Run Run Cricket Run, page 24
“Yes sir, it is. Do I have an X-Ray?”
“Lt. Boun Tang has been waiting for you to get back. I took the liberty of sending him to the briefing room.”
“Thank you, sir.” Thatcher saluted and departed.
Thatcher met Lt. Boun Tang in the briefing room. The lieutenant, like all of the X-rays, was short with pearly white teeth and black hair. Unlike the others, he didn’t smile much, but was always friendly. After a very short briefing and receiving the launch code for the day, the two walked to the flight line and started the preflight. Minutes later, they lifted off and headed east.
Thatcher contacted the airborne command post. “Hillsborough, Nail 79 outbound to Sector III.”
“Roger that Nail 79. Let us know what you need. We’ll have some F-4s available in about 20 minutes.”
“That’s great. Any CBU?”
“Affirmative. CBU 29.”
“Fantastic. I should be on station in 20 minutes.”
“Roger that.”
Thatcher reverted to intercom and continued his climb to 5,200 feet.
“Boun Tang, have you been on any of the support missions since I left?”
“No. Maj. Khampat and Lt. Tonsonnai have been flying. They say Red Man got attacked with mortars first night at Tchepone. Started back next morning. Made it to mountain. Had air cover most of way but that night very bad. Lose many men. Next morning airplane trying to kill bad guys hit Red Man’s position by mistake, kill many men.”
Most Nails didn’t work with troops, but all were trained back in America to provide close air support. This friendly fire incident directed by a Nail was disgusting. Lt. Boun Tang pronounced a word Thatcher could not mimic, but it sounded angry. Thatcher turned his attention to the radio, having gained enough altitude to permit reception.
“Red Man, this is Nail 79, over.”
“Nail 79, this is Red Man. Thank God. When can you get here?”
“Twenty minutes out.”
Red Man apparently had apparently made it to Tchepone, the former town, but was driven back almost to the starting point the following day and was perched not far from where he started on a meadow near the top of one of the ubiquitous karst formations embracing the trail on both sides. He recited some coordinates which Thatcher found easily after reaching the area. He increased his altitude to avoid drawing attention to the friendlies on the ground, but it was unnecessary. The Pathet Lao or North Vietnamese already knew where Red Man was.
Red Man spoke again in a very strained voice. “We’ve been hammered all night long by mortars. I’ve lost half my men.” He didn’t say how many were killed by friendly fire the previous day directed by the young Nail, and Thatcher didn’t ask. Red Man’s radio operator was killed, and the main radio was shot off the operator’s back. Red Man was using a handheld radio. Thatcher’s anger at the Nail who misdirected the airstrike was mixed with overwhelming sorrow at the devastation he saw below him.
Red Man and his troops came into sight, perched at the high side of a meadow at the top of a karst peak surrounded by jungle. On the eastern side of the wide grassy meadow, the side next to the trail, the rocky terrain dropped off very steeply and provided a fairly good defense against a ground attack from the trail itself. The western side was a gently sloping downhill meadow, about 600 yards in length, gradually changing into jungle. It was the only path home to western Laos and safety. On left and right sides of the scoop-shaped meadow, were walls of vertical karst formations, not suitable for moving troops, enemy or friendly. The geography meant the ground troops were safe from attack both from the trail and from the sides. Unfortunately, the only way home was downhill, directly into the enemy mortar position in the trees, which was more than likely supported by infantry in sizeable numbers.
The CIA-supported troops on the trail side of the meadow were in a dug-in infantry position, a large circle of foxholes easily visible from the air. Black spots of earth dotted the circle, and it was obvious the enemy forces had worked hard on them the night before with mortars. Bodies were scattered around the site; a few dozen were in clear view with more probably in the trees.
“What do you need, Red Man?” Thatcher’s mood had changed from anger to an overwhelming sense of compassion as he contemplated the possible actions that might save the remnant below him.
Red Man answered, his voice raspy and tinged with a sense of helplessness. “There’s at least one 82mm mortar down the slope to the west of us in the trees, maybe more. I don’t know how far down. They move up close after dark and hammer us. They’re killing us. Most of my survivors are wounded. We won’t make it through another night with them blocking us. We need to go over or through them to get back home.”
Thatcher had been flying over the area downhill from the troops and 500 feet above the ground, but he couldn’t see through the canopy of trees at the lower end. Like most jungle in Southeast Asia, it was ‘triple canopy’, which meant vegetation with multiple layers even sunlight couldn’t penetrate.
“Consider them gone Red Man. God Bless.” Thatcher startled himself. He had never invoked the name of the Lord in combat before, but the visible evidence of the hell that was the current home of Red Man overwhelmed him. Much of his war was impersonal: trucks on the trail, guns in the trees, storage depots. This was a different scenario. This was personal. Thatcher had met Red Man personally at the meeting in Laos, shook his hand, shared a few beers, told a few war stories. Thatcher was emotional, but he knew he needed to remain in control. So, he suppressed his emotions and did what he had to do.
“Hillsborough, Nail 79. Troops in Contact! I need that CBU 29 and fast.”
“Roger, Nail 79. Your F-4s are a few minutes away.”
As a command-and-control system, Hillsborough and Moonbeam were well designed and operated efficiently, as Thatcher once again discovered. Thatcher never knew the people behind the radios, but they had earned his respect. In his year of combat, they never failed him. In his later years, he would regret not having met any of them.
While Thatcher waited, he spoke with Red Man again, if for no other reason than to bolster his spirits. “Red Man, it should be raining in a few minutes.” Since it was a clear day, Thatcher’s meaning was obvious.
“Thanks, Nail. I’ve sent several patrols down there to locate the mortar position, but they’ve all been wiped out. We lost our mortars two days ago. All we have are rifles and a few .50 cals.”
“Well, when we’re finished, you should be able to walk home on the bodies. I need you to tell me when you hear noise indicating a hit on the mortar rounds.”
“Roger that, Nail.”
As he finished, the Phantoms checked in.
“Nail 79, this is Denver 44 flight, flight of two F-4s with CBU 29. We have you in sight, O-2 circling left over the karst peak. We’ll be orbiting above you until you’re ready.”
“Roger, Denver. The scorched earth right under me is home to a bunch of good guys who have been hammered all night. That is sacred ground. Do not come anywhere close to it. Below them and to the west is a U-shaped valley covered in jungle. Do you have it?”
“Affirmative, Nail.”
“Okay, I’m going to locate the bad guys in that jungle and put in two smokes. Your job is to kill everything between the marks.”
“Roger.”
Thatcher told Lt. Boun Tang to keep his eyes open and dove for the trees on the V-shaped slope below Red Man. He made the first pass perpendicular to the valley a few hundred meters down the slope and 100 feet above the trees. The triple canopy jungle was as effective a screen as could be imagined, and he saw and heard nothing.
Thatcher used the excess airspeed from his first dive to climb up the opposite side of the V-shaped funnel. At the top of his climb, in a near stall, he wheeled the O-2 around, pivoting on one wing. Then, he swooped down in the opposite direction a few hundred feet farther down the slope from the first pass. Again, nothing.
On the third pass he was rewarded with what he was been looking for—a series of bursts that sounded like popcorn popping. Machine gun fire! Where there were machine guns, there must be mortars. He firewalled the throttles, pulled the aircraft quickly wings level, clawed for altitude, and armed his rockets as he climbed. At the top of his climb, with airspeed near a stall, he kicked left rudder, dropped the nose and reversed course. As he rolled wings level and nose down, he fired two rockets, 100 meters apart, at the pollution below him and then headed back toward the troops flying at tree-top level, staying as low as possible to give the jets room to maneuver. His rockets produced two distinct white plumes puffing up from the trees.
“Okay, Denver. Between the marks.”
“Roger that Nail. One’s in.”
Denver 44 Alpha, the lead F-4, rolled upside down and then rolled out 45 degrees nose low. Seconds later, Denver 44 Bravo followed suit. Thatcher never tired of watching the superb airmanship of American pilots from his vantage point as a strike commander. He had been in love with a dancer once and he often imagined himself as a kind of choreographer. This was a great ballet, although a deadly one. The finale of the 1812 Overture was thundering in the back of his mind as he conducted the F-4 Phantom Philharmonic. Within seconds, the F-4s, one after the other, rolled out wings level 500 feet above the ground and saturated the entire jungle between the parallel ridges with their deadly calling cards in the first of a series of passes. They pulled up hard and left and circled around for the next pass. The hundreds of sparkles each CBU bomblet created as it exploded looked like a field of stars in the dark green jungle below.
CBU didn’t cause as much noise as conventional bombs; they sounded more like firecrackers. Thatcher knew from being shot at just a few moments before that the CBU must have hit something, but he was looking for more noise, lots of noise, but Red Man heard nothing but the pops of the CBU.
“OK, Denver. Good work. Right on target. I know you got some troops, but I want the mortars. Let’s move down the slope a little.” He fired two more rockets, one after the other 300 meters farther down the slope. Again, the F-4s were right on target, and once again, Red Man reported nothing but the CBU pops.
On the third pass, still lower down the slope, Red Man began screaming over the radio. “You got him Nail! Their mortar rounds are cooking off like popcorn!” Thatcher found what he was looking for, and as if to confirm, every time Red Man pressed his mic button, Thatcher could hear the troops below shouting, ecstatic after a night of hell. The bad guys, Pathet Lao, or maybe even NVA, apparently anticipated a reaction and had moved well away from the friendlies on the ground. That’s why it took three passes to find them.
“Denver flight, you got the mortars and the ammunition. Our troops below are shouting and waving to us. Drop your remaining load a little farther down to give them a clear path home. Then make a low pass over the troops and give them a farewell air show.”
“Roger that Nail.”
The F-4s dropped the remaining CBU with no more appreciable secondary explosions and departed after a tree-top, vertical, after-burning climb.
Shit Hot, Ted thought. In the midst of all this crap, there is some glimmer of justice, some hope that maybe the bad guys don’t always win.
“How about that, Boun Tang?”
Lt. Boun Tang didn’t answer. Thatcher looked over at the right-hand seat for the first time since the battle was joined. Lt. Boun Tang, his eyes wide open and filled with fear, were looking at a bullet hole in the window just inches behind Thatcher’s head. The bullet, probably a .51 caliber, apparently came in through the rear right hand window of the O-2 leaving a very neat hole three quarters of an inch in diameter and exiting through the top of the cockpit over Thatcher’s head.
The two comrades looked at each other, neither speaking. Thatcher would live with the picture—and many more like it, for the rest of his life: pictures of people, men—and women—enveloped in orange swirls of napalm; squadron mates blown out of cockpits; trucks with people inside being vaporized by Mark 82s; human beings on the ground being punctured by stainless steel ball bearings from cluster bombs. If the North Vietnamese were like the Nazis in WWII, sympathy would have been out of the question; but these weren’t Nazis, they were Vietnamese trying to reunite their country. Their enemy was a different race of people from a nation halfway around the world who had arbitrarily cut their nation half and invented a government to their liking. On the ground, the few surviving North Vietnamese, all wounded, were picking up their dead, including their unit commander, Sergeant Ca, who, from his 14th birthday, had spent his entire life at war. He had been promoted from an anti-aircraft battery commander to an artillery company with over 100 men. He was a father to a son he had never seen, and a husband to a wife who would join the throngs of North Vietnamese widows who had almost forgotten what their husbands looked like. American would suffer 58,862 deaths in the war; the North Vietnamese would experience over 1,000,000 but no one could really count the cost of the Viet Nam war.
27
Farewell
The Air Force has a long-standing tradition called a Dining In, a rite of passage at which significant events are celebrated, awards are distributed to worthy recipients, and much alcohol is consumed in the assumption that anyone getting inebriated with another airman must, by definition, be solidifying the bands of the brotherhood for which they had pledged their lives and sacred honor. The 23rd TASS upheld this tradition once a month, not only to bid farewell to those leaving, but to welcome their replacements. Col Melendez called the December Dining In to order on December 29th, 1970, at 1800 hours at the NKP Officers’ Club. This Dining In was both a celebration and a memorial. The event was a celebration of life, first and foremost, but also a memorial to those who did not survive to celebrate.
As the northern-most FACs in the Viet Nam War, the graduating Nails faced death many times, flying an average of 200 missions over the course of the year they served. From their very first mission, they faced a continuous escalation of gunfire from the largest caliber of anti-aircraft guns in the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. They were also witnessing what appeared to be the beginning to the end of the war.
Dramatic events in the past year? One could write a book. Nails watched as a North Vietnamese MiG shot down a Jolly Green helicopter on a rescue mission in their own playground. They heard briefings every day on the escalation in Viet Cong victories in South Viet Nam. They watched the news as Americans, including Viet Nam veterans, were escalating their criticism of the war. So, they were leaving their brothers behind with mixed emotions. At one end of the emotional scale was a sense of relief that they still were alive; at the other end was a sense of profound sorrow at the death of many of their friends, both Nails and others with whom they fought their battles. Perhaps, somewhere in between, was the nagging thought that those to whom they were bidding farewell might not have the opportunity to do the same when their tour ended. Pilots were still dying all over Southeast Asia as were Marines and Army troops on the ground. No one wanted to be the last man to die in a war that, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing’.
Each of the departing Nails at The Dining In spoke in turn and there was no censorship of any kind. At the end of the ceremony, they were each presented with the coveted Brass Balls Award. This cherished award, a red, white, and blue ribbon consisted of two small brass balls and would hang next to their other medals when they returned home. And they would have a lot of medals.
The first after dinner speaker and the presenter of the awards was the Squadron Commander, Col. Melendez. His avuncular manner and demonstration of courage in flying as many missions as his schedule allowed had endeared him to the Nails.
“Gentlemen, we are gathered here tonight to celebrate our victories but to also remember with sadness those who are not here to celebrate with us, those who perished in the service of their country. We have all witnessed the acceleration of enemy activity, the continued drawdown of our military presence in South Viet Nam, and the turmoil in our nation back home. Many of these protests are being led by Viet Nam veterans, as you all know, and the civil unrest is becoming more and more pronounced. I have no crystal ball, but I suspect we will see a conclusion of this military activity in the foreseeable future. In fact, there is a dramatic operation intended to start our withdrawal in the near future, one code named Lam Son 719 awaiting those of us who remain. It will start with a South Vietnamese tank invasion across the DMZ at Tchepone in January.”
“Ted Thatcher, who is leaving us tonight, represented us in the planning session in Laos. You will be briefed on the operation soon. Ted was also involved in providing air cover for a CIA-led infantry probe from a safe area down Route 9 to Tchepone. It was a disaster. The NVA just waited for nightfall and wiped out half the force. Ted and I think this may signal the end of the war, but only time will tell.
To those departing our band of brothers tonight, my thanks for your devotion to duty and your courage in carrying out your mission assignments with aggressiveness and skill. You have served your country well. This event is an opportunity for your remaining comrades to honor you as they will be honored by their replacements. There is no doubt the engagement here by our nation will be debated for years after it ends, but I say to each of you honored here tonight, you have done your duty. I salute you. Return to your families and your new assignments and never doubt your actions were honorable. It’s a tradition for each departing Nail to say whatever he wants, with no censorship, so let’s begin.”
The Commander then introduced each of the departing Nails in turn with a few remarks about their more notable achievements. There were six departing Nails, each of whom made remarks, some humorous, some profane. Each then had the Brass Balls Award pinned to his black party suit, the one with the red Laotian Flag patch on the left pocket and the American flag patch sewn on the right. According to tradition, each was honor-bound to chug down a mug of beer. If the honoree was unable to get the entire mug down, tradition also required him to empty it ceremoniously on his own head. The first five Nails made comments, mostly humorous, some profane, but all received warm rounds of applause. Some got the mug all the way down, others didn’t even try.
