Green Berets in Vietnam
My father served in Vietnam as a Green Beret and always had some very interesting stories. A close friend of his from the military recently started trying his hand at ebooks on Amazon and, as neither of them are especially internet savy, they asked for my help promoting it. Hopefully I don't seem like a cheap traveling salesmen spamming this board, I just thought that folks who were interested in history might enjoy this little excerpt from that book, pasted below...
The ebook is apparently called "BRANCHING OUT: How I went from Green Beret to Marine Corps Officer"
Since clouds sometimes covered the LZ in the mountains of Laos, we had to sit around in suspense, waiting for approval as they had to ensure the skies would be clear enough for the helicopters to drop us off. Anxiously, we awaited the code word “cherry tree”, looking over at Major Halk for approval. Halk was a 42 year old, former Hungarian freedom fighter that had fled across the Hungarian border to safety when things escalated with the occupying Soviets. When he immigrated to America, Halk started out as an enlisted man in the Army and eventually became an officer.
Standing out by the shack, I did one last communications check on the radio to make sure everything was in working order. This became the routine that we would all get used to before going out into the field. With a strong sense of anticipation of what was to come, everyone reacted differently. Some people lay down and slept in morning sun, knowing that they might not get the chance to sleep much when they were out in the field. A young fellow named Bobby was our team leader or ‘1-0’. While Bobby was smart and capable, right before every mission, he would get nauseous and go out behind the radio shack to dry heave. (None of us had much food in our stomachs before going out into the field.) We couldn’t blame him.
After what seemed like an eternity, Major Halk emerged from the radio shack, looked at the helicopter pilot, and quietly spoke in his thick accent saying, “Put dem in the boosh.”
“Cherry tree!” Bobby shouted.
We all climbed into the helicopters, Americans in one chopper and Montagnards on the other. My heavy pack pulled my body back onto the bench seat inside the Huey with the wind swirling all around me. Every Vietnam veteran knows that loud sound inside the chopper: ‘WAP-WAP-WAP-WAP’. After a nail biting, 40 minute ride across the border into Laos, the pilot motioned to us.
“That’s it down there!” he shouted, pointing out the window.
We never actually touched down in the chopper for fear of hidden land mines in the area. While one of us might get blown up hopping off, they certainly didn’t want to loose an entire chopper full of people. Jumping about 5 feet onto the ground below, I put my feet together and hit hard with my 120 pound pack on my back. I slowly stood up and we moved in towards the tree line, entering the green, double-canopy jungle underbrush. Inside, there was only silence. We always sat and waited for 10 minutes, listening intently for any hint of the enemy. If we heard nothing, we would then begin walking.
Laos was less like a tropical rainforest and more like a temperate forest. The mountainous area that we were in sat at an elevation of about 5,000 feet and there was always an unsettling stillness under the tree cover. We heard neither insects nor birds. Perhaps recent fire fights in the area had caused all the animals to flee? The only natural sound we heard while running recon was the occasional barking deer late in the evenings. Laos had an indigenous species of deer that made a distinctive and peculiar barking sound at night.
The pace during the day was grueling as we slowly walked uphill, then down again, struggling to breathe at the higher elevation with all that weight on our backs. My head was always moving, scanning from left to right, then from right to left, looking for any sign of movement in the trees and the overgrown plants. Sometimes, we couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of us. We were all trained us to walk at least 15 feet apart, single file. The idea was that the blast radius of a grenade would only be so big, not to mention the spray of machine gun fire and if we were spaced further apart, we would all have a better chance of surviving if we made contact with the enemy. Typically, these missions weren’t scheduled to last more than four days, assuming we didn’t make contact of course.
By the time we finally began to lose light, the temperature would start to drop. Being soaked in sweat meant that I spent most of the night shivering, even though it was never cooler than 40 degrees Fahrenheit after the sun went down. Once it was dark, we would all crawl forward about 60 feet on our hands and knees, just in case someone had seen us when we last stopped. I got on the radio and gave our position to Covey Rider; a Cessna that flew overhead constantly and acted as a radio relay plane. I did this every time we stopped for the night to ensure that, if anything happened to us, at least they would have our last known position. For dinner, we all ate plastic packets filled with rice and fish heads to offer a little protein. Since we weren’t in the Army’s regular supply chain, we didn’t eat regular food. We also didn’t want to go into enemy territory smelling like Americans either. To this day, I still hate the taste of rice. Worse yet, we all took pills to ensure that none of us would have a bowel movement while we were out in the field. I suppose they didn’t want us to leave any trace our presence behind.
That night, as always, we slept in shifts of four hours with one American standing watch at all times. I took the first shift and as usual, I was plenty tired. I always slept like a baby after an exhausting day hiking up those mountain foothills. Eventually though, I was awoken by my teammate to take the next watch. Sitting with my back against a tree and my hand on my weapon, all was quiet.
Then, at one point in the night, I saw an eerie light shining over the tops of the trees in the double canopy. All but certain that the glow of this light had not been there before, I grew worried. The N.V.A. must have been shining lights on us!
I nudged my teammate on the shoulder, quietly waking him from his slumber, pointing to the glow on the tops of the trees.
“They’re using searchlights.” I whispered.
He looked up.
“That’s the moon, you jerk!" he whispered back.
“Really?”
“Yes!” he said, rolling his eyes at me.
I guess being a city boy meant that I didn’t fully realize just how bright a full moon could look in a dark jungle with no light pollution. I finished the rest of my shift, awake, without incident.
Early the next morning, we began walking again and I resumed my scanning, moving my head from left to right, then right to left. As usual, we stopped for an occasional break to rest our legs and listen for the sound of our enemy. All was silent that morning.
By late afternoon though, I could tell Bobby was getting a bad feeling and he gave us a hand signal to stop well before our scheduled break. Somewhere, beyond the lush trees and underbrush in front of us, we heard the sound of an enormous invisible force moving towards us. With the crackling of dried leaves and sticks underfoot, it was clear that dozens of N.V.A. were closing in on us. The sounds came not only from in front of us but from the left of us as well. As we all got up to begin moving, I called the Covey Rider on the radio, leaving a coded message to indicate that someone was trailing us. We moved quickly through the underbrush, trying to evade the force that was tracking us. All the while, the Montagnards glanced anxiously over their shoulders, looking for any sign of the enemy. Finally, Bobby gave the signal for us to stop again so we could listen for them.
We stood silently again, hearing the same sound of the massive force slowly closing in. Not only that but we heard barking off in the distance. This time, we knew that it wasn’t the barking deer but the uncanny sound of the bloodhounds they were using to track us. I pulled out a small bottle of CS gas powder and sprinkled it on the ground before covering it with a few dead leaves. This was a common tactic we used to ensure that when the dogs got a whiff of the powder, they’d be thrown off our trail permanently. Then I stood up and we started moving again.
When dusk came, we stopped, barely able to see anything in the dim twilight. We sat in a 360-degree formation with each person facing in a different direction. I retrieved two Claymore mines from my pack, each about the size of a hard cover book. Every individual Claymore had 1,000 tiny ball bearings imbedded in the plastic explosives. The blast would essentially function like the spray of a giant shotgun. I set up one Claymore far in front of us and one behind us as I and another team member took the charging handles, attached to the Claymore by a long cord. We didn’t really think that the N.V.A. would try to engage us in the dark at this hour but we knew they would be coming for us in the morning. When my turn came to sleep, I immediately closed my eyes and dozed off. It was quickly becoming clear that I would need to be well rested by the time the sun started coming up.
When it came time for me to stand watch, along with one of my fellow Green Berets, all was quiet. Then suddenly something came through the trees and landed in front of us with an audible ‘thud’. I flinched, convinced it was an enemy grenade... but no explosion followed. There was only silence. A few seconds later, another thud came down the hill, then another. They were just rocks. Hearing movement above us in the trees, it was obvious that the N.V.A. were throwing rocks at us, hoping we would open fire and reveal our position in the dark of night. We were all trained to resist the urge to open fire at night, knowing that the flash would provide a clear target. The N.V.A. must have known, or at least strongly suspected, that we were there.
We had maps of the area but it wasn’t uncommon to find flaws on them. I scanned for the nearest LZ, knowing if we couldn’t break contact, we would need to flee to there as soon as possible. As the hint of daylight began to approach with the dim glow of impending sunlight out on the horizon, Bobby went out to scout the landscape in front of us. We were sure to make contact in just a few hours and we’d need to know if our map was correct. As it turned out, directly in front of us, there were no gentle, rolling hills. Instead, there was a steep, treacherous cliff. We were sitting on a giant U-shaped ridge. Bobby grimaced, pointing to the map then using his arm to signal to us. He held his arm outstretched horizontally and then bent his wrist down sharply on the map. He looked us in the eyes and silently mouthed the words “we’re f%*cked".
I listened intently to the radio for any sign of Covey Rider overhead. There was only static. Little did we know, Covey Rider had broken down on the runway that morning and wasn’t even in the air. No one was up there. Bobby turned to address us in a hushed whisper.
“They’ll be coming from up there.” he said pointing out in front of us. “When you see them, blow the Claymores and open fire.”
We watched intently. The sunrise was upon us now and it was bright enough to make out the details of leaves and tree trunks but we saw no soldiers yet.
Then, sure enough, there must have been 40 uniformed N.V.A. that came up over that hill. We squeezed the metal charging handles. Boom! The Claymores detonated in a puff of fire, hurling dust and debris into the air as the Vietnamese soldiers in front of us were flung back. We pulled the triggers of our M4 Carbines, firing at the enemy but we couldn’t see much as the cloud of dirt and dust spread over us. The screams of wounded N.V.A. soldiers echoed in the background as we moved towards the edge of the ridge. As the trees disappeared, we saw the clearing ahead and the 25 foot drop in front of us. A rocky, dry waterfall seemed to offer a slight incline. If we had time, maybe we could have even climbed down? As my fellow soldiers fired magazine after magazine, quickly reloading each time, my damn fear of heights set in again.
“Jump!” Bobby shouted, motioning for me to go on ahead.
I had no choice. Tucking my arms in, I stepped off the cliff, free falling for a moment, then feeling my pack skid against the jagged rocks behind me. I touched down at the bottom like a baseball player sliding into home plate. Quickly standing up, the sound of machine gun fire crackling above, I realized that I still had full use of both my legs.
http://www.amazon.com/Branching-Out-Green-Marine-Officer-ebook/dp/B01CM17JDA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1457294597&sr=1-1&keywords=branching+out%3A+how+I+went+from+Green+Beret+to+Marine+Corps+Officer