REOPENING
THE ROAD TO THE SF CAMP AT PLEI ME
-or-
"The Devil's Triangle"
by Sgt Mike Medley
Prologue:
Rescuing the Special Forces (Green Berets)
No history of the Vietnam war would be
complete without saving our SF guys. The Green Berets and the MAAG
(Military Assistance Advisory Group), simply called "Military
Advisors", were there first. They did not know what the hell
they were getting into!
In
August 1969, “hot intel” (which usually translates to sleep tight, never
going to happen) came down that the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) were planning
once again to attempt to take the Special Forces camp at Plei Me.
We were instructed to be ready to move two howitzers to the camp to
support the 1/14th units which would be operating in the area.
Plei
Me seemed to be almost as popular as Chu Pa as a place to get into a fight, and
it had regularly been an NVA target through the years.
The first NVA attempt to take the camp was with a siege in October 1965,
setting off the first of the Ia Drang battles.
An
ARVN armored battalion immediately attempted to go to the relief of the camp
using the provincial road from Pleiku to Plei Me.
It was attacked by the NVA on the road and almost completely wiped out.
The 1st CAV, under Major Beckwith, led the American relief effort
which reached the camp and ended the siege.
After that, Plei Me was always a hot spot and the provincial road was
abandoned as a usable route.
For
whatever reason, known only to the great mind who hatched the plan, it was
decided that we would go by road and reopen that road for ground traffic use.
As usual, it was the standard travel FDC of Clint, George, Me and I think
Denny Mrowzinski went also. We did
have an Lieutenant with us but I don't remember who he was.
Our
group to reopen the road consisted of a unit of combat engineers with mine
detectors leading the way in front of a couple of squads of infantry.
We followed in two 3/4 ton trucks, each pulling a howitzer, with two of
us in back manning a .60 machine gun. We
were followed by some 2 1/2 ton trucks with infantry and ammo.
The
road, if you could call it that, was slow going to match the engineers walking
in front. The dirt “road” looked
like a war had been fought on it, which it had been.
The rock wall above the road was about 60 degrees coming down to the road
and on the other side of the narrow
track was at about 45 degrees. It
was easy to imagine, at best, grenades raining down from the top and us with
nowhere to go for cover.
The
spookiest and bone-chilling thing on our slow trip was when we passed for a long
period by the graveyard of the ARVN armor battalion that got wiped out on its
relief attempt to Plei Me. It seemed
to be a mile of destroyed armor
vehicles that had apparently just been pushed over the side and down the steep
slope.
Our
progress was often halted to fill holes in the road so we could get past, and
also when the engineers found something needing to be explored. At one point the
engineers found two command detonated mines fully armed and buried under the
roadway, which caused a long pause in the trip.
It was hot, but it was cold sweat when looking at the wires going
straight up the rock wall and wondering if there was someone up there waiting
for an order to set them off.
Fortunately
for us they were not manned, but it was difficult backing down the road to clear
a safe distance for the engineers to blow the mines. When the engineers blew the
mines they each left a 6 foot crater that kept us halted until we could get them
filled. Once more we got on our slow
way and experienced no further issues until reaching the Special Forces camp.
The
layout of the Special Forces camp, on first impression, looked like nothing I
had expected. I thought it would be
the three sided perimeter like the three sided diagrams I had seen in magazines.
Then I realized where we were camped was in the suburbs of the camp, not
inside the actual Special Forces position.
The
area where we set up was close to what must have been a bunker line when the
base was attacked and fought over in 1965. It was a large area with some
abandoned buildings and empty concrete slabs, apparently an expansion that never
got far.
But
we were dry and it was plush accommodations for a hip shoot since it was still
the monsoon season and we had a small building large enough for FDC with a roof
over it. Much superior to other hip
shoots, standing in a muddy hole in the rain, trying to compute a fire mission
while soaking wet under a poncho trying to keep the light in and the rain out.
The
actual Special Forces camp was well away from our area surrounded by a
continuous bunker line in which the Mike Strike Force Montagnard ('Yard) troops
lived with their families. The
Special Forces team house was located in the middle of the camp and was one
completely covered mini-compound. There
was an airstrip outside the inner camp where C-123s would bring in supplies.
They were definitely not going hungry with freezers full of steaks and
other goodies we Redlegs could only dream of.
Although
getting there was not great, my two weeks at Plei Me were the best two weeks of
my tour. The abandoned bunker line
by our position was inhabited by orphans of those killed in the 1965 attack.
Three of them basically adopted the artillery guys.
I couldn't understand their names, but two settled for being called Gluck
and Bludgen, which was as close as I could get.
The oldest I named Tom, because there was no way I could figure out how
to come even close to what he said.
The
'Yards are wonderful and a delight to be around, unlike the ARVNS and the pimps
and cold beverage sellers who would be waiting whenever we got near a
road. I wish we had had their intel
team rather than the folks in the our oxymoronic military intelligence.
The 'Yards are honest as the day is long and would never beg or steal
from their American allies.
They
were basically a Stone Age people, the men wearing loin cloths and fatigue
shirts and the women just loin cloths. The
'yard troops were more accurate with crossbows and blow darts than rifles, but
eager to fight and more than willing to kill Vietnamese, and it didn't matter to
them whether they were from the North or South.
One of the SF guys told me the main problem with their 'Yard troops was
that five minutes into a fight the Americans were the only ones with any ammo
left, and the 'Yards were off chasing down the dinks with machetes.
The
orphan kids were a lot of fun. We
made them sailboats out of pencils, used old day pad sheets and scrap wood and
sailed them in the huge puddle just outside of our hooch.
The craziest thing I did, and the most fun, was hiking with them down the
hill and swimming in the river.
Well,
actually the most stupid was flicking on the backs of thousand leg millipedes,
causing them to curl in and then picking them up and skipping them across the
water like a stone. The kids got a
kick out of it and laughed up a storm until they managed to convey that the
critters were poisonous.
During
our stay we had a run in with the Special Forces over one issue.
One evening we were peacefully settling into a game of spades when
suddenly there was the unmistakable sound of an artillery round passing
overhead. I called the Special
Forces and asked if we were under attack. He
said no, we have a 105mm howitizer and the 'yards love to shoot a round off
every night or so. I
jokingly/seriously told him that was fine, but “just advise us and point the
damn thing another direction or we will return fire”.
No further problems there.
No
big contact missions with the 1/14th during our stay, but it was not
all a pleasant vacation away from St. George.
The worst event was a tiger attacking a Delta company listening post one
night, dragging two of the three guys out into the jungle.
Delta was about at max charge 7 range and they needed an illumination
round. We shot three illum rounds
but when each popped, the parachute ripped off making a man-made shooting star.
I
had heard that the two victims died, but a friend of mine from St. George, who
served with Delta company visited me in the mid-90's.
We got to talking about the bad old days and I mentioned the tiger
incident and it turned out he had been the third member of the LP that night and
told me neither of the guys mauled by the tiger had died.
Our
great vacation in the beautiful mountains and river near the Cambodian border
came to an end, and we were back to St. George and dodging 1st Sgt
McPeak until the next hip shoot came around.