Nui Co To

Sometimes, in retrospect, things that happened years before take on a surreal quality, as if the events were part of a movie in slow motion and sepia tone, blurred edges and dated dialogue. The characters become generalized and, in this case, the plot seems insane. After more than thirty years, I now know fully that which happened on the mountains called Nui Co To, “The Mountains of the Virgins,” was total insanity. I know now that very brave men, and very professional mercenaries, were wasted on a mad project which had neither rhyme nor reason, a folly like so much of Vietnam. The insanity was there and there seems now to have been no one to stop its happening over and over again. The “beau geste,” if that is what it was, was rank and bloody, criminal stupidity.

Once, in the closing days of the Korean conflict, while peace talks dragged on, an American infantry company was thrown into the battle for Pork Chop Hill and was slowly chopped to pieces. They held on with courage alone because, supposedly, some high ranking officer came to believe that the Chinese would spend hundreds if not thousands of men for Pork Chop to see if the Americans were willing to pay the price in blood. We did, finally, and the hill remained in American hands.

It was June of 1968 and my partner across the hall in the old French-built hotel on Duong Tu Do in Saigon, came to my door and said," The Special Forces are laying on an operation, It's hairy. Do you want to go?" I had 15 days left in country and wanted home as I never wanted anything in my life. (Greeted with a divorce the day after arriving in New York, profoundly changed that perspective, but that was three weeks or so later.) I couldn't hesitate because my friend and I had known each other for years and I was a newsman who went where the action was and didn't file dispatches from the roof of the Caravelle Hotel or from Military Assistance Command Vietnam handouts, unless told to do so or there was nothing happening.

One group of network correspondents had refused to cover the siege at Khe Sanh and the veteran reporters, who literally risked their lives, had quiet contempt for them. Scared or not, frightened out of my mind, I wouldn't or couldn't back down from what was to be the last battle in which I participated. Perhaps it was also the knowledge that I would miss the near terror of a firefight and the exultation that followed when you and your Vietnamese crew made it out alive.

Within two hours I was in combat gear aboard a helicopter, trying not to think of the operation, but of this beautiful, scarred country and its amazing, tough and gracious people. I was leaving with mixed feelings. I had arrived in country during the Tet offensive, a convinced hawk, conversant with the domino theory and convinced we were doing the right thing. I was wrong, but the awareness came later, partly because of the fight for Nui Co To.

We headed south, landed in Can To and were briefed by a special forces officer who seemed totally distracted, a man deeply etched and scarred by the war. I thought he was crazy. He told us of a Cambodian communist leader who controlled these high hills, or small mountains, along the Vietnamese border, and had to be driven off, preferably killed, with as many of his troops as possible.

The premise seemed O.K. but the spokesman was obviously “dinky dow,

Vietnamese for “crazy.” He seemed totally detached and frequently stopped talking and stared at the tent flap for long moments before continuing his litany. When he finished he simply left the tent, not answering questions nor hails. I looked at my friend and he raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “That’s what we get paid for.”

Vo Su, my award winning cameraman, who got the Pulitzer for the shot of a South Vietnamese general killing a Viet Cong prisoner, joined me with a puzzled look on his face. The Vietnamese crews rarely questioned an assignment. They just wanted to be sure that the story of the war was covered properly. They had great pride in their country and their profession. It made what happened later all the more poignant.

Our Vietnamese crews would go into combat situations and frequently, the very same night, be back in their homes as their wives prepared dinner. They never seemed to see a dichotomy in this. Later I explained that we in the New York area went to our places of work, then took a train to our homes. I specifically mentioned the 6:15 to Stanford. They understood this totally despite the fact that their office could be the alleys of Saigon, the paddies of the Delta or impenetrable jungle that made up so much of the country. They could, and did, argue amongst themselves, and the rate and sound of that Vietnamese verbal fury always caused me to smile with my back turned.

We unloaded on a rough chopper pad near the Cambodian border, supposedly a country “off limits” to our operations, but that was a crock and a half. The captain of the Special Forces Unit greeted us well, a friendly officer, which wasn’t always the case with the Special Forces. The troops were a surprise in that there were several hundred of them and they were a very mixed bag: Cambodian mercenaries, Nung Chinese, who were Chinese troops with deep Vietnamese roots, and Choi Han, soldiers who had defected from North Vietnamese ranks and now served with South Vietnamese forces. The later were always suspect because they had turned coat once and often had Viet Cong among them. It was a strange mix and my partner and I began wondering just what the hell we had gotten into.

Soon two choppers, with more Americans, arrived, Navy Seals. I knew their commanding officer and my pulse rate quickened. He greeted me with, “Still alive, well I’ll be damned.” I should have lifted off then and there. I didn’t have to explain it to my Vietnamese comrades, they knew the trail signs better than I. I thought, “In for a penny...,” when still more choppers landed with Americans with absolutely no rank or insignia, who our captain described simply as “the other Americans.” The CIA sponsored American mercenaries who never appeared on any roster and made very good money. They were super-tough, ruthless, and only used on special occasions.

We got another briefing, more detailed, in which it was revealed that atop the third mountain, the Cambodian leader had established his base camp in a cave and we were going to hit it in two days. I worried about the climb with sixty pounds on my back. Years of smoking had taken its toll on my lung capacity, so my crew and I started out before the main column, which now numbered about four hundred men, and they were all pros. I believe one of them was in his late sixties.

About seven hundred feet along the steep trail, which was surrounded by B-52 bomb craters, we got lost for several gut-tensing moments, until I head the clink of metal striking metal. We caught up with the last man in the column, but not before I spotted several small cooking fires, two of which were still smoldering. “Charlie” knew we were coming.

It was the most brutal ordeal of my life and I was in relatively good shape by then. I literally staggered over the crest of the hill and saw the troops grabbing empty cardboard ration boxes which showed signs of deterioration. Americans had been here before and left. What kind of action did they see, what the hell were we doing coming back to this bomb-blasted hunk of Vietnamese, or was it Cambodian, mountain?

Our skipper blithely admitted that Americans had been here before but that the communists had retaken it after we’d pulled out. I accepted this, but could think of absolutely no strategic value of this isolated series of small mountains. I had forgotten about Pork Chop Hill. That night, those lucky enough to sleep on the empty ration boxes got some rest and we received an invitation from a first lieutenant with a decided German accent. He opened a bottle of Moselle and for a while we sipped the warm wine and spoke of the beauty and wonders of other countries we had enjoyed. Around us the dropping temperature reminded us that we were in the mountains of a strange, exotic country thousands of miles from home.

The next day the first lieutenant and three Cambodian mercenaries attacked and wiped out a Viet Cong machine gun unit that had opened fire. It was a stupid and finally fatal gesture to attack hundreds of trained troops. The Special Forces officer and his men returned to the column within twenty minutes with captured enemy weapons. Not much was made of their exploit, sort of like going to the water cooler at work, a slight distraction. The next morning we reached the summit of the small mountain and it was wasted land and totally deserted.

The captain went into the caves looking for his quarry, but there was nothing to shoot. The enemy had withdrawn again. The sense of frustration, and in my case, relief, was palpable, when suddenly the mortars started falling on our position and the mountain summit became hell in seconds. Men were dying as the steel rain fell and the shrapnel cut them to ribbons. Seems our Cambodian adversary had simply waited ‘til we got to the top, then started to systematically level it.

The casualties were everywhere but they would not be counted on our loss rolls. Mercenaries weren’t counted as KIA or MIA. They officially didn’t exist, were expendable and that morning they were expended. It was raining death when finally an unarmed med vac chopper arrived and we started throwing the wounded aboard.

To compound this bloody insanity, an American officer with no visible rank called in a fire mission against a tiny hamlet as if it were the source of our agony. You knew it would contain only old men, women and children, but this bastard wanted blood for blood and he got it. We were getting creamed and there was absolutely no reason for this carnage on this worthless piece of real estate. Suddenly, I wanted to know how many times we had taken these positions. A sergeant looked at me as if I were crazy and said, “Fucked if I know, maybe six or seven,” and threw himself to another position.

How many men had been killed on top of these bloody mountains? Dozens, hundreds, that we never heard about? I was in a rage, not at the communist gunners, but at the American military for proving they would go back as often as they felt like it. An insane, wasted effort at bloodletting was better than no bloodletting at all.

My cameraman tried to film and stay alive at the same time but it was just too dangerous. Finally he crawled to me and said, Mr. Tom, maybe it is time to take the 6:15 to Stanford,” and I knew it had taken a lot for him to say that. They never quit, but this was different and he knew it.

The next unarmed med vac chopper that came in, did so under fire and the first words out of the crew chief’s mouth were, “Did we take any incoming?” I looked him straight in the eye and said, “None.” We threw a couple of wounded aboard, there was just room for us and we took off during a slight lull. Some tough enemy soldier opened fire on the chopper and I returned it with my M2 carbine, a present from another Special Forces foray. We did some fancy flying ‘til we arrived back in Can To and the primitive officers club where my Vietnamese crew was not welcome. They were officially described as “foreign nationals,” this camouflaging the racism which existed throughout Southeast Asia. I ordered six beers, took them outside and we lay in the dust with our heads against our packs, downing the ultra cold Bam Me Va, “33” in English.

I was to remember that assault as among the most futile, bloody experiences of my months in country and remembered it well with disbelief a year later when back home in New York watching the evening news. CBS correspondent, Don Webster, was standing in front of a group of small mountains informing us that these mountains, near the Cambodian border, were suspected of hiding a known Cambodian guerrilla leader and the unit to which he had been assigned had been ordered to take the lofty positions. There it was, the self-perpetuating insanity, I thought, “Les plus les change, les plus les meme chose,” or, if you prefer. “Les plus connu les hommes, les plus j’aime mon cheng.” When last I heard, the mountains had been assaulted another six times.