By Honor Bound Read online

  AFTERMATH

  A great deal of what took place over the course of this rescue ordeal, from the initial shoot-down of the Air Force EB-66C Destroyer aircraft to Gene Hambleton’s final journey down the Mieu Giang River with Norris and Kiet, has been written about extensively. This was, after all, one of the costliest and most closely studied downed-pilot search and rescue operations of all time. Yet the details of these writings and re-creations have a decidedly Air Force/aviator-centric flavor to them—understandably so. This rescue mission, which lasted for close to two weeks, had become something of a tar baby, pulling in and grinding up assets, aircraft, and airmen at an alarming rate. So this final attempt by Norris and Kiet to recover Hambleton was followed closely by a great many people—pilots, ground crews, and senior commanders in Southeast Asia and Washington, D.C. The chatter of the FACs and the close-air-support pilots was transmitted and retransmitted to a great many ships, stations, and air bases in the region. Many of those air-to-air and air-to-ground communications were recorded, so there was an audio record of what took place in the air and the saga of the airmen on the ground.

  Then there followed the reconstructions by Hambleton, Clark, the forward air controllers, and support air crews after the fact. And one can only imagine the gratitude and emotions of Clark and Hambleton as they were able to put voice to face of the brave FACs and close-support airmen who watched over them during this long ordeal. However costly, the operation provided a rich mosaic of courage, heroism, and lessons learned. But in all that followed, there was surprisingly little coverage about these events from the men responsible for the ground rescue effort—Anderson, Norris, and Kiet. Anderson recovered from his wounds and completed a career in the Marine Corps. Norris and Kiet moved on to other duties and other missions. For the modest Tom Norris and the stoic Nguyen Kiet, this singular rescue mission was simply another combat operation in a tour of duty in a long war.

  One thing that has always bothered this narrator in reconstructions of Bat 21’s rescue has been the exchange between Hambleton and Norris on that last day—the day Norris and Kiet brought Hambleton out. There are several accounts of just what took place. These accounts or versions differ widely, yet they could only come from interviews of these three individuals and from the FAC airmen and close-support pilots who flew the support missions on the final day of Hambleton’s recovery. Tom Norris lived with my wife and me for a time in 1974 when he was detailed to Bethesda Naval Hospital for a series of reconstructive surgeries from wounds received subsequent to the rescue of Bat 21 Bravo. We talked a lot back then about the operation—what took place in the context of two combat leaders who both know and understand the stress and ambiguity of making decisions in small-unit combat. And in working on this book, we’ve covered this ground many, many times. Of course, my perspective is tainted—Tom is a brother SEAL. I’m always asking, “Why did you do this?” and “What were you thinking when you were confronted with that?” And there are the technical details of the patrol-leader responsibilities. Who carried the radio? How were your comms? Who walked point? How on earth did you keep that many balls in the air after Anderson was wounded and medically evacuated? And, of course, how did you keep going with little or no sleep for days on end? To this last question, Tom says, “Dick, that’s why we went through Hell Week. You were there—you know. You can go for days without sleep if you have to.” Yeah, I thought, but not working night after night behind enemy lines, and not under rocket and mortar fire when you weren’t. At the time he first told me of the rescue, well before there was any talk of the Medal of Honor, I felt that it was simply an incredibly courageous piece of work. Now, more than four decades later, I still feel that way. No, I take that back. Tommy was far more professional and far more courageous than I could have ever have imagined.

  PART TWO

  NOT WITHOUT MY LIEUTENANT

  TRANSITION

  Following the rescue of Bat 21 Bravo, the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive continued into the northern and western provinces of South Vietnam, bringing pressure to both the combat base at Dong Ha and all of Quang Tri Province. The North Vietnamese Army continued to trade men and armor for ground below the Demilitarized Zone.

  For Tom Norris, there was little rest. On his return to Da Nang and Camp Fay on 15 April, he continued to work with Air Force planners for the rescue of First Lieutenant Bruce Walker—Covey 282 Alpha. Walker had been on the ground for a week when Norris managed to get Lieutenant Colonel Hambleton to the ARVN outpost on the Mieu Giang River and on to Dong Ha. Walker had been dropped a survival pack with food, water, and a replacement radio on 14 April, but heavy concentrations of NVA troops in his area made it impossible for him to work his way south to the Mieu Giang for a Clark/Hambleton–like rescue. After much discussion, the decision was made to move Walker east across Route 1 toward the South China Sea. Norris, Kiet, and the other two Sea Commandos began to prepare for a possible over-the-beach rescue of the third airman. As far as the Air Force was concerned, Tom Norris was the go-to guy if they were to recover their pilot, and he was kept abreast of the developments as the pilot evaded on the ground. When Walker was killed by Viet Cong irregulars on 17 April, planning for his rescue ended. Marine First Lieutenant Larry Potts, the aerial observer and Covey 282 Bravo, was never heard from nor found, and to this day remains missing in action.

  Yet the success of the recoveries of Clark and Hambleton generated interest in standing up permanent rescue teams for the recovery of future downed airmen. With the NVA Easter Offensive in full swing, the Air Force and Navy were ramping up their efforts to bring more American air power into play to blunt the NVA offensive. So there was great interest in creating an on-call, pilot-recovery capability that could function in the area around the DMZ and into North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Tom Norris was at the center of it. There was talk of creating multiple, company-sized recovery elements with Norris heading up the efforts.

  “As you might imagine,” Norris recalls with a grin, “my stock with the U.S. Air Force was pretty high at that time. They were wanting me to do all kinds of things and promising all kinds of assets and support. But it just didn’t make any sense. By late April and into early May, it was pretty much understood that the NVA offensive was massive and that the entire North Vietnamese Army was committed to it. The only way to stop it was to bomb their supply lines, and that meant going back to a campaign of bombing up north and along the supply routes in Cambodia and Laos. So any rescue of a downed pilot would probably be a cross-border operation. I was contacted by the colonel in charge of what remained of MACVSOG, who wanted me to put together a unit for future recoveries. In fact, four enlisted SEALs were to be detailed to MACVSOG to help with this effort. My concern was that pilot rescues would mean going into Laos, Cambodia, or North Vietnam, and that we would never get approval to do these cross-border operations—even to get back one of our own. Additionally, the remaining MACVSOG assets were being turned over to the South Vietnamese, so we were losing American command and control of the Sea Commandos. And we now knew that unless an airman on the ground could be rescued easily and cleanly by a helicopter, his best chance for survival was to surrender and look to be repatriated at the end of the war. So this recovery unit never materialized.

  “I still had six months on my tour, so with the SOG/STDAT organization being turned over to the Vietnamese, I was detailed over to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, or MACV, to work with the LDNNs or South Vietnamese SEALs.”

  STALEMATE

  During the Tet Offensive of 1968, the North Vietnamese had used a limited number of their regular Army forces and relied on their Viet Cong irregulars to carry the brunt of the fighting. Using unconventional, insurgent-type tactics and avoiding conventional pitched battles had proven successful for the Hanoi government. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the revered North Vietnamese defense minister, had hoped that the Tet Offensive would lead to a general uprising against the Saigon government and their American allies. He was wrong. What
took place was a wholesale slaughter of the Viet Cong cadres. While the Tet Offensive was a huge tactical victory for the South Vietnamese and the Americans, it did in fact play out as a North Vietnamese victory in the American press and helped to turn the tide of public support against the war in Vietnam. Just as the NVA traded armor and infantry for ground in the 1972 Easter Offensive, General Giap sacrificed a great many Viet Cong fighters to change American public opinion in his favor during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

  By the late spring of 1972, the North Vietnamese Army had dropped all pretense of an unconventional struggle supported by a popular uprising of the people. They were going for a knockout blow. They sent three of their best divisions across the DMZ into Quang Tri Province, and three more divisions soon followed. Their ultimate objective was the capture of the provincial capital of Hue City—an objective they were denied during the Tet Offensive. Three more divisions attacked central South Vietnam from their sanctuaries in Laos, and another three-division force of NVA and Viet Cong came from Cambodia and moved toward Saigon from the northwest. It was an invasion force with 120,000 North Vietnamese soldiers and an unknown number of Viet Cong irregulars. General Giap had rightly guessed that the Americans would not reintroduce ground troops into South Vietnam and that with speed and surprise, the South Vietnamese would be no match for his hardened NVA force backed by armor and Soviet-provided long-range artillery.

  The South Vietnamese Army was falling back in April and May 1972—sometimes in good order but often in disarray. All along hastily erected defensive lines, firebase after firebase fell to the North Vietnamese. In the north, following the fall of Dong Ha on 28 April, the South Vietnamese 3rd Division took up positions around Quang Tri City. But it too fell to the NVA, on 2 May. The seemingly unstoppable NVA advance rolled on south toward Hue City, but no farther.

  Throughout May, all efforts by the NVA to take Hue failed. And for days on end, North Vietnamese troops were exposed to American B-52 strikes and the growing close-air-support sorties by Air Force tactical fighter-bombers and Navy carrier-based aircraft. By the end of May, the siege of Hue was lifted as the NVA, after sustaining massive losses, moved north back to Quang Tri City.

  Farther south, the Easter Offensive experienced similar setbacks. In central South Vietnam, the NVA laid siege to the city of Kontum. Massive B-52 attacks augmented by American and South Vietnamese tactical air, and U.S. Army helicopter tank killers, finally drove the attackers back across the Laotian border. West of Saigon, the third prong of the NVA offensive was halted at An Loc. Under siege and constant artillery bombardment for ninety-five days, the city defenders refused to give way—again thanks to a generous dose of American air power. By the second week in July, the Viet Cong had filtered back into the countryside and the NVA had crossed back into Cambodia.

  In Quang Tri Province, South Vietnamese forces had gone on the offensive. South Vietnamese paratroopers managed to fight their way into the citadel in Quang Tri City on 26 July, but were immediately driven back. The battle ebbed and flowed through August until, on 15 September, the ARVN forces finally retook Quang Tri City for good. But there they stopped. Both sides were exhausted. The South Vietnamese had suffered 10,000 dead and more than three times that many wounded. For the North Vietnamese it was far worse. Between 50,000 and 75,000 NVA soldiers perished, and at least that many more were wounded. Close to one in four soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army became a casualty in the Easter Offensive. Over seven hundred NVA tanks and armored vehicles, and a thousand other trucks and support vehicles, were lost. All this for the northern portion of Quang Tri Province; all this for territory that could have easily been taken, as was all of Vietnam, after the Americans and their air power had left for good.

  THE VIETNAMESE SEALS

  Throughout the Vietnam War, a great many American units created Vietnamese units in their own likeness. There were Vietnamese ranger and marine units. There were Vietnamese SEAL units, as well as explosive-ordnance-disposal (EOD) and small-craft-support units—all fashioned in some way after their American counterparts and trained in their likeness.

  The American SEALs were the direct descendants of the underwater demolition teams and so were the Vietnamese SEALs. In 1960, the South Vietnamese Navy created underwater demolition units for harbor and port security duty. The new South Vietnamese frogmen trained in Taiwan, and the first underwater demolition team was formally established in July 1961. Very soon these frogmen, the Lien Doi Nguoi Nhai, usually referred to as LDNNs, added special amphibious operations to their mission taskings. The U.S. Navy SEALs were established in January 1962 and soon began advisory deployments to Vietnam. Initially, the SEALs were assigned to train Vietnamese Sea Commandos, or Biet Hai, for cross-border forays into North Vietnam. As the course of the war escalated and the Navy SEALs began rotating combat platoons into South Vietnam for direct-action combat operations, the U.S. SEALs began to take a hand in the training of the LDNNs for duty as SEALs. Beginning in the summer of 1965, formal training started in Nha Trang for the LDNNs under the guidance of Navy SEALs. The Vietnamese trainees, like their American counterparts on Coronado, California, and at Little Creek, Virginia, were vetted with long ocean swims, paddling small craft deep into swampy inlets, punishing runs, and a U.S. SEAL–like “Hell Week.” In 1966, small cadres of LDNNs were brought to Subic Bay, the U.S. base in the Philippines, for special, more intensive training.

  Throughout the development of the LDNNs, they remained an asset assigned to the South Vietnamese Navy, and their American advisors were under the direction of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). At the beginning of the Easter Offensive, the MACV commander was General Creighton Abrams. The Vietnamese Navy and their LDNNs had their own cadre of advisors who reported to the Commander, Naval Forces, Vietnam, or COMNAVFORV. The U.S. Navy presence in Vietnam, under COMNAVFORV, also reported to General Abrams. Under this arrangement, U.S. Navy SEALs helped to train and, indeed, operated with LDNN units in the field. Yet their area of operations, with few exceptions, was confined to South Vietnam. The Biet Hai, or Sea Commandos, were different. They were an asset of the secretive MACVSOG organization (which also reported to MACV), but their portfolio extended to cross-border operations. These commandos were trained by U.S. SEALs, like Tom Norris, as well as Army Special Forces and Marine reconnaissance instructors. Speaking with SEALs of that era who trained both LDNNs and Sea Commandos, it was generally considered that the Sea Commandos were a superior force.

  In 1971, in keeping with the turnover of assets and command structures to the Vietnamese, the LDNNs, both the frogmen and the SEALs, along with EOD teams and boat support teams, fell under a South Vietnamese command structure. The Americans served as advisors and training cadre to these units. Also during 1971, twenty-one LDNN officer candidates were taken to the United States for training; ten returned as qualified South Vietnamese SEALs to provide junior officer leadership to the LDNN. Operationally, the LDNNs were generally organized in twelve- to fourteen-man detachments with two or three American SEALs as advisors. These detachments were spread across the country, with many of the detachments operating with or near the remaining U.S. SEAL platoons in the lower Mekong Delta. During the Easter Offensive in the spring of 1972, many of the LDNNs were pulled back to the Da Nang and Hue area. While this was a conventional NVA offensive met by conventional South Vietnamese forces, the LDNNs and their American advisors were being used to good advantage in a reconnaissance role to probe the territory now held by the North Vietnamese. To help bolster the LDNN efforts closest to the North Vietnamese line of advance, Tom Norris was assigned to the northernmost LDNN base of operations—a South Vietnamese small boat harbor at the village of Thuan-An. Thuan-An (pronounced “TWO-wee-non”) was a small coastal facility just east of Hue City. Norris arrived there in June 1972. Barely two weeks earlier, another Navy SEAL had been assigned to the American advisory team at Thuan-An. His name was Mike Thornton.

  BACK TO VIETNAM

  “I arrived back in-co
untry in May 1972,” Mike recalled. “Since we were no longer deploying SEAL platoons as stand-alone operational units, there were no longer dedicated aircraft assigned to deploy those platoons. My last two rotations, we had our own assigned transport aircraft and let me tell you, they were something. They were called C-54s, and they were basically piston-engined, unpressurized DC-4 passenger planes. It was about forty air hours from San Diego to Saigon—flying at 9,500 feet. We stopped for fuel in Hawaii, Johnston Island, the Philippines, and Guam. It took forever. But on those trips, we had all our weapons and operational gear with us, along with a whole truckload of box lunches. This time I went to war on a chartered 707 from Travis Air Force Base to Tan Son Nhut, the big air base in Saigon. It was only about a third full on the trip over; most of those transpacific charter flights were bringing guys back. So this trip over was in relative luxury.

  “As soon as I got in, one of the SEAL advisors picked me up and took me over to the LDNN training base at Nha Trang—about forty-five minutes from the air base. There were LDNN detachments all up and down the country. Some of them had American SEAL advisors, others did not. But most of the basic training for the LDNNs and some of the sustainment training took place at Nha Trang. I was there for about two weeks and it was a good stop for me. I got to meet some of the South Vietnamese LDNN training cadre working with their new recruits. And it gave me a chance to compare the LDNN program to what I was doing on my last tour, which was not to Vietnam.

  “Right after my first deployment, I was assigned to the SEAL Team One training cadre on Coronado and worked under some really great SEAL instructors there. I taught—or ‘helped to teach’ might be a better phrase—advanced demolitions there at Team One in Coronado and small-unit tactics at our mountain training facility in Cuyamaca, some forty miles east of San Diego, just south of the town of Julian. It was a great time for me, and I learned a lot from those veteran instructors. One of them, Al Huey, got pulled from the training cadre and assigned to a platoon headed for Thailand to train the Thai SEALs. He asked if I’d like to go, even though I’d only been back a few months, and I said sure—another rotation, why not? This was in 1970, and while the Team One platoons were still in combat rotation, there was a general feeling that the war wasn’t going to last too much longer. If you had a chance to get back overseas, you took it. And I was proud to have been asked to go over and work with the Thais. It wasn’t an operational tour like my first one, but it was an important deployment nonetheless.