The Bonding of Warriors
A Unit History
The Years 1968-1971
Ch 21
1968 - Compiled by Bill Cheek
The FNG's looked at them: Muddy, bloody (the blood had dried on the side of Andrews' neck and collar), half worn-off camouflage, and probably no complete uniform among them. As he recalls, they were prone to wearing cut-offs and going barefooted.
While many of the directives received were deemed stupid, it was truly believed that many were issued simply because many of the officers making the decisions didn't know how to tactically employ the LRRPs. Colonel Hackworth was right on when he said they were fighting the war using WW II tactics. Remember, the LRRP units were on the cutting edge of new war fighter tactics. Many of the things they did hadn't been done before. Then throw in the factor of ticket punches and awards, there were tremendous pressures brought to bear. Had it not been for "Top' Press keeping the LRRP officers straight, they may have gotten into many conflicts as well?
Norm Breece had taken over team #11 after graduating from Recondo School, from Curtis Daniels after he was killed. One of the first missions for his team was a stay behind with a line unit from the 3rd Brigade. During the visual recon Norm gleaned right away that it was going to be extremely difficult to find a good "hide" in this highly populated area. The mission was to collect some high ranking VC/NVA that was meeting in the small ville northwest of Tan Tru. He dropped off the tail gunner into the hide position at last light. Immediately there were children in the area looking for the team. A couple of young girls walked into the position and had to be kept with the team until they were ready to move on the hooch.
It wasn't very long when the night calm was saturated with the heavy noise of mechanized tracks. Norm called to Weids & Stinky who were monitoring the radio at base camp and asked them to identify the mechanized unit to the South. They called back saying there were no friendlies in the area. That was confusing to Breece as he was somewhat confident that NVA armor hadn't traveled that far south. They continued to hear the tracks coming closer and closer, but higher continued to deny their existence. At 2000 hours the team moved into the ville, taking along the kids they had acquired. The hooch was a negative, but the most elaborate one he had seen during his tour to date. The cat had some serious cash. The tracks could be heard moving into their final night position, gunning the Detroit's as they came on line.
Releasing the girls, the team began moving west from the ville and into the night position. Kentes was walking point as they broke from the midst of the last hooch, when a round snapped by his face. He hit the deck and everyone thought he was jacking around. Breece told him to get up and move out, when he immediately received another round right by his snoot. Again, for some reason, Breece hadn't heard the round and summarily chewed on Kentes and told him to get moving. They had only moved far enough for the entire team to get along side a big dike line running east and west when all hell broke loose. The tracks unloosed a major barrage from their 50s. The ground actually felt as if an earthquake was occurring. The ground was being ground away and flying everywhere. Kentes and Valenti had unders, Cheek had his M-79, Root, and Phouc M-16s and Breece carried his Car-15. Everyone with the 40s were told to put as many rounds in the air as possible, they managed 3 in the short seconds before the first round hit the tree line about 400-500 yards to the south. They all fired one magazine of 5.56 to break contact, got up and ran as hard as they could to the west. It worked, as the tracks lit up the area just to their rear. With contact broken, they continued to low crawl along the dike.
Breece had been on the radio with the Fire Support Base trying to get the goofy ARVNs off their backsides, when a marking round went off. Willie Peet, 200 feet up. The big guns were firing from Tu Tua. Norm had previously fired with the Red Legs over there and quickly went up on their push telling them to check fire as it was friendlies they would be firing up. They acknowledged and initiated the check fire.
SFC Jesse Stephens, higher had told him they wanted them to move to a position to the west. He came back much too aggressively and said a few expletives that later got his butt in a sling, but they finally sent a chopper out and extracted them. The run to the chopper seemed like an eternity, knowing the trigger happy ARVNs were just a few hundred yards to the south. Needless to say, SFC Stephens had some choice words for him back at the ranch.
Around that same time, they pulled a security mission with three arty guys, a major and two enlisted guys with the biggest starlight scope Breece had ever seen. They were to set up at the junction of a major dike line. Breece had a good visual recon and planned how they would conduct the mission. The problems began when they hit the LZ, close to last light. Immediately the major had the misconception that he was in charge. He wanted to split the teams and move several hundred yards apart to wait for dark. Breece immediately nixed that idea and told the major in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to split up, he could move his people to an area of cover to their northwest and he would set up security there in a defendable position. The major was ticked off and moved into his position.
It started to rain and for a while it was miserable. Breece had carefully watched where the major had gone and when it became dark he moved out. They circled his position to the south and came in from the west. By now, the moon was giving some good light and they showed the red legs why they were good at what they did. Sneaking up behind them, they watched for a short time as the three were staring to the east, not having a clue the LRRPs were right behind them. Breece slowly moved up behind the major and tapped him on the shoulder thinking he would probably wet his pants. They moved out to the preplanned junction of the dikes, set them up to watch, and all went to sleep. Man that was a big starlight scope!
We pulled another stay behind with a unit from the 3rd Bde. This one was really fun. We took trucks out to the jump off point and once again were the tail gunners of the file. We were moving thru a large Ville, I don't recall which; all of us were at high alert as a whole company had walked through there already. We were walking parallel to a large canal when a gook stood up right in the bushes beside the hardball. I heard 6 M16 safeties, click, click, click, etc. We didn't fire the dude up because we recognized the Chu Hoi from the line unit. That dump almost cost him his life. The interesting thing was the grunts right in front of us seemed oblivious to the guy. They didn't even pull up their weapons.
We continue into the night marching toward the NW. We had been traveling about an hour and a half when I heard something coming from the West. I halted the grunts near me and the team and we lay down. Whatever it was coming, they sounded like a heard of elephants. I called the CO and told him of the movement, and he halted his formation. The noise stopped. Here we are out in the middle of nowhere with a point element of this company lost. I told the CO the noise had quit, that his point element was walking right into his flank element and to pass the word not to fire us up. He clamed he knew where he was at and it couldn't be him. On of the platoon leaders had been listening to our discussion and moved back to my position. We discussed the situation; he called the CO and confirmed the snafu. The COs solution was to have all of the men in the formation continue to follow the man in front of him and come back to the spot we were at. I told him my team would remain and wait for them to wade through two blue lines and link back up. We had a very pointed discussion, but I remained there.
After quite a while, the tail element was back to our position, and we continued north. After another half hour or so the CO called me up to his position. He was under his poncho with a red lens flashlight. We discussed our position and he was lost. I tried to tactfully show him where we were but my patience was really running thin. Finally, I went up on Arty's push and called for two marking rounds on adjacent grids, did a resection, and found out I was about 150 meters from where I thought I was. Man was that young Cpt mad. We dropped off at our mission site shortly thereafter. It turned out to be a dumping point on a major dike line close to a Ville. The rats were as big as house cats. Man to this day I still can't stand rats. They were crawling across our legs and feet. They weren't scared of anything. They would jump when you poked them with the barrel of the 16 but were right back.
This mission really took on another twist. We were to move to an LZ for pick up at first light. So, we move into position and awaited the sun. About 0600 I got a call informing me a 25th ID unit was in big contact and no air assets were available until later. Well we were out of water, and had no rations because this was to be an over nighter. Shame on us. We waited until around 1000 hrs, still no choppers. We were about 700 meters from the blue line that run right by the TOC of the unit we went out with. We moved to the river and after a couple of shots across the bow, Papasan pulled his sampan over to the bank and gave us a ride to the Ville close to the TOC. As I recalled we paid the old boy a few MPC and he was giggly.
The Major we ran into when we walked into the TOC to borrow his land line to arrange transportation back to Tan Ann wasn't very amused. This was the same bugger eater that couldn't get us a ride home, but was really upset we found our own way. He summarily chewed my backside. Well that day he discovered the truth of the axiom, "where there is a LRP there is a way".