`This is what I saw that day' (over 35 years ago)
by William B. Rood
Feb. 28, 1969: On the Dong Cung River
[From the Chicago Tribune]
There were three swift boats on the river that day in
Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15
crew members. Only two of those officers remain to
talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.
One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential
candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on
that date. I am the other.
For years, no one asked about those events. But now
they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential
election with a group of swift boat veterans and
others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver
Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star
and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other
actions.
Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers,
the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I
have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's
service--even those from reporters at the Chicago
Tribune, where I work.
But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be
untrue, have charged that the accounts of what
happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains
to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit
of what others did, but their version of events has
splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and
harder for those of us who were there to listen to
accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they
come from people who were not there.
Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him,
the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry
has called me and others who were with him in those
days, asking that we go public with our accounts.
I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but
that is not why I am writing this. What matters most
to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not
public figures and who deserved to be honored for what
they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to
never again talk publicly about it.
I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver
Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that
resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the
Bronze Star.
But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of
PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's
PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried
Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a
Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow
tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in
the area.
The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each
driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down
with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.
Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no
exception.
Instructions from Kerry
The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical
command of that particular operation, had talked to
Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way
the boats usually did to an ambush.
We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial
volley and had a clear fix on the location of the
ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the
boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers
and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the
plan.
The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the
heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush,
firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream
and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the
ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time
the troops got there.
The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and
automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the
three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We
routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The
troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats
and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC,
wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast
masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.
Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream
with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.
It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry
ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we
headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded
B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as
two men jumped up from their spider holes.
We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry,
followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and
chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15
yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there
that day recall the man being wounded as he ran.
Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty
officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all
these events, recalls that, which is no surprise.
Recollections of those who go through experiences like
that frequently differ.
With our troops involved in the sweep of the first
ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew,
and I also went ashore to search the area. I was
checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard
gunfire nearby.
Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he
had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also
had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we
took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.
John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of
Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry
chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no
idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but
both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man,
dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.
The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at
that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who
fled. There was also firing from the tree line well
behind the spider holes and at one point, from the
opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of
just one attacker.
Our initial reports of the day's action caused an
immediate response from our task force headquarters in
Cam Ranh Bay.
Congratulatory message
Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch,"
then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the
task force commander, fired off a message
congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one
point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a
"shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy"
and that it "may be the most efficacious method of
dealing with small numbers of ambushers."
Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and
now says that what the boats did on that day
demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a
fault.
Our decision to use that tactic under the right
circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of
discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of
all three boat officers.
It was also well within the aggressive tradition that
was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then
commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before
that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael
Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top
Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up
the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the
Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French
fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the
mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was
operating upstream.
Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his
crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and
killing several.
Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had
expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and
Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely
patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.
The decision sent a clear message, underscored
repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that
aggressive patrolling was expected and that
well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's
were encouraged.
What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with
the tone set by our top commanders.
Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base
at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the
Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and
commendation medals on the rest of us.
Error in citation
My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised
the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were
"caught completely off guard."
There's at least one mistake in that citation. It
incorrectly identifies the river where the main action
occurred, a reminder that such documents were often
done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers
by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying
to piece it all together. There's no final authority
on something that happened so long ago--not the
documents and not even the strained recollections of
those of us who were there.
But I know that what some people are saying now is
wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're
saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.
Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60
machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth
Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our
boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at
our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the
opposite bank.
Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat
went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they
saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an
abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong
Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth
of his only child, Tracy.
The survivors of all these events are scattered across
the country now.
Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built
and sold a successful printing business. He owns a
beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of
a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights
of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on
the tall poles in his back yard.
Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters
and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he
spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior
computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson
finished a second military career in the Army.
With the debate over that long-ago day in February,
they're all living that war another time.
Feb. 28, 1969: On the Dong Cung River
[From the Chicago Tribune]
There were three swift boats on the river that day in
Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15
crew members. Only two of those officers remain to
talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.
One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential
candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on
that date. I am the other.
For years, no one asked about those events. But now
they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential
election with a group of swift boat veterans and
others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver
Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star
and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other
actions.
Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers,
the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I
have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's
service--even those from reporters at the Chicago
Tribune, where I work.
But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be
untrue, have charged that the accounts of what
happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains
to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit
of what others did, but their version of events has
splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and
harder for those of us who were there to listen to
accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they
come from people who were not there.
Even though Kerry's own crew members have backed him,
the attacks have continued, and in recent days Kerry
has called me and others who were with him in those
days, asking that we go public with our accounts.
I can't pretend those calls had no effect on me, but
that is not why I am writing this. What matters most
to me is that this is hurting crewmen who are not
public figures and who deserved to be honored for what
they did. My intent is to tell the story here and to
never again talk publicly about it.
I was part of the operation that led to Kerry's Silver
Star. I have no firsthand knowledge of the events that
resulted in his winning the Purple Hearts or the
Bronze Star.
But on Feb. 28, 1969, I was officer in charge of
PCF-23, one of three swift boats--including Kerry's
PCF-94 and Lt. j.g. Donald Droz's PCF-43--that carried
Vietnamese regional and Popular Force troops and a
Navy demolition team up the Dong Cung, a narrow
tributary of the Bay Hap River, to conduct a sweep in
the area.
The approach of the noisy 50-foot aluminum boats, each
driven by two huge 12-cylinder diesels and loaded down
with six crew members, troops and gear, was no secret.
Ambushes were a virtual certainty, and that day was no
exception.
Instructions from Kerry
The difference was that Kerry, who had tactical
command of that particular operation, had talked to
Droz and me beforehand about not responding the way
the boats usually did to an ambush.
We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial
volley and had a clear fix on the location of the
ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the
boats' twin .50-caliber machine guns on the attackers
and beaching the boats. We told our crews about the
plan.
The Viet Cong in the area had come to expect that the
heavily loaded boats would lumber on past an ambush,
firing at the entrenched attackers, beaching upstream
and putting troops ashore to sweep back down on the
ambush site. Often, they were long gone by the time
the troops got there.
The first time we took fire--the usual rockets and
automatic weapons--Kerry ordered a "turn 90" and the
three boats roared in on the ambush. It worked. We
routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The
troops, led by an Army adviser, jumped off the boats
and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC,
wounded or captured others and found weapons, blast
masks and other supplies used to stage ambushes.
Meanwhile, Kerry ordered our boat to head upstream
with his, leaving Droz's boat at the first site.
It happened again, another ambush. And again, Kerry
ordered the turn maneuver, and again it worked. As we
headed for the riverbank, I remember seeing a loaded
B-40 launcher pointed at the boats. It wasn't fired as
two men jumped up from their spider holes.
We called Droz's boat up to assist us, and Kerry,
followed by one member of his crew, jumped ashore and
chased a VC behind a hooch--a thatched hut--maybe 15
yards inland from the ambush site. Some who were there
that day recall the man being wounded as he ran.
Neither I nor Jerry Leeds, our boat's leading petty
officer with whom I've checked my recollection of all
these events, recalls that, which is no surprise.
Recollections of those who go through experiences like
that frequently differ.
With our troops involved in the sweep of the first
ambush site, Richard Lamberson, a member of my crew,
and I also went ashore to search the area. I was
checking out the inside of the hooch when I heard
gunfire nearby.
Not long after that, Kerry returned, reporting that he
had killed the man he chased behind the hooch. He also
had picked up a loaded B-40 rocket launcher, which we
took back to our base in An Thoi after the operation.
John O'Neill, author of a highly critical account of
Kerry's Vietnam service, describes the man Kerry
chased as a "teenager" in a "loincloth." I have no
idea how old the gunner Kerry chased that day was, but
both Leeds and I recall that he was a grown man,
dressed in the kind of garb the VC usually wore.
The man Kerry chased was not the "lone" attacker at
that site, as O'Neill suggests. There were others who
fled. There was also firing from the tree line well
behind the spider holes and at one point, from the
opposite riverbank as well. It was not the work of
just one attacker.
Our initial reports of the day's action caused an
immediate response from our task force headquarters in
Cam Ranh Bay.
Congratulatory message
Known over radio circuits by the call sign "Latch,"
then-Capt. and now retired Rear Adm. Roy Hoffmann, the
task force commander, fired off a message
congratulating the three swift boats, saying at one
point that the tactic of charging the ambushes was a
"shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy"
and that it "may be the most efficacious method of
dealing with small numbers of ambushers."
Hoffmann has become a leading critic of Kerry's and
now says that what the boats did on that day
demonstrated Kerry's inclination to be impulsive to a
fault.
Our decision to use that tactic under the right
circumstances was not impulsive but was the result of
discussions well beforehand and a mutual agreement of
all three boat officers.
It was also well within the aggressive tradition that
was embraced by the late Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, then
commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Vietnam. Months before
that day in February, a fellow boat officer, Michael
Bernique, was summoned to Saigon to explain to top
Navy commanders why he had made an unauthorized run up
the Giang Thanh River, which runs along the
Vietnam-Cambodia border. Bernique, who speaks French
fluently, had been told by a source in Ha Tien at the
mouth of the river that a VC tax collector was
operating upstream.
Ignoring the prohibition against it, Bernique and his
crew went upstream and routed the VC, pursuing and
killing several.
Instead of facing disciplinary action as he had
expected, Bernique was given the Silver Star, and
Zumwalt ordered other swifts, which had largely
patrolled coastal waters, into the rivers.
The decision sent a clear message, underscored
repeatedly by Hoffmann's congratulatory messages, that
aggressive patrolling was expected and that
well-timed, if unconventional, tactics like Bernique's
were encouraged.
What we did on Feb. 28, 1969, was well in line with
the tone set by our top commanders.
Zumwalt made that clear when he flew down to our base
at An Thoi off the southern tip of Vietnam to pin the
Silver Star on Kerry and assorted Bronze Stars and
commendation medals on the rest of us.
Error in citation
My Bronze Star citation, signed by Zumwalt, praised
the charge tactic we used that day, saying the VC were
"caught completely off guard."
There's at least one mistake in that citation. It
incorrectly identifies the river where the main action
occurred, a reminder that such documents were often
done in haste and sometimes authored for their signers
by staffers. It's a cautionary note for those trying
to piece it all together. There's no final authority
on something that happened so long ago--not the
documents and not even the strained recollections of
those of us who were there.
But I know that what some people are saying now is
wrong. While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they're
saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.
Men like Larry Lee, who was on our bow with an M-60
machine gun as we charged the riverbank, Kenneth
Martin, who was in the .50-caliber gun tub atop our
boat, and Benjamin Cueva, our engineman, who was at
our aft gun mount suppressing the fire from the
opposite bank.
Wayne Langhoffer and the other crewmen on Droz's boat
went through even worse on April 12, 1969, when they
saw Droz killed in a brutal ambush that left PCF-43 an
abandoned pile of wreckage on the banks of the Duong
Keo River. That was just a few months after the birth
of his only child, Tracy.
The survivors of all these events are scattered across
the country now.
Jerry Leeds lives in a tiny Kansas town where he built
and sold a successful printing business. He owns a
beautiful home with a lawn that sweeps to the edge of
a small lake, which he also owns. Every year, flights
of purple martins return to the stately birdhouses on
the tall poles in his back yard.
Cueva, recently retired, has raised three daughters
and is beloved by his neighbors for all the years he
spent keeping their cars running. Lee is a senior
computer programmer in Kentucky, and Lamberson
finished a second military career in the Army.
With the debate over that long-ago day in February,
they're all living that war another time.
posted by Rev. Rick Mitchell, PhD at 10:25 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home