Other items included one can of C-Ration fresh fruit, either peaches or apricots; extra hand grenades; the remainder of my CAR-15 magazines; extra M-79 rounds, including one tear-gas round; an Army long-sleeved sweater; a thin, hooded, waist-length plastic rain jacket; and toilet paper. Both the sweater and rain jacket would be folded under the PRC-25 to buffer where it hit my back. I also carried an extra PRC-25 battery, an extra URC-10 battery, extra smoke grenades, an extra canteen of water if needed, and extra LURPs.
On a few occasions, especially when we ran targets in Cambodia, which was flatter and more wide open, I’d carry a Claymore mine and a few pre-cut fuses — five-second, 10-second, and longer-duration fuses — used to break contact with enemy troops chasing us. On several occasions I carried .22-caliber High Standard semi-automatic pistol with a suppressor for ambushes or to kill enemy tracker dogs. I also carried cough syrup for team interpreter Nguyen Cong Hiep or anyone who coughed at night, cans of black pepper and powdered mace for enemy tracker dogs, and a compact toothbrush.
There were some redundancies, such as bullets, bandages, and smoke grenades, carried in various locations on my body. Each could be crucial to surviving a firefight and successfully directing helicopter gunships, F-4 Phantom jets that delivered ordnance on target faster than the speed of sound, or the old deadly propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders.
The emphasis was packing firepower for survival. I preferred to go hungry instead of running out of ammo. Comfort items were discarded in favor of carrying an extra grenade or a high-explosive M-79 round.
Why?
Because in the Prairie Fire AO, there were several times when we were in contact with NVA troops for two or three hours before making radio contact with Covey or any U.S. aircraft. Then, depending on weather and the status of other teams in the field, there would be further delays in getting air assets on-scene, especially when the team was surrounded and there were no routes for escape and evasion. On most missions, I preferred six-man teams due to helicopter extraction considerations: height, altitude, weight, and weather conditions dictated how many men could board an extraction chopper.
The type of helicopter used for the extraction would either be the old H-34s to Hueys or on rare occasions, the Air Force’s HH-3 Jolly Green Giant a larger and more powerful chopper. On very rare and unique missions, SOG recon and Hatchet Force teams would use the largest helicopter available: the CH-53 Sea Stallions based in Da Nang with the Marine Corps HMH-463 unit. Which one picked up the team, usually under heavy enemy gunfire, made a difference in regard to how many men it could carry. And, to the man, every aircrew SOG team member we worked with was fearless, always willing to put their lives on the line for SOG teams.
There were at least two missions where, upon ST Idaho getting extracted from the target, I was down to my last CAR-15 magazine, M-26 grenade, and M-79 round. The NVA were relentless and fearless.
We had an intimate knowledge of all the weapons we carried to the field. Not only did we know how they worked, but we could dismantle them and clean them at night — that was mandatory training, not optional. We fired thousands of rounds through our CAR-15s and M-79s during live-fire reaction drills and at static targets. Before we carried any new weapon or device into the field on a mission, we practiced using it for hours in order to gain familiarity with it and to see how it functioned under repeated use. We also trained on enemy weapons we’d encounter on missions: the AK-47, RPD, B-40 grenade launcher, and the older SKS rifle.
With ST Idaho, if the team wasn’t on a mission, we were training on the range or doing local training patrols, which included both silent and live-fire reaction drills.
For wiretaps, ST Idaho Vietnamese team leader Nguyen Van Sau was the quickest team member to climb an NVA telephone pole or tree to install a wiretap. He trained several other men on the team, including Phouc, Hung, Quang, and Son. They had to climb the pole, install the wiretap, and cover the wire, leading from the telephone wire down to our cassette tape recorder, with mud or wood putty in order to hide it from passing enemy troops.
For Bright Light missions, we carried extra rounds, hand grenades, Claymore mines, bandages, medical supplies, and at least one machine gun. We carried one canteen of water, but no food. On a few missions, we carried anti-tank and anti-vehicular mines.
Before going to the field, Black or Shore would spend hours cross-training our Vietnamese team members to ensure they could install the devices as quickly as possible without detection by enemy troops while the remainder of the team provided security for them. On those missions, we’d usually carry at least one M-72 Light Antitank Weapon (LAW), but only after the entire team had drilled on them for several days.
For POW snatches, ST Idaho spent hours practicing how to set up a jungle ambush. This entailed each team member quickly placing a Claymore mine in the kill zone and at our flanks, in addition to installing the pre-cut block of plastic explosive that would knock out an enemy soldier. The Claymore mine, officially designated the M-18A1 fragmentation antipersonnel mine, weighed 3.5 pounds and contained 1.5 pounds of plastic explosive, which propelled 700 steel balls in a deadly, killing arc that was dangerous out to 250 meters.
Throughout 1968, there were experimental weapons that S-4 shared with recon men for our assessment of their performance capabilities, such as the Gyrojet rocket pistol that fired a 13mm round similar in gauge but longer than the standard .45 caliber round. There were many variations of silenced weapons such as the M-1 carbine, the old WWII Sten submachine gun, the 9mm Karl Gustav Swedish K submachine gun, and the XM-21 sniper rifle.
We had various night-vision devices, the Starlight scope, and the experimental pump M-79 weapon. The Air Force and the CIA often came to us with experimental explosive devices, communications equipment, and various trail sensors. In the early ’70s, the Air Force used the recon teams’ experiences combating the NVA at night to design complicated enemy-targeting devices, some of which lead to technology that was used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sometimes team members were issued devices that were unknown to me. For example, in 2005, Doug LeTourneau told me about a team perimeter security device that he carried with him on all missions. It was a small box that held a small strand of nylon filament which he placed around the team’s perimeter. He would place the listening device near his ear and if a person or an animal walked through the team’s perimeter, it would sound a barely audible alert signal.
For a short period of time, Black used a seismic alert system made up of four probes, each emitting its own signal. He had a receiver in his breast pocket with an ear jack that allowed him to hear the warning signals from each probe. Unfortunately, if it was used in grassy areas, any wind moving the grass would set off the probes, falsely indicating the team was surrounded. Once we discovered this flaw in the system, we scrapped it. Not all technology worked out.
LeTourneau also reminded me that he took “no-shit” pills before a mission, which prevented bowel movements. I didn’t use them. Enough said on that topic.
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