By Honor Bound Page 12

  “I was one of the eight from Class 49 to go to SEAL Team One along with Mike,” recalls Hal Kuykendall, “and I was with him in Charlie Platoon. And it truly was a great platoon. Us new guys, and even the veterans, worshipped Barry Enoch; he was a great leader and a great teacher. Mike fit right in. He carried the squad M-60 medium machine gun and about eight hundred rounds of ammunition—often more. Sometimes a whole operation would depend on getting the 60-gunner into position where he could command the target. And Mike loved it. I was the radioman in my squad. I walked right behind the squad leader and Mike walked behind me. When he put that 60 into action, it was like poetry. He’d settle into a nice three-to-four-burst rhythm—sort of a cadence.

  “I can remember more than one firefight, where we were shooting and ducking—sometimes more ducking than shooting. But Mike would be right there, working that 60 with a big grin on his face. There were plenty of times when I was really scared, but I’m not sure Mike ever was. He was reliable and brave, but I’m not sure he ever knew or understood fear like the rest of us. He was a great teammate and my God, he was strong. None of us could believe how much ammo he carried. Sometimes he’d go out with a thousand rounds, or more. That’s close to eighty pounds of just ammo. And he’d swim canals with that load! He’d just shrug and say, ‘You don’t want your 60-gunner running out of ammo, do you?’ We got through a pretty active tour with no one getting killed. Then a couple of the guys stayed behind to break in the new platoon while the rest of us packed up and left. They were two of our best, and one of them was killed in a helo crash with three other SEALs. We all took it hard when Rich Solano was killed, but I think Mike took it the hardest. Mike was a guy who really cared for his teammates.”

  “Mike was a solid platoon SEAL from start to finish,” recalled Tom Boyhan. Then Lieutenant Tom Boyhan was Charlie Platoon’s officer in charge. “He could get a little wild when he wasn’t in the field, but so could a lot of us. But [Barry] Enoch only had to say a word to him, and he’d settle right down. But Mike was a sled dog; I’ve never seen anyone carry that much ammo. It was unbelievable. And he was reliable in a fight. I only saw him falter one time. It was during a daylight operation, and we didn’t do too many of those. We were in these motorized skimmers that were something like a Boston whaler only with shorter gunwales. It was a Viet Cong small-craft boatyard of some sort, and we decided we’d just drive in and take it down—surprise them in the daylight. It was an audacious play, but it worked. The VC just watched while we came down the canal, and we were in the middle of them before they knew it. Then the shooting started. Before they could get organized to resist, we had the upper hand.

  “We formed a loose skirmish line and began to work our way through the objective. I heard Mike’s M-60 get off a few rounds, then it went silent. The bark of an M-60 is very distinctive; it’s psychological as well as a fire-superiority weapon. When it was quiet, something was wrong. I looked around and Mike was on one knee. He had the weapon’s receiver in one hand and the barrel in the other. M-60s are designed for a quick barrel change, and so the barrels twist off with a quarter turn. It seems his first few rounds had unseated the barrel. ‘No problem, Lieutenant,’ he yelled with that wild Mike Thornton grin, ‘I’ll have it fixed in no time.’ And he did. Soon he was back on line and had his 60 rhythmically barking out short bursts. After we finished the mission, he apologized for letting his gun go down for a few minutes.”

  * * *

  “Those of us at the LDNN base in Thuan-An all came to know both Tom and Mike well,” recalled Ryan McCombie. Then Lieutenant Ryan McCombie was one of the SEAL officers from SEAL Team Two who was cutting his teeth as an LDNN advisor on his first combat deployment. “Both were great SEAL operators, and they were both very different guys. Tom was quiet and serious, yet he had this great, wry sense of humor. He rarely drank and never used foul language, which was probably one reason the guys in his first platoon took to calling him ‘Nasty.’ We of course picked right up on that nickname. But he was all about getting the job done. After Tom arrived, we began going out a little more frequently. Mike was easygoing and gregarious—always ready for a laugh or to kid around. I’m proud to have served with them both and proud to call them friends today. As for Mike, he could be a rowdy sailor as well as a crack Navy SEAL. I remember well the first and only time I went out for a few drinks with Mike Thornton in Vietnam.

  “Today, SEALs generally deploy in an alcohol-free environment. This began with General Order Number One initiated by General Norman Schwarzkopf in the Gulf War—no alcohol in the battlespace. Probably a good idea, but in Vietnam that was not the case. Alcohol was readily available. For us back then it was usually a cold beer or two after we came in from an operation or at the end of the training day. But one day, it got a little past that. Not long after Tom arrived in Thuan-An, I received word that my first child had just been born, and that mother and son, Ryan, were doing just fine. So we decided to celebrate. We took the LCVP over to the Air Force base where there was a bar just outside their gate that catered to American servicemen. And we started drinking. It was probably one of the only times that we really got drunk. At any rate, a few Army Special Forces soldiers came in for a beer and a bowl of rice, and being SEALs, we started giving them a hard time. Well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon the Army guys began to get a little fed up with us. And rightly so. Then the team leader, a Special Forces major, takes out his .45 and says it’s time for us to drink up and leave. He probably had no intention of using it; it was just for show. But he did take the gun out of his holster. So Mike slaps it out of his hand, picks the guy up, and throws him out the window. The bar was built out over a tidal inlet, so the Army major lands in a few feet of water and a whole lot of mud. Mike hands the pistol to one of the other Army guys and says they might want to go out and retrieve their officer before the tide comes in and washes him away. All the while, he’s got this wild grin on his face. That’s just how he was.”

  Ryan McCombie went on to serve for twenty-six years in the Navy and the Navy SEAL teams, retiring with the rank of captain. He now serves on the board of trustees for his alma mater, Penn State University. When both Tom Norris and Mike Thornton speak of good naval officers they’ve served with during their SEAL careers, Ryan McCombie is at the top of that list.

  The main force fighting around Quang Tri City continued through mid-September, when the NVA finally quit the outskirts of the city and consolidated their positions along the southern bank of the Cua Viet River. The Easter Offensive had taken the starch out of both the North and South Vietnamese forces, and by the first week of October they had settled into static lines of defense. While this left the northern portions of Quang Tri Province under North Vietnamese control, the provincial capital had been retaken. Hue City, and by extension the LDNN base at Thuan-An, was safe—for the time being. With Quang Tri City now under ARVN control, the question arose as to what might be the next move in driving the North Vietnamese back across the DMZ. It seemed logical that the ARVN would continue north along Route 1 to recapture Dong Ha. Or through the north-central part of the Quang Tri Province toward the city of Cam Lo. Yet efforts to push the enemy out of western Quang Tri Province were frustrated by the NVA’s use of Laos as a sanctuary and for resupply. And now that the NVA were in a defensive posture, their superb long-range Soviet artillery made the prospect of any further push north a costly offensive.

  “There was a great deal of talk about landing the Vietnamese marines north of the NVA line of defense at the mouth of the Cua Viet River in an Inchon-like maneuver,” recalled Ryan McCombie. “Or even a seaborne assault to retake the Cua Viet Naval Base as a step to recapturing Dong Ha. Some thought any amphibious landing behind the NVA lines would be a feint and an attempt to fool the NVA into thinking it would be a major amphibious effort while the Vietnamese rangers attacked Cam Lo or Dong Ha from the west. But no one really knew what was going to happen—if anything. A couple of times a week, two or three of us would take the jee
p into Hue City to talk with the Army advisors there. They didn’t know much more than we did, but we were getting more requests for intelligence on enemy movements along the coast north of Thuan-An. It was that need for intel that took Tom Norris down to Vung Tau late that October.”

  MISSION TASKING

  “The summer of 1972 and into the fall was a very tense time for all of us in the Hue City area,” Tom Norris recalled. “We knew the Paris Peace Talks were under way, but that really meant little for us at the operational level. We were focused on the next mission. Gradually that summer, and certainly when we got into September, we knew the North Vietnamese were not going to overrun Hue. We continued to operate in the fall much as we had that summer, conducting a lot of coastal reconnaissance operations. When we did go up north of Thuan-An, we went at night, and when we went ashore, we were careful to avoid any large concentrations of NVA. But exactly where the enemy was, and in what strength and configuration, was unknown to those at MACV or to the South Vietnamese.

  “For me personally, I went out on very few of the operations. I left that for Ryan and Doug Huth, the two assigned SEAL Team Two officers. They needed the experience in the field and, given just how few operations we were running, there was no need for me to go out. Then on 25 October, I got a message from Commodore Schaible that he wanted to see me and that I was to get to Vung Tau as soon as I could. The next day, a couple of the guys drove me down to Da Nang, where I caught a helo from there directly to Vung Tau. Vung Tau was a coastal city some fifty miles southeast of Saigon. It was an old city with a lot of intact French architecture. There was a nice, crescent-shaped harbor, and it was very picturesque. It was also home to the Coastal Surveillance Command, what was more commonly referred to as the Brown Water Navy, and Commodore Schaible’s CTF 214, which included the LDNN advisors.

  “Uncle Dave had me take a seat in his office, and I could tell he had something on his mind. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘my counterpart [the Vietnamese commander of the LDNNs] wants to run a SEAL reconnaissance mission to the mouth of the Cua Viet River. Specifically he, or he and his superiors in the South Vietnamese Navy, want to know about the defenses and enemy disposition around the Cua Viet Naval Base. He wants a Vietnamese LDNN officer to head up the reconnaissance team. I want you to run the operation to ensure the mission gets done properly, but this needs to be seen as a Vietnamese operation.’

  “I knew what this meant. It meant that we would run the operation, and when we got back, the Vietnamese officer would report what he saw and learned to his superiors. His American officer counterpart—in this case, me—would also report what took place, but from all outward appearances it was to be a Vietnamese show. That was okay with me, as we had some terrific LDNNs, and as long as I could choose the team, American and LDNN, I knew things would work out once we were in the field. But I was a little iffy on just why we needed to go up there, as we already had much of the information needed for any kind of an assault on the Cua Viet base.

  “‘Sir,’ I told him, ‘I think we already know what’s going on up there, as we had teams in that area shortly before I got to Thuan-An. I’m not sure we need to mount an operation to go and get what we pretty much already know.’

  “So Uncle Dave gives me that knowing, patient smile of his and says, ‘Tom, that’s not what I asked you. I asked if you could lead an American-LDNN reconnaissance patrol up to the Cua Viet Naval Base and report back on base defenses and enemy disposition.’

  “‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. ‘I’m sure we can do that.’ Thinking quickly, I added, ‘So long as we can pick the team, we can make it happen. And for this kind of reconnaissance, I’d like to keep it to a small team—say, about five guys. Two American SEALs and no more than three LDNNs. I’ll probably take Mike Thornton along as the other American.’

  “I got another patient smile and Commodore Schaible replied, ‘Good choice.’”

  MISSION PLANNING

  “When Tommy got back from Vung Tau,” Mike remembered, “we all wanted to know what was going on, but he was pretty close-lipped about it. Yet we knew it must have been some kind of priority for him to go all the way down there to get briefed for a single mission. The other two officers assumed that one of them would be tasked with the operation, but it didn’t work out that way. Tom came to me the next morning and said that we would be doing a recon of the Cua Viet Naval Base. He said that he’d be the American officer on the operation and that I would be the only other American SEAL. He also said that while it was to be a Vietnamese operation with the LDNNs nominally in charge, we would go along as advisors and to coordinate the fire support and help out. As we both knew, we’d basically be running the operation. In the eyes of the South Vietnamese it was an urgent mission, but we would have a few days to prepare for it. Up the Vietnamese chain of command, they wanted to know the strength and disposition of the NVA at the Cua Viet Naval Base and what kind of force might be needed to retake the base.

  “The senior LDNN officer at Thuan-An, Lieutenant Quan, was a great officer with a lot of experience. He was the obvious choice to head up the Vietnamese side of things. Tommy asked me to choose the other two LDNNs, and there were two at Thuan-An who I had worked with during my first tour with Charlie Platoon. They were seasoned fighters and very reliable in a firefight. I knew we could count on them. I was a little surprised that Tommy was going on the operation, as I knew he liked to give good operations to the other two officers. But I also knew he was getting close to the end of his tour, and I just assumed he wanted to get in one more good operation before he rotated back home. As I recall, it was Ryan McCombie’s turn in the rotation, and he was a little pissed that Tommy had decided to take the mission himself. But Tommy was in charge and that was his prerogative—or, as I later learned, his direction from Uncle Dave. Now that we had the team set, we had to get ready for the operation. My job was to get the LDNNs and our equipment ready to go and make sure the boats were ready to put to sea; Tommy had to plan the operation.”

  The U.S. Naval Support Activity Cua Viet River, more commonly called the Cua Viet Naval Base, was established in March 1967 to provide support to the combat base at Dong Ha and the firebase installations in northern Quang Tri Province. The Cua Viet River was a major river complex just south of the Demilitarized Zone. In addition to the Cua Viet, there were a series of estuaries just south of the Cua Viet between Dong Ha and the South China Sea. The waterway becomes the Cua Viet River just west of Dong Ha with the confluence of the Cam Lo River and Quang Tri River. In order to supply Dong Ha and even Quang Tri with fuel and other supplies, the Cua Viet base was set up as a maritime transshipment installation. Oceangoing, shallow-draft ships and seagoing landing craft, like LSTs (landing ships, tank) could land there and off-load stores and fuel bladders. From there these needed supplies could be loaded onto smaller, riverine-type landing craft for transit west, upriver.

  The base itself was a crudely constructed facility with sandbagged plywood huts and a small pier complex for supporting swiftboat operations. Situated on the southern bank of the Cua Viet River, the base was sited among sand dunes and sparse coastal vegetation. Ships making the almost one-hundred-mile journey from Da Nang to the Cua Viet facility had to contend with shifting sandbars and artillery fire from North Vietnamese batteries that had taken up positions inside the DMZ on the northern bank of the Cua Viet River. The base was the northernmost naval base in South Vietnam, and protected from direct assault by the Marine 1st Amphibious Tractor Battalion. Their PM5 amtracks were gunned with 105mm gyro-stabilized howitzers. Additionally, there was only a small naval security detail that manned sandbagged machine gun emplacements. Yet the base really depended on U.S. air power and naval gunfire for its defense. It was more of a beach landing facility than any kind of harbor, and the sailors and marines there lived in near-field conditions. In late 1971 the U.S. Navy turned the facility over to the South Vietnamese. They continued to operate the facility in support of Dong Ha until Dong Ha and the Cua Viet base were overrun in
the Easter Offensive. Now with Quang Tri City back in South Vietnamese hands, the ARVNs were looking to retake both Dong Ha and the Cua Viet Naval Base. And since any retaking would be an ARVN or South Vietnamese marine operation, they wanted a thorough reconnaissance by their own troops—in this case, the Vietnamese LDNN SEALs.

  “What they wanted,” said Tom Norris, “and what Schaible was asking for was some idea of just how well fortified the NVA had made the Cua Viet base. Was it lightly garrisoned or had they really dug in? Was the base manned by second-tier garrison troops or were they a seasoned NVA infantry unit? We knew they had held the base for close to five months, but in what kind of strength? Had they erected any new defenses? We could do this, but we’d have to be very careful. And I wanted it to be a single-night reconnaissance operation. So we needed to get onto the beach as soon after dark as possible, patrol into the area and do our recon, and then get back out before first light. I figured that if we left Thuan-An early afternoon and got up there at best speed to be off the coast at dusk, we could get in and out of there quickly and accomplish our mission, again in a single night. As for Mike, I wanted him along on the operation, as I knew we would be going in heavy, with a radio, cameras, a night-vision scope, and enough ammo to fight our way out if we got caught. I could have taken Brooks or Chambers or Woodruff—they were all good men. But I wanted Mike, as I knew that he was good in the water, that he could carry a lot of gear, and that he was reliable in a firefight. But all of what I knew was by reputation. I’d never been on a mission with him; this was to be our first.