Vietnam's last battle — Part one

[thedrifter]

Vietnam's last battle — Part one

By Issac Daniel, T-H Intern

July 31, 2008 10:51 pm

— ODON — As May 15, 1975, dawned, the last wave of U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, 210 leathernecks, set foot on Koh Tang Island; 18 didn’t come home.
The mission was to rescue 39 sailors on board the merchant vessel SS Mayaguez, captured by the Khmer Rouge, a radical Cambodian political group responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths from 1975 to 1979.
President General Ford’s demand for safe release of the sailors and ship had fallen on deaf ears.
A military force comprised of Marines, Navy and Air Force units were quickly assembled to free the captives.
Their destination was Koh Tang, a small five-mile-long island about 35 miles southwest of Cambodia.
Two hundred and ten Marines landed on the island; 18 didn’t return.
The veterans of America’s last battle in Vietnam haven’t forgotten that day. They also haven’t forgotten each other. As often as they can, the men rally together in each other’s company expanding the bond created on May 15, 1975.
They reunited this week at Tom Noble’s home in Odon.
Tom Noble
Among the Marines were the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines (BLT 2/9). Their job was to land on the eastern and western sides of the island and surround the enemy’s encampment.
As troops placed foot on the beaches, they met an enemy willing to fight to the death, branding a memory still remembered after 33 years.
Noble, a resident of Odon, served with the BLT 2/9 and awaited orders on the USS Henry B. Wilson.
Enemy fire intensified, never letting up, shooting two helicopters out of the sky. One had its tail ripped off in flight and swirled down uncontrollably, crash landing on the beach, exposed to enemy fire. The surviving Marines from the crash sprinted into the jungle for cover and remained pinned down for the majority of May 15.
The second helicopter crashed nearly 20 yards off Koh Tang’s shore into the Gulf of Thailand. Surviving Marines were unable to reach the beaches of Koh Tang with enemy fire zipping in their direction. They swam out to sea. When the helicopter crashed and burned it was thought, during the action, that no Marine survived. They tread water for five hours until the USS Henry B. Wilson accidentally stumbled on them.
Tom Noble pulled them in.
Two more helicopters were annihilated by the Khmer Rouge. The zone became too hot for air-rescues. It was decided the remaining 20 or so Marines stranded on the island would be rescued by boat. Noble’s orders were given, and he and six other Marines steered a motorboat head-on into enemy fire.
Noble pushed forward, but his crew were too late for a rescue. Instead, an Air Force helicopter dropped in. Noble, along with three other Marines, picked up four M60s, mounted two of them, and free-held the remaining machine guns to give the helicopter cover, unloading into Koh Tang’s tree line with 7.62 mm bullets.
They were determined to get every Marine off that island, dead or alive.
Noble’s voice lowered and slowed when mentioning the loss of three Marines who just seemed to have disappeared.
“What could of been a more horrible death? Cambodians are right there,” said Noble. “(The men would be thinking) No food, no water, and Americans left me. It couldn’t have been any worse on the face of the earth.”
He dreams nightly, with the question: “What could I have done differently?”
The BLT 2/9 were told during the evacuation that it was all clear and all men where accounted for. Only years later did they find out PVT Danny G. Marshall, PVC Gary L. Hall and L/CPL Joseph N. Hargrove were missing.
The Marines don’t know for certain what happened to their missing brothers. They assume death by the Khmer Rouge.
Noble grew bonds stronger than friendship during Vietnam, during Koh Tang, and said it’s not the same as a high school or college chum.
“It’s the same that on that day, 15 of May, 1975, all of us looked death in the eye, and faced it together,” said Noble.
Uncertainty was common on Koh Tang.
Fred Morris
Fred Morris was certain when he signed up for the United States Marines out of high school. Vietnam was disastrous, but he figured America wouldn’t jump into a jungle without looking first.
He is from Waterloo, Iowa, and was 19 when he headed off for boot camp.
Hours leading up to the May 15 invasion of Koh Tang, the more experienced troops echoed comforts in Morris’ ear such as: Don’t worry about the alert, It happens all the time.
“Clearly we were nervous,” said Morris. “If you weren’t, you weren’t human.”
He was part of the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, and they were set on alert.
Intelligence told them to expect 20 to 25 militia-type fishermen on Koh Tang. It would be an easy sweep and home by noon for lunch.
Morris doesn’t remember the five hours leading up to the battle. It all started with the ride over. He flew in on the first helicopter, five days out of boot camp, given an M16 that was so war-ridden from previous owners it didn’t look like a real rifle and expected to perform as a Marine.
The helicopters used that day were HH-53 “Jolly Green Giants.” The current Blackhawk helicopter could fit in one of those, said Morris.
Morris flew in with his group of leathernecks, getting accustomed to the humming of the helicopter. Suddenly, all he heard were loud slaps.
The helicopter came to a steady hover and started spinning. Khmer Rouge bullets showered the chopper.
It dawned on the men of the BLT 2/9 those were AK47s and these were no fishermen, no simple militia. These were heavy machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. Morris found himself in a full-scale battle.
“It seemed like it took the pilot just forever to swing us around and sit down,” said Morris. “The gunner motioned us to get out and we were like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’”
The Khmer Rouge seemed like they were just waiting for Morris. He and the other Marines jumped out, ran toward the nearest patch of elephant grass and took cover.
Morris’ bird made it about 300 yards off shore when it crashed and sank into the Gulf of Thailand.
Morris fired his M16.
“Traumatic would be an understatement. One shot, then I had to pry the bullets out of the chamber before I could load another one in,” said Morris. “It was a worthless rifle.”
The enemy launched a barrage of heavy fire onto incoming USAF helicopters. The second helicopter to come in after Morris’ landed, unloaded its Marines, took off, then got shot down. It became a routine for the helicopters.
Morris was pinned down between a storm of Khmer Rouge gun slaughter and an open sea. He stayed there until nightfall when an Air Force helicopter flew into the sea of enemy fire with the mission to rescue Morris and the remaining Marines.
Continued in Saturday’s paper.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Vietnam’s last battle — Part 2

By Isaac Daniel, T-H Intern

August 02, 2008 12:01 am

— ODON — United States Marine veteran Dan Hoffman lost his eye a few years after he invaded Koh Tang Island 33 years ago. It came to light only years after the battle that he learned of three Marines left behind to die.
Monday, he told his story at a Vietnam veterans’ reunion in Odon.
PVT Danny G. Marshall, PVC Gary L. Hall and L/CPL Joseph N. Hargrove never made it off. Their bodies were never found. The constant thought of those three souls with no water, no food, and the agonozing truth that Americans left them, plagued Hoffman with post traumatic stress.
Thirty-three years ago, night crept over Koh Tang on May 15, 1975. Air support ceased to exist, and 62 United States Marines remained on Koh Tang Island, 200 miles south of Thailand. Purdue University graduate, Dan Hoffman, joined the leathernecks right out of college.
Koh Tang is his only combat experience during Vietnam. He and the BLT 2/9 remained trapped on the beaches, surrounded. The Khmer Rouge continued to close in.
Tom Noble and six other Marines finished pulling Marines from a crashed helicopter at this time. Noble pushed forward toward Hoffman.
“We were in bad shape,” said Hoffman. “We don’t want to leave Marines on the beach to die. We’re trying to get out of there.”
Hoffman then saw his rescuer. Not Noble. A Unites Stated Air Force HH-53 “Jolly Green Giant” helicopter.
High tide strolled in creating a tight landing zone. The pilot landed the bird in shallow water. It was pitch black, with 200 to 300 Khmer Rouge machine guns trying to light up the island.
Hoffman was treading in the surf with water up to his neck. Fatigue started to hit the Marine hard, making climbing into a helicopter nearly impossible. He climbed into the tail ramp of the helicopter and felt the death-shadowed day come to an end.
“We got up in the air. We’re taking off and — oh my God! — we’re saved,” said Hoffman. “We’re gonna live. We’re gonna be all right.”
At that moment, Hoffman spotted a cooler full of ice cubes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had water.
“That was the best ice I ever had,” he said.
Thirty-five fully combat loaded Marines joined Hoffman. Air Force regulations demanded only 26 were allowed for a safe take-off.
The helicopter was attracting bullet holes. The waves made for an unsteady lift off, but Bob Blough managed to take Hoffman and the 34 other Marines into the night sky.
Hoffman sat back for five minutes, looked over the ramp on the tail end of the “Giant” and saw glimpses of water beneath him only made possible by the ripples of waves. There was no moon, no starlight, just pitch black.
Hoffman started shaking. The helicopter started shaking.
“I’m saying, ‘Oh my God! We’re going in the water,’” said Hoffman. “I’m telling all the Marines by me to take off your helmets, take off your flak jacket, we’re going in the ocean.”
The helicopter was taking on turbulence, and all Hoffman could see was black ocean
He was in the back with the ramp used to drop supplies and parachutes. The prospect of abandoning the craft nearly overwhelmed him.
Hoffman turned to his Marines for possibly the last time. They were all running out.
The “Jolly Green Giant” had one little entrance door near the front. Stairs lead down in, and there was enough room for one man at a time.
And that’s what they did. The Marines walked out one man at a time onto the USS Harry E. Holt.
“The tail end of the helicopter was so large the
a-- end of it was hanging out over the water,” said Hoffman.
Militaty safety regulations absolutely denied the landing of the such a large scale helicopter on a tiny destroyer like the Holt.
The ship was in motion, the wind was relentless, and the sea’s waves were causing the ship to rock back and forth.
“This crazy pilot has balls of steel,” said Hoffman. “Not brass ball like Marines, we got stainless steel balls.
“Ooh-ra!”
Bob Blough
Bob Blough, resident of Chattanooga, Tenn., won’t tell you what he did, but Marines like Fred Morris and Dan Hoffman would be dead if not for him.
Hoffman rode in the first helicopter rescue piloted by Blough. Morris rode after. It was the last time a Marine would be rescued off that island.
Blough piloted for seven active years in the Air Force.
Before the planned invasion on May 15, 1975, he and the rest of the pilots waited with their birds on ground until President Gerald Ford gave the go-ahead to deploy troops.
The plan was to unload the first wave of Marines during the twilight.
The plan went south before it started. The entire action was delayed for 30 minutes.
Koh Tong is 200 miles away from Thailand, and the sun had come up by the time the helicopters arrived with Marines.
“The helicopters coming in broad daylight were sitting ducks,” said Blough.
Resistance was expected to be low. Turned out, about 200 Khmer Rouge regulars were stationed there a couple nights before with “big guns.”
“Not just AK47s. There were heavy machine guns, mortars and rocket propelled grenades,” said Blough. “And all those are serious to helicopters.”
The main landing zone was to be the East beach. The West got narrow and offered poor landing establishments.
Two helicopters went in and got shot down.
The first helicopter managed to land on the West but was so badly torn up unloading Marines it crashed after take-off in the water, and a crewman lost his life.
Helicopters continued to try to land on the East beach, but heavy damage repelled them. The Khmer Rouge used the Marines on the sand as helicopter bait. They’d fly in to rescue but didn’t fly out.
More troops managed to step foot on the West beach. A hundred Marines created the first wave. About half made it to the island.
Blough was stuck at the base 200 miles away with a broken helicopter. His best friend and flight school roommate, John Schramm, had already taken off, headed toward East beach with a load of leathernecks.
“Meanwhile, I’m looking at this status board, big chalk board, like an old fashioned school chalkboard, with each of the helicopters and what their status was,” said Blough.
Statuses: shot up, shot down, in the water, or down on the beach, some more prevalent then others.
“They started talking about this one helicopter down on east beach,” said Blough. “They were surrounded and they didn’t know how many of them survived. And I said: ‘Who’s flying it?’”
It was John.
It took four hours round trip from Thailand to Koh Tang.
The objective was successful. The SS Mayaguez was recaptured and the crew rescued. Now to get the Marines off that island before an overrun.
Bough’s helicopter worked again, and he dove in. The pilots agreed lights would result in an easy target. All lights on the copters were turned off, including the landing lights.
“This was way before night vision goggles and all that,” said Blough.
Pilots took turns extracting Marines from the West beach. Blough went in low, just above the water.
He took a compass heading were he thought the beach held the remaining Marines. He saw Koh Tangs’ sands up ahead. The tide grew creating a slim coast.
Blough almost landed on the helicopter that left behind him.
“I thought he was already out of there,” said Blough. “But he was still there in the landing zone, and he finally flashed his light at me to let me know he was there.”
After avoiding a friendly collision, Blough dove in, saving 72 Marines.
The invasion of Koh Tang lost 41 men: 25 from United States Air Force, 14 from the United States Marine Corps, two men from the Unites States Navy and three unaccountable.
They are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

Ellie

[Eric Hood]

There is a decent account of this in a book called:" Leave No Man Behind". These are very brave Marines.
Semper Fi,
Eric