A Short Story
Early in the morning January 15, 1973 “Weasel” nudged Captain Tyler awake.
“Sir, you’ve got to take this ASAP!” It’s urgent it’s the Group Commander, Colonel Haseman.
“What’s up?”
“No idea Sir, but it’s ‘Old Lion-Six’ himself!”
“Ah, shit this can’t be good!
‘Old Lion Six’ this is ‘Hardcharger Six’, OVER”.
“’Hardcharger Six’, direct order from COMMANDER USAR-V! Cease and Desist. I say again Cease and Desist, get your butts back across the line as best you can. Do not, I say again, Do not under any circumstances engage the enemy. OVER”.
“ROGER ‘Old Lion Six’ pick up at LZ EAGLE?” queried Tyler.
“Negative ‘Hardcharger Six’, you’ll need to find your own way out, can’t send any support of any kind. Peace Accords are pending. Any actions on your part might jeopardize agreement! Complete Stand Down”!
“Ah SHIT! WILCO ‘Old Lion Six’, Keep us in your prayers!”
’Hardcharger Six’, Good luck son and we’re praying for you! ‘Old Lion Six – OUT’”!
First Sergeant Pettis gathered the team around Captain Tyler for a situation report. They weren’t going to get a helo pickup at LZ Eagle. They were going to have to figure out how to get home on their own!
“OK guys, the shit’s hit the fan and unfortunately we’re covered with it!”
“So, Sir, are these ‘shit birds’ just going to leave us out here at the mercy of the NVA?”
“Well, “Gordo”, we’re big boys; we’re just going to have to pull a rabbit out of our ass and walk home.”
“OK “Puma” you and LT Watkins plot us a course to get us back into South Vietnam. Get some security back out there. Remember guys it’s only a short ten or eleven-mile hike. We’ve done more than that before. We’ll take it slow and easy and avoid all possible prying eyes spotting us. I got you into this mess and I swear I’ll get you out of it!
“Puma” and Lieutenant Watkins started working up a way to get them back safely into South Vietnam. They got with the captain and the first sergeant and outlined the best route out from their current location. They would take advantage of their knowledge of the route that they had taken to get here and try to repeat it back to LZ Eagle.
From LZ Eagle they developed a course that would take them down to the Song Bến Hải River. They’d take a day or two and find a crossing point along the river. They’d sit on the crossing until nightfall. That was the easy part. The hard part was that they’d be on half rations for about five or six days.
“One other glitch we’ll have to work out, Sir. We’ll have no idea what the security codes will be when we finally get into South Vietnam. We’ll have to make sure that we contact Quảng Trị and that the ‘good guys’ that find us don’t take us for NVA infiltrators and shoot before asking questions,” stated 1SG Pettis!
“OK “Top” get everyone over here and give them a quick brief. I want everyone to know the plan just in case they have to evade capture on their own. Have ”Doc” collect all the food that we’ve got left. He’ll divide the food among us for the duration. “Weasel”, get Quảng Trị on the horn, explain our situation, and let them know we’ll need pick up on the 20th or the 21st.”
“Guys, it sounds like this war is finally over. We’ve been ordered to stand down. We’re going to have to get out of here on our own, no sweet ride at LZ Eagle. “Doc’s” going to be responsible for rationing our food for the next five or six days. “Puma” is going to give everyone a detailed set of instructions so that you can get back across the Song Bến Hải if we get separated. But that ain’t going to happen!
“OK let’s get moving!”
They repeated their route back to LZ Eagle without a problem. They made their road and stream crossings carefully, maintaining the same unhurried pace they had used heading to their initial objective. There was a tendency to try to push ahead faster. Captain Tyler had to constantly remind his men; stealth was more important than speed for a safe return. On the 18th they reached LZ Eagle, and notified Quảng Trị of their position.
The next day was agonizingly slow. Once again, they left about 1100 hrs. in the heat of the day. The two road crossings took at least an hour, but they made them safely and unobserved. The second road crossing was especially tricky. There was a one-hundred-meter open area before reaching the road. They moved one at a time avoiding truck and wagon traffic along the roadway. The NVA were running patrols between LZ Eagle and the river looking for a report of American infiltrators. Tyler’s crew was being hunted by a battalion of NVA Regulars.
Tyler emphasized that the “Hardchargers” movements had to remain stealthy, slow, and deliberate.
They crossed an area that was heavily bombed out. The vegetation was dense but low to the ground. The going was tediously slow; they were constantly worried about being observed in the open. The heat was oppressive as they crawled on their bellies clinging to every piece of concealment that they could find. The biting insects took pleasure in feasting on their unprotected flesh.
“Puma”, on point, was on a constant watch for snakes in their path. He stopped abruptly, gave the hand signal for halt, and watched snakes slither through the brush near them.
They miraculously crossed the area without being observed. They went into a dry camp for the night in a small tram grove. “Doc” passed out food to everyone and checked their water supply. It looked like rain again.
“Spread out your plastic ‘elephant ears’ and collect as much fresh rainwater as possible,” “Doc” ordered. They posted security but everyone spent a restless night waiting, watching, and praying that their captain and first sergeant knew what the hell they were doing.
Late the following morning they once again began a short 1.8 miles trek to the river. This was going to be one of their toughest days. There were villages along the river and that meant people and dogs! They had to avoid both. If they were spotted the NVA would scoop them up as infiltrators. If the dogs got scent of them, they’d start barking, people would start looking, and possibly spot them. Going was terribly slow in the blistering heat.
As they neared the river, they saw signs of people. The mosquitoes began to attack them with a fury. Their path took them through an area that had been heavily bombed. “Gordo” took the ‘point’, carefully probing the area with his K-Bar knife to avoid any unexploded ordnance that littered the area.
At one point they thought they had been spotted. A woman was coming back from her privy almost stepping on one of the men; either she didn’t see him or pretended that she hadn’t. By nightfall they reached the river’s edge. They found a hiding spot in a dense tram tree grove. Here they could observe both sides of the river as well as the nearby village. They established a defensive position in the grove surveying their surroundings.
They saw an NVA armed patrol boat on the river that moved directly under them. The NVA soldiers didn’t see them, but this added a new wrinkle in their crossing. To make matters even worse one man informed 1SG Pettis that he couldn’t swim! LT Gary Watkins indicated that he too was a non-swimmer
They faced two major issues, first how to cross the swollen river without being seen, and how to cross with two men who were non-swimmers. The river was deep and the fast current would make swimming across the stream difficult for even a strong swimmer. The recent heavy rains from the typhoon washed large amounts of debris into the swollen stream, even a proficient swimmer would be dodging floating logs and tree limbs in the water.
One of the Vietnamese trackers went downriver to scout out the village. He spotted a damaged sampan along the riverbank. They could drag the boat up to their position, fill It with brush and float it across the river, and make themselves look like just a bunch of floating brush.
Pettis noticed that the patrol boat would stop at the village and take a twenty or thirty-minute break before making another trip upriver and then return. He also noted that the crew took a longer break, possibly for lunch around the beginning of ‘pot time’. He realized that from the time they passed their position it took them about two hours to return. They were able to develop a timeline for their crossing and a timeline to bring the damaged sampan up to their position.
Around pot-time the village went silent. The NVA patrol boat was docked at the village pier. “Puma,” the Vietnamese soldier and “Gordo” crept along the riverbank and found the damaged sampan. It was heavy but they pushed and pulled it up stream to their hiding spot. They positioned it so that it would be unnoticed from other sampans or the patrol boat. It looked just like it had been before, an unwanted derelict.
Between the passings of the patrol boat, they carried brush down to the sampan and filled it with debris. It resembled the floating logs and limbs that had been washed into the river by the recent torrential rains. “Weasel” used some antenna cable to fashion hand holds for the non-swimmers. He looped the wire around the heaviest pieces of debris and wrapped the ‘handles’ with some torn pieces of cloth. Now they waited, watched, and prayed!
Darkness fell quickly in this rural part of Vietnam. After dark not a sound could be heard coming from the village. There were only a few flickering lights that broke the inkiness of the night. Occasionally a dog would bark in the distance; other dogs would take up the call. It was time!
One by one they quietly slipped from their perch and entered the muddy river. The current wasn’t that strong where they entered the water. There was a slight bend in the waterway and as a result the current pulled the floating debris towards the southern shore.
They pushed themselves into the current. The two non-swimmers assumed their position on each side of the sampan and held tightly onto “Weasel” safety grips. Everyone covered and concealed themselves. When ready, Captain Tyler gave the sampan a mighty shove into the Song Bến Hải and grabbed hold of the stern.
Mid-stream a large broken tree limb struck the sampan along the upriver side and LT Watkins lost his grip. “Gordo” grabbed the back of his shirt and managed to pull him back to the safety before the current sucked him under the boat.
They all kicked and used their hands to silently guide the boat slowly across the river.
First Sergeant Pettis was at the bow. He was the first to feel the soft mud of the opposite bank. He and “Gordo” managed to hold tight to the shore. “Gordo” held Watkins and got him safely onto the bank as the men got out of the water, retrieved their equipment, and crept carefully up the muddy bank. Captain Tyler was the last man out of the muddy river and the last American to leave North Vietnam.
“Thank You Lord – You’ve answered our prayers!” he silently said to himself as they congratulated themselves on their escape from North Vietnam.
“Well,” said Sergeant Pettis. “Don’t get too damn cocky! Now we‘ve got our next big problem. It’s about a mile out of here to the road that runs along the DMZ! Now we’ve got to figure out how not to get shot by our own guys and hope that we haven’t wandered into one of our own mine fields!”
“”Top”, I’ve got an idea,” said “Weasel”.
“OK Wasfaret,” let’s hear it!”
“I’m going to contact Quảng Trị and let them know about where we are. On their maps they should be able to identify the village and the bend in the river so they’ll know about where we are at and where we should hit the road. Once we get to the road let’s just build a bonfire along the road and I’ll get the radio rigged so we can blast AFVN radio. Hopefully, they’ll see our fire, hear our radio, and pick us up. What’d you think? Quảng Trị should be able to tell them about where we are so they’ll be looking for us and the fire should attract them.”
“OK “Weasel,” let me run that by the ol ’man and see what he’s got to say.”
Captain Tyler listened to the plan and figured it was about as good an idea as they could come up with. He asked “Weasel” to find out about how long it was going to take the guys from Quảng Trị to get to their position. He didn’t want to light the fire and have to go searching for more firewood in the middle of the night.
Specialist Wasfaret contacted Quảng Trị and they told them that they’d have to sit tight until about midnight and that one of their roving patrols should pick them up and bring them back to the safety of Quảng Trị. They reported that things were deathly quiet tonight all along the line. Evidently the NVA had gotten the same word that the Americans had received – ‘Stand Down – Peace Was At Hand’!
“Gordo” led the way and carefully probed the ground with his K-Bar trying to locate any potential mines or boobytraps. By 2300 hrs. they found the road and set up their perimeter and collected firewood along the side of the road.
About 2345 hrs. 1SG Pettis lit the bonfire. “Weasel” fired up the radio and played American music on AFVN as loud as he could, and they waited for their final pickup. To insure that they could be identified as Americans they took off their fatigue jackets and undershirts so that their ‘white’ bellies would assist in their identification. They sat around the fire and of course one of the hungry men remarked that somebody should have brought some hot dogs and marshmallows.
About half an hour later, from the darkness, they heard a voice amplified by a portable loudspeaker call out in English and then in Vietnamese; “HALT – DON’T ANYONE MOVE – HANDS IN THE AIR AND DROP ALL OF YOUR WEAPONS!” All of the sudden a floodlight lit up the area and they could see a group of armed soldiers in the shadows. “CAPTAIN PAUL TYLER FRONT AND CENTER!” came a loud voice that cut through the darkness.
With that Captain Tyler, hands raised, approached the voice in the night. He was temporarily blinded by a high beam flashlight. “Are you Captain Tyler?” the voice asked.
“Yep, that’s me, and these are my men.”
“Sir, I’m going to have to treat all of you like you’re POWs. Have all of your men place their hands behind their backs and my men will tag and tie them and bring them back into the truck, Sir, you understand that we have to do this, and we’ll release everyone as soon as we get back into Quảng Trị and can properly identify all of you.”
“Sergeant, I fully understand your position. Let my guys put their shirts back on, the bugs are terrible out here! Just make sure that you retrieve all of our equipment. I’d hate to do a report of survey and blame your guys for any of our lost gear.”
“Gotcha Sir, and for God sake welcome home. This is going to be one hell of an after-action report!”
Tyler’s men were tied and tagged and carefully loaded into the waiting deuce-and-a-half and driven back to Quảng Trị. Captain Johnston was there to greet them and identified each of them as they got out of the vehicle. They were quickly released and taken down into the headquarters bunker and fed a wonderful meal. They ate their fill and the guys started giving them as much beer as they wanted.
Captain Johnston contacted headquarters in Da Nang and gave them the good news, which was promptly relayed to Saigon and the 525th MI Group Headquarters.
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The Advisor Series:
“The Senior Army Instructor” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0GSXJ2ZHC)
“The Advisor, Kien Bing, South Vietnam, 1969-1970. A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B09L4X5NQ3)
“The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor, Kien Song Province 1970-1971; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0BHL2XCX5)
“The Hardchargers,” Vietnam 1972-1973; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0C7SPR1JY)
“The Tuscarora Trail” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0D3QY2GM6)
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www.ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com. Until next Friday, Have a good week.
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