By Honor Bound Read online

  “The weather had cleared and we had a partial moon, so we could see across the river. And from where we were on the south riverbank, we had a good field of vision to see anyone in the immediate area on the north bank. I was trying to decide if I should swim the river and search along the north bank for him, but we really had a good vantage point from where we were. So I decided that we would just work our way slowly along the southern bank, first upstream and then back downstream, and search the far bank for him. After a few hours of moving and looking, I sensed that there was some kind of a dispute among my Sea Commandos. That’s when I could have really used Lieutenant Tho. Kiet was very steady, but the other two were getting impatient with being this far upstream and this far from the safety of the outpost. They wanted to go back. I couldn’t really blame them; there were a lot of enemy troops about. We would spot company-sized bivouacs and periodically we could glimpse trucks and tanks moving across the Cam Lo Bridge and along Route 9. The enemy was all around us. I called the FAC but he was now having trouble raising Hambleton. A few hours before dawn, we began to make our way back to the outpost. Neither I nor the Sea Commandos wanted to be out there in the daylight. I hated to go back empty-handed, but there was no point in crossing the river and thrashing around trying to find him. And we were out of time. We’d just have to try again.

  “Once again, we carefully made our way back to the outpost and Kiet alerted the ranger and tank crews that we were coming back in. The following day, April 12, was pretty much a repeat of the previous day. I got Kiet and the others something to eat, and had them tend to their equipment. I told them to get some rest because we’d be going back out again after dark. I could tell they were not all that excited about it, but that was my mission—our mission. Twice that day we came under mortar and rocket attack, but the FACs were quick to call in suppressing fire. I think the NVA across the river knew something was going on at our outpost with the APCs coming and going. But they also knew that if they fired on us, they’d be inviting air attacks.

  “Most of that day I was talking with the FACs and trying to come up with a plan to get to Hambleton. Everyone knew he was getting weaker and that he was having trouble moving. This meant that even if we did find him, he might have a hard time walking out. And he needed to do more than walk—he had to move quietly in a patrol file and take direction from me. It didn’t look good, but I had an idea. Maybe we could bring him out by sampan—again if we could find him. During our previous outings, we’d passed through some deserted villages and I knew there were plenty of sampans along the riverbank. But I didn’t recall seeing any paddles. Sometimes the Vietnamese don’t use paddles, but I knew we’d need them. So that day I radioed back to Dong Ha and asked them to round up some canoe paddles—two of them. I got a lot of ‘You want what?’ and ‘Say that again,’ but I finally got through to them. I also asked for some life jackets and medical supplies, and that afternoon they were delivered by APC. The APC also delivered something I really didn’t need.

  “It was along about midafternoon and I was standing at the side of the bunker talking to one of the FACs about the upcoming mission that night. The weather was improving; that was good for the guys in the air, but not necessarily good for us on the ground. I was wearing only my cammie shirt and boots—nothing else. My blue jeans, which is what I operated in, were hung over a bush drying out. I heard this commotion behind me, and when I turned around, there’s this reporter. He had a microphone in his hand and a film crew setting up a camera. I couldn’t believe it! I asked him what the devil he was doing here and he said he was with such-and-such news network and that he’d heard there was some kind of rescue going on. They were there to film it. I said, ‘The heck you are. I want you back in that APC and I want you out of here now.’ Besides the distraction, we could come under attack at any time.

  “So he told me, ‘We have clearance to be here and permission from some general up the chain of command.’ I was just flabbergasted; this was the last thing I needed. So I grabbed my AK-47, which is never very far away, and jacked a round into the chamber. I’m not sure quite what I said, but there was no mistaking my meaning: they were to clear out, and they were to do so now. I must have looked pretty funny there on that bunker with a cammie shirt, no trousers, no underwear—and an automatic weapon in my hand. But he didn’t think it was funny. He and his crew packed up in short order and filed into the APC, and they left. That might have been a little harsh on my part, but we were playing for some high stakes here, and people’s lives were on the line. I simply didn’t need one more issue to deal with. And this was a classified mission. Who the heck gave them permission to be there in the first place?”

  BAT 21 BRAVO

  “That evening as I was getting ready to go back out, Kiet came to me and told me that the other two Sea Commandos would not go. They said it was too dangerous and that it was not worth risking their lives again to save one American. I was kind of expecting this, and had already decided to not to take any of them back out that night. But I had not told Kiet this. I figured that sooner or later we’d run into an NVA patrol or an outpost, and it would go badly for us. Or the NVA would push through our little outpost on the way to Dong Ha, and we’d have no secure base to come back to. So I told Kiet, ‘You stay back here with them and be ready to help me when I’m on the way back in tomorrow morning.’

  “He said, ‘No, Dai Uy, I’m going with you.’

  “‘Look, Kiet,’ I told him, ‘this time it could be really dangerous. I might not get back from this one.’ I didn’t really think in terms of this as a one-way mission; you don’t want to admit that, even to yourself. But it was going to be very difficult. If he too did not want to go, then I wanted to give him a way out—a way to save face. But he would have none of it.

  “‘If you go, Dai Uy, I go,’ and that was it.

  “‘Okay, we go together. You get everyone here ready to help us when we get back to the outpost, and I’ll let the FACs know what we’re trying to do.’”

  A good question at this point in the narrative might be why did either of them go? Even though they had returned safely from two previous patrols, they were tempting fate a third time. And this time, they had to recover a man who in all probability could not walk and would be just so much baggage on a combat patrol where stealth and silence were essential. Those of us who know Tom Norris know why he went back; he’s simply the caliber of warrior who could not rest if another American was in trouble. No matter what the odds, he would go. He is also someone for whom fear either does not exist or can be so compartmentalized that personal physical danger does not enter into the calculus. Of course he was going back out.

  As for the fate of a downed airmen, or any American in danger of capture, there was some logic in the idea that Norris or Kiet should not go back into harm’s way. It was known that captured Americans—live Americans—were of value. North Vietnamese Army protocols in place at the time were that captured Americans were to be made safe, medically treated, and sent north—not tortured or killed. The United States was pulling out of South Vietnam and peace talks were under way. Captured Americans were leverage at these talks. While a prize like Hambleton might be the exception in that he might not be held by the North Vietnamese but passed along to the Russians for his special knowledge, Americans at risk of capture were not necessarily at risk of death. From my study of downed pilots during the Easter Offensive during the late stages of that war, if an American in enemy territory simply raised his hands and surrendered, there was a good chance he would be taken to Hanoi to wait out the conflict. In fact, two airmen shot down during failed attempts to rescue Bat 21 Bravo did just that, and were repatriated at the end of the war.

  Yet Tom Norris was not alone. A great many airmen at sea and at air bases in Thailand and Vietnam were poised and ready to go into harm’s way for those evading on the ground. It is simply a part of our culture; we risk all for one of our own—we go back. Regarding Petty Officer Nguyen Kiet, I asked him why he ag
reed to go back out with this American dai uy that third night. His answer was simple and straightforward.

  “I volunteered because it was my duty, and it was the right thing to do. If we had left Hambleton there, he would have been captured by the North Vietnamese Army troops.”

  The situation regarding the NVA offensive on the evening of 12 April had changed little, at least for those working on the rescue of the two remaining downed airmen. The North Vietnamese continued to move armor, trucks, troops, and supplies across the Cam Lo Bridge, but these forces seemed to flow south into western Quang Tri Province rather than east toward Dong Ha. That would come later. While Hambleton was on the ground, the no-bombing, exclusionary zone around him included the Cam Lo Bridge. The North Vietnamese seemed to be making full use of this bridge to move their forces south. They were also fording the Mieu Giang River at crossing points farther west. And these were not the only enemy forces on the move. The NVA had come out of Laos in divisional strength, moving east into Quang Tri Province and driving toward Quang Tri City—the provincial capital.

  Hambleton himself was not doing all that well. The night before, while Norris and the three Sea Commandos searched for him, he had apparently been too weak to move down onto the bank of the river where they could see him. It was becoming clear to all that he could not last much longer. The airborne forward air controllers had pinpointed his location and on two occasions had directed that relief packs called Madden kits with food and water be dropped in his area. Two of these kits were scheduled to be deployed, yet only one was released from the drop aircraft. But Hambleton had been too weak to recover it. At one low point, Hambleton struggled onto a sandbar in the river and began to wave a white handkerchief. He was immediately spotted by one of the FACs, who managed to get him on the radio and talk him back into the covering foliage of the riverbank. Throughout the ordeal, Hambleton had been both responsive and defiant. He had even retained his sense of humor. But this was changing. He was missing some of his radio checks, and when he did communicate he was dispirited and sometimes incoherent. Back at the outpost, Norris was able to gather enough from his conversation with the FACs to know that Hambleton was reaching the end of his tether and that he couldn’t last much longer.

  Both the FACs and Norris were coming to the conclusion that it would have to be this night or never. And Norris knew that he would have to go and physically get him. Hambleton was simply unable to get into the water and float to a rendevous, and when they did find him, it was a near certainty that he would be too weak to walk out.

  * * *

  “Just after dark, Kiet and I saddled up and made our way down from the outpost toward the river. Before we got to the water we again swung west and began to move toward NVA-controlled territory. I now carried our radio, and both Kiet and I were each armed with an AK-47 and a canoe paddle. It took us a half hour to get to an abandoned village that we had skirted the previous night, and, after watching it for a while, we made our way along the water into it. There we found what we were looking for: a small nest of sampans. They were tied up in the river and submerged. They keep them submerged so the wood won’t dry out. When they dry out, they crack and leak. We found one that looked seaworthy, emptied it out, and climbed carefully aboard. A sampan is like a flat-bottomed canoe with much less freeboard on either side. In a sampan, you sit cross-legged with your butt in the bottom of the boat. I also made sure we had one of the bail cans that we found along the bank. In a sampan, you paddle for a while, then you bail for a while, as they always leak. We lucked out with this one; it leaked very little. Moving on the water would allow us to avoid area-denial ordnance that may have been dropped in the area to protect the pilots. And it gave us the option of moving Hambleton back downstream by sampan, if and when we found him.

  “We had a little more gear this night than we’d had on previous trips up the river. I had an extra canteen and some medical gear, the radio of course, a compass, and extra magazines for my AK. Before we went out, both of us had traded our uniforms for local dress. Kiet had exchanged his tiger-stripe camouflage utilities for a dark khaki shirt like the NVA wear, and I had on a black long-sleeved shirt like most Vietnamese wear when they’re on the water fishing. And my blue jeans. We had our gear on the bottom of the sampan and our rifles in our laps. On close inspection, we probably wouldn’t fool anyone, but from a short distance in the dark, we looked like a couple of fishermen. On most of the rivers in Vietnam, there was a curfew at night because that’s when the Viet Cong moved about. But a lot of Vietnamese villagers along the water snuck out at night to fish. Now, we may not have been fooling anyone, as by this time most of the civilians had left the area, but it seemed like it was worth a try. And if we needed to, we could always leave the sampan and make our way overland. It was a gamble any way you cut it. I’m not a big guy, and Kiet is smaller than me, so there was a good chance we’d be taken for local fishermen.

  “Once we settled into the boat and arranged our gear, we began to paddle upstream. The current was swift in places but we kept to the eddies along the bank, taking advantage of the cover along the shoreline. We’d hug either the north bank or the south bank, depending on where the cover was best. Pretty soon, we began to notice activity on both banks. The enemy troops seemed to feel secure and that they had control of the area—which they did—and they didn’t try to be quiet. It was an overcast night so it was pretty dark, which was to our advantage, as all we needed to see were the banks on either side of the river. There were some side channels that made for some confusion. At one point, we got lost and had to call on one of the forward air controllers overhead to help us out. Finally, we were able to find our way and move up the main course of the river.

  “Being on the water is a lot different from patrolling on land. It was easier going in some ways, but you felt a lot more exposed. We pulled into the bank in the overhanging vegetation several times to check the compass. Kiet would hold us into the bank with his paddle and I’d check the map with a small red-filtered penlight. The river snaked around a great deal, so by comparing the compass heading with the course of the river, we knew approximately where we were. And from what the forward air controllers had told us before we started, I had a pretty good idea where Hambleton was. At some point earlier that evening, the FACs had managed to get him into the Mieu Gang River, across it, and to the southern bank. I had his new position plotted on my map; we just had to get to him. My plan was that when we got close to where he was, we’d beach the sampan and conduct an area search for him along the bank of the riverbank. Then, about an hour into the paddle upstream, we went into the fog.

  “You have to understand that this was our first time on the water, so as we were feeling our way upstream, we were seeing the banks of the river from a perspective that was new. On my map, I had Hambleton’s position plotted exactly; I knew right where he was. My biggest challenge was knowing where I was on the map. The river snaked around a bit, so with my compass, I could tell generally where I was and generally where I was in relation to Hambleton’s location, but not precisely. There was no way I could pull over to a section of the bank of the Mieu Giang and say, ‘He should be right here.’ It wasn’t that easy, and the fog changed everything. It made it easier and harder. It was easier because now we were much safer from being spotted by an NVA patrol or an NVA encampment along the river. But it made our navigation more difficult. There were small streams and tributaries coming into the main channel, and we made a few wrong turns. And with the fog, sound became our primary line of defense. We were making no noise at all, but we could hear a lot of movement along the shoreline.

  “The fog allowed us to safely cross Mieu Giang and use the cover on whichever bank looked the best. We were making good time, as we didn’t have to stop as often to look for enemy patrols. We were shrouded in fog. Yet I still had to navigate and try to track where we were. Once when we pulled over so I could get a compass heading and check the map, we were suddenly surrounded by tank engines. It was li
ke pulling into a bus station. The fog hugged the water so I could see only a few hundred feet. Just inshore from the riverbank was a refueling station and there were tanker trucks gassing up NVA tanks. They were all camouflaged with tree branches and palm fronds, but they were making a lot of noise. We eased out from the bank and continued upstream, generally working our way west, but with the bends in the river sometimes we were paddling south and sometimes north. And periodically along the bank, we would hear enemy troops talking and hear the movement of troops. By this time I guessed we were in the area where Hambleton should be, so we hugged the southern bank of the Mieu Gang looking for him. The fog kept us safe, but it made searching the bank for him very difficult. Again, I knew where he was supposed to be and had a description of the terrain where he was hiding, but it was hard to see details of the shoreline in the fog—just as it was hard to know exactly where we were. We’d been on the river for about six hours and we’d come a long way. Suddenly the fog broke and we could see. We were just a few meters downstream from the Cam Lo Bridge.

  “I thought that by now the bridge would have been bombed to keep the enemy from moving south, but that was not the case. There were no vehicles on the bridge, but there was a procession of enemy troops marching across. I was thinking, ‘I hope they continue south and don’t turn east down Route 9 and take out our outpost—or cause our little outpost garrison to get spooked and pack up and leave.’ But now that I could see the bridge, I knew exactly where I was on the river and I knew where Hambleton was supposed to be from our current location. He was downstream from us about seven hundred meters. The Mieu Giang River flowed almost due east under the bridge for about four hundred meters, then took a bend to the left in a northeasterly direction. Hambleton was on the south shore some three or four hundred meters from this bend in the river. So we drifted downstream from the bridge, and after passing the bend in the river, we began a careful search of the bank where we thought he should be.