The problem was how to get the elephants from Ban Don to Tra Bong. It is 200 miles by air and over 400 miles by road. Someone at 5th Group Headquarters in Na Trang suggested that since 5th Group was an airborne unit, the elephants could be dropped by parachute into Tra Bong. No one was certain if this was a serious idea or not, but the press got wind of it, then the animal rights groups, and soon that idea was dead for sure, until some years later when the screenwriters and producers of the movie, “Dumbo Drop,” heard the story, probably from a Saigon commando.
So, A-233 was minding their own business one day in March of 1968 when a Huey helicopter came in bearing the 5th Group Civil Affairs officer and the group veterinarian. They came off the Huey in starched jungle fatigues, carrying enough weaponry to arm an ODA, and met with the team commander, the team sergeant, and my friend, the XO, and presented their plan of buying an elephant. 233 thought the staff guys were high from sniffing fuel on the Huey, but they played along. My friend mentioned to the CA officer that he thought he could buy two elephants. The CA officer told him to find out how much two elephants would cost and to let him know. With that, the CA and veterinary officers headed back to Na Trang to put in the paperwork for their Air Medals and CIBs.
Once the team vented sufficiently to each other about REMF idiocy, my friend went down to the village of Ban Don to see the elephant handlers, with whom he had done business in the past. The lead elephant handler thought that my friend had been drinking too much nam pe rue, Montagnard rice wine, for he could not conceive why my friend, an American Special Forces officer, who could get anything he wanted, would want to buy two elephants. My friend was eventually able to explain the situation to the handler enough for him to quote a price.
This A-team XO then sent a message to the 5th Group S-5/CA officer, Capt. Scott Gantt, stating the price. It was decided that two elephants would be procured from the Montagnard tribesmen at Ban Don by him, the XO of A-233. The elephants would then be flown from Ban Don to Chu Lai where the elephants would be sling-loaded by CH-53 Jolly Green Giant helicopters to Tra Bong.
A few days later, Gantt and the veterinarian returned with enough Vietnamese piasters to purchase the elephants. First, they wanted to see the elephants, so they drove to the village where the 5th Group veterinarian gave the elephants a quick physical. Then my friend gave the money to the handlers. At that point he was the owner, if just for a few days, of two Asian elephants. The team named them Bonnie and Clyde.
March 31, 1968, was the day of execution for this transport operation. A C-130 aircraft arrived and off-loaded a forklift, two pallets, two cargo nets, and an entourage of group operations and civil affairs staff people, veterinarian personnel, various other staff officers, and of course the public affairs reporters and photographers. The moment they had all been waiting for arrived when the two elephants finally lumbered onto the airstrip. The first elephant, Clyde, was placed on a laid-out cargo net and the group veterinarian tranquilized him with compound 99, delivered by a dart shot from a CO2 rifle.
At this point the veterinarian, Capt. George McCahan, put on his rubber gloves and covered one arm with plastic and proceeded to take a rectal temperature reading of the elephant. The Montagnards found this highly entertaining. It was shortly after the temperature reading that the operation acquired its name: Operation Barroom. Rest assured, elephant farts are epic. Turns out the chemical used to tranquilize elephants creates a considerable amount of intestinal gas. The group veterinarian had anticipated this and donned a protective mask. A-233 did not anticipate this and did not have masks (and were not issued masks until the following December, after a mortar attack that involved CS and CN gases). So, they were at the mercy of the elephant gas.
Within minutes, the elephant became drowsy and lay down on the cargo net. The forklift then picked up the cargo net, with the elephant inside, and placed it on one of the pallets. The net was secured and the pallet was placed inside the C-130 and off it and the elephant, Clyde, went to Chu Lai. Later that day, the operation was repeated with the second elephant, Bonnie. A few days later the headlines in Stars and Stripes stated that Operation Barroom was a rip-roaring success.
So, the truth is that there were two elephants, Bonnie and Clyde, and they were transported by aircraft from Ban Don to the Special Forces Camp at Tra Bong, in the northern part of I Corps, not dropped in by pachaderm-chute, as in the movie. The other key truth is that both elephants were pygmy elephants, too small for hauling timber. It was never determined if the elephant handler had pulled a fast one or not. But, he probably knew they were pygmies.
In 1970, my friend returned to Vietnam, with the stand-down elements of the 5th Special Forces Group, and was assigned to MACV Ranger Command. He went to Special Forces Camps and transitioned the Civilian Irregular Defense Forces (CIDG) of those camps to ARVN Rangers. He was assigned to a battalion in I Corps, not too far from Tra Bong, and went to Tra Bong the first chance he had to see the elephants and the saw mill. When he got there he was disappointed to find no elephants and no saw mill, and no one that he talked to knew anything about the elephants or that they ever existed, which was very odd, and suspicious.
The moral of this story is that, once again, movies are, usually, bullshit, especially war movies, with few exceptions. Movie producers are not concerned with truth. They are concerned with making money. And truth, on the whole, does not sell in movies, or much else for that matter.
And, also, civil affairs operations can be tenuous affairs indeed. Civility in the civilized world is hard enough, but trying to deliver such solutions or infrastructure to remote Third-World locations can carry enormous challenges. There are many similar stories from Afghanistan, Iraq, Thailand, Haiti, and numerous other places that Special Forces teams have been over the past seven decades, trying to win hearts and minds, all with varying degrees of success.
The Army flew the lumber out on Caribou C 7As. Instead of elephants, tractors and men in teams pulled the lumber between the airfield and the sawmill, maybe two or three hundred meters. Some said it was a wonderful jobs program, just not for the elephants. The other problem with using the elephants to haul lumber, besides them being too small, was the VC, which were thick in the area where the lumber was cut. Elephants are more susceptible to bullets than are tractors.
Many visitors went to see this great public works program, and the elephants. Lots of photos were taken. Various SF men from that time and place have said that pictures of riding the pygmy elephants were probably the best things to come out of that whole operation. It would have been nice if the elephants had lived long and prosperous lives. But life is not a Disney movie, especially in a war zone.
Less than a year later, Bonney developed some intestinal problems, probably from what they were feeding her. The group vet came out and looked her over, but there was nothing he could do. She died soon after, with lots of loud bellowing. Clyde died a few weeks later of a broken heart. The village celebrated after the funeral by having an elephant meat BBQ that is probably still talked about in certain parts of the central highlands of southern Vietnam.
Authors note: This story was first written up in the 1968, Volume III issue of the 5th Group magazine, “The Green Beret.” A version of this article was published in the Fall 2012 issue of The Drop, the quarterly magazine of the Special Forces Association, by this author.
Featured image courtesy of sky.com.
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