Master Chief (25 page)

That afternoon, Dai Uy, Trung Uy, and I were kept busy preparing documentation (1149s) for all of our personal belongings and SEAL team gear for Customs inspection and return to the Strand by military conex boxes. Senior Chief Bassett, Roger Hayden, and Gordon Compton drove our pickup out to Warehouse 6 and traded it for a Scout. Dai Uy spent the afternoon in preparation for his departure to Taiwan, Republic of China. I wouldn’t see him again until 1975.

At 1100 hours on November twenty-fifth, Lieutenant Todd called from Binh Thuy and told Trung Uy Kleehammer,
“Get your men and gear ready! A Sea Lord slick is on its way to your location. You’re going in on a downed helo.” Because we were on nonoperational status as of the twentieth, our gear was packed and all of our ordnance had been given to Ba To. However, many of us still had our basic web gear.

All hands quickly loaded the five-ton truck and drove over to our U.S. Navy buddies next door. We borrowed M-60 machine guns, M-79s, M-16s, ammo, grenades, and smoke grenades. Within a matter of minutes we were ready and waiting at the Seawolves’ helo pad, where we loaded the Sea Lord slick and flew directly to Binh Thuy. There we rendezvoused with Mike Platoon from Ben Luc. They loaded two Sea Lord slicks, which flew them eighteen klicks southeast of Can Tho to the Navy AirCoFac CH-46 crash site. Mike Platoon’s mission was to set up a security perimeter around the craft until a Navy crew arrived to remove the main and tail rotor blades. After the CH-46’s blades were removed, an Army CH-54 “flying crane” helo flew from Tan Son Nhut to the crash site, retrieved the CH-46 body, and returned it to Binh Thuy.

While we were on standby at Binh Thuy, Lieutenant Todd explained to us what had happened. Because of the low-hanging clouds, the CH-46’s pilot was flying the craft between two and three hundred feet altitude. At one point the helo passed over a sampan carrying two armed VC. Both of the VC fired their AK-47s at the helo as it passed overhead, hitting the pilot in the leg and wounding several others. The pilot almost bled to death before he could set the helo down on the ground, after which emergency first aid was applied to stop the bleeding. Fortunately, the crash site was relatively secure, or free from VC. However, the situation was sure to change within a short period of time. No doubt the two VC were grandly promoted and given certificates of heroism.

After Mike Platoon returned to Binh Thuy at 1500 hours, all of us went to the chow hall and ate a great Thanksgiving dinner. As Boatswain Mate Joe Thrift was fond of saying, “Everyone was absolutely famished and drew sparks with their knives and forks while eating.”

Everyone was beginning to get uptight and tired of waiting for our departure from Vietnam. Bassett paid the hootch maids through the end of the month, dismissed them, and thanked them for their loyal service. I went to My Tho and visited with my old friend Sao Lam, who had maintained his position as the assistant PRU chief of Dinh Tuong province. He invited me to drink, eat dinner, and spend the night at his home, as we had traditionally done many times in the past. In spirit, Sao Lam was and always would be one of my life’s best friends.

Relief finally came at 0800 hours on the morning of November twenty-eighth when Lieutenant Todd inspected our barracks and surrounding area and told Trung Uy and Senior Chief that we could depart for Annapolis from Tan Son Nhut AFB the following morning. By noon of the next day we had secured our weapons, filing cabinet, and other items at AirCoFac, and spent the remainder of the afternoon at NavForV. Lieutenant Morrow kept me busy working on C&CI fund vouchers and making Xerox copies of four dossiers to pass to Lieutenant Zig. I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with and (indirectly) for Lieutenant Morrow. He always encouraged me, thoughtfully guided me, and was never condescending. I was sorry that I would never have the opportunity to work with him again.

That evening, we visited the Navy EOD villa in Saigon. Captain Schaible was there also. The two of us discussed the importance of good intelligence information for a while, then he made his pitch. “Smitty, I congratulate you on the job you have done as November Platoon’s intelligence petty
officer. Lieutenant Morrow, Lieutenant Fletcher, and others have also told me of your dedication and expertise. I also know about your letters of commendation from Lieutenant Morrow and John B. of OSA. It’s because of that that I want you to extend your tour here for another six months. You would be working directly for me with the intelligence community gathering specific information for pilot rescue and LDNN targets. Are you interested?”

I was flattered; however, I knew my limitations. “I’m sorry, Captain, I can’t do it right now because I’m mentally and physically exhausted. I’m afraid that, under the circumstances, I’d be of little use to you. However, thanks for giving me the opportunity to serve under you again.” After my confession and explanation, Captain Schaible didn’t mention the matter again.

I was hardly in the mood to attempt explaining my emotions at that time. I knew that I would probably never return to South Vietnam or see my Vietnamese military and civilian friends again. Somehow, I felt our politicians back home were running with a white flag. Sadly, our liberal Congress, cultural elite, intelligentsia, and academe had set the agenda as designed by the North Vietnamese, and we, the military men, were reaping the bitter harvest—we had been sold out. In summary, I felt we were slipping our mooring lines prematurely.

We didn’t depart Tan Son Nhut until the afternoon of December 2, 1971. Mike Platoon, located at Ben Luc, wouldn’t be able to catch a flight out of country until the seventh. They were to be the last SEAL platoon to depart South Vietnam. They had been in-country from September to December of 1971. The platoon members were Lt. Michael S. McCrary, Lt. (jg) Walter F. Merrick, QMC Thomas A. Norton, HM2 Carey (returned to the Strand after one mission), HMC William P. “Doc” Hill, BT1 Lenord J. Van Orden, SFP2 Paul C. Bourne, BM2 Frank
J. Czajkowski, SF3 Randy Kaiser, RM3 Thomas J. Christofer, YN3 John W. Chalus, RMSN Stephen R. Jones, RMSA David R. Hover, RMSN William M. Foley, and ETNSN David W. Johnson.

The first leg of our trip was by a Navy C-118 to Da Nang for a short stop, then on to NAS Cubi Point, Subic Bay, Philippines. Once we checked into the UDT barracks, Senior Chief Bassett and Chief Thompson took Knepper and me to the Chiefs’ club for a San Miguel brew before the club closed at 0100 hours.

The next day was spent visiting our UDT teammates Lieutenant Nelson, Lieutenant Winters, Chief Sick, and others. That afternoon, everyone rendezvoused at the U and I Club in Olongapo and really let our hair down. Bassett and I each bet a five-spot that Little Bear Guano couldn’t eat two baloots—fertilized, half-developed duck embryos in the shells, which had been aged by burying them in a salty solution for a period of months—and keep them down for thirty minutes. Guano arrogantly accepted our challenge. I paid a Filipino three pesos and specifically asked him to get two rotten baloots.

Within a matter of minutes the indigenous fellow delivered the two darkly covered, large duck eggs to me. After I instructed Bear in the Filipino method of eating the baloots, I gave both of them to him. With all eyes watching, Guano carefully opened one egg and properly emptied the juice into his mouth without gagging. Next, he popped the whole black egg in his mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed. I was certain that we had him, but Little Bear somehow swallowed the mess without puking.

Once Guano was done, he said, “I need a little while before I eat the second one.”

I reminded him that we had agreed to his eating both baloots quickly and that his thirty minutes didn’t begin until he had fulfilled our agreement. Guano began looking
a little green around the gills and nodded as he took the last egg from my hand. Unfortunately, when he cracked the remaining egg open, I saw it didn’t contain a developed duck embryo. Not realizing that fact, Guano reinforced the principle of “mind over matter” when he popped the egg into his mouth and started gagging. Then he blew the egg out on our table. Immediately, all of the surrounding UDT/SEALs and Filipinos started yelling accusations and laughing at Guano’s predicament.

Bear somehow retained his composure and declared emphatically, “No sweat, I’ll eat it.” He bit the egg in twain, swallowed it, did the same again, and successfully managed to keep the contents down for the agreed thirty minutes. After we begrudgingly paid up, we added another sobriquet to his handle—Little Bear “Guano” Baloot Breath. Later that night at the barracks, Baloot Breath confessed that he had a terrible time getting the baby duck guts, feathers, and bones of the first baloot down. While he was telling us this, he started gagging. Looks like “mind over matter” wins again, I thought.

Thankfully, the next morning we departed the Philippines and flew to Kadina AFB, Okinawa, where it was thirty-two degrees! There, we delightedly ran into SEAL Team 1’s Kilo Platoon, their platoon chief, Doyle, and Lieutenant Commander Hendrickson, who was commanding officer of SEAL Team 1 from 1970 to 1972. They were returning from Korea after a couple of months of winter and submarine operations with our Korean UDT/SEAL/EOD counterparts.

A few hours later we departed Okinawa and flew to Naval Air Station Atsugi, Japan, for the night. The following evening, December fifth, we departed Japan for Midway, and arrived by 0740 hours the next morning. Several hours later we were on our way to Barbers Point, Hawaii, and arrived there at 1605 hours. Both platoons
and Captain Hendrickson immediately headed for the Enlisted Men’s club.

The club was practically empty and unusually quiet at 1730 hours. However, within a short time and after the first few chin-chins and pitchers of beer, all twenty-eight hoodlums told endless tales of incredible missions deep within the bowels of the VC and NVA’s home turf that were only survived by superhuman strength, intelligence, and uncommon determination and expertise.

By 1800 hours, BMC Leon Rauch and his wife Sue, having received word that we were in town, arrived at the club. Leon and I had operated together as PRU advisers in Kien Giang province in ’69 Now, Leon was serving as a Navy recruiter in Honolulu. The boatswain mate chief petty officer, being a great storyteller, soon overwhelmed all others with his top-secret, cross-the-border experiences of derring-do in Laos.

The following day, December sixth, we were told that our VR-21 flight had been delayed until 1400 hours. That was more than Lieutenant (jg) Kleehammer, Senior Chief Bassett, Knepper, Hayden, “Bad Medicine” Doc Holmes, and Compton could stand. They rented a taxi to the Honolulu International Airport and paid for a commercial flight to San Diego. That left me with “Deacon” Same, Waneous, Eberle, and Baloot Breath as the November Platoon’s remnant.

At 1400 hours we were notified that our VR-21 flight had again been delayed until 2200 hours. By that time the five of us were almost ready to catch a commercial flight ourselves. Finally, after seven days of travel, the remainder of November Platoon, Kilo Platoon, and Captain Hendrickson arrived at North Island NAS, Coronado, California, at 1100 hours on December seventh. I was very thankful to be back to the good ol’ U.S. of A. for a while.

By the first of March 1972, I was enrolled in the twenty-one week Radioman B School at the Naval Training Center, San Diego. The training was long and difficult for me. All of my classmates were E-5 to E-6 and had spent their careers working with shipboard radio and the newer satellite equipment. Fortunately, I did manage to graduate. I was tenth in a class of eleven with a final mark of 84.28, proving that I still held to my hatred of anything with wires. However, I did pass the chief petty officer’s radioman test that following July, justifying my having attended the school, and best of all, I ran into my very good radioman friend John Bagos. He had been assigned to the comm shack in Nha Be, Vietnam, in 1967–68. My life was never the same since.

In August, SEAL Team 1 had received permission from the U.S. Park Service to allow six members of November Platoon to descend the Colorado River by IBS—a seven-man rubber boat twelve feet in length and weighing approximately 290 pounds—from Lee’s Ferry, just below the Utah state line, through the Grand Canyon
to Lake Mead for a total of approximately 225 miles. A UDT-12 group and a SEAL 1 platoon had previously managed to survive the arduous trip down the treacherous river earlier that summer. One of the Park Service’s requirements was that we had to put on football helmets and Kapok life jackets before entering each rapids. Interestingly, one of the earlier SEAL fellows, whose IBS had capsized at the Rock House rapids, was sucked underwater by a huge whirlpool for reportedly over three minutes. His Kapok life jacket eventually brought him back to the surface and probably saved his life.

After a long drive aboard SEAL team’s five-ton truck from San Diego to Lee’s Ferry in northern Arizona, both boat crews started inflating the IBSs with the large hand pumps. Lieutenant (jg) Kleehammer, Eberle, and one other person were in IBS number one, while I, along with a corpsman and another fellow—unfortunately, I have forgotten some of their names—took boat number two. Trung Uy Kleehammer’s IBS blew a main tube because Eberle pumped it to the maximum three psi and did not allow for its expansion due to the rapidly increasing ambient heat. What was surprising was that Eb hated work, especially when the ambient temperature was running about 110 degrees. Fortunately, each IBS had an emergency repair kit that contained two rubber-lined metal disks held together loosely with a wire bolt, nut, and lock washer.

After Eb had finished with the temporary repair job, we finally shoved off into the beautifully clear and deceptively calm river. Trung Uy Kleehammer coxswained one crew, with Eberle in the number-two starboard position as strokeman and the other fellow to port, while the other crew had myself as strokeman, Doc to port, and the third fellow as the coxswain.