counting rounds on us!”
“Well, you’re right there, Six. If the divarty commander is so goddamn interested in seeing where his precious rounds impact, why don’t he come and sit his ass on the 506 one night ‘stead of living in the lap of luxury back there at English!” he said, beginning to bristle.
“Right, Top!”
“I mean, just who the fuck is he to be questioning my commander!” he continued, his anger intensifying.
“Uh… right, Top, but actually we don’t know if he even… It’s just like I said the other night. These fat fucks sit back there in their secure fire base, eating their goddamn steaks and drinking their goddamn booze while snuffie here…”
“Whoa, Top. Let’s not get into another discourse on living conditions and the haves and have-nots, okay?”
He paused, smiled, and said, “Yeah, guess not. Guess we’ve pretty much covered that ground, huh?”
We sat in silence for a while, hearing only the low rushing sound emanating from the company’s radios positioned a short distance away.
“But shit, Six, I know I’m preaching to the choir in your case,” he remarked, picking up the conversation where we’d let it drop moments before. “Hell, you’ve paid your dues, what with this being your third tour and all. And I know you ‘green beanies’ suffered too, far as living conditions were concerned.”
I merely nodded.
“Well, what about it, sir? Was it worse out there with Special Forces than it is here with us?”
“No, not worse. Sometimes, in some ways, it was better. I mean as far as living conditions go.” Then, reflecting on it, I added, “And sometimes, in some ways, it was worse. But mostly, it was just different.”
“Yeah, different. I know what you mean there,” he responded. “At least here we got the whole fucking Cav behind us when we get into something. Whereas you all had what? Twelve men, brave and true, and a campload of gooks with no red leg or nothing else to back you UP.”
“Kind of like that.”
“Where were you anyway, sir? Not here in II Corps? You know they got a team over in Happy Valley.”
“No, not here. First time, back in ’62, there weren’t any ‘twelve men brave and true.” Back then I was a young staff sergeant stationed in Nha Trang, living a hell of a lot better than we’re living out here, Top.”
“Second time I was on the Laotian border, at earth’s end, not far from Khe Sanh.” I smiled, reminiscing. “You know, Top, this place was so isolated, we used to go to Khe Sanh for R&R.”
He grinned and asked, “What was the name of the place?”
“It was called ARO, although it beats the shit out of me why.”
Later that night, as I lay in my piece of Vietnam’s soil, my thoughts drifted back to those early years—so different, so young, so long ago.
8. Early Days Saigon, Vietnam: November 1962
The first of three four-engine C-124 Globe Master transport planes began its lumbering descent into Tan Son Nhut, the international airport located on the outskirts of Saigon, in the country of Vietnam, a country few of us aboard had ever heard of six months before. The descending Globe Masters carried an Army Special Forces element referred to by its planners as “Force 76T.” The seventy-six Green Berets aboard, however, referred to ourselves as the “seventy-six trombones,” which was also a song from the then-currently popular movie, The Music Man. The Force would exercise command and control over all Special Forces operational detachments, or “A” teams, serving in Vietnam, teams that were presently controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency and, in most cases, working with the country’s indigenous mountain, or Montagnard, tribes.
The C-124 taxied along Tan Son Nhut’s tarmac to the military off-load area, then shut down its engines and opened its massive cargo doors. The humid, hot, and sticky influx of air hit us like a sledgehammer. Our Vietnam experience had begun. It would affect each of us differently.
Some would rapidly grow to hate this country and everything about it—the climate, food, culture, deprivation, our mission, and most of all the country’s people. Others would fall in love with everything our colleagues loathed and in so doing develop symptoms of a Far Eastern disease referred to by French Foreign Legionnaires as “Yellow fever,” a love of the Orient in general and Indochina in particular.
We were quartered in an old and beautifully preserved French villa on the outskirts of the city just a hop, skip, and a jump from Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Actually, the officers were quartered in the beautifully preserved villa; the peons, myself included, were quartered in peasant hutches behind the lovely villa.
Our job was to understudy the CIA, which would eventually relinquish to us its control of the Army’s Special Forces in Vietnam. The code name for this transfer of responsibility was Operation Switchback, an operation that would take six months to complete.
Assigned to the command’s operations section, I quickly discovered that our CIA counterparts were very good at what they did. In supporting our field teams, the Central Intelligence Agency’s underlying philosophy was to ask the man on the ground what he needed to do the job and then see that he got it—without subjecting him to a lot of “first sign this in triplicate” hassle.
Most of these supplies were airlifted to outlying teams from our logistical support base in Nha Trang, and, within days of our arrival, that was where many of the “trombones” found themselves. The rest of us remained in Saigon.
Saigon was a beautiful city in the fall of ‘62, one of the most alluring in all of Asia—a pleasant mix of East and West, old and new, traditional and contemporary. I saw quite a bit of Saigon in those next couple of months. With the CIA still running the show, duties were not that taxing in our joint downtown TOC (tactical operations center), and since I didn’t go on shift until four in the afternoon, I had most of the day to wander about exploring the city. And getting off shift at midnight, I had another two hours’ play time before Saigon’s 2:00 A.M. curfew closed the bars.
Meanwhile, the “little war” in the high country continued as our widely scattered twelve-man Special Forces A teams went about enlisting Vietnam’s principal minority, the Montagnard, in the republic’s struggle against the Viet Cong. Many a Montagnard and many a Green Beret were dying in the process. But they were also succeeding in the central highlands at a time when there were few successes to boast about throughout the rest of the country.
With the passage of time the CIA surrendered its control of these teams, and we found ourselves with fewer leisure hours to roam the haunts of Saigon.
9. Nha Trang, Vietnam: February to November 1963
In February, with Switchback nearing its completion, we moved to Nha Trang, consolidating the seventy-six trombones at one location.
As was the case with Saigon, Nha Trang was a far different place in 1963 than would it be in the post-‘65 period, after our ground forces entered the fracas. When we arrived it was little more than a picturesque fishing village astride a sparkling white beach on the South China Sea.
We lived in tents at Long Van Air Base, a couple of miles south of Nha Trang. However, our TOC, in fact, the entire headquarters with the exception of the logistical support center, was located downtown in a former legionnaire’s barracks only a block or so from Marie Kim’s bar, a colorful establishment that in years to come would serve as a gathering place for many a Green Beret migrating to and from his little piece of the war.
But we had little time to frolic in the waters of the South China Sea or lounge about Marie Kim’s bar. Instead, we worked feverishly on OPLAN 1-63, a plan designed to put many of our Special Forces teams in a border surveillance role. Finally, having completed and staffed the plan, we briefed it to everyone and his brother until it received a stamp of approval.
