FicWad

Chapter Three

First Assignment

-xxx-

So, there Doggie and I were - in the Republic of Vietnam. As it turned out, four of us were assigned to the 2nd MIKE Force, based out of Pleiku. The unit was the largest Special Forces outfit in the II Corps Tactical Zone, committed to provide special reconnaissance for higher headquarters, and to train a support force that could deploy to any besieged camp or strategic hamlet within its area of responsibility.

We were sent in on the 'shit hook', a CH-47 twin-rotor cargo helicopter that routinely ferried supplies and personnel from Saigon to the combat sectors in Pleiku. A brigade of the 4th Infantry Division was based east of the small regional capital, and the 7th Squadron of the 17th Air Cavalry operated from a rudimentary air base that a number of smaller engineer and medical units also called home.

From the air, Vietnam didn't look so tough. We flew over sprawling squares cut into the green, fertile ground, where the local village communities planted their rice paddies and then flooded them until the food staple finished growing. Scattered black and brown shapes - oxen and water buffalo - moved around the rice paddies, some of them drawing hand plows guided by wizened Vietnamese farmers, wearing their traditional thatched round hats.

Those hats looked like flipped-over woks to Doggie and me. I half-joked to Doggie as we passed over a tiny hamlet of bamboo houses on stilts, that the locals must love to eat, if they wear their cook pots conveniently on their heads.

Obviously the other guys in the 'shit-hook' didn't see the humor in it.

Good thing I had Doggie to talk to. The two of us rookies must've stood out like sore thumbs.

-xxx-

The squat, green-painted CH-47 Chinook swept in low over the thick overgrowths of vegetation in a sector of undeveloped land near Pleiku. It passed over the 2nd MIKE Force's main base, which looked like some of the typical fighting camps that Duke and Doggie saw in their pre-deployment briefings. Except for the fact that the Pleiku camp was on steroids.

Set up to help protect a large concentration of refugees from Viet Cong insurgents in the surrounding provincial towns and villages, the 2nd MIKE Force base was nearly a small city. It had an inner area, which had at least two rings of security. The defensive earthworks, trenches, and interlaced concertina wire perimeters were so thickly constructed, they were clearly visible shapes from the air.

The inner area served the American contingent of the force's home. Command and control, supplies, a medical clinic or surgical station, signal relay facilities, barracks, ammunition dumps and armories would be in the very center of the camp, within that innermost defense. Pleiku also had the amenity of its own helicopter pad within the inner sanctum's cluster of structures.

Beyond that, a ring of half-buried shelters housed refugees and dependents of the locally recruited Vietnamese and ethnic fighters. A number of firing ranges and pieces of equipment erected by the Special Forces were around for combat training.

Also interspersed among the circle of shelters were the dozen crescent moon-shaped firing pits of the camp's most prized defensive combat system - the battery of 81mm mortars and their well-drilled Montagnard and Nung crews. Led by a team of Special Forces men in the camp's fire direction hooch, the mortars could rain fire and steel on anything that tried to beat their way into the perimeter.

The outer rings of protection were expansive, despite having broad dirt roads and trails running through them. Long, zigzagging slit trenches had been dug in several echelons, followed by networks of Claymore minefields covering the trails, and thick defensive earthworks. There were also the invisible defenses, such as ADSID seismic detectors for early warning, ambush patrols of CIDG fighters, and extra ordnance and mantraps built inside the tree line to discourage enemy movement.

Additional bunkers, which looked a lot like the housing structures with stacks of sandbags for reinforcement, were used to bunk the indigenous fighters that weren't on patrol, the camp's dedicated defense company, and elements of their American advisors. The camp's defenders also engaged the VC from these protected hooches before spreading out into the trench networks to continue the fight.

Beyond the camp defense bunkers, Army engineers had purposefully cleared away the ground with giant tree-crushing vehicles and earthmovers to more than a thousand meters' distance, before any tree line or cover was available to an attacker. This measure was to force the enemy to stay away or risk launching human waves of charging VC against the camp's daunting firepower capacity, which could cut scores of them down as they crossed the open and featureless ground.

Apparently, several sectors of the camp had been recently attacked. Teams of people, civilians and soldiers alike, were working on the ground to reconstruct some caved-in hooches, erecting simple walls of corrugated metal backed by neat lines of sandbags. The sprawled out corpses of a few dozen people were lying out in the open, slumped over their fighting positions or impaled on the barbed wire and punji stake mantraps that were randomly dug around the camp perimeter. Neither Hauser or Dobbs could tell on whose side the dead were from the air, but they didn't look any less frightening.

The "shit hook" (local slang for the CH-47 transport) descended quickly and flared for landing, using a rapid deceleration tactic taught to many of the assault helicopter pilots that often had to bring their aircraft into hot landing zones under enemy fire. The violent maneuver caused Hauser and Dobbs to practically roll out of their seats, and Dobbs began to turn green as his stomach wanted to retch.

"Easy, Doggie," Hauser said, helping his buddy back into the sling seats. Dobbs nodded his head silently that he was okay, and the two men settled back into their places while the veteran troops on board snickered derisively. The two replacements that were seated towards the rear cargo ramp of the chopper, where the maneuver could be felt the most, turned their lunches into a puddle on the transport's slick floor, dousing their brand-new jungle boots in the smelly, multi-colored, half-digested concoctions.

The CH-47 settled onto the Pleiku camp's landing pad, lowering its ramp right away. A stream of civilians and indigenous recruits, dressed in a motley collection of uniform pieces mixed with normal clothes, clamored around the cargo ramp, helping to rapidly unload the supplies. The replacements and operators returning to the Pleiku camp filed out of a passenger loading door, marching right into the waiting arms of the unit's top kick, who was directing all of the activity.

"Replacements!" the top sergeant, MSGT Harold Draper, shouted in a forceful bellow. "Center up on me, you fuckin' turds! Get your slimy, newbie asses and that rat-shit Stateside gear over here where I kin look at ya!"

MSGT Draper was a bear of a man, an obvious take-no-shit character. Even with a set of loose, field-worn fatigues on, the bulging muscles in his chest seemed to spring out. He had meaty, hairy fists that were planted firmly on his tapered hips. He reminded Hauser and Dobbs of their worst nightmare in Infantry Basic.

The replacement Special Forces men assembled in front of the master sergeant, who promptly jabbed at them in their guts and began to circle around them, tearing their combat packs off their backs and dumping out the neatly stored contents.

"First rule in the field, /shits-for-brains/," Draper shouted at the men from behind. "If you fucks look anything like a formation, then some Victor Charles sniper's gonna turn the guy you're standing before into a fine red mist! Do I look like an officer ta ya?"

MSGT Draper stalked around the group and centered his gaze on Hauser, who tried to relax from the position of attention. "Well, slick?" he bellowed. "Do ah look like a fuckin' officer ta ya?"

Hauser began to stammer out a reply, his youthful voice trying to stay firm. "N- n- no, Master Sergeant..." he said softly. His answer was rewarded with a hard jab to the midsection, which put him down in the slippery, clay-encrusted mud at his feet.

"I don' fuckin' care what you turds were told back in the world," Draper growled. "Around these parts, if you even look like you're talkin' ta officers, you make them automatic targets. So, no salutin' in the open. There'll be no standin' at attention or in some sorta military parade formation. None of that namby-pamby bullshit you learned in Infantry Basic or Jump School is the SOP here. In this post, we deal with survival. We survive, or we die. An' we Special Forces don't die needlessly. We're too important to this war effort."

Draper leaned down and wrapped his beefy fist around a good portion of Hauser's shirt, drawing the newbie up onto his feet. "You didn't answer my question, slick. Do ah still look like a fuckin' officer ta ya?"

Hauser shook off the dazed feeling in his head at being knocked around and looked Draper in the eyes with a cold stare. "If you looked like a /fuckin' officer/, I'd offer ya a rubber so ya wouldn't get the clap. You look like a scumbag non-com ta me!"

Draper's fingers tightened, clutching Hauser's uniform tightly and threatening to cut off his windpipe. Then he suddenly loosened his grip and dusted Hauser's shoulders off. "Ha!" Draper shouted with a belly laugh. "Ah think ah'm gonna like you, kid."

The master sergeant pointed over to the camp command post, which was about fifty meters from the helicopter pad, in an unmarked hooch. "Let's go pay a visit to the real officer around here, you rejects from the repple-depple. An' quit standin' so tall; the shit-hook's gonna cut your brain bags clean off!"

Following the dark-haired, human monstrosity, Hauser and Dobbs trudged through the damp Pleiku morning air towards their part of the Vietnam War.

-xxx-

So I guess for all of the uninformed, it's time to explain a little bit more about the 2nd Mobile Strike Force (or MIKE Force). They were sort of like a coordination center for the Special Forces teams that worked their magic throughout the II Corps Tactical Zone (II CTZ).

You see, the way Special Forces were organized in the 'Nam was rooted in the twelve to sixteen man A-Team. These were the guys who went out to distant hamlets and villages to recruit and train the civilians to fight against the VC and NVA as the bad guys tried to force Communism upon their way of life.

Of the dozen or so A-Teams that worked II CTZ, they were rotated in and out of action by a couple of higher headquarters, akin to a company-level command. These were called B-Detachments, or B-Teams. Logistical or service support units were often attached to the B-Teams, and they occupied a more fixed fighting camp.

B-Teams were responsible for combat support of the A-Teams in the field, including coordination of insertion, air support, extraction and artillery fire from nearby conventional units. The 7/17 Air Cav was a well-used partner of the 2nd MIKE Force, since a lot of rescues had to happen quickly, and the only way to get places fast in the 'Nam was by riding the ubiquitous UH-1 "slick".

Certain B-Teams also directly controlled the more clandestine reconnaissance and assassination operations our guys were going out on. Shh! That was supposed to be a secret!

The highest command for the Special Forces was at the battalion level. There was one C-Detachment per Corps Tactical Zone, which coordinated the activities of assigned A and B Teams, also seeing to their general and logistical needs.

The commanders at the B-Detachments normally spent time training replacements before putting them out with A-Teams that were already formed and knew how to work together independently. They also often had their own resources that required Special Forces men to lead in combat actions.

At the MIKE Force, we had almost five light infantry battalions' worth of CIDG and ARVN personnel, including an elite ARVN Airborne Ranger outfit. These units were used to relieve the A-Teams that got themselves into too much trouble in the field, or covered the safe extractions of special reconnaissance missions.

We also had small squads called Roadrunner Teams, which was a fire team of four American operators advising roughly ten or twenty CIDG guys. They would work together for a long time, patrolling deep into enemy zones, scouting out villages, and looking for VC tunnel systems that led to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main supply route for arms and goods coming from North Vietnam into the South.

Now, you might be thinking the same thing that I was. If you put a B-Detachment in charge of five or six battalions of local troops, wouldn't they call that a Brigade? Maybe so, as far as the ARVN might be concerned. In reality, the American portion of a B-Team and its controlled A-Teams might barely number enough men to flesh out two rifle companies - that's only a couple hundred guys.

The reason why the CTZ decided to keep the MIKE Forces consolidated together was because of the special training requirements the fighters had, and that they were rather difficult to coordinate with conventional American mechanized and air-mobile forces in major operations. The regular American troops were unaccustomed to the language barriers that were involved, and the CIDG fighters had no idea what large-scale, combined-arms actions were all about.

But, I have to tell you something. Those damn CIDG guys were highly motivated, kick ass dudes. They knew the forests, trails and jungles we patrolled to the point of being able to tell when the smallest things were out of place. And when it came down to a firefight, the CIDG fought like tigers, despite the rumors among the American regulars that the average ARVN or CIDG were cowardly, lackluster soldiers.

It was too bad that the only reason they fought was to defend themselves and their villages, or to earn the stipends the CIA and South Vietnamese government offered. The guys in any given squad often came from the same village and pooled their bounty money to buy things for the folks at home instead of for themselves. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Is there any wonder why I respect the hell outta these people?

Many of them knew very little of the Saigon government, and mistrusted the government forces just as much as they did the VC and NVA. But they liked our guys, who went out and lived among them, taking care of their needs and teaching entire families how to make a good living for their villages.

Our A-Teams ran small schools, or coerced medical and engineer units to show up to help build wells and treatment clinics. And when the Army couldn't help, our guys rolled up their sleeves, set aside their rifles, and did it themselves. The CIDG guys had a mutual respect for the Green Berets.

Well, anyway, back to the camp. Doggie and I were about to get our first taste of what fighting the guerilla war was like, and a lot quicker than we had expected.

-xxx-

Command Post

2nd MIKE Force, Pleiku Fighting Camp

Major Mike Barnes looked up from a table made up of empty ammunition crates stacked atop one another, sighing as he took a swig from a tepid can of Coca-Cola. The latest VC attack on his camp had come from a direction that brought the pesky guerillas dangerously close to the electrical generator plant and the fuel dump of gasoline the camp needed to keep them running.

Many of his ARVN Rangers had been out on ambush patrols or learning air movement techniques with the 7/17 Air Cav. And a lot of CIDG squads had gone back to their villages temporarily, leaving a company of rookie CIDG fighters, a platoon from the camp defense company and one of his A-Teams to get blunted by the massed human wave charge. The VC had brought along portable firepower in the form of modified Russian B-40 rockets, which they were able to use to knock out one of the camp's power generators.

The camp's force doggedly fought the enemy off, for the umpteenth time, but Major Barnes knew that MAC-V wouldn't appreciate his steady stream of damage reports. The REMF's wanted results, but didn't realize the unique problems of running a camp that seemed to have a big red bull's eye painted around it. After taking another swig of his Coke and shaking his head dejectedly, he signed the latest communication for Saigon and set it aside to bring to the signal hooch.

Master Sergeant Draper's voice boomed in the outer room of the command post, as the gargantuan stomped down the dirt steps, scaring aside some of the ARVN auxiliaries that took care of the maps and other papers that passed through the hooch.

"Major Barnes?" Draper said. "Are you 'round here, sir?"

"In the back, Harry," Barnes said, dabbing at his sweaty forehead with a thin Army towel.

"Ah've got the latest bullet-stoppers from Saigon here ta see ya, sir," Draper said, crossing the command post room and leading the four replacements into the cramped back office where Barnes was doing his after action reports.

"Okay," Barnes replied. "I'll talk to them for a few. You get one of those criminals you call supply specialists to put together four sets of our standard 'replacement's issue' gear, and find these guys a hooch to live in. I've got to pick which officers to dump 'em on."

Barnes thought for a moment without even looking at the replacements that were lining up in front of his makeshift desk. "Oh, and Draper, have Supply dump a few six-packs of piss brew in the medical tent's drug freezer for the Roadrunner teams coming in tonight. I don't care if the docs bitch and moan about it - without the number four generator, the mess tent and reefer CONEX are both out of action unless we shut down something more important to conserve the remaining three. So we have to spread out the power usage until Tommy the Wrench gets it running again tomorrow."

"You got it, sir," Draper said, adjusting a sweat rag that covered the top of his head before leaving the office.

Major Barnes' eyes rose slowly, meeting each pair of replacement's eyes and studying them carefully. He never changed his expression, a neutral, thin-lipped look. After he took stock of what he saw, the major finally let out a short breath and spoke to them.

"So, you kids are the new breed," the nearly forty year old career Infantry officer said. "Does Saigon expect me to start ordering diapers through Supply for you, too?"

"Nossir," the replacements chanted softly.

"Oh, so you think you're badass killers, eh?" Barnes said. "Well, I sure intend to find out. Hand over your orders, men."

Hauser collected all four orders jackets from the replacements and presented them to Major Barnes. The major gave each one a perfunctory once-over and then nodded to himself.

"Good," the major said, to no one in particular. "They at least sent me all Weapons Specialists this time. I can teach you guys the required manuals for first aid, communications, demolitions and civic action in the field. What I can't teach is weapons and tactics, when I have to try to turn those gooks out there into cohesive fighting units."

Barnes' voice fell silent for a second as he considered what he wanted to say. SSGT Dobbs rocked from side to side for a moment, wondering if the major was expecting the men to say something. Hauser's eyes became slits as he watched the major quietly.

"Okay. Here's the deal, mud-eaters," Barnes said, setting down the orders jackets. "All of you are going to the ranges. I'm going to have you start learning all the jobs of a Special Forces man that you don't already know. Since I have a pair of summa cum laude graduates of the JFK School in my midst, Sergeants Hauser and Dobbs, you will be joining one of my Roadrunner teams. It will be coming home tonight, and going out again in three days. Two of the advisors are short-timers, and I'm pulling them out to send them home. You two characters will take their place. You'll have seventy-two hours to learn what it takes to survive out here."

"We can handle it, sir," Dobbs blurted out, trying to puff out his chest in a display of bravado. Hauser simply stood at parade rest and listened to the major.

"I didn't ask you a fuckin' question, newbie!" Barnes snarled at Dobbs. "This outfit isn't manned by glory hounds! I send assholes like that to shed blood with the Infantry! You're going to find that being on Roadrunner means you're not trying to pick a fight with the bad guys unless we specifically tell you to. Yeah, you're gonna pop some caps here and there, and God help you if the enemy pops 'em on you first. However, routine direct engagement with the enemy is not in your mission profile."

Dobbs clammed up quickly, especially when Hauser shot him a dark look and stomped on the toe of his jungle boot with the heel of his own.

Barnes caught MSGT Draper in the corner of his eye, re-entering the command post hooch. "Harry... er... Master Sergeant Draper will assign you to hooches, where you will live in camp. And he will begin to ramp you up for your assignments. I strongly suggest that you listen to every iota of what he has to say. It WILL mean your life if you don't and end up screwing the pooch out there. Get outta here - you haven't the time to stand slack-jawed in front of me. I'll see Hauser and Dobbs again when your Roadrunner mission brief comes down from the Intel hooch."

Afraid to mumble, the replacements traded glances. MSGT Draper slipped into the office, with his meathooks on his hips.

"Are you slicks STILL HERE?" Major Barnes bellowed. "Get the fuck outta my sight!"

-xxx-