VC traveling on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to defect. Operation Camel Path had, in November 1967, begun dropping millions of leaflets from aircraft over the border areas. Recently, Leaflet 95-T showed a photo of dead and rotting NVA soldiers with text that read: “During the Communists’ Tet Offensive, the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam and the Allies killed more than 65,000 Communist troops and captured more than 12,000. You are being sent to replace them. Most of you will be killed…. Seize the first opportunity to leave your unit and come over to the ranks of the Republic of Vietnam.” Another leaflet, chillingly poetic, warned the NVA operating in this region that their future was destined for the “fate of the unmarked grave on Cambodian soil, of preying beasts [that] await your dying breath.”

  Mousseau and Bao, their faces camouflaged, were those beasts, as still as the vegetation surrounding them as they crouched a few feet off the trail, monitoring the three men who approached their position. Charged with widening the footpath using machetes and hatchets, these “woodcutters” were also armed with AK-47s slung across their chests, marking them as North Vietnamese.

  Wright was a dozen yards behind Mousseau, deeper in the undergrowth, while O’Connor was poised for retreat a few yards behind him. At this distance—some twenty yards off the trail—O’Connor couldn’t see the work crew, but he could hear them hacking away with their machetes, tossing aside cut branches and vines. The noise increased, and O’Connor tried to discern when the sounds of breaking branches began to recede, indicating the work crew had passed them by.

  It was not to be. A muffled scream was accompanied by a quick succession of “clicks” that were the reports from a silenced pistol. It was followed quickly by a short burst of gunfire from an AK-47.

  O’Connor paused momentarily, confirming that there was no follow-up to the gunfire—no firefight. Wright signaled with his hand to reverse, and O’Connor with the CIDG quickly backtracked to the gully
he had identified earlier as a rally point. He directed the CIDG into the cover, where they formed a hasty defensive perimeter, their rifles and carbines pointed back down their route, prepared to cover Wright, Mousseau, and Bao if they were pursued.

  A few minutes later, Wright appeared; he reported that the woodcutters had begun chopping out the narrow spot of the trail where Mousseau and Bao were hiding, clearing away some of the foliage that concealed their position. Then a woodcutter had looked right at them, the trigger for Mousseau and Bao to eliminate the threat, swiftly and quietly. One had gotten his finger on his AK-47 trigger as he went down.

  Moments later Mousseau and Bao, their hands and arms smeared with blood, crawled into the perimeter.

  “We hid the bodies,” said Mousseau, “but the gunfire may have compromised us.”

  The entire team knew how damning the gunfire was but held on to hope that since it had been both brief and from an enemy weapon, it could be interpreted as an accidental discharge. If the helicopters were also heard, however, the gunfire would be investigated. The men had to assume the worst—that their role was shifting from hunter to hunted.

  “They chopped right up to us,” said Mousseau, “we had no choice.”

  —

  THE TEAM members hastily dug in, concealing themselves within the undergrowth of the gully, while Wright quietly discussed options with Mousseau and O’Connor. Then they heard voices from the general direction of the insertion point—a disturbingly quick response to the gunfire.

  In late 1967, the NVA had converted an entire brigade into “hunter-killer” forces, their mission to track down and capture or kill American and South Vietnamese recon teams on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Intelligence would eventually learn that these large, company-size “counter-recon” units of a hundred and fifty men were assigned to conventional forces based at intervals on the trail. After a recon team was detected, the North Vietnamese counter-recon force split into squads or platoons and swept the suspected area, often employing tracker dogs. The search was orchestrated by radio, with the conventional forces called in to ensure that superior numbers could encircle and overwhelm the recon team and thwart any rescue attempts. They would also shoot down the helicopters they knew would attempt an extraction, multiplying the casualties.

  Concentrating on the voices, Wright came to the conclusion that this was an enemy patrol sweeping across the clearing, looking for signs of a recent insertion—trampled grass, footprints, perhaps a carelessly dropped piece of equipment—while heading toward the foot trail to investigate the gunfire. If the patrol avoided the thick jungle to the north, instead crossing the clearing to the trail, it would pass right by the team’s current location.

  The brief conversations among members of the patrol provided snippets of information that indicated they were moving into the wood line and away from the team. But it was impossible to know if there were others lying in wait, monitoring the clearing—the only LZ within a mile where a helicopter could land.

  Once he was convinced the patrol had passed them, Wright attempted to radio Tornow to request a standby alert for possible extraction. The thick jungle canopy, however, prevented contact. Knowing the enemy was close and might at any moment find the bodies of the woodcutters, Wright then turned the radio off while backtracking to the first rally point, a location near the clearing where they’d had a clear radio signal. There they monitored the clearing, which appeared void of any enemy movement. They could barely make out the faint sounds of voices and machetes chopping through the jungle off its southeastern end.

  Perhaps the group had been another work party, crossing the clearing en route to the trail they were enlarging. Or perhaps they had been sent to investigate the gunfire. If so, where were they sent from? Was there a nearby NVA base camouflaged from the air patrols? That, of course, was part of their reconnaissance mission: to get a good sense of what this jungle held beneath the canopy or, deeper still, dug into the ground. The NVA were masters at constructing underground tunnel systems. The team could be standing on top of an enemy base right then and there and not even know it.

  The group continued to move away from the men to the southeast; the team’s objective—the Ho Chi Minh Trail—was in the opposite direction to the northwest. While O’Connor changed out the antenna on his radio, the CIDG gave conflicting reports on what the enemy had been saying, and their type and unit size, which ranged from a squad of six to twelve NVA to a large detachment of woodcutters. Tuan listened attentively to the CIDG as they reported the enemy conversations. One word they agreed on hearing was truc thang, Vietnamese for helicopter, and Tuan concluded that it had most likely been the NVA looking for an American recon team or a downed helicopter—but he couldn’t be sure.

  Wright tried to decide whether to call in that they had been compromised and request extraction, or to continue with the mission. “It was a difficult decision,” O’Connor later wrote, “because the objective was close to being a one-time try, and if we reached it we would have total and full support; but if we got compromised or made hot contact on our way to the objective, the enemy’s guard would be up and it might be too late to try it again at another time.”

  Wright proposed to Mousseau and O’Connor that since the team had not been detected, they should inform command of their situation and hopefully get the okay to continue toward the objective. The men agreed. They had begun to discuss an alternative route to the objective, and Wright was preparing to call in a report when they again heard voices. Everybody froze.

  The mystery group was returning from the eastern side of the clearing and coming toward the north side, their location. On the southern side, across the landing zone, were more voices.

  A decision was quickly reached. Wright contacted Robin Tornow, explained the situation, and requested immediate extraction.

  —

  STILL ORBITING high above, Tornow received Wright’s transmission loud and clear. He could see the LZ out the side window of his banking Cessna, a light-green crescent. The Ho Chi Minh Trail, a prominent line a half mile to the west, was speckled with vehicles.

  Tornow told Wright to stand by, then relayed the communication to Jones, who was in the C&C slick just as Yurman was approaching Quan Loi to land. Jones asked Yurman to remain airborne and return to the LZ. Minutes later, they came within range of the team’s PRC-25 radio, and Jones was able to speak directly to Wright, who confirmed three points: they had been compromised by three armed men, there had been gunfire, and the team had killed the men and hidden the bodies.

  “Stand by for extraction,” Jones informed Wright.

  At that moment, the Special Forces major tapped Jones on the shoulder and said, “No, no, they have to stay in.”

  “No, Sir, that’s not the way we do this,” replied Jones. “I’m the launch officer; we’re gonna go in and get them, come back, and refuel, regroup, and then we’ll put them back in on their alternate LZ. We have to get them now.” He told Yurman to get his slicks on station to extract, and Yurman relayed this to his Greyhounds and Mad Dogs, poised to launch at Loc Ninh.

  But the Special Forces major told Yurman to cancel the launch. “They’re not in contact,” he said. “They’re going to stay in.”

  It was unusual to override standard operating procedure for extraction in such instances, but not unprecedented. Ultimately, it was the call of the officer in charge.

  At Loc Ninh, Mad Dog Three gunship copilot Jesse Naul, who was monitoring the radio, spun his finger in the air to signal to his aircraft commander, Louis Wilson, and crew chief, Paul LaChance, that it was time “to crank,” says Naul, who wasn’t surprised. “Our unit [the 240th] had inserted and extracted several teams prior to [this]. The area was so heavily patrolled that we simply could not keep the teams on the ground long enough to accomplish their mission.”

  Then they got the call to abort the launch and stand by.

  In the
C&C slick, Jones and the Special Forces major argued back and forth—Jones stating several times that it was standard operating procedure to extract a team at compromise, and in this case there had been gunfire, so it was much more than compromise. The major, according to Jones, argued that unless the team was still in direct contact, they were to stay on the ground.

  Hearing this, Jones assumed the major had been sent not to “observe” but to make sure he kept the team on the ground as long as possible. While Jones and the major argued in the backseat, Yurman hit the privacy button on the intercom and spoke to James privately.

  “Sir,” he said, “when there’s contact, we pull them. I agree with the lieutenant.”

  Finally James leaned back between the seats and bellowed at the major, “Look! The lieutenant knows what he’s doing. Let’s go in and get them now while we can, before they get into any more trouble.”

  “Sir,” Jones pleaded, “if we wait, we’re going to lose the team, or we’re going to lose helicopters. This isn’t the time to discuss this.”

  “But he was insistent,” says Yurman. “He had his orders and was sticking to them. He told Lieutenant Jones he outranked him and [Jones] was off the mission. He was in charge now.”

  Tornow knew the protocol and was surprised when he received orders for the team “to evade and stay concealed until the threat passes. [Then] move on with their mission.” He relayed the communication to Wright, who gave the order to continue to the objective, adding that they would “take a shortcut in order to leave the LZ area before the enemy swept through.”

  Following Wright’s lead, the team members shouldered their rucksacks, checked their weapons, and moved away from the LZ as silently and quickly as possible, pushing rather than cutting a route through the foliage—a technique that was quieter than a machete and didn’t leave behind an obvious trail.