I then went over to Truong and, through Hoang, tried to explain why he should not come with us. I asked Sergeant Hoang what the problem was, and he told me that Truong had “lost face” by not being included in the evening’s patrol. However, his problem was that he couldn’t speak any English at all, and I had briefed the squad that he would not participate in the evening’s ambush in the (correct, as it turned out) belief that, because of the difficulty of the operation, all members of the patrol had to speak English.Īs we finished test-firing our weapons, a clearly distraught Truong came aboard the barge and sat down beside Jim Harmon, and began to weep. He was an intelligent young soldier with a wife and a kid or two in a nearby town, and we were glad to take him along on most of our missions. We normally included as a squad member a young Vietnamese Regional Force corporal named Truong, who dearly loved to go along with the SEALs to get VC body count. (7) our rear-security man, Jim Harmon Navy SEAL in Vietnam (4) the Vietnamese interpreter, Hoang, a truly tough Vietnamese Army sergeant (1) the point man, Charlie Johnson, who could smell VC a mile away We went over everything from hand signals to line of march, which was as follows (names have been changed):Ĭheck your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. In the afternoon we rigged our equipment and test-fired our weapons from the deck of the barge where most of our gear was stored. Working with personnel from Task Force 116 (the River Patrol Force) and HAL-3 (the Navy light helicopter attack squadron), we developed a plan to infiltrate the area and set up an ambush on the banks of the canal.Īfter developing a detailed patrol leader’s order (PLO), I briefed my squad the morning of the operation. forces at war in Vietnam.Īccording to what intelligence we could gather, the Viet Cong were staging major crossings of men and materiel across the Bassac from a village on the banks of a large canal emptying into the river. I should point out here that East Coast SEAL platoons at that time were organized into two squads of six men each was led by one of the two officers in the platoon. Thus it was that my squad, Three Alpha (3A), planned a particularly hairy operation much farther down-river than we had ever gone. As we gained more confidence in our ability to operate within Viet Cong territory, we began to conduct missions ever-farther away from our base at Can Tho, on the Bassac River. In April 1967 my SEAL Team TWO platoon (one of two assigned to the so-called IV Corps area in the southernmost part of South Viet Nam) was making great strides toward carrying the war to the enemy on his own turf. It ain’t always so, however fact is, much of war is not dramatic – it’s just sad, as the following personal account demonstrates all too clearly. As recounted in the average personal memoir, war is most frequently depicted in combinations of heroic actions, cowardly misdeeds, triumphs of the human spirit, and the like.
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