Sea Stories

Sea Story II

       In September of 1969 in a remote town in the Mekong Delta called Kien Hung, I was a Navy lieutenant in the process of relieving LT Jim Gautier as Senior Advisor to the South Vietnamese Navy’s River Assault and Interdiction Division 72 (RAID 72, for short).  Jim’s time in Vietnam was up and he was going home.  His twenty-one boats were moored side-by-side along the bank of a narrow stream which fed a larger river, the Song Cai Lon, running 20 miles northwest to the sea.               

         The river boats were of various types, most converted from 50 foot long World War II Mike 6 landing craft.  There were monitors armed with a 40 mm Bofors gun in a turret, 20 mm gun mounts, 50 Cal machine guns, and an 81 mm mortar.  There were heavy armored troop carriers, speedy assault support patrol boats, and a command and control boat.  I rode in the latter boat, which featured 20 mm gun turrets, 50 cal machine guns, and a great deal of communications equipment.  The U.S. Navy had operated these boats as the Mobile Riverine Force, or, as U. S. Army General Abrams called them, the “Great Green Fleet.”  Now, the boats were a part of the Republic of Vietnam Navy manned by Vietnamese sailors, who were trained and advised by experienced American Navy personnel.

        Kien Hung was the headquarters of local regional forces and popular forces of the South Vietnamese military.  Those soldiers were like a local militia made up of people living in the area, who were armed and trained by the government to defend their region.  The “Ruff Puffs,” as they were called, were advised by a small group of U.S. Army advisors, who lived in a small “hooch,” or tin-roofed house. 

        While Jim was in the process of turning over his responsibilities to me, we stayed with the Army advisors in their hooch, which had some conveniences of home like a refrigerator stocked with beer and a ping pong table.  Local women cleaned the place and prepared some meals.

        One of the women had a ten year-old son, Tran, who hobbled around the hooch on crutches.  During a Viet Cong mortar attack on the village months earlier, a hot fragment of a mortar round had severed the tendons in the back of one of his knees.  Scar tissue behind the knee had shrunk, permanently freezing the leg at a 90 degree angle. Tran was a friendly smiling young man, who did all in his limited power to be helpful to the Army personnel.  He became sort of a mascot to the small group of five soldiers.  He probably reminded some of the older soldiers of their children at home in America.

        The soldiers’ medic had done everything possible at the time of Tran’s injury to minimize the handicap, but orthopedic surgery would be necessary to restore function to the leg.  The senior advisor and the medic had communicated the boy’s condition to higher authorities and arrangements had been made for U.S. Army surgeons in Saigon to repair the leg.  However, consent of the parents was required.

         The parents would not consent unless they could be with their son to Saigon during the surgery and recovery period.  The advisors therefore arranged for the whole family to be lifted by helicopter to Saigon.  However, when the day came, the parents backed out, afraid to ride on a helicopter.  The boy, doomed to be a cripple for life, seemed, nevertheless, to be in good spirits.

         Jim and I suggested that the family might be able to ride north in one of the Vietnamese Navy boats, at least as far as Long Xuyen, but there seemed to be little interest on the part of the family.  Fatalism was endemic in the area.  The people there had been victims of both sides during the decades of war.

          Tran had a good command of English because of his association with the advisors, so he translated for his friends.  I recall one memorable occasion when the whole village was seated outside the advisor hooch to  watch a movie.  The advisors had a 16mm projector, and films were circulated from place to place to entertain the troops.  The advisors shared with the villagers by projecting the films onto a sheet in the wide doorway of their hooch.  People outside, sitting on the ground could see, but not understand the film.  Tran explained what was happening. 

          The movie I recall best was Yellow Submarine. That animated psychedelic adventure brought the Beatles to Pepperland to help thwart the Blue Meanies.  The children of the village really howled with delight at the animated character “Nowhere Man.” Not much translation was required for the kids to figure out what was happening.  Nevertheless, Tran was their hero for explaining the weird story. 

           One day before our boats were to begin an operation deep into the notorious NVA/VC stronghold in the U Minh Forest region of the Mekong Delta, a USO handshake tour by a couple of actors was to take place at the advisor hooch.  All of the Americans in the area gathered in the hooch for the occasion.  A helicopter landed and two former child actresses disembarked for a thirty minute visit with the soldiers.  Neither actress was anyone we recognized.  Still, the soldiers appreciated the break in the action. After the actresses departed, Jim and I sat around the ping pong table talking and drinking beer with the Army advisors.

        Suddenly, the canal beside the hooch erupted in a giant explosion. Large fragments of metal flew through the building tearing it to shreds.  A column of water, raised a hundred feet by the explosion, fell, collapsing the roof of the building.  Sitting on the edge of the ping pong table, I dove for cover in a sandbagged bunker just as the beam over the table broke under the weight of falling water.

          After the confusion and terror subsided, I found that none of the Americans was seriously hurt.  I was soaking wet, but unscathed. The roof had fallen onto the ping pong table where I had been sitting.   Examination of the fragments revealed that the VC had used a dud USAF 500 lb. bomb as a mine.  The printing could be read right off a four by fourteen inch hunk of sharp steel imbedded in a sandbag.  The fragment was still hot.  The Viet Cong had suspended the bomb under a sampan and cut it loose as they passed by the hooch on the bank of the stream.  A timer had later detonated the mine, probably in an effort to kill everyone assembled for the USO visit.  Viet Cong monitored US radio frequencies must have heard some announcement of the USO visit.

          No Vietnamese Navy boats were damaged, but a Vietnamese sampan loaded with civilians taking produce to market was blown up.

           Ashore, there was only one fatality – Tran was killed.

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