The Story I Promised My Mother I Would Never Tell

The Story I Promised Not To Tell

Free Fall

It all starts with the briefing, and the briefing always starts with “Gentlemen we.”  Where does the “we” originate?  No one ever saw a full bird in the field. Today, it goes like this, “Gentlemen, we are about to go on a mission that will shorten the war and specifically relieve the siege of Ka San. We will perform the most innovative assault ever attempted in a jungle environment.” We, those of us that are actually going on this mission, are saying to ourselves, “bullshit! We are going to die.”

After all the training, the military is just like any other job. Well maybe, like if you are a schoolteacher, you probably do not go to work saying to yourself, “Damn! I am going to die today.” The aircraft, a C130, is waiting for us. Walking by the ramp of the first plane, they are loading Big Blue 82. Big Blue is the bird’s brilliant idea. We gather at the front of the cargo bay, a rather gloomy group of young soldiers considering that with our buddy Big Blue we were going to change the course of the Vietnam War and save the Marines at Ka San. Actually, the consensus is that we are going to die today.

The plan begins with the idea that the 101^st airborne consist of paratroopers. That means they extract themselves from perfectly good aircraft at elevations of 500 to 30,000 feet and expect a sheet of nylon to break the fall. The rulebook says that you cannot jump into a jungle because jungles are filled with trees. Big blue is going to take care of the trees for us. Big blue 82 is 15,000 pounds of sodium nitrate, one of the largest non-nuclear bombs in the world. When Big Blue is thrown out of the plane, it will float down on a parachute and detonate at tree top level. Many things will die.

Because of the size of big Blue, it gets its own C130; the engineers are to follow shortly. Probably just enough time to give the NVA time to send a patrol in force to determine what is responsible for all the noise. Two companies can ride on the same aircraft. The other will follow shortly thereafter. The companies consist of an engineering company with the 173^rd and an assault infantry company of the 173^rd. The brigade with several hundred paratroopers will follow after we do our job. Our job will be to clear out the area so it will be relatively safe for the main infantry. In other words, they plan to drop about 500 men into an area of 900 square feet. This will not take place as planned. You simple cannot drop 500 people with parachutes into a football field without someone being killed. That is what the bird said and that is what we are going to do. Ours is not the reason why but to do or die.

The crew of the C130 carrying us keep us informed. The lead C130 makes a steep climb and Big Blue is away. We enter a circling pattern and wait for the big bang. Even though we are at 800 feet, the pressure wave shakes the giant plane. Shortly, we will jump. Preparation starts and each of us checks the person next to us. We talk through the procedure, the same procedure some of us have done a hundred times. New guys begin to lose their cool bravo. Some become sick and lose their breakfast. Everyone knows the feeling and no one laughs. We stand up in two rows and continuously check the equipment of the person in front of us. The rear ramp opens and the noise is unbelievable. Everything is communicated through hand signals. We attach our statistic lines. The control light goes green and for the next few seconds you will never be able to recall your thoughts. The equipment goes first; the equipment includes two pioneer carts and four army mules. Pioneer carts contain an air compressor, a generator, chain saws, ropes, picks, shovels, and radio equipment. The army mules are some of the most poorly engineered piece of shit ever. They are electrical carts that have a flat bed with no sides. They are so slow that even though you can ride on them, you would not want to.  They   cost the government about eight-thousand dollars each. Remember, this is in 1960s values; you can buy the top line corvette for that much. A Rolls Royce cost around fifteen-thousand dollars. Then we go. Jumping in combat is a duality that is hard to explain. First, there is the count, one thousand one …One thousand four. You are basically free falling. After those four seconds, you have hit terminal velocity. You are no longer accelerating and you no longer have the sensation of falling. At this time, something should happen. You should start feeling that you are slowing down and then you feel that you have stopped moving. The first part of the duality of combat jumping has just occurred. You are rather overjoyed that you are not going to die in an 800 foot fall. Now the second aspect hits you. You are floating down towards a place where other people want badly to kill you. You may even feel sorry that you did not die in the fall.

On the ground, all of the training comes together. It is a ballet of men doing their jobs. Everyone knows what to do. The Infantry secures the landing zone, the engineers unpack their equipment, and in just a few minutes, the generator and chainsaws are cutting away anything over a foot tall. In a couple of hours, the area is a safe landing zone for the assault troops. Then SAFU. The 101st planes are coming; it is hard not to hear two C130s flying close together.  Then the horror strikes; they are going to miss the landing site. Winds are tricky in the mountainous area. We monitor the winds and pass that information to the pilots. There is just so much you can do.

You can see the troops struggling with their chutes to glide over to the landing site. One of the problems is they are dropping too low. At 500 feet, there is very little room for error. About the time your chute opens, you have only a short time to locate the landing zone and to guide your chute to the zone. There is no chance for many; they will fall into the trees. We are taught what to do if we hit a tree. No amount of training will prepare you for what is about to happen. Think of it this way: parachuting from that height is equivalent to jumping out of a two-story window. Military chutes drop a lot faster than a sport chute for one simple reason, a person is an easy target hanging from a parachute. Many people are going to be injured. We prepare to go after our own.  Then we hear the worse possible sounds…the sound of AK47s. They are killing our people in the trees. This is where the training takes over for sure. There is not any running in with guns blazing. Surround the area, secure it, and then start the war. In the field, many people use different personal weapons. I carry a hammerless Model 1912 12-gauge riot shotgun with various rounds for different occasions. It was far more effective for close fighting than the issued M-16. A 12-gauge blast loaded with buckshot will make a big hole. Our company’s first sergeant carries a 15-pound BAR with 60 pounds of ammunition. All the new guys are carrying their M-16s, which will just waste a lot of ammunition. I will take out more enemies with one shot than they will with 20 rounds.

We quickly set up an offensive line. We start firing, not with full automatic but with single well-placed shots. This way the enemy does not know exactly where we are and how many of us there are. They soon realize that we have them surrounded and they only have two choices—surrender or die. Most decide the best part of valor is to live another day. Besides, the Americans treat you better than your own officers do. They soon learn this is a big mistake. We capture their commander, an NVA regular officer, a rare catch indeed. If I were that officer and I knew what was going to happen, I would not have surrendered. An officer like this is prime meat for the CIA interrogators. The spook has a company of South Korean scouts. These guys are not boy scouts. The officer refuses to talk, not good at all for this man’s hide. The Korean pulls out the second in command and asks him politely to tell his commander to tell the CIA what they want to know. This is a good soldier also, and too bad. They bind the officer up and hang him by his feet.  The operative is still asking questions the whole time. A Korean sergeant cuts the officers uniform off him.  This act is very embarrassing for an oriental.  What is going to happen next is even more embarrassing.

The CIA operative says that torture is usually not effective on the individual. The individual will tell all kinds of lies under torture, but if you torture one person in front of a group, you can get all kinds of information when you pick the second one. The fact is the Korean skinned that man alive. The rest of the captives were very cooperative. We found out some startling news: the NVA had ordered the siege to end the night before and they had already removed their artillery, mud in the face of our intelligent. Out of 700 men that jumped that day the casualty rate was 65 percent. Over 200 died in the trees. The engineering company lost 35 and 22 were injured severely enough to warrant discharge. During the debriefing, the bird complimented us on a job well done. Well done!  We were sent on an impossible mission and the enemy was already leaving. We did nothing but kill many young men or crippled them for life.

For me?  It was the worst of times and the best of times. In our efforts to save as many caught in the trees, I inadvertently saved the officer commanding the 101 infantry. Normally, a field grade would not be on a field mission like this, much less a jump. This rather ambitious young Major was going up for light bird (Lieutenant colonel). He needed combat experience so he chose this mission to get his combat badge.  It almost cost him his life, but he received his promotion.  When things had settled down, he asked me to go back in his helicopter. He made me one of those offers that you cannot refuse.  He asked me if I wanted out of this mess.  Finding out that I was a college graduate with a degree in geology and a minor in mathematics, he asked me if I would go with him to the seventh signal brigade in Germany as the headquarter company statistician. I became friends with him and his wife. When he divorced his wife, she and I shared many adventures in Europe.  

©Michael L. Wright