Swift Boats: Hard
Day on the Bo De
(Continued)
My .50-caliber gunner had quite a gut on him. He probably weighed
190-200 pounds. He was wearing a flak jacket and flak pants, but there
was about a four-inch gap between them. A small-arms round came through
the turret and went right into his gut. He slid out of the gun turret,
unconscious, with blood all over the place. So I had 200 pounds of unconscious
guy at my feet, with .50 calibers going off on all the other boats.
I was trying to make myself heard on the radio, "Beach out, beach out,
beach out." I had dead Marines on the decks of all boats. They were
in the open, hunched down on the deck, and they were catching B-40s.
I finally got the boats beached out and got the Marines ashore. Then
my skipper grabbed me and he said, "Commodore, we've only got eight
boats."
I counted them and realized there was a boat back in the ambush. So
I picked up the radiophone, with my big gunner still under my feet.
I called the two boats beside me. I said the them, "Go back into the
ambush and get our boat out."
Both said, "I can't, Commodore. We've got too many wounded people aboard."
All at once, the truth of the whole matter came to me: "This is not
a good situation, to send somebody back into an ambush site. If you
can't lead them, don't do it." So I yelled over to one of the skippers,
"Send me your .50-caliber gunner and stay right where you are." He sent
me the .50-caliber gunner, and we got my wounded gunner onto another
boat. One of the boats on the other side of the river, the PCF-5, had
a good skipper I knew, Lieutenant (junior grade) Bill Shumadine. He
called me on the radiophone, ready to go. I said, "Bill, follow me.
We're going back in."
We went back into the ambush site, and there was the ninth PCF, high
and dry on the bank. The water intakes were out of the water, and the
engines were running full speed. A B-40 rocket had gone through the
pilothouse and killed the skipper. He had his throttles two-blocked
just like everybody else trying to get through the ambush. The B-40
had exploded in the pilothouse, and the boat went out of control and
went at full speed up a slick mud bank. The screws were chopping water,
but the water intake was out, and the engine was burning up, with the
throttle still wide open.
| |
U.S. Coast Guard Commander and future Commandant Yost communicates
with a Vietnamese woodcutter in the lower Ca Mau peninsula, where
he commanded Swift boat missions in Operation Market Time—including
the river ambush recalled here. U.S. NAVY PHOTO (A. R. HILL).
|
The crew was out of the boat in about knee-to waist-deep water behind
the boat, with the Viet Cong up on the beach in bunkers firing at them.
The crewmen were using the boat for shelter. They couldn't stick their
heads out. A lot of their weapons had been lost, and they were just
trying to stay alive. So the .50 calibers on my boat and Bill's boat
began to chatter. And once they began to chatter, the Viet Cong went
into the bunkers. Nobody was going to have their heads out with .50
calibers going. Just the sound of them is enough to scare you to death,
let alone the ruckus they make when the rounds are hitting. So the Viet
Cong were suppressed.
I went in alongside the boat, took up the people in the water and a
couple of guys who were still in the boat. I said, "Get aboard. Get
aboard." But they wouldn't get on. They said, "You've got to take our
skipper."
I said, "I'll take your skipper. Hand him over here." So they handed
over the dead skipper, Lieutenant (junior grade) Don Droz, a Naval Academy
graduate. At that moment, I received the only "wound" I got during my
entire time in Vietnam. As they handed over the skipper, my boat was
tight up against their boat. The BAR, Browning automatic rifle, used
by my forward gunner was white-hot from being fired. I was thinking
to myself, "They're going to hand this guy over and lay him on this
white-hot BAR." So I reached down with my bare hands and moved it to
the side. It left a singe across four of my fingers, almost to the bone.
Immediately when I did it, I said, "You're trying to protect a dead
man from getting burned, and you just burned your right hand so it's
hardly usable. And you're in the middle of combat."
After the ambush, I was screaming on the radiophone for the helicopters
to come in and make the strike, make the strike. I got a call from the
ship, "The helicopters are being launched at this time."
I said, "What do you mean being launched at this time? They're supposed
to be overhead."
|
"The helicopters are being launched at this time." About 20 or 30 minutes
later, I had helicopters. When they arrived on scene, they asked me,
"What do you want us to do?"
I said, "You can dust off. You can pick up some of the dead and wounded."
They said, "We don't do that. Where do you want the ammunition?"
I said, "Put it in the bunker area." Well, they put their ammunition
in the bunker, but I don't think anybody was there. Then they went back
to the ship. And then it was dark.
When I made my way back to the area where my boats were beached out,
I found a lot of dead Vietnamese Marines. I said to the Marine Corps
major, "This is a small group of Viet Cong that has ambushed us. Get
these Marines going down the banks."
The major said he wouldn't move. The commander was a full colonel, a
Vietnamese Marine. He said, "I can't move because we're up against at
least a company, probably a battalion."
I said, "You're not up against a battalion. You're up against a platoon
or a few Viet Cong. Move down the banks."
He wouldn't do it. He said, "We've got to dig in here. We're liable
to get overrun tonight. I'm going to need your mortars to protect me."
