thedrifter
02-21-04, 12:16 PM
John Kerry's Final Mission in Vietnam
John Kerry's last mission in Vietnam was a deadly Swift boat patrol up the Bay Hap River where everything was ventured but nothing gained -- except another medal and more horrific memories.
By Douglas Brinkley
March 13, 1969, would prove among the worst and best days John Kerry spent in Vietnam. Three years earlier, with the main thrust of the antiwar movement yet to come, Kerry had graduated from Yale University, delivering his class oration. Although he had just signed up with the U.S. Navy, in that address he questioned U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. After completing several assignments and being trained to command a patrol craft fast (PCF), or "Swift" boat, Lieutenant junior grade Kerry was ordered to patrol the Viet Cong–infested rivers of Vietnam's Mekong Delta as part of Operation Sealords.
By that March day he had been on Swift boat duty for only four months, but had already been wounded in action twice and was increasingly frustrated with the course of the river war. It seemed senseless to motor up a river, presenting an easy target on the open water, and then exchange fire with usually unseen enemies safely ensconced in the heavy growth on shore -- only to motor downriver and repeat those same actions the following day. Uncooperative allies and interservice rivalries only added to his frustrations. Yet Kerry, like so many others involved in the conflict, did the best he could to follow orders.
The March 13 mission, Kerry's last in Vietnam, was no exception. By the time it was over, he would have earned a Bronze Star, plus his third Purple Heart, and with it the last punch on his ticket out of Southeast Asia.
At 6 a.m. Kerry's PCF-94, along with fellow Lt. j.g. Rich McCann's PCF-24, left their supporting LST (landing ship, tank) to join three other Swifts for Operation Sealords Mission XCVIII -- a raid on the Bay Hap River. The day dawned gray and sunless, which made forming up particularly difficult. The humid air hung stagnant, and the radars worked spottily, if at all, through the unusually dark morning. PCF-94 was in far from tiptop shape. "All the windows on my boat and on [Larry Thurlow's PCF-53] boat had been blown out in the ambush two days earlier, and water slopped into the main cabins as the Gulf of Thailand sloshed us back and forth," Kerry recalled. "Each boat had its quota of Chinese-Cambodian [Nung] mercenaries on board, and speed was reduced because of the extra weight."
Near the entrance to the Bay Hap River, McCann's boat developed engine trouble and had to stop. "We transferred his troops to our boats and continued into the river," Kerry reported, his PCF-94 now so weighted down with men and gear it looked like a World War II Higgins boat heading for the Normandy beaches. Also aboard were U.S. Special Forces teams of Green Berets and SEALs being transported into enemy territory.
For the first time during Kerry's many trips up the Bay Hap, the river was choked with early-morning traffic. Swarms of fishing boats of all shapes and sizes were bobbing around. The sampans and motorized junks were crowded with old men and women and the usual smattering of children. In those dawn hours on the Bay Hap, if Kerry had felt like enforcing the no-movement rule to the letter, he could have ordered his men to shoot every Vietnamese on the sampans. The dead would have been matter-of-factly written off as VC trafficking goods during the U.S.–ordained curfew time.
Instead, Kerry slowed his boat down so that its wake wouldn't swamp the locals' shallow-draft rivercraft, and the men proceeded with guns cocked just in case anything unfriendly came their way. "They looked at us and we at them -- each staring with mistrust and fear," he remembered. Finally PCF-94 arrived at the opening to the small Dong Cung canal, where it was to rendezvous with the Swifts skippered by Lieutenants Skip Barker, Don Droz and Larry Thurlow, who would join them bearing the South Vietnamese Popular Forces members (called "Ruff-Puffs") they had picked up in Cai Nuoc.
Barker arrived leading the other boats, and the Swifts got in line headed for the tiny entrance to the Dong Cung canal. At its mouth the PCFs stopped and waited anxiously while Barker cut the wire connecting the fish stakes to make a hole wide enough for the Swifts to pass through. "Only a week earlier I had personally cut that same line," Kerry recalled. "But then, we had learned not to place any particular suspicion in any quarter. Everything could turn around and kill you, and any omen was suspect. And then, an innocent fisherman could easily have replaced it."
The canal was so narrow that the first two boats roiled the waterway around the fish stakes, causing the others to roll wildly from one side to the other. Ridiculously overburdened by the additional troops they had taken aboard from the crippled PCF-24, Kerry's Swift could make only about 10 knots. Fortunately, every so often the rebounding wakes from the boats in front of them would combine into just enough of a wave to pick PCF-94 up and send it hurtling forward.
As PCF-94 twisted and turned up the river, its crew occasionally losing sight of the other Swifts around the waterway's sharp turns, the Special Forces captain in the pilothouse with Kerry glanced at him knowingly as he intently scrutinized the banks for any sign of movement. But none appeared, in part because the mangroves rose so thick about them on both sides that they could barely see through them. "Christ, they can hear us coming for miles," the captain pointed out, "and I can't remember any ****in' thing in the history of war that runs like this -- taking friendly boats smack into VC territory so that they can be shot at." Then, "with a sigh that said '****,'" as Kerry put it, the captain returned to staring out the pilothouse door.
PCF-94 slowly approached the area where it had been ambushed a few weeks before, and they began to look for the place where they were supposed to deposit the ground troops. Lieutenant Skip Barker continued upriver, seeking to drop off the South Vietnamese troops at a point some 2,000 yards past the position of the drop-off point for the Cambodian Nung mercenaries. Kerry found the spot, and the boats nosed ashore into a small clearing, where the troops began moving onto the banks. A few minutes after all the Nung were ashore, the Swift crews heard a loud but muffled explosion inland. A voice came over the radio: "Can you come back in here and pick up a body? I've got one of my boys killed by a booby trap."
Mike Medeiros jumped ashore to join PCF-53's Thurlow, taking a couple of U.S. military-issue ponchos to carry back the mercenary's remains. Kerry secured his boat and followed the others ashore. "The Nung seemed to be wandering around almost aimlessly, unaware that one of them had bought the ticket," Kerry wrote in his journal. Their leader came up to him and told him where the dead body was. "I remembered easily who he was," Kerry wrote, "the loud, boisterous, fat, impish man who was something of a ringleader among the Nung and who had endeared himself to everyone by his funny face." The Americans started down to where Bac She De, the Nung mercenary, had died. Moments earlier Kerry had asked, "Is it bad?" The Nung leader had replied "that you could put him in 'a bucket,'" Kerry wrote. "I walked more carefully, looking where each step went so that I wouldn't trigger another trap."
Kerry and Medeiros came upon the crumpled remains of the Cambodian. "I never want to see anything like that again," Kerry confided in his diary. "What was left was human, and yet it wasn't -- a person had been there only moments earlier and… now was a horrible mess of torn flesh and broken bones; bent and bloody, limbs contorted and distorted as if they could never be alive. Most of his stomach was hollowed out and there was a huge hole that went through his mouth and nose to the other side. I didn't really want to look and so I concentrated on looking right through him, avoiding contact with any personality."
As the two enlisted men bundled up Bac She De, Kerry wrote: "I looked at the small green sack that had been booby-trapped, and was awed by visions of the blast that must have ensued when it had been grabbed at. Half a hootch had been blown out by the concussion and there was a frightening hole in the ground." The situation was too dangerous for further on-site reflection, however, and the Navy men started back to their boats. "We had to extricate this body by carrying him in a poncho," Medeiros remembered. "I was carrying the front end, and somebody else was carrying the back. We had to go through a mangrove swamp, tramping through all this mud. I had a [grenade launcher] strung over my back, my radio was inoperable, and we had to deposit this poncho on the stern of the boat."
As the landing party turned back up the path, "light fire suddenly started to rake up from a field over the trees to the left," Kerry recorded. "Everyone dove instantly into the ditch by the side of our dike and I landed in water and mud up to my waist with the muzzle of my M-16 firmly planted in the crap. A whole line of mercenaries had already formed in the ditch, all shooting madly at what seemed like nothing. However, the whiz of the bullets over our heads that was visually nothing was clearly lethal." Kerry continued: "And Bac She De lay in front of us crumpled in the poncho while this holocaust went on. His feet were sticking out of one end, and I couldn't take my eyes off the boots -- one going one way and the other the opposite direction -- and the whole thing just silhouetted where he had been dropped suddenly when the shooting began. The alive shooting over the dead to remain alive.
continued....
John Kerry's last mission in Vietnam was a deadly Swift boat patrol up the Bay Hap River where everything was ventured but nothing gained -- except another medal and more horrific memories.
By Douglas Brinkley
March 13, 1969, would prove among the worst and best days John Kerry spent in Vietnam. Three years earlier, with the main thrust of the antiwar movement yet to come, Kerry had graduated from Yale University, delivering his class oration. Although he had just signed up with the U.S. Navy, in that address he questioned U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. After completing several assignments and being trained to command a patrol craft fast (PCF), or "Swift" boat, Lieutenant junior grade Kerry was ordered to patrol the Viet Cong–infested rivers of Vietnam's Mekong Delta as part of Operation Sealords.
By that March day he had been on Swift boat duty for only four months, but had already been wounded in action twice and was increasingly frustrated with the course of the river war. It seemed senseless to motor up a river, presenting an easy target on the open water, and then exchange fire with usually unseen enemies safely ensconced in the heavy growth on shore -- only to motor downriver and repeat those same actions the following day. Uncooperative allies and interservice rivalries only added to his frustrations. Yet Kerry, like so many others involved in the conflict, did the best he could to follow orders.
The March 13 mission, Kerry's last in Vietnam, was no exception. By the time it was over, he would have earned a Bronze Star, plus his third Purple Heart, and with it the last punch on his ticket out of Southeast Asia.
At 6 a.m. Kerry's PCF-94, along with fellow Lt. j.g. Rich McCann's PCF-24, left their supporting LST (landing ship, tank) to join three other Swifts for Operation Sealords Mission XCVIII -- a raid on the Bay Hap River. The day dawned gray and sunless, which made forming up particularly difficult. The humid air hung stagnant, and the radars worked spottily, if at all, through the unusually dark morning. PCF-94 was in far from tiptop shape. "All the windows on my boat and on [Larry Thurlow's PCF-53] boat had been blown out in the ambush two days earlier, and water slopped into the main cabins as the Gulf of Thailand sloshed us back and forth," Kerry recalled. "Each boat had its quota of Chinese-Cambodian [Nung] mercenaries on board, and speed was reduced because of the extra weight."
Near the entrance to the Bay Hap River, McCann's boat developed engine trouble and had to stop. "We transferred his troops to our boats and continued into the river," Kerry reported, his PCF-94 now so weighted down with men and gear it looked like a World War II Higgins boat heading for the Normandy beaches. Also aboard were U.S. Special Forces teams of Green Berets and SEALs being transported into enemy territory.
For the first time during Kerry's many trips up the Bay Hap, the river was choked with early-morning traffic. Swarms of fishing boats of all shapes and sizes were bobbing around. The sampans and motorized junks were crowded with old men and women and the usual smattering of children. In those dawn hours on the Bay Hap, if Kerry had felt like enforcing the no-movement rule to the letter, he could have ordered his men to shoot every Vietnamese on the sampans. The dead would have been matter-of-factly written off as VC trafficking goods during the U.S.–ordained curfew time.
Instead, Kerry slowed his boat down so that its wake wouldn't swamp the locals' shallow-draft rivercraft, and the men proceeded with guns cocked just in case anything unfriendly came their way. "They looked at us and we at them -- each staring with mistrust and fear," he remembered. Finally PCF-94 arrived at the opening to the small Dong Cung canal, where it was to rendezvous with the Swifts skippered by Lieutenants Skip Barker, Don Droz and Larry Thurlow, who would join them bearing the South Vietnamese Popular Forces members (called "Ruff-Puffs") they had picked up in Cai Nuoc.
Barker arrived leading the other boats, and the Swifts got in line headed for the tiny entrance to the Dong Cung canal. At its mouth the PCFs stopped and waited anxiously while Barker cut the wire connecting the fish stakes to make a hole wide enough for the Swifts to pass through. "Only a week earlier I had personally cut that same line," Kerry recalled. "But then, we had learned not to place any particular suspicion in any quarter. Everything could turn around and kill you, and any omen was suspect. And then, an innocent fisherman could easily have replaced it."
The canal was so narrow that the first two boats roiled the waterway around the fish stakes, causing the others to roll wildly from one side to the other. Ridiculously overburdened by the additional troops they had taken aboard from the crippled PCF-24, Kerry's Swift could make only about 10 knots. Fortunately, every so often the rebounding wakes from the boats in front of them would combine into just enough of a wave to pick PCF-94 up and send it hurtling forward.
As PCF-94 twisted and turned up the river, its crew occasionally losing sight of the other Swifts around the waterway's sharp turns, the Special Forces captain in the pilothouse with Kerry glanced at him knowingly as he intently scrutinized the banks for any sign of movement. But none appeared, in part because the mangroves rose so thick about them on both sides that they could barely see through them. "Christ, they can hear us coming for miles," the captain pointed out, "and I can't remember any ****in' thing in the history of war that runs like this -- taking friendly boats smack into VC territory so that they can be shot at." Then, "with a sigh that said '****,'" as Kerry put it, the captain returned to staring out the pilothouse door.
PCF-94 slowly approached the area where it had been ambushed a few weeks before, and they began to look for the place where they were supposed to deposit the ground troops. Lieutenant Skip Barker continued upriver, seeking to drop off the South Vietnamese troops at a point some 2,000 yards past the position of the drop-off point for the Cambodian Nung mercenaries. Kerry found the spot, and the boats nosed ashore into a small clearing, where the troops began moving onto the banks. A few minutes after all the Nung were ashore, the Swift crews heard a loud but muffled explosion inland. A voice came over the radio: "Can you come back in here and pick up a body? I've got one of my boys killed by a booby trap."
Mike Medeiros jumped ashore to join PCF-53's Thurlow, taking a couple of U.S. military-issue ponchos to carry back the mercenary's remains. Kerry secured his boat and followed the others ashore. "The Nung seemed to be wandering around almost aimlessly, unaware that one of them had bought the ticket," Kerry wrote in his journal. Their leader came up to him and told him where the dead body was. "I remembered easily who he was," Kerry wrote, "the loud, boisterous, fat, impish man who was something of a ringleader among the Nung and who had endeared himself to everyone by his funny face." The Americans started down to where Bac She De, the Nung mercenary, had died. Moments earlier Kerry had asked, "Is it bad?" The Nung leader had replied "that you could put him in 'a bucket,'" Kerry wrote. "I walked more carefully, looking where each step went so that I wouldn't trigger another trap."
Kerry and Medeiros came upon the crumpled remains of the Cambodian. "I never want to see anything like that again," Kerry confided in his diary. "What was left was human, and yet it wasn't -- a person had been there only moments earlier and… now was a horrible mess of torn flesh and broken bones; bent and bloody, limbs contorted and distorted as if they could never be alive. Most of his stomach was hollowed out and there was a huge hole that went through his mouth and nose to the other side. I didn't really want to look and so I concentrated on looking right through him, avoiding contact with any personality."
As the two enlisted men bundled up Bac She De, Kerry wrote: "I looked at the small green sack that had been booby-trapped, and was awed by visions of the blast that must have ensued when it had been grabbed at. Half a hootch had been blown out by the concussion and there was a frightening hole in the ground." The situation was too dangerous for further on-site reflection, however, and the Navy men started back to their boats. "We had to extricate this body by carrying him in a poncho," Medeiros remembered. "I was carrying the front end, and somebody else was carrying the back. We had to go through a mangrove swamp, tramping through all this mud. I had a [grenade launcher] strung over my back, my radio was inoperable, and we had to deposit this poncho on the stern of the boat."
As the landing party turned back up the path, "light fire suddenly started to rake up from a field over the trees to the left," Kerry recorded. "Everyone dove instantly into the ditch by the side of our dike and I landed in water and mud up to my waist with the muzzle of my M-16 firmly planted in the crap. A whole line of mercenaries had already formed in the ditch, all shooting madly at what seemed like nothing. However, the whiz of the bullets over our heads that was visually nothing was clearly lethal." Kerry continued: "And Bac She De lay in front of us crumpled in the poncho while this holocaust went on. His feet were sticking out of one end, and I couldn't take my eyes off the boots -- one going one way and the other the opposite direction -- and the whole thing just silhouetted where he had been dropped suddenly when the shooting began. The alive shooting over the dead to remain alive.
continued....