The Last Man: The Final Irony of the Vietnam War
By Dick Lancaster
Captain Harry Cramer Jr., the first man, was an obvious pick for the new Special Forces concept the Army had in mind after the Korean War. While secretly training South Vietnamese in the art of ambush, Cramer was killed near Nha Trang on October 21, 1957. His death was ‘an accident’ because officially, America had no combatants in Vietnam. He was quietly buried. We moved on.
In that same year, Danny Marshall, the last man, was born.
End of an Era
Sgt. Bobby Weldon and Airman Tom Lindow sat down together for midnight chow. The two Air Force H3 chopper mechanics had just finished a maintenanceshift at Hill AFB in Utah. Weldon had just become a Flight Engineer, a mechanic that flies as part of the crew. Both were bound for Thailand shortly.
“In the middle of our meal,” says Lindow, “Bob looked over at me with a very serious look on his face and told me he knew he wasn’t coming back home. I asked him to explain and he just basically felt he had a one way ticket.”
Lindow tried to reassure his friend that such thoughts were irrational. Weldon was unmoved.
Ted Whitlock arrived in Thailand that January. This was his fourth tour with the AirForce in Asia but his first in this country. In April, 1975 America ended its official involvement in the Vietnam War when it pulled out the last remaining Americans and many Vietnamese in ‘Operation Frequent Wind’. He was assigned to the 388th Security Police Squadron as law enforcement Flight Chief at Korat RTAFB (Royal Thai Air Force Base). He commanded a unit of 110 U.S. and 200 Thai AF guards, “primarily [as] a resources protection mission.”
“We probably would be closing down bases in Thailand,” recalls Whitlock. “I assumed this tour would be a piece of cake.”
TSgt Whitlock would just miss having it thrown in his face. Other Air Force personnel wouldn’t be so fortunate.
One of them was 1st Lt. Bob Blough, an HH-53 pilot with the 40th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron ( 40ARRS) based at Nakhon Phnom (NKP) in northeastThailand. Blough commanded two crews which rotated twice weekly to Korat since this base was centered between NKP in the north and Utapao RTAFB on the southern Thai coast. One of the most experienced pilots of the 40th, Blough had been in Thailand almost a year supervising and training other pilots, many of whom were on their first assignments out of flight school.
The 40ARRS as well as the 21st Special Operations Squadron (21SOS) which flew CH 53s out of NKP had been busy that April. They were called on to assistin evacuating the American Embassy in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia. Two weeks later they participated in the evacuation of Saigon. By then both Weldon and Lindow had arrived to catch the action.
Tom Lindow, a mechanic now assigned to the 40ARRS echoed the assumption of TSgt Whitlock and many others at the time. After the evacuation of Saigon, “common thinking was that the war was now officially over and ‘what are we going to do now’?”
So on the 13th of May, less than two weeks after the fall of Saigon when Lt. Blough’s two choppers arrived in Korat, it seemed that the pilots, crews and their stressed machines could lay back a little.
That evening PFC Gale Rogers stared up at the night sky from his perch at the crest of a large hill. Thirty years ago to the month, Marines who had fought over this very ground were being pulled off to be sent south to help a battered Army take Shuri Ridge. Ever since then U.S. Marines have been training on this old battleground.
Rogers’ watch on this routine training exercise would end at midnight. Tonight however, the routine seemed disturbed. Rogers had been looking south and noticing an increasing amount of traffic at Kadena Air Force Base. He didn’t know it at the time but that increased air traffic was for him and his Battalion. In just a few hours he and the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines (2/9) would be taken off this old battleground of Okinawa to create a new one.
As it turned out, the official end to the long and grueling Vietnam War would have to be postponed for a couple of weeks. There was an unexpected job to be done. With a Stand Down atmosphere enveloping the post war military, their mettle would be tested when their leaders flipped the war switch back on.
The battle these men and those they represent were to experience shortly would be a bookend to the Vietnam War. It would not take place in Vietnam nor would it be a mission to keep an ally free. It would be a successfulmission to free American citizens. It took place in the predictable bath of blood that defines communist conquest. Perhaps Congress thought that pulling all support for South Vietnam in 1973 would result only in a blood bath there. That is an appalling indictment in and of itself. But abandoning an ally to a known fate also dishonored those Americans who were sent there, by Congress, to prevent that very result. And for those who were lost or left there, how could they know their leaders would abandon their sacrifice? It had never happened before on such a massive, national scale.
The American leader in this last, violent act would abandon men who did his will; both where they fell and where they were recorded—in the history books. The ‘High Point’ of his Presidency would not have looked so good had he paid too much for it. So he simply transferred half the losses participating in his ‘defining moment’ to another account. Only the relentless efforts of their peers would assure their honor.
In the end, the predictable blood bath did indeed occur in Southeast Asia. In Cambodia it even exceeded the most pessimistic assumptions. It was so bad that the brutal, godless Vietnamese communists had to invade the country to stop it while their own citizens risked their lives fleeing in dilapidated boats!
The ‘killing fields’ were in their infancy then. And three U.S. Marines would be among the first victims.
An Act of Piracy
After their victory in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge were anxious to secure some disputed islands in the Gulf of Thailand while the Vietnamese communists were distracted with their own conquest. This resulted in a higher number of Khmer troops being sent to these islands in anticipation of a Vietnamese claim and possible invasion.
At the time the Khmer Rouge regime could be described as organized anarchy. Its army mainly consisted of young, rural, semi-disciplined peasants who were brutally forcing their own citizens out of the urban areas and into the countryside to starve. The Paris educated political leadership was hardly stable as Pol Pot assumed the officeof Prime Minister. Its navy, consisting mainly of captured American patrol boats, amphibious vessels and auxiliary craft were harassing commercial shipping in the Gulf of Thailand off its southern coast. It was perhaps a rogue naval unit with no orders from the chaotic government that seized the U.S. merchant ship SS Mayaguez on the afternoon of May 12, 1975.
When word of the piracy reached Washington, President Gerald Ford called in his advisors to discuss the situation and assess the resources available for military action. America had been humiliated just two weeks before in Vietnam and the ‘Pueblo Incident’, the North Korean capture of an American intelligence ship was still fresh after only seven years. Henry Kissinger, the architect of the American abandonment of South Vietnam as well as hundreds of U.S.POWs who had served there, was called back from an engagement in Missouri. He had remained Secretary of State as he was under the disgraced Nixon.
Given the chaotic conditions in Cambodia and the retention of Kissinger, diplomatic resolution was given only a cursory glance by the Administration. Had the U.S. Military not been forced by Congress to significantly downsize its assetsin the region, a quick resolution could have been achieved by a rapid show of force. As Thailand watched its neighbor fall to the communists, it was understandably reluctant to allow any American military operations from its soil. With no American Naval presence in the region and a skittish Thai government objecting to a combat role for its bases, the options were limited to humiliation or overkill. Subsequent records declassified over the years give a more focused view of the priorities set by the White House. In the following excerpt from a National Security Council meeting on the subject of using B-52s to bomb Cambodia, White House advisor Robert Hartman appears to affirm the choice of overkill to recover the Mayaguez when he says to the President:
“This crisis, like the Cuban Missile Crisis is the first real test of your leadership. What you decide is not as important as what the public perceives…We should not just think of what is the right thing to do, but what the public perceives.”
What the President eventually decided to do was to deliver a quick and violent blow to the pirate nation. That would be perceived as determined leadership. Of course, this wasn’t possible. The assets just weren’t there. It would take days to get naval assets on site and assets with Marines aboard were even further away. The 7th Air Force was the only local asset. Based at three locations in Thailand, it had only 14 heavy lift choppers in the entire country and no combat assault troops. In spite of these scant resources, little or no useful intelligence, no training and an impossible time frame, President Ford ordered the Air Force to the rescue. A hero needed to be perceived.
At NKP the choppers were on the ground but the rumors of home were flying. Tom Lindow indulged the rumors and the assumptions were that they were to pack up and ship people and aircraft out of Thailand. He was working to that end on aircraft in the early morning hours of the 13th, having already been awake for some time prior to his shift.
Over the radio in the maintenance van he and his crew got the word that the Cambodians had just seized an American merchant vessel. “I thought the Navy and Marines were going to be busy again after all the work they just did in Saigon.”
But Lindow too, would be busy. The Air Force mechanics wouldn’t get any substantial sleep again for another 60 hours.
A Fog Drifts In
TSgt. Ted Whitlock had just settled down after a midnight shift. He hadn’t been out long before a rude knock on his hooch door woke him up.
“Sgt. Whitlock! You need to report immediately to CSC (Central Security Control) with your mobility gear ready for deployment.”
Groggy from lack of sleep, Whitlock shook it off, got his gear and headed for CSC. There he found 25 Airmen ready to deploy to Utapao RTAFB on the south coast. Whitlock was assigned squad leader under a Lieutenant who would serve as Officer-in-Charge (OIC). They were told nothing else.
Upon arrival at Utapao, the Air Force police were housed at the base gym while Whitlock reported to a General Officer for deployment orders and further instructions. At that meeting Whitlock learned that he and his men were assigned to rescue a merchant ship off the coast of Cambodia via helicopter assault. What hadn’t been apparent to the planners but what Whitlock recognized immediately is that the wrong unit had been deployed from Korat. Whitlock was the leader of a law enforcement flight (unit). They were Security Police armed with .38 revolvers, nightsticks and handcuffs. Hardly the gear you would want to take on a military assault mission. It was the Air Base Ground Security Flight at Korat that had the equipment and training for such a mission. How could they miss that? Whitlock was witness to only the tip of a very large goof berg floating through the planning of the soon to be SS Mayaguez rescue operation.
Unsure if his men really would continue with the mission armed only with revolvers, Whitlock assumed they would and made preparations to carry on. But there was another glitch. The lieutenant, the OIC who was supposed to lead the unit never deployed from Korat. It seemed to Whitlock that the ‘fog of war’ was settling in way too early.
Shortly after word of the Mayaguez capture reached the maintenance crews at NKP, every bird was to be made serviceable. Every shift was involved. By the evening of the 13th most were ready to fly and Airman Tom Lindow turned twenty.
“I stood in front of the aircraft I was assigned to ‘run up’ and watched the crews come out heavily armed with their weapon magazines taped back to back giving each other hand shakes, back slaps and thumbs up. It really sunk into me then and there that these people were going into danger.
“I thought to myself, ‘don’t screw up, make sure you get your aircraft launched successfully, AND DON’T GET RUN OVER!!
“I looked up and down the flight line, past our row of HH-53C ‘Jolly Greens’ and onto the CH-53C aircraft (call sign ‘Knife’) from our sister squadron the 21st SOS – ‘Dustys’. Slowly each aircraft began its startup procedure. [Auxiliary power units] came on line breaking the night’s silence with their high pitched whining noise followed by engines lighting off. Rotors began to slowly turn building up to a steady roar from an entire flight line of H-53s; something I have never, nor believe anybody will ever see again.
“The noise was incredibly deafening. I laughed to myself that we certainly weren’t sneaking up on anybody tonight. Having got my aircraft run up complete without any hiccups, I took a position further out in front of the aircraft getting ready to marshal it out. Looking up and down all I could see was silhouettes of H-53s with their anti-collision lights spinning and navigations lights on. The rotor tip lights making circles in the dark night that ran up and down the long flight line was mesmerizing.
“In the background, OV-10 after OV-10 aircraft (a twin fuselage observation plane) from the 23rd TASS (Tactical Air Support Squadron) were taking off from the runway to stage [at Utapao]. It was an incredible scene of power. Slowly each aircraft made its way out to the runway to take off. They all lined up behind one another on their way out. Shortly thereafter the flight line went from a deafening roar to silence as we watched the last of them disappear into the night sky.
“I stood there feeling hopeless wishing I could be with them, wherever they would eventually go. Crazy thoughts ran through my mind – thinking, ‘did I do the right thing when I was working on them? Was I sure I checked and double checked everything?’ I thought they would be busy enough with their mission, and didn’t want to think something mechanical would go wrong.”
There were more birds to service so Tom went back to work. Happy birthday.
At 21:00 Lt. Blough, still at Korat was summoned to the Tactical Unit Operations Center and handed a phone by an NCO. It was the Pentagon. Because of the communication quirks at the time, the Pentagon Captain will forever be known to Blough as Donald Duck.
“Lieutenant, can you land your helicopter on a ship?”
“What type of ship, sir?”
The NCO showed Blough a photo of the fully loaded SS Mayaguez.
“I don’t think I could land on the containers, sir. We’d be too heavy. But we could hover and pick up any injured crewmen with the rescue hoist.”
“Could you hover and off load troops?”
“Do we expect any resistance from the crew?”
Donald Duck paused for a bit. “Only some small arms and maybe a couple of RPGs (rocket propelled grenades).”
That was an abrupt switch in this rescue pilot’s internal imagery.
Bob took a deep breath, “Sir, I think you should be talking to my commander at NKP.”
Before Donald Duck could answer one of the crewmen rushed in.” We’ve been scrambled! One of our 53s went down near NKP!”
When TSgt. Whitlock realized he was expected to lead a unit on a ship assault with handguns (revolvers, no less) in gas masks and no officer, he called his command in Korat to explain the situation. He was there, Whitlock was told. Make the most of it. Whitlock and his men had a green light, but a very fuzzy one.
Regardless of what the planners had in mind, Whitlock was not going to lead his men on a suicide mission. His team would be one of five 25 man teams of security police from bases in Thailand to meet up at Utapao then on to… well, wherever. Wherever wherever was, this Law Enforcement unit wasn’t going there with pistols. It took some time but Whitlock finally persuaded the armory to lend his team the proper weapons. His three NCOs had been through Air Base Ground Security Defense training which is combat oriented, but the rest of his men had not. But they would be. The four NCOs gave their sleepy men a crash course.
Whitlock’s suicide mission was concocted by Lt. General John Burns, Commanding Officer (CO) of the 7th Air Force based at NKP. It was obvious that the political will was to solve this crisis quickly. A sea rescue of individual sailors was within the scope of the Air Force rescue choppers. Air assaults were doable as proven by the Son Tay POW rescue attempt in North Vietnam five years earlier. But these assault missions had to be carefully planned and rehearsed. Boarding a ship at sea in a hostile action however, is the Navy’s job. Even so, the Navy had not done so since 1826!
Command confusion began at the top with the Commander-in-Chief himself. With the Pueblo Incident fairly fresh, Ford was pressing for an immediate response; a public perception of a man of action. Immediate meant local assets. General Burns was literally inventing a new amphibious Air Force mission and tactics in the span of a few hours!
For the first time in history President Ford had real time access to tactical battlefield information and it can be reasonably argued that this new capability could not have debuted on a more inappropriate mission. The overall Command of Pacific Forces (CINCPAC) is properly tasked with coordinating all Pacific military assets in response to a crisis. Unfortunately, this mission called for the comingling of Air Force and Naval assets. Air and Naval Commands clashed due to this confusion. In the end, with speed essential to the mission and all local assets in the hands of 7th Air Force CO Gen. Burns, the 56th Air Force Security Police Squadron was the only local unit capable of improvising an amphibious assault. In this hazy improve, it’s not too surprising that Whitlock’s 388th Law Enforcement unit was deployed inadvertently with the 56th SPS.
Although the Navy had ordered ships to the area and made plans to ready a Marine Battalion Landing Team (BLT) as early as the evening of the 12th, it wasn’t until the loss of the AF chopper near NKP and the convoluted intelligence concerning the whereabouts of the Mayaguez crew that made deployment of the Marines the most practical option.
Still, Gen. Burns would have to get them there. So let’s invent another Air Force mission out of thin air. Let’s invent a joint Air Force/Marine Corps amphibious assault mission and try to accommodate everyone of rank who has an opinion on how that should happen.
The senior command structure is still ambiguous in the histories of this event. The CINCPAC Command History includes a command chart for this mission, which after the CINCPAC designation, resembles an etch-a-sketch drawing. It is certain however, that the President was commanding the mission at the White House throwing sporadic fuel on a tactical command structure fire. As if to emphasize the bizarre nature of command, the Commander-in-Chief was hosting a black tie dinner party for a Dutch diplomat while the most intense portion of the up-coming battle raged. He would excuse himself from time to time to be briefed and give orders—then go to sleep.
An Inconvenient Loss
Seventy-five volunteers from the 56th SPS were hastily assembled and waiting at NKP to link up with Whitlock’s group and another 25 men in Utapao by late afternoon on the 13th. The mission required five CH 53s to landon, or hover over the containers on the ship one at a time covered by the other four choppers and discharge the AF Police in a fog of riot control gas! Far earlier in the day, the White House had consulted an engineer who said the containers would crumble under the weight. Apparently it wasn’t ruled out because the Pentagon decided to consult with a pilot, Bob Blough. It doesn’t appear that General Burns was informed of this.
None-the-less, twelve choppers loaded with men and gear took off toward Utapao that evening for an assault planned for the next morning, the 14th. At about 2130 one of them went down killing all aboard. It would be years before these men would be included as Mayaguez veterans. Their number exceeded half the number of the crew to be rescued. Essentially, they made the loss numbers look bad for the Ford Administration.
It would also be years before a consensus of the cause of the crash was settled upon; a defective sleeve on a rotor blade. Guilt causes casualties among those that survive tragedies, combat or otherwise. This is a common wound for men with such a close bond but is often overlooked and untreated; and just as often, unjustified. If it is self-inflicted it is harder to heal. For those in a stateside factory with a government contract there is no guilt. It is the rare worker who realizes that lives depend on his competence. Hopefully, he will now.
When I tell you I’m leaving, permanently, it scares you. You don’t know where I got that information and it is the fear of the unknown, my unknown that makes you anxious. So what do you do? You try to convince me that I’m being irrational and you believe that. But you also believe I know what I’m talking about. I saw my future and you should be honored that I would let you in on such a personal matter. I don’t even tell my family, but I have to tell someone—you.
I didn’t do it to burden you. I told you because I wanted someone to carry me through the rest of a life I will not have. I believe you would do that for me. I’m putting my memorial in your hands. If you’ll do that for me, it will make my destiny easier to accept.
To sense the presence of your own demise and continue the physical duties that will likely bring it about is valor. That is what you leave as your legacy if only to one other human being.
Bob Weldon died with 22 other airmen in that crash at NKP doing their duty. He told Tom Lindow he would.
Save Them—Kill Them
With one-fifth of the assault team already dead and other choppers diverted to assist at the crash site, the mission would continue. However, new plans were formulated which called for a Marine battalion to take the place of the Air Force Police. The Air Force would ferry them in. Such a joint Air Force/Marine operation had never before occurred; nor had an amphibious helicopter assault. Here would be an improvised, completely unique mission with limited assets, useless intelligence and questionable off-scene leadership.
Whitlock wasn’t told of any new plan or even of the loss at NKP. He was still going to war with a hastily trained crew on a mission not yet written in the training manuals.
When the remaining Air Force Police units were assembled at Utapao, they were briefed and assigned certain levels of the ship. They were given a few hours’ sleep before boarding buses to take them to the flight line. Whitlock’s crew was already asleep which is why they missed the news of the crash at NKP.
Once airborne and headed north to NKP to assist at the crash scene, Lt. Blough’s crew was informed that the CH 53 had gone down with 18 passengers aboard. These were tight knit units. Everyone knew everyone else, at least casually. Naturally their thoughts drifted to whom they may have lost. Blough’s chopper began to hear radio traffic of other birds headed south. Soon his bird would be ordered south too. Not to Korat—to Utapao.
About mid-night, as the date turned to the 14th, senior NCOs began to shut down the Marine training exercise and ordered the men to break camp. There was an urgency to this order confirmed when they were trucked back to Camp Schaub.
“Empty your footlockers and pack your gear in your sea bag,” the Gunny shouted. “Write down the names of your next of kin and attach it to your sea bag. You will then secure your gear and line up to draw weapons and bayonets.”
If PFC Rogers had sensed a disturbance in the routine before, now he could see it turning up-side-down. The Marines did what they were told and made quick about it. They were off to Kadena AFB.
While Ted Whitlock was aboard a bus to the flight line at Utapao, Bob Blough was en route and Gale Rogers was packing his sea bag, U.S. aircraft were flying over the Mayaguez dead in the water about a mile off the coast of an island. Koh Tang, as it was called was about 35 miles off the coast of Cambodia. There, pilots on station saw people being ferried to the island from the ship. It was assumed the crew was being transferred to Koh Tang. That’s when the plans changed.
Actually, all of the Mayaguez crewmen were on a Thai fishing vessel pirated by the communists along with its captain five months earlier. The crewmen would be headed toward the Cambodian mainland a few hours later.
At the White House, the National Security Council was meeting on the evening of the 13th; or 10:00 on the 14th Koh Tang time. One of the pilots reported the fishing boat headed toward the mainland and thought he saw ‘Caucasians’ on board.
When the White House was informed Kissinger remarked, “We have a pilot who thinks there may be Caucasians. It would have been a much better position for us to take that we will simply hit anything that leaves the island.”
President Ford replies, “Right.”
Kissinger then makes a stunning revelation, “Now we are debating with the pilot.”
To which Ford replies, “I gave the order at the meeting ( the previous NSC meeting ) to stop all boats. I cannot understand what happened on that order.”
From the records it is never clear what the pilot and the White House were debating about during a combat mission. This incredible passage from the minutes of the National Security Council meeting weren’t declassified until 1996. And while the meeting swung wildly from topic to topic, this excerpt is not out of context. It appears Ford was willing to take out the crew to avoid another Pueblo Incident on his watch and the pilot may have been debating the legality of the order; if, in fact he ever got it.
As if to confirm the psychopathic obsession at the White House, one of its aides, John Marsh asks later in that same meeting, “Supposing some of the boats near the island have Americans on it? Should we send some order to use only riot control agents there?
“I think the pilot should sink them,” the consistent Kissinger replied. “He should destroy the boats and not send situation reports.”
What Kissinger is implying here is that he wants to avoid an embarrassing Pueblo Incident and he is willing to kill the Mayaguez crew to obtain his end. With no situation report from the pilot, it will be the pilot and not the Administration guilty of murder. It is not clear from the available records if this was the subject of the debate between the A-7 pilot and the White House during the actual combat mission mentioned above. What is fact though is that the pilot, recognizing ‘Caucasians’ on the Thai vessel, did gas and pepper it with cannon fire, firing fore and aft in an attempt to keep the boat at sea. Several Mayaguez crewmen were wounded in that action. So the effort to keep any crewmen from reaching the mainland circa Pueblo Incident was serious and severe. Purposely firing on ‘Caucasians’ is not something a pilot would do on his own. That had to come from the top. In the end, that effort was unsuccessful. When the crew reached the mainland it appears the Cambodians didn’t know what to do with them.
The American captives were never on Koh Tang Island. What the air crew saw were reinforcements ferried to the island because the Americans had been flying over it continuously, beginning a few hours after the crew was seized. The White House assumed the crew had been split up between Koh Tang and the mainland. The new plan had to wait for the Navy to arrive late on the 14th. A detachment from the 4th Marines based in the Philippines would board the Destroyer Escort USS Harold E. Holt by chopper and mount a ship to ship assault on the Mayaguez. Simultaneously, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines would assault Koh Tang and free the crew. Bombing of mainland targets was to commence dictated by the situation. This included a plan for B-52s. The command would come from CINCPAC, the 7th Fleet in Hawaii or from the 7th Air Force in Nakhon Phanom or maybe it would come directly from the White House. Who knew?
Duty Guilt
PFC Gale Rogers and his unit laid propped up on their packs next to the airstrip at Kadena. Everyone had been in the field for two days; some three. It was 03:00 when the black and white turbo prop taxied toward them. A C130? Maybe a C5? What do grunts know about aircraft other than get in, sleep and get out? This one wasn’t a sleeper though. No seats. Just cargo nets. But they had their packs and improvised. Sleep and anticipation traveled with them to—wherever.
Rogers was in the air when Ted Whitlock’s crew was waiting to board the choppers that would take them each to their own personal destiny. Then the word came. One of their choppers went down en route to Utapao; none survived. Was it an accident? No one knew; or weren’t saying. There had been casualties already? For the superstitious, that was a bad omen. For the practical, having been originally assigned this mission armed with only handguns—that was a bad omen. But Whitlock’s NCOs had equipped and prepared them. They were going to war with NCOs that knew how to solve problems. With the deaths now of their guys at Nakhon Phanom they were all determined to do their best on this mission so that none of those men would have sacrificed in vain.
“The adrenaline was really flowing then,” said Whitlock. “We were ready to kill these bastards that we thought had caused the chopper crash. We were pumped!”
That mindset was justified for there had always been communist activity surrounding U. S. air bases in Thailand.
Preparing for combat, a rookie soldier will entertain many thoughts. If he recalls those thoughts later, he may be surprised at how different the scenario he played out prior to his upcoming experience was from the actual experience he would remember. He’s preparing with others in his unit. He watches them as they do him. His first though may be how he handles himself in front of them; will they be able to count on him? He will wonder if he will be able to kill another human being. If so, how will he handle that burden? He reviews the 12 years or so he remembers from his eighteen or twenty year biography; his family, his school, the freedoms and pleasures of impending adulthood which he is just now entering. And for the first time, he considers his own mortality. He finds it a stranger.
There is only so much to prepare. Now he waits. His mind, now less occupied with the task of preparing for battle lets the stranger in. He anticipates it. Oracles and fortunetellers practice the second oldest profession due only to man’s obsession to rid himself of anticipation
But man is base. His will more often than not act as if his survival is of utmost importance. If he is trained well in his army, he will learn to subdue his ego to a point. But no army has ever trained the knot out of the human stomach that has time to anticipate the mystery of impending combat. And no soldier can be his own oracle to predict how he will act when it is his time to fight.
For those who go on into action they need no oracle; they know. They become part of the written history. They satisfy or disappoint themselves. And if satisfied, they free themselves of that uncertainty of character.
For those who prepare, anticipate and are willing to assume a looming risk and for some reason are called back on its brink, the burr stays in the shoe. There will be no actual experience to compare to the scenario he has already invented. Most will get over their untested character. That knot though, is always remembered and respected. More importantly and perhaps more common is duty guilt. There are few more helpless feelings among soldiers than to sit by idly while friends are forced into danger. A soldier’s worst enemy is helplessness. No order is more despised and no duty is more dreaded than the order to stand down when brothers are ordered to stand up.
The Mayaguez operation was full of these unsung heroes. They went where they were sent; they did what they were told. That was their duty; but it wasn’t their call. They would have gone if it was. Still, they feel guilty.
For the law enforcement flight of the 388th Security Police Squadron, their combat experience would end at this juncture. They had all walked through its prelude but they would not be going to war. Their mission was canceled in part due to the loss of their men at Nakhon Phanom; in part because their highest leadership had botched its way into a need for more time; time enough to call in the Marines.
Those Marines would soon see other Air Force personnel of the same stock.
Whitlock’s unit had been only moments away from flying off into the unknown. Still, there was some anxiety. Given what they had been through up to that point, would it be proper to ask how much longer they kept those borrowed rifles?
The Players Assemble
Blough’s crew arrived at Utapao at about 02:00 on the 14th. They were fueled up and Bob went to find out what happened to the chopper (a CH 53, Call Sign, ‘Knife 13’) that went down that evening. He and his crew lost some friends. They would remain on alert and sleep in the chopper.
That morning the crew was called on to rescue a Navy A-7 pilot who had gone down in the Gulf of Thailand. The flight took an hour and a half to reach the rescue coordinates only to find out they were actually looking for survivors of a Khmer gunboat sunk by the A-7. Their search pattern took them near the north end of Koh Tang Island when crewman David Ash informed Blough that they had just been fired at from the island.
A seasoned combat vet might have taken evasive action. But Bob simply pondered the implications. The crew’s ‘seasoning’ would come the next day. It was probably an RPG. Had it been an anti-aircraft missile they would have been seasoned in salt water.
But the surreal moment of the near death experience and the wonderment of why someone would want to kill him passed quickly. It was the training that kicked in. The crew was now in combat mode.
Reporting the incident to the command aircraft resulted in an admonishment to stay clear of the island. “No kidding?”, or more accurately, the military phrase to that effect.
It is quite possible that Gale Rogers was flying over the island that wanted to kill him as well as the pilot who would save his life 30 hours hence on his way to Utapao during this time. But for now, Rogers didn’t know where he was when the Marines landed in Thailand. No one was told anything. Only later he found out. Charlie Brown, co-pilot of a chopper who would later take Marines from the 4th Regiment to the USS Holt was asked by a Marine boarding his chopper, “Where am I?” Brown told him he was at Utapoa. “I know that,” the grunt replied. “But what country am I in?” Such was the level of information all Marines were given throughout this mission—and after.
The Marines of 2/9 settled down on the tarmac at Utapao, stowed their gear and were herded down to the mess hall. Rogers assumed it was morning because the facility “had [breakfast] food you could identify” in addition to silverware and plates.
After chow the Marines were organized and assigned into helicopter transport teams. They drew ammo and waited.
Blough’s chopper returned to Utapao in the afternoon. He and his crew were told to get some rest. Nothing was in the works for that night.
While Gale Rogers ate breakfast at Utapao on the 14th, the U.S. was bombing targets on mainland Cambodia; particularly the airbase that posed a threat to the upcoming assault. The Mayaguez crew was on the mainland at this time and perhaps because of the bombing, the Khmer Rouge decided to release them. The crew reported later that their captors kept asking them if they could stop the bombing. “Well, yea. Send us back. We’ll tell ‘em.”
It was a common communist obsession that set the crew’s release back a full day and subsequently forced a battle. The Khmer Rouge wanted the crew to sign a document of friendship between the crew and the peace loving butchers of Democratic Kampuchea, Cambodia’s new name. This day long drama on the 14th was hampered by document revisions, translation delays and one crew members’ refusal to sign. By the time all was in order it was evening and the crew would have to wait until morning to be released. The war was on.
Airman Tom Lindow arrived at Utapao on the afternoon of the 14th.
“When we arrived, there were C141′s coming and going and the flight line was busy with young Marines standing or lying about with their gear. Most looked pre-occupied within their own thoughts and all were pretty much quiet and keeping to themselves. We were told to stay clear of them.
“I had to pass them going to and fro on the flight line while doing my duties. When I passed, I gave them a nod or a wave or thumbs up. What else could I do?? I knew these guys were pretty much going to take the brunt of whatever was going down [and I] felt helpless not being able to contribute. Later on we mingled with a few who wanted to talk or bum cigarettes. They asked us some questions about our weird looking helicopters, which did look quite different than the Marines’ traditional, slicker looking H-53s. I was tempted to kid them about it and play some jokes on them but refrained, knowing this was going to be a hectic day for them. We told them to take care of themselves.
“Again, I felt stupid. What do you say to someone about to go into combat? We worked into the night getting the aircraft ready and finished sometime around mid-night.”