WEBVTT

00:02.701 --> 00:03.951
- Good evening.

00:05.582 --> 00:08.415
I hope everyone's had enough food.

00:09.517 --> 00:12.391
I made sure I filled up my plate before I left the table.

00:12.391 --> 00:15.301
I see Bill's back there ready to get the leftovers.

00:15.301 --> 00:18.133
I wanna thank everyone for coming tonight

00:18.133 --> 00:20.935
for this special heritage presentation.

00:20.935 --> 00:23.334
I wanna thank Admiral Hogg for coming.

00:23.334 --> 00:24.991
Admiral Gunn, good to see you.

00:24.991 --> 00:29.158
And we're honored to have Admiral Toole, a former commander

00:29.773 --> 00:32.397
of River Division 53 with us tonight,

00:32.397 --> 00:34.480
it's a part of the story.

00:34.702 --> 00:38.285
Dr. Ed Marolda and Commander McDavitt here.

00:39.122 --> 00:41.599
It's gonna be a very interesting evening and we're glad

00:41.599 --> 00:43.432
you all could be here.

00:43.514 --> 00:46.931
Tonight, Dr. Sherwood is going to monitor

00:48.122 --> 00:50.122
and run this discussion.

00:50.701 --> 00:52.784
He's a historian from the

00:54.679 --> 00:56.088
Naval Historical and Heritage Command and the author

00:56.088 --> 00:58.364
of 'War In The Shallows: U.S. Navy Costal

00:58.364 --> 01:02.031
and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, 1965-1968'.

01:02.712 --> 01:06.879
He's also on the committee at SNA and has been working

01:06.946 --> 01:09.033
with us all year to put this together,

01:09.033 --> 01:12.172
as well as last year's program which was phase one

01:12.172 --> 01:15.089
of the 50th anniversary of Vietnam.

01:17.200 --> 01:20.123
I also like to thank Dr. Winkler for showing up tonight

01:20.123 --> 01:22.815
who's worked with us for years and helped put this together.

01:22.815 --> 01:26.054
So without further ado I'd like to present Dr. Sherwood.

01:26.054 --> 01:26.887
Thank you.

01:28.287 --> 01:31.454
(audience applauding)

01:33.052 --> 01:35.363
- [Dr. Sherwood] Thank you very much.

01:35.363 --> 01:38.363
Unfortunately, Captain Chester Smith

01:39.129 --> 01:41.462
will not be with us tonight.

01:42.082 --> 01:46.082
I will be providing some insight into his career

01:47.193 --> 01:48.776
in Vietnam instead.

01:50.462 --> 01:54.629
But our first speaker tonight is Ed Marolda, Dr. Ed Moralda.

01:56.314 --> 02:00.147
Our second speaker is Commander Fred McDavitt.

02:02.040 --> 02:06.207
Dr. Marolda had a 40-year career in the federal government.

02:06.594 --> 02:10.761
His last position was Director of Naval History Acting,

02:10.939 --> 02:13.847
and Senior Historian of the U.S. Navy.

02:13.847 --> 02:18.014
He has authored, coauthored, or edited 15 books including

02:19.310 --> 02:23.037
'From Military Assistance to Combat 1959-1965'

02:23.037 --> 02:26.524
in the Vietnam series of the Naval History

02:26.524 --> 02:27.954
and Heritage Command.

02:27.954 --> 02:31.871
He is also the author of 'By Sea, Air and Land:

02:32.831 --> 02:36.361
An Illustrated History of the United States Navy'

02:36.361 --> 02:40.528
and 'Ready Seapower: A History of the U.S. Seventh Fleet'.

02:40.794 --> 02:43.992
Currently he is overseeing a commemorative booklet series

02:43.992 --> 02:47.317
on the U.S. Navy in the Vietnam war and has authored

02:47.317 --> 02:50.875
or coauthored four booklets in the series, including

02:50.875 --> 02:53.875
one on riverine operations entitled,

02:53.986 --> 02:56.133
'Combat at Close Quarters'.

02:56.133 --> 03:00.300
All of those commemoration booklets are available free

03:00.569 --> 03:02.236
to download at NHHC.

03:03.777 --> 03:07.944
We also have a limited number at our booth downstairs.

03:08.989 --> 03:10.322
So, Dr. Marolda.

03:18.107 --> 03:20.918
- [Dr. Marolda] Thank you John for that kind introduction.

03:20.918 --> 03:23.679
First of all, I'd like to give a shout out

03:23.679 --> 03:25.492
to my fellow Vietnam veterans.

03:25.492 --> 03:28.876
How many Vietnam veterans are in the audience tonight?

03:28.876 --> 03:30.202
Oh, quite a few, great.

03:30.202 --> 03:31.397
Well, I'm in good company.

03:31.397 --> 03:34.564
(audience applauding)

03:36.123 --> 03:37.733
How many of you served on the rivers

03:37.733 --> 03:39.983
or in-country I should say?

03:40.252 --> 03:42.252
Well, a good number too.

03:42.712 --> 03:43.612
(audience applauding)

03:43.612 --> 03:47.065
It's a pleasure to be here this evening and I'm honored

03:47.065 --> 03:51.232
to be on the same panel with distinguished Fred McDavitt

03:51.786 --> 03:54.708
and unfortunately Chet Smith couldn't make it

03:54.708 --> 03:58.875
but I'm certainly honored to be on the same panel as he.

04:00.958 --> 04:02.858
My talk today, I'm going to give an overview of

04:02.858 --> 04:05.868
the U.S. Navy in-country riverine operations,

04:05.868 --> 04:10.035
not specifically River Section 531, but a bigger picture.

04:11.950 --> 04:14.609
The first thing that comes up, and I hear this all the time

04:14.609 --> 04:16.859
from folks that I speak to,

04:17.001 --> 04:20.397
why was the Navy in Vietnam, how'd that come about?

04:20.397 --> 04:22.897
Well, it wasn't an easy thing.

04:23.090 --> 04:27.050
In the early days there was much opposition by Navy Central

04:27.050 --> 04:31.217
in the Pentagon to deploying any kind of forces in-country.

04:31.588 --> 04:35.129
The thinking was, "That's an Army or Marine balliwick.

04:35.129 --> 04:36.993
"We don't need to be in there."

04:36.993 --> 04:40.474
Horacio Rivero, who was the Vice-Chief of Naval Operations

04:40.474 --> 04:44.358
in '64 or so, put out a memo one time saying the Navy

04:44.358 --> 04:48.108
will not get involved in muddy water warfare.

04:48.794 --> 04:50.611
And that held, that was the thinking.

04:50.611 --> 04:54.778
In fact, it lasted, even '65 through '68 it was still

04:55.020 --> 04:58.270
the thinking by many folks in the Navy.

04:58.917 --> 05:01.740
The inspiration really, or the driving force to get

05:01.740 --> 05:05.907
the Navy in-country was from General Westmoreland,

05:06.160 --> 05:09.675
Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.

05:09.675 --> 05:11.508
He said, "I need help.

05:11.820 --> 05:15.002
The South Vietnamese are not cutting it

05:15.002 --> 05:16.752
in the Mekong Delta."

05:17.493 --> 05:19.696
You've got three ARVN divisions there,

05:19.696 --> 05:21.410
you've got the River Force, the Vietnam Navy,

05:21.410 --> 05:25.493
that's not enough so I need you guys to help out.

05:25.774 --> 05:28.191
So he was the spark for that.

05:29.115 --> 05:33.282
It was the logical place however for the Navy to be.

05:34.327 --> 05:38.336
Here's a map of the Mekong Delta, some 3000 miles

05:38.336 --> 05:42.503
of waterways: canals, rivers, all kinds of water courses.

05:43.236 --> 05:47.403
Route four was the only main road in the Delta, that was it.

05:47.665 --> 05:50.545
So water was very important for transportation,

05:50.545 --> 05:53.878
for commerce, for all kinds of activity.

05:54.368 --> 05:56.754
The Mekong Delta of course was the rice bowl

05:56.754 --> 05:59.668
of South Vietnam, it probably still is.

05:59.668 --> 06:01.335
A very fertile area.

06:03.202 --> 06:06.071
A home to 50 percent of the South Vietnamese

06:06.071 --> 06:08.154
population at that point.

06:09.313 --> 06:13.480
In another area that you can see to the upper right side,

06:14.273 --> 06:17.584
I'll use my pointer, this is the so-called

06:17.584 --> 06:19.417
Rung Sat Special Zone.

06:21.393 --> 06:24.393
Here's a vessel of the Vietnam Navy.

06:24.993 --> 06:28.493
In old French, we call it a stay-con-foam.

06:28.788 --> 06:30.935
Not very powerful, it doesn't even look powerful.

06:30.935 --> 06:32.955
It looks like a little pleasure boat.

06:32.955 --> 06:35.031
They had some pretty poor equipment

06:35.031 --> 06:37.531
that they had to operate with.

06:37.901 --> 06:42.068
Here's the Rung Sat, it's actually, looks like the river

06:42.199 --> 06:44.746
on the left goes directly to Saigon.

06:44.746 --> 06:46.315
Well, that's not the one you would take.

06:46.315 --> 06:49.657
The more navigable waterway was the Long Tao which goes

06:49.657 --> 06:52.535
right through the middle of that swampy, mangrove area,

06:52.535 --> 06:56.615
45 miles of circuitous route to Saigon, but absolutely

06:56.615 --> 07:00.448
critical because Saigon was the enter port for

07:00.846 --> 07:04.023
all the stuff coming in for our military

07:04.023 --> 07:07.356
and the southern areas of South Vietnam.

07:09.194 --> 07:11.734
One of the things that I wanna mention in a larger sense

07:11.734 --> 07:14.817
is the work done by Mine Squadron 11.

07:15.287 --> 07:18.455
Those guys fought long and hard to keep that route open.

07:18.455 --> 07:21.705
You had minesweeping boats and a number

07:22.522 --> 07:24.679
of them were sunk, guys were killed.

07:24.679 --> 07:28.846
The coastguard was in there with some of their cutters.

07:31.305 --> 07:35.031
You had of course, river patrol boats, PBRs and at one point

07:35.031 --> 07:39.198
in 1966 in Operation Jackstay, the U.S. Marine Corps

07:40.664 --> 07:43.747
took part in a sweep of the Rung Sat.

07:44.794 --> 07:47.383
That was the only one time that they really came south

07:47.383 --> 07:49.622
but this was very important.

07:49.622 --> 07:53.287
It took the whole war to finally secure that route.

07:53.287 --> 07:56.841
We had merchant ships that were sunk, we had lots of smaller

07:56.841 --> 07:59.078
boats the same thing happened to 'em.

07:59.078 --> 08:02.439
But the main point here is the route was maintained,

08:02.439 --> 08:05.939
it was kept open, the supplies kept going.

08:06.510 --> 08:09.146
The other main activity, and I think most of you

08:09.146 --> 08:12.807
who are in the rivers or are associated with that,

08:12.807 --> 08:16.279
the river patrol force, Task Force 1-1-6,

08:16.279 --> 08:19.196
carrying out Operation Game Warden.

08:21.574 --> 08:25.223
Here's the result of a PBR that ran afoul of a mine.

08:25.223 --> 08:29.390
Fiberglass hull doesn't take much to cause that damage.

08:32.233 --> 08:35.063
Here's your standard river patrol boat.

08:35.063 --> 08:37.528
And I always mix up my Mark I's with my Mark II's,

08:37.528 --> 08:39.175
I'm sure you guys know the difference.

08:39.175 --> 08:41.342
Either 31 feet or 32 feet.

08:42.711 --> 08:45.622
This was your main preoccupation, especially the early days,

08:45.622 --> 08:49.789
checking sampans, checking papers on the major rivers

08:50.311 --> 08:54.478
in the Mekong Delta was established in the end of 1966.

08:57.961 --> 09:00.878
The main rivers included the Bassac

09:01.686 --> 09:04.471
and the three main tributaries of the Mekong River

09:04.471 --> 09:07.054
which offload in from Cambodia.

09:07.702 --> 09:11.535
Critical to the work of the river patrol force

09:12.104 --> 09:15.449
in Operation Game Warden and I know there's some of you

09:15.449 --> 09:17.581
out here because I sat with one of you at the bar

09:17.581 --> 09:20.081
just before tonight's program.

09:20.363 --> 09:21.958
That's it! (laughs)

09:21.958 --> 09:24.983
Helicopter Attack Light Squadron Three, the Seawolves.

09:24.983 --> 09:29.150
Absolutely critical to what was done on the rivers.

09:29.976 --> 09:33.095
Because the waterways are narrow, the canals are narrow,

09:33.095 --> 09:36.440
you had foliage came right down to the water, it would've

09:36.440 --> 09:38.889
been suicide without air support.

09:38.889 --> 09:41.689
HAL Three provided that throughout the war, really

09:41.689 --> 09:45.689
instrumental in our doing anything successfully.

09:45.804 --> 09:49.971
Later on, they decided we needed a little bit faster

09:50.413 --> 09:53.528
aircraft to get in there and be on-call and get out

09:53.528 --> 09:57.176
to an operational area within 20-25 minutes.

09:57.176 --> 10:00.843
So they brought in fixed-wing OV-10 Broncos.

10:01.128 --> 10:03.878
The Black Ponies, they're called.

10:04.425 --> 10:07.831
And they were equally powerful and really appreciated

10:07.831 --> 10:09.998
by the folks on the water.

10:10.790 --> 10:13.559
And last, certainly not least, SEALs;

10:13.559 --> 10:16.056
Navy special operations forces.

10:16.056 --> 10:19.174
The SEAL community really cut their teeth.

10:19.174 --> 10:21.207
That was their birthplace, Vietnam.

10:21.207 --> 10:24.118
They were created for, around the world but they really

10:24.118 --> 10:27.701
were focused on Vietnam throughout the war.

10:28.490 --> 10:30.262
Worth their weight in gold.

10:30.262 --> 10:33.943
Gathering intelligence, taking out enemy leaders,

10:33.943 --> 10:37.831
working with the South Vietnamese provincial troops

10:37.831 --> 10:38.914
and the rest.

10:39.288 --> 10:43.288
These were all involved in the river operations.

10:44.998 --> 10:49.081
Another aspect of this, and I don't wanna forget,

10:49.209 --> 10:53.223
the folks, you guys that served in the Mekong Delta,

10:53.223 --> 10:56.182
there were others who served in the northern parts

10:56.182 --> 10:59.432
of South Vietnam, Operation Clearwater.

10:59.547 --> 11:03.714
That was on the Cua Viet River, right next to the DMZ.

11:03.722 --> 11:06.329
As you know, the North Vietnamese Army was just north

11:06.329 --> 11:10.496
of that river and really wanted to contest our passage.

11:11.129 --> 11:15.296
But to keep the Marines at Con Thien and The Rockpile

11:15.718 --> 11:18.967
and other places supplied, the Cua Viet had to be kept open.

11:18.967 --> 11:22.361
So PBR's were sent up there, some of the mobile riverine

11:22.361 --> 11:24.778
force, heavier units as well.

11:25.335 --> 11:29.502
The same thing with the river to Hue, the Perfume River.

11:29.654 --> 11:33.821
During Tet 1968, when there was absolutely heavy fighting

11:34.233 --> 11:38.400
in Hue, the Navy kept that route open to bring supplies

11:38.519 --> 11:39.852
in up the river.

11:41.078 --> 11:43.495
Two critical aspects of that.

11:46.295 --> 11:49.622
I mentioned that General Westmoreland was dissatisfied

11:49.622 --> 11:53.367
with the ARVN activities in the Mekong Delta.

11:53.367 --> 11:55.534
He wanted to do even more.

11:56.460 --> 11:58.870
He said, "You know, we're relying on these three

11:58.870 --> 12:02.359
South Vietnamese divisions, infantry divisions.

12:02.359 --> 12:04.109
They need some help."

12:04.646 --> 12:07.351
So he had established the U.S. Ninth Infantry Division,

12:07.351 --> 12:10.560
which is a division he had served in as

12:10.560 --> 12:14.643
an Artillery Battalion Commander in World War Two

12:14.670 --> 12:17.053
and then I think Chief of Staff of the division.

12:17.053 --> 12:19.790
So he was favorable to that division

12:19.790 --> 12:22.638
being deployed to the Mekong Delta.

12:22.638 --> 12:25.341
They were paired with a Navy force,

12:25.341 --> 12:29.508
the Riverine Assault Force, Task Force 1-1-7.

12:29.998 --> 12:32.718
So he had 1-1-5 as the costal patrol,

12:32.718 --> 12:36.398
1-1-6 was the Game Warden, riverine, river,

12:36.398 --> 12:39.839
and then 1-1-7 for the heavy hitting.

12:39.839 --> 12:44.006
The riverine force, I mentioned the combination of the Army

12:44.445 --> 12:47.148
guys, the Second Brigade and the Ninth Division,

12:47.148 --> 12:51.315
and the Navy's Riverine Assault Force with Monitors,

12:52.542 --> 12:56.709
armored troop carriers, assault support patrol boats,

12:57.183 --> 13:01.350
all manner of river craft heavily armored and heavily armed.

13:02.370 --> 13:05.821
These guys were not to go out and check sampans

13:05.821 --> 13:08.493
or to patrol segments of the river,

13:08.493 --> 13:10.576
they're out to kick butt.

13:10.845 --> 13:14.762
All of you probably know General Westmoreland's

13:15.197 --> 13:17.774
big thing was 'search and destroy'.

13:17.774 --> 13:21.496
He was fighting, in his mind, a war of attrition.

13:21.496 --> 13:24.833
We've got to kill more of the enemy than they kill of us.

13:24.833 --> 13:27.337
So that's what the MRF was out for, they were out to

13:27.337 --> 13:30.587
be the waterside segment of a surround.

13:33.048 --> 13:36.344
If you locate a Viet Cong unit, we would take over

13:36.344 --> 13:39.432
the riverside, the Army would either helicopter or walk in

13:39.432 --> 13:42.938
from the other sides, theoretically surround the enemy unit

13:42.938 --> 13:44.438
and beat up on it.

13:44.924 --> 13:46.841
Very effective in 1967.

13:48.233 --> 13:51.482
The MRF took a heavy toll of the enemy.

13:51.482 --> 13:54.280
The enemy took a heavy toll of our guys as well,

13:54.280 --> 13:57.000
and the South Vietnamese who fought with us.

13:57.000 --> 14:01.167
They were especially instrumental and John Sherwood covers

14:02.394 --> 14:05.227
this in his 'War in the Shallows'.

14:05.706 --> 14:06.539
Tet 1968.

14:08.569 --> 14:12.152
The term is under suspicion by me actually.

14:12.568 --> 14:15.401
They supposedly 'saved the delta'.

14:16.072 --> 14:18.281
I haven't been able to track down who actually said

14:18.281 --> 14:22.201
that statement but it's been put to the MRF that they helped

14:22.201 --> 14:26.368
recapture My Tho, Long Vinh, Ben Tre, and other population

14:26.826 --> 14:30.993
centers that the enemy had overrun, they took 'em back

14:31.113 --> 14:33.816
with the Army troops and the Riverine Assault Force.

14:33.816 --> 14:36.316
So critical to that operation.

14:38.410 --> 14:41.401
Here's a PBR, this is going back a bit,

14:41.401 --> 14:45.234
unloading on one of the banks in the riverway.

14:46.425 --> 14:48.698
Here's a HAL Three helicopter and you can see

14:48.698 --> 14:52.121
they're overhead, close at hand, ready to do their thing.

14:52.121 --> 14:55.288
Mini-guns, M-16 machine guns, rockets,

14:55.401 --> 14:58.234
heavily armed ready to go to work.

15:00.009 --> 15:01.977
Here's a SEAL, I love this painting,

15:01.977 --> 15:06.144
it's a representation but I think it's pretty colorful.

15:08.810 --> 15:12.977
And we're talking about 531 this evening and this is

15:13.401 --> 15:17.068
Boatswain's Mate First Class James Williams,

15:17.485 --> 15:21.318
Medal of Honor recipient for his work in 1966.

15:21.928 --> 15:25.449
If you read the citation it's just phenomenal.

15:25.449 --> 15:29.018
They discovered some Viet Cong who were unloading supplies

15:29.018 --> 15:32.265
in the river, he went charging in, shot the place up.

15:32.265 --> 15:35.598
He and one other boat, he had two PBR's,

15:36.569 --> 15:40.185
they went right through, RPG's were going all over 'em,

15:40.185 --> 15:42.793
they were being shot at, but they were taking

15:42.793 --> 15:44.793
heavy toll of the enemy.

15:45.129 --> 15:48.057
He got to the other end, rather than staying there he turned

15:48.057 --> 15:50.307
around and came back again.

15:50.363 --> 15:53.737
This went on for two or three hours, the entire engagement.

15:53.737 --> 15:57.904
Finally air support came in and he and the air support

15:58.793 --> 16:02.234
knocked out some 50 Viet Cong sampans loaded with supplies,

16:02.234 --> 16:05.067
soldiers were killed on the banks.

16:05.322 --> 16:07.839
I like this picture because he's the most unlikely looking

16:07.839 --> 16:10.672
hero but he definitely was a hero.

16:11.355 --> 16:14.984
President Johnson, when he put the Medal of Honor ribbon

16:14.984 --> 16:17.305
around his neck made some comment like,

16:17.305 --> 16:20.045
"Wow, you're a thick-neck sailor." (laughs)

16:20.045 --> 16:23.045
(audience laughing)

16:23.085 --> 16:26.777
There's the battleship of the Mobile Riverine Force.

16:26.777 --> 16:30.944
This is a monitor, it's an old LCM, Landing Craft Medium.

16:32.333 --> 16:35.801
From even World War Two, which they just armored

16:35.801 --> 16:39.968
the whole thing, put guns, 40-millimeter, 60's and the rest.

16:43.390 --> 16:45.807
Here's a flame-throwing boat.

16:47.786 --> 16:50.637
It was, and it sounds pretty nasty but really the object

16:50.637 --> 16:53.644
was to clear the vegetation away from the banks so the enemy

16:53.644 --> 16:57.210
couldn't hide there or build bunkers on the side,

16:57.210 --> 16:58.710
they'd be exposed.

16:58.921 --> 17:02.744
That's called a Zippo Boat and us Vietnam veterans

17:02.744 --> 17:04.411
know Zippo lighters.

17:05.913 --> 17:10.080
Here's a typical in the river, and the Mobile Riverine Force

17:10.824 --> 17:14.634
had a whole bevy of support ships, repair ships, birthing

17:14.634 --> 17:17.768
and messing ships to support their activity.

17:17.768 --> 17:21.935
That support group went with the MRF up the rivers

17:22.586 --> 17:24.729
as they went up looking for the enemy.

17:24.729 --> 17:26.062
Really critical.

17:26.440 --> 17:30.273
You can see the armored troop carriers nesting

17:30.445 --> 17:32.058
and it was very convenient.

17:32.058 --> 17:36.225
The soldiers loved the support ships because they came out

17:36.525 --> 17:39.977
of the paddies, where they'd been in the rice paddies

17:39.977 --> 17:41.810
for two or three days.

17:41.902 --> 17:44.890
You all remember Trench Foot from World War One?

17:44.890 --> 17:47.783
Well, in Vietnam it was called Emersion Foot.

17:47.783 --> 17:50.312
Their feet were in water the whole time.

17:50.312 --> 17:52.360
They would come out of the water and their feet

17:52.360 --> 17:54.739
would be all shriveled up and diseases were rampant.

17:54.739 --> 17:57.145
They finally got a formula where they could only

17:57.145 --> 17:59.272
be in the field for two days, they had to go back

17:59.272 --> 18:02.184
to the ship, hot showers, hot chow.

18:02.184 --> 18:04.684
The soldiers really like that.

18:06.220 --> 18:09.658
Here's some Ninth Division troops either coming or going.

18:09.658 --> 18:11.640
I'm not sure what they are but they're heading out to

18:11.640 --> 18:15.807
the boonies, not a pleasant place to be in the Mekong Delta.

18:17.773 --> 18:21.440
Here's the result, this is a Tet 1968 image,

18:22.152 --> 18:23.784
and the enemy got devistated.

18:23.784 --> 18:25.960
The Viet Cong came out of hiding and really took a hit

18:25.960 --> 18:28.587
that they never really recovered from.

18:28.587 --> 18:31.768
The Hanoi had to send in North Vietnamese regulars

18:31.768 --> 18:34.685
to stiffen the forces in The Delta.

18:36.477 --> 18:39.117
After 1968, The Delta actually was not

18:39.117 --> 18:43.284
the key fighting area, it was moving more to the north.

18:43.449 --> 18:47.032
Although some here I'm sure would disagree.

18:47.177 --> 18:50.778
Here's Tom Kelly, another Medal of Honor recipient.

18:50.778 --> 18:52.445
He was with the MRF.

18:54.089 --> 18:56.618
You can see the wound to his skull.

18:56.618 --> 18:59.209
I asked him to come into the Naval History Center

18:59.209 --> 19:00.840
at one point and give a talk.

19:00.840 --> 19:02.697
He did, it was a fine talk.

19:02.697 --> 19:05.663
He talked about the Navy in Vietnam.

19:05.663 --> 19:06.877
At the end of it I said,

19:06.877 --> 19:08.589
"Well Tom, aren't you gonna tell us about

19:08.589 --> 19:11.407
"the action in which you got the Medal of Honor?"

19:11.407 --> 19:13.693
He read his citation, he said, "That's all I can do.

19:13.693 --> 19:16.509
"I do not remember what happened."

19:16.509 --> 19:20.342
He got badly injured but he kept trying to run

19:20.493 --> 19:23.487
the battle even when he was badly injured

19:23.487 --> 19:25.987
and he got his men through it.

19:33.741 --> 19:37.908
The key person in Vietnam, the fellow on the right,

19:38.425 --> 19:42.171
Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., and to his left,

19:42.171 --> 19:44.810
General Creighton Abrams, who was commander of

19:44.810 --> 19:47.135
the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam.

19:47.135 --> 19:50.857
Elmo Zumwalt was clearly the most notable naval figure

19:50.857 --> 19:54.330
in the Vietnam war, he is most remembered.

19:54.330 --> 19:56.378
He went on to be Chief of Naval Operations after

19:56.378 --> 19:58.045
his time in Vietnam.

19:58.958 --> 20:00.523
He made a difference.

20:00.523 --> 20:04.238
When he came in, he built on the work done by you guys

20:04.238 --> 20:08.281
who were in the River Patrol Force up through '68,

20:08.281 --> 20:11.582
but he launched his Operation Sealords and the object

20:11.582 --> 20:15.749
was to put patrolled barriers along the Cambodian border

20:16.907 --> 20:21.074
to stop some of that stuff that was coming in from Cambodia.

20:21.737 --> 20:25.467
From the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville, I should add,

20:25.467 --> 20:28.217
in supposedly 'neutral' Cambodia.

20:28.618 --> 20:30.988
Prince Sihanouk was allowing Chinese ships

20:30.988 --> 20:33.510
to come into the port, offload.

20:33.510 --> 20:35.786
Cambodian trucking companies were paid off

20:35.786 --> 20:37.850
to carry the stuff right to the border,

20:37.850 --> 20:39.913
hand it over to the Viet Cong.

20:39.913 --> 20:43.163
So Zumwalt set up these border patrols.

20:44.889 --> 20:48.203
Very effective and the fighting was very heavy afterward

20:48.203 --> 20:50.794
because the enemy realized they had to break through here.

20:50.794 --> 20:53.377
They weren't very good at that.

20:55.690 --> 20:58.357
Another, before I go to that ...

21:00.298 --> 21:04.058
Another aspect of his was the Vietnamization program

21:04.058 --> 21:08.225
was the overall, turning the war over to the Vietnamese.

21:08.362 --> 21:10.122
The Navy called it ACTOV,

21:10.122 --> 21:14.173
Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese, same thing.

21:14.173 --> 21:17.098
My view, not as successful here as he was with

21:17.098 --> 21:19.583
Operation Sealords, in fact, I'm writing about it now.

21:19.583 --> 21:23.750
He only had a few years to get the South Vietnamese

21:23.834 --> 21:27.584
ready to operate very heavy equipment, ships,

21:27.659 --> 21:30.742
coastguard cutters, destroyer escorts

21:31.483 --> 21:34.554
and all the other, the logistic system.

21:34.554 --> 21:37.802
Their navy doubled in size in that period.

21:37.802 --> 21:41.135
Too much, they just could not handle it.

21:41.433 --> 21:44.378
So it didn't work but he gave it the college try

21:44.378 --> 21:47.961
and he was innovative in the way he did it.

21:48.249 --> 21:51.466
Now, he work tended to move beyond the Mekong Delta after

21:51.466 --> 21:55.466
Zumwalt's time because the enemy was driven back

21:56.223 --> 22:00.390
into Cambodia once we went into Cambodia, push them back.

22:01.967 --> 22:03.717
The war was changing.

22:04.187 --> 22:07.434
It was no longer guerrillas fighting, it was more up north

22:07.434 --> 22:10.298
where you had North Vietnamese conventional forces,

22:10.298 --> 22:13.298
tanks, heavy artillery and the rest.

22:14.842 --> 22:17.548
To the very end of the war, the Mekong Delta was held

22:17.548 --> 22:20.732
by the South Vietnamese where they lost

22:20.732 --> 22:23.399
everything else north of Saigon.

22:25.017 --> 22:27.100
And the Easter Offensive.

22:28.410 --> 22:31.609
Because things were so well settled in the Mekong Delta

22:31.609 --> 22:34.905
in 1972, when the North Vietnamese launched their attacks

22:34.905 --> 22:39.072
north of Saigon towards Saigon, the allies were able

22:40.236 --> 22:43.289
to dispatch South Vietnamese Infantry Division up

22:43.289 --> 22:46.570
to north of Saigon to help out so they didn't have

22:46.570 --> 22:49.653
to worry about The Delta behind them.

22:50.137 --> 22:52.470
As we know, we lost the war.

22:53.115 --> 22:57.282
So what was the effect of riverine operations in Vietnam?

22:58.602 --> 23:02.602
I've got four things that I think speak to this.

23:04.992 --> 23:08.554
The riverine operations limited the enemy's

23:08.554 --> 23:10.971
strength in the Mekong Delta.

23:11.626 --> 23:15.793
That was their birthplace of the Viet Cong movement.

23:15.914 --> 23:18.907
It also significantly reduced the supplies coming

23:18.907 --> 23:22.157
in from Cambodia, especially after '68.

23:24.010 --> 23:27.292
It helped facilitate the Republic of Vietnam maintaining

23:27.292 --> 23:31.209
control of this critical area of their country.

23:32.202 --> 23:36.042
And it kept open the Long Tao River through the Rung Sat,

23:36.042 --> 23:38.618
the Perfume River, the Cua Viet and certainly

23:38.618 --> 23:41.201
the Mekong River to Phnom Penh.

23:41.514 --> 23:45.681
A little post script here, there was a convoy system from

23:46.569 --> 23:50.107
the South China Sea all the way up to Phnom Penh until 1975

23:50.107 --> 23:54.274
that was enabled by Cambodian, and South Vietnamese

23:54.506 --> 23:56.339
and U.S. Naval forces.

23:57.836 --> 24:01.865
Ammunition and fuel kept going into Phnom Penh when

24:01.865 --> 24:06.011
everything else was in the charge of the Khmer Rouge.

24:06.011 --> 24:09.899
River Operations had their effect in a tactical sense.

24:09.899 --> 24:12.587
As you know, we lost the war and the war was really,

24:12.587 --> 24:16.528
the major fighting was ashore with the Army and Marine

24:16.528 --> 24:20.361
troops but the Navy played it's part for sure.

24:20.460 --> 24:24.076
John mentioned I think, if you're interested in my little

24:24.076 --> 24:27.449
booklet, it's a PDF with the Naval History

24:27.449 --> 24:29.898
and Heritage Center but also a G-P-O if you wanna buy

24:29.898 --> 24:32.737
a copy of an 80-page booklet, I guess it is.

24:32.737 --> 24:36.427
Thank you very much, it's been a pleasure speaking to you.

24:36.427 --> 24:39.594
(audience applauding)

24:42.971 --> 24:44.826
- Thank you very much Dr. Marolda, that was a very

24:44.826 --> 24:47.659
interesting and illuminating talk.

24:48.170 --> 24:51.837
Our next speaker is Commander Fred McDavitt,

24:52.314 --> 24:54.564
United States Navy Retired.

24:55.418 --> 24:57.658
Commander McDavitt was the first commander

24:57.658 --> 25:01.491
of River Section 531 based in My Tho, Vietnam.

25:02.138 --> 25:04.971
My Tho is a very significant town.

25:05.163 --> 25:07.830
It's the terminus of Route Four,

25:08.587 --> 25:12.254
which is the only road going into the Delta.

25:13.372 --> 25:17.539
It is also just downstream from what became the main base

25:18.896 --> 25:22.979
for the MRF, the Mobile Riverine Force, Dong Tam.

25:23.714 --> 25:27.214
He was commander of the PBR unit stationed

25:29.167 --> 25:31.584
at My Tho, River Section 531.

25:32.254 --> 25:36.421
Under his tenure, the River Section became one of the most

25:37.566 --> 25:41.483
highly decorated units in modern naval history,

25:41.825 --> 25:45.992
earning among other awards, a Presidential Unit citation

25:46.241 --> 25:49.966
and numerous individual awards including one Metal of Honor,

25:49.966 --> 25:54.133
two Navy Crosses, seven Silver Stars, and 26 Purple Hearts.

25:56.478 --> 25:58.800
The Metal of Honor recipient has already been mentioned,

25:58.800 --> 26:00.847
it's James Elliott Williams.

26:00.847 --> 26:04.597
We have a D-D-G named in his honor.

26:04.819 --> 26:08.321
One of the Navy Cross recipients was supposed

26:08.321 --> 26:10.904
to be here tonight, Chet Smith.

26:11.343 --> 26:12.843
So, Fred McDavitt.

26:14.496 --> 26:17.663
(audience applauding)

26:23.599 --> 26:25.393
- It's like Old Home Week.

26:25.393 --> 26:27.330
When I first got here I saw the pictures

26:27.330 --> 26:30.321
of Boatswain Williams, it's the first one over here,

26:30.321 --> 26:32.238
in the black and white.

26:32.910 --> 26:36.240
And then the picture beside him is Reuben Bender,

26:36.240 --> 26:38.407
who is his Forward Gunner.

26:38.590 --> 26:41.615
And there couldn't have been two more diverse people

26:41.615 --> 26:45.198
within touching range of each other because

26:45.615 --> 26:49.782
Boatswain Williams was from Darlington, South Carolina

26:51.505 --> 26:54.422
and in the mid-50's and early 60's,

26:56.287 --> 26:58.992
that has a description all itself.

26:58.992 --> 27:00.863
He was everything you might think he would be.

27:00.863 --> 27:04.696
Reuben Bender was a Jewish kid from the Bronx.

27:07.853 --> 27:11.628
And they both took to each other like fire and,

27:11.628 --> 27:13.612
or I'd say oil and water, and there

27:13.612 --> 27:16.195
was constant fighting going on.

27:17.483 --> 27:21.470
I noticed when I'd gone on patrol with Williams,

27:21.470 --> 27:24.063
he had a broom right next to the radios and the radar,

27:24.063 --> 27:25.581
and I said, "What is that for?"

27:25.581 --> 27:26.990
And he says, "Watch this."

27:26.990 --> 27:28.419
and he would take and poke Bender with it

27:28.419 --> 27:29.987
just to keep him going.

27:29.987 --> 27:32.987
(audience laughing)

27:34.288 --> 27:36.205
And it went from there.

27:38.705 --> 27:42.318
I would also like to acknowledge Admiral Jim Toole.

27:42.318 --> 27:45.068
He and I were very young in 1966.

27:46.511 --> 27:50.678
I was a frocked lieutenant, and he, as I remember we had

27:51.437 --> 27:53.869
his wetting down party in Vung Tau,

27:53.869 --> 27:55.806
for a lieutenant commander.

27:55.806 --> 27:59.973
When it comes to young and inexperienced, we were it.

28:01.007 --> 28:05.174
Now on the other end of that scale was Boatswain Williams

28:06.048 --> 28:09.048
who was 36 and on his twilight tour.

28:09.342 --> 28:12.925
And I might add, unlike Time Magazine said,

28:13.759 --> 28:17.176
the PBR sailors are a, what did they say?

28:19.680 --> 28:23.847
Something to the effect of, "A band of" shall we say

28:26.065 --> 28:29.571
"brave volunteers" and I'm cleaning that up a little bit.

28:29.571 --> 28:33.583
Williams and several of the other boatswain's mate first

28:33.583 --> 28:36.021
class we got didn't volunteer.

28:36.021 --> 28:38.222
Williams thought he was gonna be Master at Arms at our

28:38.222 --> 28:41.639
barracks in Norfolk in his twilight tour.

28:42.319 --> 28:43.902
Surprise, surprise!

28:46.047 --> 28:48.736
Turned out to be very luck for all of us 'cause he had also

28:48.736 --> 28:52.903
been in his earlier days a coxwain on a Mike Six going

28:54.239 --> 28:58.072
into Incheon Harbor for the invasion of Korea.

28:59.583 --> 29:03.750
So we had a very interesting crew and we'll go from there.

29:04.831 --> 29:06.414
And now I'll start.

29:07.648 --> 29:11.815
Honored guests, members of the SNA Board, distinguished

29:12.881 --> 29:16.714
flag officers, and fellow brown-water sailors.

29:17.136 --> 29:18.886
And who are you guys?

29:21.600 --> 29:22.433
Excellent.

29:23.152 --> 29:26.152
(audience applause)

29:29.106 --> 29:33.120
It's a real honor to be here, it was 50 years ago.

29:33.120 --> 29:37.287
I pretty much forgot all about this and I got a letter

29:39.280 --> 29:41.872
from SNA saying, "Hey, you're the only guy that we know

29:41.872 --> 29:44.320
"that may be dumb enough to come from California

29:44.320 --> 29:46.820
"to Crystal City in November."

29:47.824 --> 29:49.119
(audience chuckling)

29:49.119 --> 29:51.617
"We heard you'd go anywhere for a free meal."

29:51.617 --> 29:52.784
And here I am!

29:54.033 --> 29:55.649
(audience chuckling)

29:55.649 --> 29:59.731
What I'm gonna talk about tonight is the early days

29:59.731 --> 30:03.898
of riverine warfare and in particular the founding of 531.

30:06.383 --> 30:09.104
This is more of an admin brief and Chet Miller,

30:09.104 --> 30:11.344
who unfortunately couldn't be here because he's stuck

30:11.344 --> 30:15.511
in a snowbank was gonna talk more about the combat end

30:17.186 --> 30:20.103
so we'll see how much time we have.

30:21.075 --> 30:25.242
What I'm gonna cover tonight will be in seven subjects.

30:26.255 --> 30:28.624
The first will be our initial training

30:28.624 --> 30:31.376
and the next one is what is a PBR.

30:31.376 --> 30:34.101
Then we're going to go is what is a river section,

30:34.101 --> 30:37.393
what kind of personnel did we have, dealing with

30:37.393 --> 30:40.305
the Viet Cong, and one of the most difficult tasks

30:40.305 --> 30:43.472
we had which was establishing a curfew

30:45.089 --> 30:48.756
on the Mekong River from sundown to sunrise.

30:50.000 --> 30:53.856
Now you got to realize for hundreds of years, the Vietnamese

30:53.856 --> 30:57.826
fishermen just ran the river anytime they wanted

30:57.826 --> 30:59.696
and when you're gonna tell them you can't do it when

30:59.696 --> 31:02.273
you really like do it to get to market on time,

31:02.273 --> 31:04.523
a lot of interesting stuff.

31:04.692 --> 31:07.903
And lastly I've got a photo, I think it's the only existing

31:07.903 --> 31:10.820
photo of most of the people in 531.

31:20.530 --> 31:21.363
Okay.

31:23.072 --> 31:27.239
50 years ago, Admiral Toole and I show up at the fib base

31:27.984 --> 31:30.901
along with about 250 other sailors.

31:31.648 --> 31:35.815
Oh, Time Magazine called us, "An elite corps of volunteers."

31:38.144 --> 31:41.010
When you're my age, things like that cycle through

31:41.010 --> 31:43.952
and you gotta say 'em when they show up.

31:43.952 --> 31:45.056
(audience laughter)

31:45.056 --> 31:49.223
We all checked in and said, "We are here for our PBR

31:50.320 --> 31:54.487
"training but more importantly for our tactics training."

31:54.671 --> 31:58.838
and they said, "We have no idea what you're talking about.

31:59.360 --> 32:03.527
"Come back next week, sign in, we'll put you on basket leave

32:04.690 --> 32:06.687
"and we'll try to figure something out."

32:06.687 --> 32:09.678
We came back the next week and I don't know if you'll

32:09.678 --> 32:13.199
remember this Admiral Toole but they took the six of us

32:13.199 --> 32:16.068
who were gonna be CO's and a couple of the division

32:16.068 --> 32:20.235
commanders into a room, had long tables and those tables

32:21.136 --> 32:23.215
were covered with training catalogs.

32:23.215 --> 32:25.055
And they said, "Here's the deal.

32:25.055 --> 32:27.652
"Figure out what you think you aughta know,"

32:27.652 --> 32:30.402
sounds like modern-day education,

32:31.071 --> 32:33.279
"Figure out what you think you aughta know, see if there's

32:33.279 --> 32:37.328
a course on it and we'll get you quotas to go, and that'll

32:37.328 --> 32:40.399
take another week or two to get that going on."

32:40.399 --> 32:43.232
Well, if a course only takes 30 people and you got 250

32:43.232 --> 32:47.065
to get through the school, it's a good effort.

32:49.079 --> 32:53.246
The first thing we had was small arms training, we thought

32:54.107 --> 32:56.911
that was important and they sent us up to the Marines

32:56.911 --> 32:59.756
for two weeks at Camp Pendleton, it was called

32:59.756 --> 33:02.363
Camp San Onofre, and that was excellent training

33:02.363 --> 33:06.530
because if it was in Vietnam and you could pick it up,

33:06.830 --> 33:09.372
take it apart, put it back together and shoot it,

33:09.372 --> 33:10.955
that's what we did.

33:11.645 --> 33:14.413
We told 'em that we're gonna do a lot of 50-caliber work

33:14.413 --> 33:18.267
off of boats and they said, "Well, we got no boats,

33:18.267 --> 33:21.147
"but we got a deuce and a half flatbed."

33:21.147 --> 33:23.739
and they bolted a 50-caliber machine gun to it and we went

33:23.739 --> 33:27.706
up and down the hills and got to shoot 55-gallon drums.

33:27.706 --> 33:28.789
Close enough.

33:29.610 --> 33:31.648
(audience laughing)

33:31.648 --> 33:35.515
The next thing we wanted was Jungle Survival School.

33:35.515 --> 33:37.422
As you can see from my list there,

33:37.422 --> 33:39.770
we got Desert Survival School.

33:39.770 --> 33:41.437
Again, close enough.

33:42.219 --> 33:45.039
(audience chuckling)

33:45.039 --> 33:46.976
The course that we wanted next was

33:46.976 --> 33:48.636
Survival Swimming, we did get that.

33:48.636 --> 33:52.803
That was provided by the UDT school, that was pre-SEAL.

33:54.509 --> 33:57.643
If you haven't been through it, you start out

33:57.643 --> 34:01.114
in a bathing suit and in a swimming pool and end up

34:01.114 --> 34:03.676
swimming several miles in the open ocean with

34:03.676 --> 34:06.509
your full uniform including boots.

34:08.123 --> 34:11.123
Literally, I near drowned doing that

34:11.422 --> 34:13.839
'cause we did it in February.

34:14.509 --> 34:17.517
Next, we wanted, and this is a requirement for anybody

34:17.517 --> 34:21.194
going into combat, Code of Conduct and POW Conduct.

34:21.194 --> 34:25.361
You're supposed to have that before you go into combat

34:26.747 --> 34:30.347
and they gave that to us, but it was all based

34:30.347 --> 34:34.014
on World War Two in Korea area era behavior.

34:36.299 --> 34:38.514
What we were supposed to do, and it couldn't

34:38.514 --> 34:40.597
have been any more wrong.

34:41.243 --> 34:45.410
They finally changed it but the main difference was

34:45.434 --> 34:48.874
in World War Two in Korea they kept the prisoners in groups,

34:48.874 --> 34:52.041
usually of about 25 with a senior man.

34:52.059 --> 34:54.059
What did they do in Vietnam?

34:54.059 --> 34:56.347
Isolated 'em, one man to a cell and they would go months

34:56.347 --> 34:59.014
without seeing another American.

35:00.109 --> 35:01.148
Another story.

35:01.148 --> 35:04.981
Next we wanted PBR, or Small-Craft Operations,

35:05.098 --> 35:09.265
but in particular, PBR's, and of course there were none.

35:10.219 --> 35:11.436
And why did we want that?

35:11.436 --> 35:14.415
Because that was the first boat that the Navy was going

35:14.415 --> 35:17.665
to acquire that had Jacuzzi water jets.

35:18.331 --> 35:20.831
And even the boatswain's mates who had been driving

35:20.831 --> 35:24.202
small boats for 20 and 30 years had no idea what that

35:24.202 --> 35:27.210
was gonna be like and they wouldn't find out until

35:27.210 --> 35:28.877
they got to Vietnam.

35:29.450 --> 35:33.355
Then of course we wanted Riverine Warfare Tactics.

35:33.355 --> 35:34.188
Open book.

35:35.867 --> 35:37.728
They handed me a notebook and said,

35:37.728 --> 35:39.466
"Fill this sucker up and hand it to us

35:39.466 --> 35:43.633
"when you come back and we'll get something going."

35:43.822 --> 35:46.027
Several courses that we got that were good, we got

35:46.027 --> 35:49.003
Diesel Engine Maintenance that was about a week,

35:49.003 --> 35:51.430
and Fiberglass Patching and Repair and that was good.

35:51.430 --> 35:55.597
One of the funniest one was Basic Vietnamese Language

35:56.011 --> 36:00.178
and that was provided by the Defense Language Institute

36:00.284 --> 36:04.451
at Monterey and they sent down their only Vietnamese

36:05.278 --> 36:08.445
language instructor, Professor Biadas,

36:09.357 --> 36:11.940
who was also a reserve captain.

36:12.315 --> 36:16.482
In the career choices you make, this is not one that

36:18.123 --> 36:22.107
you would want because she is now teaching Vietnamese

36:22.107 --> 36:26.274
to 250 essentially boatswain's mates who really don't

36:27.132 --> 36:28.882
wanna know very much.

36:29.051 --> 36:30.843
(audience chuckling)

36:30.843 --> 36:33.926
Once you got by "How much is a beer?"

36:35.310 --> 36:37.246
(adience laughter)

36:37.246 --> 36:41.413
"Where is the restroom?", which turns out to be, anywhere.

36:41.467 --> 36:42.939
(audience laughter)

36:42.939 --> 36:46.733
and "How much for a short time?", and that was the extent,

36:46.733 --> 36:48.368
(audience laughter)

36:48.368 --> 36:52.535
that was the total extent of their language requirements.

36:53.435 --> 36:55.659
(audience laughter)

36:55.659 --> 36:59.826
The rest of us suffered through the rest of that two week

37:01.327 --> 37:04.156
period learning all about how to speak about weapons

37:04.156 --> 37:08.323
in Vietnamese but that's not what we really wanted to know,

37:09.421 --> 37:12.731
we didn't know it at the time, because we would operate

37:12.731 --> 37:16.898
in the same area of the river for years and we needed

37:17.621 --> 37:19.252
to know, "How's your mom? How are things going?

37:19.252 --> 37:22.276
"Are your chickens growing?" and stuff like that

37:22.276 --> 37:25.782
to get their confidence and we couldn't ask them anything

37:25.782 --> 37:28.615
except have you got a machine gun.

37:29.172 --> 37:31.172
The answer was never no.

37:31.861 --> 37:32.862
(audience giggles)

37:32.862 --> 37:33.695
Okay.

37:34.313 --> 37:38.480
Another problem we had was uniforms and jungle boots.

37:38.902 --> 37:41.960
The Marines felt so sorry for us that they issued all

37:41.960 --> 37:44.877
of their surplus, winter utilities.

37:45.814 --> 37:49.981
The Marines don't have fatigues, they have utilities.

37:51.482 --> 37:53.190
And these suckers were so heavy

37:53.190 --> 37:55.141
that you could hardly pick 'em up.

37:55.141 --> 37:58.938
They also issued us jump boots, and all of those things

37:58.938 --> 38:01.349
pretty much rotted off of us when we got to Vietnam

38:01.349 --> 38:03.099
but so much for that.

38:08.887 --> 38:13.054
I became obsessed with finding out what a PBR was.

38:13.717 --> 38:16.341
You go to the training command and they can't even show

38:16.341 --> 38:18.789
you a picture or no one even knows what

38:18.789 --> 38:22.789
you're talking about, people like me go berserk.

38:23.225 --> 38:25.773
So I called Uniflite up in Bellingham, Washington and said,

38:25.773 --> 38:28.444
"Are there any other than in the factory?"

38:28.444 --> 38:31.465
and they said "No. But if you go to the San Diego

38:31.465 --> 38:34.569
"Yacht Club, three people have bought them there

38:34.569 --> 38:36.902
"and you can go for a ride."

38:37.112 --> 38:37.945
So I did.

38:40.345 --> 38:44.512
And sure enough, I loved it and I took a look at it,

38:46.443 --> 38:47.860
and there it was.

38:48.506 --> 38:51.589
(audience chuckling)

38:52.153 --> 38:56.267
Slept six, had a head, had a galley, air conditioned.

38:56.267 --> 38:59.684
What's not to like? You know what I mean?

39:01.402 --> 39:04.809
Paint it green, give everybody an M-16 and you could

39:04.809 --> 39:08.059
be on your way, that's what I pictured.

39:09.262 --> 39:10.845
That was not to be.

39:12.441 --> 39:16.608
Here are the spec sheets, this is 1966, this is the lowest

39:16.921 --> 39:20.338
model, the one you saw was the top model.

39:21.353 --> 39:24.137
Another thing I might mention, that you can get this beauty

39:24.137 --> 39:26.387
fully equipped for $12,000.

39:27.050 --> 39:29.967
Wait til you find out what we paid.

39:31.774 --> 39:35.103
Looks great, I pictured this was gonna be good living,

39:35.103 --> 39:37.538
even if it was on the river and even if we were gonna

39:37.538 --> 39:40.144
be shot at, you could take your chances.

39:40.144 --> 39:44.311
When we finally got to Vietnam and we ended up going to

39:47.649 --> 39:51.816
Vung Tau first and then they took us out to an LSD

39:52.065 --> 39:56.232
called the Spiegel Grove, where they had offloaded

39:56.657 --> 39:59.907
10 PBR's and had them in the well deck.

40:00.881 --> 40:05.048
They were covered with canvas and then Cosmoline, and then

40:06.144 --> 40:09.633
beside them was a conex box and I wondered what that was.

40:09.633 --> 40:12.300
And what that was, was the boat.

40:15.825 --> 40:18.786
The radar was in there, the radios were in there, the guns

40:18.786 --> 40:22.119
were in there and we had to assemble it.

40:22.689 --> 40:24.689
Batteries were included.

40:24.842 --> 40:26.367
(audience chuckling)

40:26.367 --> 40:30.534
When we got it all put together and we decided we'd make

40:32.602 --> 40:36.769
one first, we had 10 and we would put one together first

40:37.066 --> 40:38.956
to see how hard it was and we would try

40:38.956 --> 40:41.206
it out and see how it went.

40:41.694 --> 40:43.882
You've seen a couple of pictures of what they look like

40:43.882 --> 40:47.382
a couple of months or years down the road.

40:48.733 --> 40:51.816
Here's what the first ones look like.

40:54.090 --> 40:57.340
It had an armored turret and a twin 50.

40:58.569 --> 41:02.319
The 50's came from B-17's in Litchfield Park.

41:02.745 --> 41:06.745
It had an awning that stretched all the way over

41:08.716 --> 41:11.466
the entire open part of the boat.

41:12.163 --> 41:14.969
When we finally got an engineer from Bellingham, Washington

41:14.969 --> 41:18.052
out I said, "What's with the awning?"

41:18.250 --> 41:20.650
because you were totally blind.

41:20.650 --> 41:22.814
You couldn't look backwards, it was hard to see to the sides

41:22.814 --> 41:26.481
and the turret was so big that you could see

41:30.537 --> 41:33.579
20 degrees in front of you and that was it,

41:33.579 --> 41:36.922
and you can see 180 degrees to the side of you,

41:36.922 --> 41:40.089
but essentially the coxwain was blind.

41:41.162 --> 41:44.662
And it was very heavy and it kept the boat

41:44.810 --> 41:46.729
from getting on the step.

41:46.729 --> 41:49.193
In other words it could never make the conversion

41:49.193 --> 41:52.776
from a displacement hull to a planing hull.

41:53.370 --> 41:56.603
I forgot to tell you the answers that the engineers

41:56.603 --> 41:58.436
gave me on the canopy.

41:58.730 --> 42:01.813
They said, "Keeps the sun off," good.

42:01.919 --> 42:04.752
"Keeps the rain off," even better,

42:05.370 --> 42:07.466
big problem six months of the year.

42:07.466 --> 42:11.633
"and it keeps the snakes who jump out of the trees on to you

42:12.089 --> 42:15.226
off of you and they'll slide over the side."

42:15.226 --> 42:17.854
And I told them, "As far as I know,

42:17.854 --> 42:20.271
there are no jumping snakes."

42:20.491 --> 42:21.492
(audience chuckling)

42:21.492 --> 42:25.659
They may fall out of a tree, but they're not jumpin'.

42:28.276 --> 42:29.702
The other thing that this had, the initial ones

42:29.702 --> 42:33.369
that showed up were a 30-caliber machine gun

42:35.574 --> 42:39.741
in the aft part of the boat instead of a 50-caliber

42:40.299 --> 42:42.676
and the 30-caliber was totally ineffectual.

42:42.676 --> 42:46.229
It would penetrate into the brush on the side of

42:46.229 --> 42:49.526
a river bank, somewhere in the neighborhood of two feet,

42:49.526 --> 42:52.965
where a 50 would go through it like butter.

42:52.965 --> 42:57.132
The first thing we did was we requested to have 50's show up

42:57.605 --> 43:01.772
for the back of our boats and they showed up pretty quick.

43:01.946 --> 43:05.696
Mr. Browning's finest achievement in my mind.

43:08.678 --> 43:12.845
We took a vote and we decided not to install the turret.

43:14.918 --> 43:18.501
Now you have to realize that the turret ...

43:25.143 --> 43:28.976
Was ceramic armor and the gunner couldn't see.

43:31.834 --> 43:36.001
And it was so heavy, the aircraft-type bays, gun tubs

43:37.242 --> 43:41.409
if you will, had to be physically slewed and they had breaks

43:41.830 --> 43:45.997
and you could stop 'em, but if it wasn't on break mode

43:46.998 --> 43:49.014
and the coxswain turned really fast,

43:49.014 --> 43:51.173
that sucker just spun like a top.

43:51.173 --> 43:53.923
With the armor it was even worse.

43:57.893 --> 44:02.060
So the armor went, then we cut the canvas right here.

44:14.295 --> 44:17.712
This shows you the inside of the gun tub.

44:19.527 --> 44:20.444
Right here.

44:22.677 --> 44:26.454
And the field of vision that the gunner had out of

44:26.454 --> 44:28.621
the turret was right here.

44:29.285 --> 44:31.318
And you can see where the coxswain wouldn't

44:31.318 --> 44:32.486
be able to see a thing.

44:32.486 --> 44:34.859
What you have here is a whole bunch of stuff to look at.

44:34.859 --> 44:39.026
This is the back two supports for this piece right here

44:42.263 --> 44:44.930
which was the top of the turret.

44:44.998 --> 44:46.741
When we tried to take them off,

44:46.741 --> 44:49.262
the folks in Saigon would say, "You're messing with

44:49.262 --> 44:51.322
"the design of the boat and you've got

44:51.322 --> 44:53.511
"to have all this on there."

44:53.511 --> 44:57.678
Our ultimate solution was we wouldn't have the side panels

45:00.869 --> 45:03.119
but we would carry the top.

45:03.376 --> 45:06.459
We didn't use it, we just carried it.

45:06.878 --> 45:09.878
Now this is classic for many things.

45:10.181 --> 45:13.088
Here is, if you're ready, Brown Water,

45:13.088 --> 45:15.338
as in the Brown Water Navy.

45:15.534 --> 45:18.138
And this is what we spent most of the day doing

45:18.138 --> 45:20.471
searching sampans and junks.

45:20.686 --> 45:23.614
Here is the lead boat where the searching

45:23.614 --> 45:25.197
is being done from.

45:25.518 --> 45:27.582
And this is the cover boat.

45:27.582 --> 45:31.749
Normally this boat would be about 50 yards out here, but for

45:32.017 --> 45:34.766
photographic purposes, this came out of Life Magazine,

45:34.766 --> 45:37.235
this was shot by Larry Burrows who was

45:37.235 --> 45:39.485
ultimately killed up north.

45:40.240 --> 45:43.454
This boat, we had to position here for him to get it

45:43.454 --> 45:45.454
but this is what we did.

45:46.430 --> 45:50.287
I'm going to give you another one for you to learn.

45:50.287 --> 45:51.537
This is a junk.

45:52.768 --> 45:54.185
This is a sampan.

45:55.578 --> 45:58.831
The difference is a junk has an internal motor,

45:58.831 --> 46:02.367
people can live on it, it has a water supply as you can

46:02.367 --> 46:06.200
see right there, and it can carry a big cargo.

46:07.262 --> 46:10.179
A sampan is like an outboard motor.

46:11.182 --> 46:13.633
It's usually 18 to 20 feet long, they're very narrow

46:13.633 --> 46:17.466
and tend to tip over if you turn 'em too fast.

46:17.967 --> 46:19.884
There's another sampan.

46:21.166 --> 46:22.916
Lots in that picture.

46:26.255 --> 46:30.422
This is inside the Spiegel Grove when we took the boat out.

46:34.179 --> 46:38.346
This was the one that we built that had the turret on it.

46:38.846 --> 46:43.013
What this pile of stuff here is, all of these cradles

46:43.438 --> 46:47.605
had wheels on them and the folks on the ship decided that

46:47.782 --> 46:51.949
having 14,000 pound boats rolling around in their well deck

46:52.494 --> 46:56.560
might not be a good idea and would we mind taking off

46:56.560 --> 46:59.766
the wheels which we did, but they took their crane

46:59.766 --> 47:02.349
to pick 'em up and take em off.

47:02.462 --> 47:06.295
The other thing you see here is our long past,

47:06.912 --> 47:09.358
our marine utilities and all the crew guys

47:09.358 --> 47:11.191
are wearing dungarees.

47:13.247 --> 47:14.080
Okay.

47:17.233 --> 47:19.316
What we ended up with ...

47:22.718 --> 47:23.551
Was this.

47:25.262 --> 47:27.086
You can see everything done to it.

47:27.086 --> 47:29.502
And of great significance here,

47:29.502 --> 47:33.252
this happens to be Chet Smith's boat, PBR-98.

47:33.824 --> 47:37.991
His engineman is up there near the flag, Engineman Cook,

47:39.119 --> 47:43.036
and his after gunner Sal Talarico is in the aft

47:43.886 --> 47:47.719
with a 50, they've taken the 30's off by then.

47:49.215 --> 47:53.382
With a light load and half-fuel tanks these things could

47:53.440 --> 47:57.279
get up to about 30 knots but under normal circumstances

47:57.279 --> 48:01.362
20 to 25 would be about as good as they could do.

48:04.768 --> 48:08.935
Which we found out from the engineers, that the jacuzzi

48:11.551 --> 48:15.127
pumps while very nice and keeping you able to run in about

48:15.127 --> 48:18.960
nine inches of water when it was on the plane,

48:20.486 --> 48:23.558
50 percent of the power generated by the engines

48:23.558 --> 48:27.725
was taken to run the pump because it had to suck water

48:28.713 --> 48:32.487
up from the bottom, change direction 90 degrees

48:32.487 --> 48:34.664
and then blow it out the back.

48:34.664 --> 48:38.215
The pump itself was a big user of energy and I guess they've

48:38.215 --> 48:42.382
improved greatly on that design over the past 50 years.

48:45.996 --> 48:50.163
The ones we had, the previous application was pro football

48:53.065 --> 48:56.650
locker room jacuzzi baths for the football players,

48:56.650 --> 48:59.567
that's where those pumps came from.

49:00.280 --> 49:03.386
We never got to see any football players.

49:03.386 --> 49:04.219
Okay.

49:08.123 --> 49:10.266
What did a PBR have in it?

49:10.266 --> 49:11.933
It was a hodgepodge.

49:12.378 --> 49:15.628
You had a commercial hull, you had guns

49:16.042 --> 49:20.209
from World War Two bombers, the engines were V6-53 diesels,

49:20.345 --> 49:24.345
GM, that were in fact built for Greyhound buses.

49:26.266 --> 49:30.433
The radios were Korean war tank radios, VHF frequency range,

49:33.467 --> 49:37.634
and the radar was a Raytheon 1900N which you could buy

49:38.554 --> 49:41.137
at any yacht store, commercial.

49:42.155 --> 49:44.938
It was a relative radar, and for those of you who don't

49:44.938 --> 49:47.865
know what that means, that means that any direction

49:47.865 --> 49:50.365
that you were going was north.

49:52.875 --> 49:54.650
But it was good for running in a river

49:54.650 --> 49:57.233
where you could see both banks.

50:03.306 --> 50:05.389
What was a river section?

50:06.714 --> 50:09.518
You had 10 PBR's, they were supposed to be sequential

50:09.518 --> 50:13.518
but you can see from the ones we had they were not.

50:13.518 --> 50:16.509
One of the reasons was as the new PBR sections would come

50:16.509 --> 50:19.262
up the Mekong River to go to Vinh Long and Sa Dec

50:19.262 --> 50:22.401
and Long Xuyen, if they had a bad boat in transit,

50:22.401 --> 50:25.473
we got it, they took one of our good ones and then we fixed

50:25.473 --> 50:26.973
up the broken one.

50:30.385 --> 50:33.743
Personnel, we had four officers, supposedly an officer

50:33.743 --> 50:36.477
in charge or a CO, an ops officer, a maintenance officer

50:36.477 --> 50:38.227
and a patrol officer.

50:39.009 --> 50:41.533
Seldom had all at the same time.

50:41.533 --> 50:44.814
We had four chiefs and their job was to serve as patrol

50:44.814 --> 50:48.431
officers and then we had 13 four-man crews which included

50:48.431 --> 50:52.222
a boat captain, which was a petty officer first class,

50:52.222 --> 50:55.999
designated to be a boatswain's mate but they ran out

50:55.999 --> 50:58.095
of boatswain's mates in a hurry.

50:58.095 --> 51:00.323
So Smith was a signalman, we had a radioman,

51:00.323 --> 51:02.240
we had a quartermaster.

51:02.849 --> 51:06.015
If you were a first class petty officer and your heart

51:06.015 --> 51:09.348
was beating you could be a boat captain.

51:11.025 --> 51:14.255
We had enginemen, and you would think that they would all

51:14.255 --> 51:18.334
be diesel enginemen but in River Section 531, there was

51:18.334 --> 51:21.501
one diesel engineman, a very busy guy.

51:22.751 --> 51:26.367
We had other enginemen but they weren't diesel mechanics.

51:26.367 --> 51:30.534
Forward gunners like Reuben Bender over here were all GMG's,

51:30.607 --> 51:34.774
gunner's mates, either seamen or third class, and then

51:34.831 --> 51:37.631
the after gunner was a non-rated seaman.

51:37.631 --> 51:40.548
Total of 60 people on the org chart

51:40.719 --> 51:43.969
and we never reached ever full manning.

51:47.342 --> 51:50.355
What we really needed, and the people who designed

51:50.355 --> 51:53.407
the manning, I always wanted to talk to 'em, we never

51:53.407 --> 51:55.669
had an XO, that was supposed to be a duty

51:55.669 --> 51:58.415
for the ops officer, in addition.

51:58.415 --> 52:01.278
We never had an admin officer which is a real critical thing

52:01.278 --> 52:04.798
and that was another additional duty for the ops officer.

52:04.798 --> 52:08.631
We never had a yeoman, and that was a big job.

52:08.718 --> 52:10.946
And we never had a corpsman.

52:10.946 --> 52:14.368
Our section had a 60 percent casualty rate

52:14.368 --> 52:17.570
and we never had a corpsman and couldn't get one.

52:17.570 --> 52:21.407
The only time we could get a corpsman is if they were

52:21.407 --> 52:24.639
doing a MEDCAP where they would take a corpsman

52:24.639 --> 52:26.961
and a dentist and a doctor and we would take 'em out

52:26.961 --> 52:28.638
to the various villages to do medical

52:28.638 --> 52:30.639
stuff for the Vietnamese.

52:30.639 --> 52:34.556
They could get a corpsman, we couldn't get one.

52:37.347 --> 52:40.764
To give you an idea of what we looked at,

52:42.000 --> 52:46.167
my maintenance officer, I didn't have one for three months,

52:46.559 --> 52:49.203
and they had a hard time finding maintenance officers so

52:49.203 --> 52:52.671
they had a program for about a year where they took

52:52.671 --> 52:56.222
first class enginemen and they promoted them directly

52:56.222 --> 52:59.389
to WO-1, and that's what I got one of.

53:05.571 --> 53:09.738
The leaving out of the XO, admin officer and yeoman

53:11.573 --> 53:15.171
was a stroke of genius from bre-up-per's standpoint

53:15.171 --> 53:18.671
but they never had a concomitant reduction

53:19.329 --> 53:21.746
of requirements of paperwork.

53:21.954 --> 53:25.871
It remained the same, there was never a change.

53:27.298 --> 53:31.048
Finally, it came to a head when fib-pack sent

53:31.526 --> 53:35.109
two captains out to do an admin inspection.

53:35.442 --> 53:37.922
When the helo was landing I said,

53:37.922 --> 53:39.552
"What are you guys here for?" and they said,

53:39.552 --> 53:41.201
"We're here to give you an admin inspection."

53:41.201 --> 53:43.350
and I told the warrant running the helicopter,

53:43.350 --> 53:44.767
"Keep it going,"

53:46.050 --> 53:49.298
"there's no reason for these people to be here."

53:49.298 --> 53:51.808
But they were able to talk me into letting them come over

53:51.808 --> 53:53.975
and see what was going on.

53:56.560 --> 53:59.103
They agreed that it was stupid but they were staying anyway

53:59.103 --> 54:01.584
'cause they wanted to get combat pay.

54:01.584 --> 54:02.584
(audience laughing)

54:02.584 --> 54:06.751
What they would do, it was a standard thing, you came

54:08.609 --> 54:11.761
the last week of one month and stayed the first week

54:11.761 --> 54:15.928
of the second month and got two months combat pay.

54:16.337 --> 54:20.504
The fact you didn't accomplish anything didn't matter.

54:22.160 --> 54:25.153
About six weeks later there was a beep at our front gate

54:25.153 --> 54:27.508
and there's a deuce and a half and in there are desks,

54:27.508 --> 54:31.675
file cabinets, typewriters, every publication you've

54:32.681 --> 54:36.848
ever seen, no corrections entered, and two yeoman.

54:37.701 --> 54:41.868
My yeoman's name was Gabe Devries and I noticed in his

54:44.712 --> 54:48.879
record that he had four tours and he was a YN, SN,

54:52.088 --> 54:54.392
so I knew there was a story there.

54:54.392 --> 54:57.392
(audience laughing)

55:00.707 --> 55:04.874
Admiral Toole's yeoman's name was Peter Koehler-Pfotenhauer,

55:05.883 --> 55:09.300
and that took two complete pockets to get

55:09.800 --> 55:13.800
that name across there and he was a good yeoman.

55:14.164 --> 55:17.988
On the interesting side of the yeoman world, they all wanted

55:17.988 --> 55:22.155
to go on patrol, and Gabe Devries, I took him out on a day

55:23.188 --> 55:27.355
patrol and he was shot in the derriere by a sniper.

55:33.030 --> 55:35.221
I couldn't stop the bleeding and I finally sat him down

55:35.221 --> 55:39.388
on the engine cover which stopped the bleeding and he was

55:39.396 --> 55:43.563
evacuated to the States which was probably his worst fear

55:43.781 --> 55:47.285
'cause he had married two women and was engaged to a third.

55:47.285 --> 55:50.285
(audience laughing)

55:55.301 --> 55:59.468
Admiral Toole's yeoman, Peter Koehler-Pfotenhauer was going

56:01.044 --> 56:04.741
on a, in fact he was leading a convoy to Saigon, 'cause they

56:04.741 --> 56:08.244
didn't like coming down where we were, and got shot

56:08.244 --> 56:12.069
in the head but the bullet was at the end of it's run

56:12.069 --> 56:14.708
and it went into his helmet and went around about three

56:14.708 --> 56:17.350
or four times and dropped in his lap, but it looked like

56:17.350 --> 56:20.401
you took a straight pin and ran it around his head

56:20.401 --> 56:22.401
because he was bleeding.

56:22.453 --> 56:24.370
He thought he was dead.

56:24.789 --> 56:28.039
And he did stay but it was interesting.

56:30.405 --> 56:34.572
I finally got an ops officer for about three months.

56:39.014 --> 56:43.181
He was evacuated after wounding himself in his private parts

56:44.692 --> 56:47.141
and I won't go any further with that.

56:47.141 --> 56:49.058
And he never came back.

56:52.325 --> 56:54.626
One of the funniest things, I went up to Saigon to see him

56:54.626 --> 56:58.793
in the hospital and they had his private parts in traction.

56:59.969 --> 57:00.968
(audience chuckling)

57:00.968 --> 57:05.135
He said, "The worst thing I hate is Admiral Ward comes

57:06.529 --> 57:09.290
through everyday and tries to pin a Purple Heart

57:09.290 --> 57:12.001
on my pillow and I keep saying 'Go away, I don't want it

57:12.001 --> 57:13.668
don't want anybody'"

57:13.842 --> 57:14.675
Anyway.

57:14.899 --> 57:17.569
(audience laughing)

57:17.569 --> 57:20.236
It was a difficult time at best.

57:20.817 --> 57:23.697
And as I said personnel-wise we never were

57:23.697 --> 57:25.280
at full complement.

57:27.106 --> 57:31.273
One of the things we did which was considered to be unusual

57:33.345 --> 57:37.260
at the time and way out of line, an area where I lived

57:37.260 --> 57:41.427
a lot of my time in the Navy, was I noticed after being

57:43.661 --> 57:46.930
in a couple of firefights, that some folks are really good

57:46.930 --> 57:49.097
at it and some folks suck.

57:50.172 --> 57:52.284
I was sort of in group two.

57:52.284 --> 57:55.284
(audience laughing)

57:55.293 --> 57:59.460
So I said, "What are the common denominators? What do

57:59.692 --> 58:03.823
you look for for people who are really good in combat?"

58:03.823 --> 58:07.906
and it is their ability to react after it starts.

58:07.996 --> 58:12.163
If you are on an offensive ambush, it's like you're a kid

58:12.749 --> 58:15.618
in the backyard and you've got cap guns,

58:15.618 --> 58:18.299
you've got real guns in this case but the bad guys

58:18.299 --> 58:21.180
have got cap guns and you're in charge.

58:21.180 --> 58:23.634
But when you get ambushed at night,

58:23.634 --> 58:26.051
it's a whole different world.

58:26.511 --> 58:29.516
You don't know what excitement is until all you can see

58:29.516 --> 58:33.016
is white flashes and tracers coming at ya.

58:33.309 --> 58:37.476
Well everybody for a few seconds goes blank 'cause you can't

58:37.500 --> 58:40.417
believe someone you don't even know

58:40.833 --> 58:44.583
is trying to kill you, and for no good reason

58:44.641 --> 58:46.808
you knew of at the moment.

58:46.989 --> 58:50.688
The people who are good at it are quick to recover.

58:50.688 --> 58:54.438
When they are quick to recover they can rally

58:54.959 --> 58:56.876
the rest of the troops.

58:57.141 --> 58:59.308
Some people never recover.

58:59.938 --> 59:04.105
If you remember Saving Private Ryan at the beginning

59:04.862 --> 59:07.983
of the movie they have a guy in combat who runs up

59:07.983 --> 59:12.150
a stairway and hides up there when combat starts and they

59:12.687 --> 59:15.791
essentially send him home, that happens.

59:15.791 --> 59:17.708
We had it happen twice.

59:19.471 --> 59:22.432
But the people who can react the quickest and rally

59:22.432 --> 59:26.265
the troops can turn a fight around in seconds.

59:26.942 --> 59:29.982
For reasons I don't know, people react to say,

59:29.982 --> 59:31.399
"C'mon let's go."

59:31.875 --> 59:33.648
Williams was genius at it.

59:33.648 --> 59:37.815
But again, he was 36 and the rest of us were quite young.

59:38.222 --> 59:40.879
And I found that the younger the people were,

59:40.879 --> 59:42.449
the more likely they were to be affected

59:42.449 --> 59:45.366
in a firefight as far as fear goes.

59:46.814 --> 59:50.981
So I decided that I would make a program with, and I might

59:52.516 --> 59:56.599
add, Admiral Toole's blessing, to qualify certain

59:59.711 --> 01:00:03.311
of my first class boatswain's mates or signalmen

01:00:03.311 --> 01:00:07.478
or quartermasters as PBR patrol officers which was normally

01:00:09.327 --> 01:00:12.574
a commissioned officer or chief, if they could pass

01:00:12.574 --> 01:00:15.907
a series of tests and win the confidence

01:00:16.831 --> 01:00:20.164
of the other officers, in this case, me.

01:00:21.310 --> 01:00:25.143
It worked quite well and we had three of them.

01:00:26.960 --> 01:00:31.127
As Chet Smith would tell you, there's no days in the week

01:00:33.363 --> 01:00:36.736
that a guy on the signal bridge can dream that somebody's

01:00:36.736 --> 01:00:40.014
gonna come up and say, "Hey, have I got a deal for you.

01:00:40.014 --> 01:00:42.703
"How would you like to lead men in combat,

01:00:42.703 --> 01:00:45.286
"you skivvy-waving sucker you?"

01:00:45.358 --> 01:00:47.199
(audience chuckling)

01:00:47.199 --> 01:00:49.949
In the Navy, that doesn't happen.

01:00:51.983 --> 01:00:55.246
We don't give folks the chance to operate out of their

01:00:55.246 --> 01:00:58.862
comfort zone and that's really out of your comfort zone.

01:00:58.862 --> 01:01:01.612
Well, fortunately that caught on.

01:01:04.724 --> 01:01:07.839
I've just been told that he's gonna get the hook.

01:01:07.839 --> 01:01:12.006
So anyway that caught on and that happened throughout

01:01:12.640 --> 01:01:16.807
the PBR force for the rest of the time it was over there.

01:01:17.631 --> 01:01:20.975
I'm gonna go fast, fasten your seatbelts.

01:01:20.975 --> 01:01:23.892
This is River Section 531 coming up

01:01:24.766 --> 01:01:26.926
the Mekong River into My Tho.

01:01:26.926 --> 01:01:28.259
Classic picture.

01:01:30.337 --> 01:01:33.485
When we got to the point where we were moving off of

01:01:33.485 --> 01:01:36.735
the piers of the Vietnamese Navy in My Tho and building

01:01:36.735 --> 01:01:39.327
our own piers which was six months after we were there

01:01:39.327 --> 01:01:41.077
we had some visitors.

01:01:43.855 --> 01:01:46.355
And this picture were captured

01:01:48.879 --> 01:01:51.546
from Viet Cong by the U.S. Army.

01:01:52.304 --> 01:01:55.535
These were taken with a camera called the Minolta-16

01:01:55.535 --> 01:01:58.175
which I understand is quite small.

01:01:58.175 --> 01:02:00.415
They were setting us up for something and what they were

01:02:00.415 --> 01:02:02.271
setting us up for was they were

01:02:02.271 --> 01:02:04.286
gonna float mines down on us.

01:02:04.286 --> 01:02:08.119
And they started doing that by using coconuts.

01:02:08.255 --> 01:02:10.208
First time a whole bunch of coconuts and then onesies

01:02:10.208 --> 01:02:12.708
and twosies and what have you.

01:02:12.880 --> 01:02:17.047
We ended up having the Seabees come in and make a mine net.

01:02:19.951 --> 01:02:23.808
Now you wouldn't think anybody would bother mining

01:02:23.808 --> 01:02:27.891
a 31-foot plastic boat but if you don't aim high,

01:02:29.460 --> 01:02:31.877
that's what you end up doing.

01:02:33.393 --> 01:02:35.391
They changed our name all the time.

01:02:35.391 --> 01:02:37.855
We went from River Division 531,

01:02:37.855 --> 01:02:40.014
and that's what I was ordered in as.

01:02:40.014 --> 01:02:43.454
They changed it to River Section, the River Patrol Section

01:02:43.454 --> 01:02:46.142
because that's what we did, we patrolled.

01:02:46.142 --> 01:02:48.478
Then back to River Section when they started moving

01:02:48.478 --> 01:02:52.645
the boats around on the LST's and the floating barracks

01:02:55.183 --> 01:02:57.681
and they started moving them around and we were no longer

01:02:57.681 --> 01:02:59.902
assigned to patrol a specific area.

01:02:59.902 --> 01:03:03.819
Then finally in late '68, they changed the name

01:03:03.998 --> 01:03:05.915
back to River Division.

01:03:06.800 --> 01:03:09.406
Kept somebody busy in the Pentagon probably,

01:03:09.406 --> 01:03:11.323
a whole year at a time.

01:03:11.358 --> 01:03:14.525
"What will we change it to this week?"

01:03:15.392 --> 01:03:17.892
This is a very famous picture.

01:03:20.927 --> 01:03:24.782
There is, right here at six-foot six, Chet Smith,

01:03:24.782 --> 01:03:27.949
who's not here who got the Navy Cross.

01:03:28.878 --> 01:03:30.991
And that's my whole section through there.

01:03:30.991 --> 01:03:34.818
This is Boatswain's Williams and this is me in what

01:03:34.818 --> 01:03:37.521
I like to call my sleek and racy days.

01:03:37.521 --> 01:03:40.604
(audience chuckling)

01:03:43.822 --> 01:03:47.572
This is a caricature drawing that was done by

01:03:48.354 --> 01:03:50.525
a caricature artist named Rick Romeo,

01:03:50.525 --> 01:03:53.275
and that one's supposed to be me.

01:03:53.947 --> 01:03:56.530
You might ask, "Why the cigar?"

01:03:56.786 --> 01:04:00.953
Well, we used to escort the San Miguel Brewery coast-y

01:04:02.108 --> 01:04:05.307
steamer out of Manilla and it would go up

01:04:05.307 --> 01:04:07.890
the Mekong River to Phnom Penh.

01:04:09.356 --> 01:04:11.931
We would escort as it went through our various areas

01:04:11.931 --> 01:04:15.804
and as it came back down, if it wasn't attacked it would

01:04:15.804 --> 01:04:19.086
near sink our patrol boats that were near it with beer,

01:04:19.086 --> 01:04:22.919
Philippines San Miguel beer which I might add,

01:04:23.725 --> 01:04:26.704
and it's very good if you've never had any,

01:04:26.704 --> 01:04:30.871
and Philippines cigars called Tabacaleras Coronas Largas,

01:04:33.644 --> 01:04:36.380
and for me they were about that long and for about the first

01:04:36.380 --> 01:04:40.094
10 minutes it was a question of who was smoking who.

01:04:40.094 --> 01:04:43.094
(audience laughing)

01:04:46.316 --> 01:04:49.324
And that's the end of my drill so what I'm gonna do here

01:04:49.324 --> 01:04:52.074
is leave you with two riverine...

01:04:55.199 --> 01:04:57.693
I guess you could say mottos or sayings that you might

01:04:57.693 --> 01:05:00.126
wanna write down and you can have them engraved in a plaque.

01:05:00.126 --> 01:05:04.043
The first one is, "No matter how fast you think

01:05:04.461 --> 01:05:08.378
"your boat is, it's not gonna outrun a bullet."

01:05:10.128 --> 01:05:13.711
And the second one is, "If you're ambushed,

01:05:15.692 --> 01:05:18.511
"no matter how much ammunition you have with you,

01:05:18.511 --> 01:05:20.482
"it's not gonna be enough."

01:05:20.482 --> 01:05:21.533
(audience chuckling)

01:05:21.533 --> 01:05:23.101
And that's it, folks.

01:05:23.101 --> 01:05:26.268
(audience applauding)

01:05:36.237 --> 01:05:37.737
- Thank you, Fred.

01:05:38.109 --> 01:05:42.276
I'm going to be very quick in describing the Vietnam

01:05:42.733 --> 01:05:44.816
experience of Chet Smith.

01:05:47.624 --> 01:05:51.776
Chet retired as a captain but in the Vietnam war he was

01:05:51.776 --> 01:05:55.943
a signalman first class, he came from Western Ohio,

01:05:56.365 --> 01:06:00.532
Celina, Ohio, and he was quote-unquote "More interested

01:06:01.263 --> 01:06:04.622
"in seeing the world than going to school."

01:06:04.622 --> 01:06:06.652
So what did he do in 1954?

01:06:06.652 --> 01:06:08.828
He joined the Navy at the age of 18.

01:06:08.828 --> 01:06:12.411
After bootcamp he entered Radioman A School

01:06:13.202 --> 01:06:15.857
but he dropped out, and why did he drop out?

01:06:15.857 --> 01:06:19.965
"Because I did not join the Navy to go to school."

01:06:19.965 --> 01:06:22.465
Okay. So what did the Navy do?

01:06:22.812 --> 01:06:26.766
They sent him to auxiliaries to chip paint, literally.

01:06:26.766 --> 01:06:30.332
He did that for a while and he finally landed

01:06:30.332 --> 01:06:33.915
on a radar picket escort from 1956 to 1959.

01:06:39.084 --> 01:06:41.468
He struck for the signalman rating

01:06:41.468 --> 01:06:43.420
because he loved being outside.

01:06:43.420 --> 01:06:47.587
Maybe that was from his experience working on the deck.

01:06:48.861 --> 01:06:53.028
Other ships he served on were the Hugh Purvis DD 709,

01:06:53.853 --> 01:06:57.020
and the Auxiliary Fleet tug Su-ne-din.

01:06:58.652 --> 01:07:02.819
Tugboats are not known for their smooth ride in rough seas

01:07:02.973 --> 01:07:07.140
so that's where he got some nice ocean-going experience

01:07:08.198 --> 01:07:10.448
in a relatively small boat.

01:07:13.950 --> 01:07:18.117
Smith was not voluntold to go to Vietnam, he volunteered.

01:07:18.317 --> 01:07:22.484
And he volunteered not because he wanted to go to Vietnam

01:07:22.717 --> 01:07:26.476
but because he detested the idea of a shore assignment.

01:07:26.476 --> 01:07:30.309
He became a plank owner for River Section 531.

01:07:31.084 --> 01:07:35.251
Fred McDavitt described Smith as, "He was a quiet guy

01:07:37.070 --> 01:07:41.237
"but I could see the intensity burning in his eyes."

01:07:41.597 --> 01:07:45.084
But McDavitt hesitated at first in appointing Smith

01:07:45.084 --> 01:07:48.140
as a boat captain because of his rating.

01:07:48.140 --> 01:07:51.889
The shortage of boatswain's mates ultimately compelled him

01:07:51.889 --> 01:07:55.439
to take a look at other ratings and Smith stood out

01:07:55.439 --> 01:07:58.164
because of his sea-going experience

01:07:58.164 --> 01:08:00.415
and his aggressive attitude.

01:08:00.415 --> 01:08:04.415
He spent several months in a cover boat as the boat captain

01:08:04.415 --> 01:08:08.066
in a two-boat patrol and he eventually passed

01:08:08.066 --> 01:08:10.899
all tests and hurdles required for

01:08:11.694 --> 01:08:13.840
the role of Patrol Officer position.

01:08:13.840 --> 01:08:15.007
Yeah, officer!

01:08:15.888 --> 01:08:17.888
He was a first class, and this is really

01:08:17.888 --> 01:08:20.055
a position for an officer.

01:08:20.984 --> 01:08:25.144
These patrol officers and to a certain degree, boat captains

01:08:25.144 --> 01:08:29.311
had agency, they had the ability to interpret rules

01:08:29.993 --> 01:08:33.562
of engagement, make use-of-force decisions.

01:08:33.562 --> 01:08:36.889
Lives were in their hands, this was a big deal

01:08:36.889 --> 01:08:41.056
in the Vietnam war, the idea of giving a first class

01:08:42.167 --> 01:08:45.750
petty officer this level of combat command.

01:08:46.776 --> 01:08:49.609
He and Williams were the first ...

01:08:55.048 --> 01:08:59.215
He became the only first class petty officer of the unit

01:08:59.769 --> 01:09:03.000
besides Smith to achieve the patrol officer position,

01:09:03.000 --> 01:09:05.750
the two-boat leadership position.

01:09:08.248 --> 01:09:11.529
Smith received his Navy Cross on a mission

01:09:11.529 --> 01:09:13.831
on 11 December 1966 as a patrol officer

01:09:13.831 --> 01:09:15.581
of a two-boat patrol.

01:09:17.146 --> 01:09:20.777
He pursued a sampan with several Viet Cong down one

01:09:20.777 --> 01:09:24.944
of the small canals and he received fire not only from

01:09:27.112 --> 01:09:31.029
this sampan but from Viet Cong along the banks.

01:09:34.727 --> 01:09:38.477
He promptly directed his crew to return fire.

01:09:40.616 --> 01:09:44.533
In theory, the mission of the PBR was to patrol

01:09:45.690 --> 01:09:49.023
the main river, so the four main rivers,

01:09:49.244 --> 01:09:53.244
the Bassac and the three branches of the Mekong,

01:09:53.623 --> 01:09:56.840
to check papers, look for contraband, enforce the curfew.

01:09:56.840 --> 01:10:01.007
The mission wasn't direct action but McDavitt told

01:10:04.108 --> 01:10:08.275
his sailors if there was an opportunity to engage the enemy,

01:10:10.654 --> 01:10:14.821
even if it meant going up a small canal which was dangerous

01:10:15.944 --> 01:10:18.856
because the only way out was to back out, and because

01:10:18.856 --> 01:10:23.023
of high banks it was difficult with gun angles and whatnot.

01:10:25.223 --> 01:10:29.390
But if you felt as a patrol officer that you could succeed

01:10:30.231 --> 01:10:34.398
in such an endeavor, you could engage in direct action

01:10:34.489 --> 01:10:36.156
with a combat force.

01:10:36.760 --> 01:10:39.896
And don't forget, the PBR was fiberglass,

01:10:39.896 --> 01:10:42.479
it was essentially non-armored.

01:10:43.484 --> 01:10:46.033
The gun tub was armored, there was a little bit of armor

01:10:46.033 --> 01:10:50.200
around the pilothouse but it was essentially unarmored.

01:10:51.143 --> 01:10:54.560
Smith not only went down that canal once,

01:10:56.170 --> 01:10:57.837
but he did it twice.

01:10:58.168 --> 01:11:01.768
He actually did it three times thinking that he wouldn't

01:11:01.768 --> 01:11:03.601
be expected to return.

01:11:03.705 --> 01:11:07.872
When he did return, he found 40 sampans and a company-sized

01:11:10.264 --> 01:11:14.181
Viet Cong force preparing for a river crossing.

01:11:19.115 --> 01:11:22.865
Smith attacked, he came back, attacked again.

01:11:24.185 --> 01:11:25.784
Then what did he do?

01:11:25.784 --> 01:11:28.572
He called in the helicopters, HAL Three.

01:11:28.572 --> 01:11:32.739
HAL Three was intimately involved with these operations.

01:11:33.115 --> 01:11:36.948
Often helicopters created the most casualties.

01:11:42.024 --> 01:11:44.607
They had firepower and mobility

01:11:46.696 --> 01:11:48.679
that riverine forces didn't have.

01:11:48.679 --> 01:11:52.846
The two working hand-to-hand were extremely successful.

01:11:54.090 --> 01:11:58.257
The net result of this action was 15 Viet Cong killed,

01:11:59.402 --> 01:12:01.735
28 sampans sunk, 12 damaged,

01:12:02.141 --> 01:12:04.891
3 captured during the engagement.

01:12:05.704 --> 01:12:08.887
Next to Williams' action, it's one of the most significant

01:12:08.887 --> 01:12:12.137
actions performed by River Section 531.

01:12:13.367 --> 01:12:15.208
The next day General Westmoreland,

01:12:15.208 --> 01:12:18.984
who was Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, at the time,

01:12:18.984 --> 01:12:23.151
wrote a message to Admiral Ward who was ComNav for V,

01:12:24.632 --> 01:12:28.041
and he said quote-unquote, "PBR's 98 and 106 were right

01:12:28.041 --> 01:12:31.239
"on the job on the morning of 11 December, resulting in

01:12:31.239 --> 01:12:34.571
"a fine victory against the enemy at Dinh Tuong.

01:12:34.571 --> 01:12:38.738
"Attack by PBR's and light fire team disrupted large VC

01:12:39.592 --> 01:12:43.020
"force and was an outstanding example of success

01:12:43.020 --> 01:12:46.186
"of Game Warden. Please pass on my hearty congratulations

01:12:46.186 --> 01:12:49.436
"to all concerned. Westmoreland sends."

01:12:51.287 --> 01:12:55.454
I'd like to thank everybody for attending Heritage Night.

01:12:55.642 --> 01:12:59.809
I'll allow some time right now for Captain Aldridge

01:13:00.295 --> 01:13:04.431
to say a few words then we'll have a brief Q and A.

01:13:04.431 --> 01:13:05.264
Thank you.

01:13:05.965 --> 01:13:09.132
(audience applauding)

01:13:17.002 --> 01:13:19.159
- Thank you, Dr. Sherwood, Dr. Marolda

01:13:19.159 --> 01:13:21.076
and Commander McDavitt.

01:13:21.767 --> 01:13:25.352
Dr. Marolda, thank you for your overview, Dr. Sherwood

01:13:25.352 --> 01:13:28.378
for pulling this together and Commander McDavitt for your

01:13:28.378 --> 01:13:32.545
briefing which was excellent and we're really honored

01:13:32.759 --> 01:13:34.956
to be in your presence tonight.

01:13:34.956 --> 01:13:37.290
We really appreciate you travelling out here in the cold.

01:13:37.290 --> 01:13:41.457
You arrived in the very cold this Saturday, although

01:13:41.607 --> 01:13:45.276
it's mild today but we appreciate you coming out here

01:13:45.276 --> 01:13:47.527
and it was a very nice presentation.

01:13:47.527 --> 01:13:51.159
On behalf of Surface Navy Association, we like to present

01:13:51.159 --> 01:13:53.992
Dr. Marolda with a plaque, please.

01:14:01.097 --> 01:14:03.180
Thank you for everything.

01:14:04.407 --> 01:14:06.250
- Thank you. Very nice.

01:14:06.250 --> 01:14:08.429
(audience applauding)

01:14:08.429 --> 01:14:10.795
- And Commander McDavitt, we'd like to present to you also

01:14:10.795 --> 01:14:13.703
with a plaque, appreciation for coming out tonight,

01:14:13.703 --> 01:14:14.984
and your service.

01:14:14.984 --> 01:14:16.824
Thank you, sir.
- Thank you, sir.

01:14:16.824 --> 01:14:19.991
(audience applauding)

01:14:20.455 --> 01:14:22.455
- Thank you.
- Thank you.

01:14:23.609 --> 01:14:26.984
- Now if we wanna entertain a few Q and A, please stand up

01:14:26.984 --> 01:14:31.151
and state your question and we'll see what we can do.

01:14:35.211 --> 01:14:36.044
Sir.

01:14:37.336 --> 01:14:39.031
- [Male Audience Member] You had me on the edge of my seat

01:14:39.031 --> 01:14:42.088
wondering Commander McDavitt said it was 12,000 dollars

01:14:42.088 --> 01:14:44.521
to buy the PBR commercially, I can only imagine

01:14:44.521 --> 01:14:46.688
what the Navy paid for it.

01:14:47.143 --> 01:14:48.144
Can you tell us.

01:14:48.144 --> 01:14:49.689
- 76,000 dollars a piece.

01:14:49.689 --> 01:14:52.537
(audience gasping)

01:14:52.537 --> 01:14:53.540
- [First Audience Member] Thank you.

01:14:53.540 --> 01:14:55.559
- I do wanna say one other thing about Chet Smith

01:14:55.559 --> 01:14:58.647
that he was gonna say, and I aim this at the more senior

01:14:58.647 --> 01:15:01.863
officers in the room, and that is the difficulty that

01:15:01.863 --> 01:15:05.337
these kids that had been patrol officers who had been

01:15:05.337 --> 01:15:09.504
in charge of tactics and calling in helicopters or 105 tubes

01:15:10.138 --> 01:15:14.054
for support and being sent back to the signal bridge

01:15:14.054 --> 01:15:18.221
on ship wasn't an easy pill to swallow and on the good side

01:15:24.758 --> 01:15:28.925
for Smith, it forced him into going into the LDO program.

01:15:29.426 --> 01:15:32.149
(laughs) Just to get even but that's another whole story.

01:15:32.149 --> 01:15:35.089
(audience laughing)

01:15:35.089 --> 01:15:38.589
And on the other hand, Williams never ever

01:15:38.944 --> 01:15:41.527
got promoted above first class.

01:15:41.712 --> 01:15:44.688
He is still today they most decorated sailor

01:15:44.688 --> 01:15:47.761
in the United States Navy and he never

01:15:47.761 --> 01:15:50.241
got promoted above first class.

01:15:50.241 --> 01:15:54.074
SECNAV gave him an honorary promotion to chief

01:15:56.272 --> 01:15:59.172
and gave him an ID card that said he was a chief

01:15:59.172 --> 01:16:03.024
but there was no money connected with it and he never

01:16:03.024 --> 01:16:07.191
quite got over that, but that's another whole story.

01:16:09.810 --> 01:16:11.265
- [Moderator] Anyone else?

01:16:11.265 --> 01:16:13.807
- [Second Audience Member] Did you do any transitions

01:16:13.807 --> 01:16:17.974
on that anti gun transition into an M-16 machine gun

01:16:18.143 --> 01:16:21.199
or could any reinforcement in the back of those boats

01:16:21.199 --> 01:16:24.386
have included an M-80 mortar to patrols?

01:16:24.386 --> 01:16:28.553
- The PBR was a fascinating craft, I'm making up time here,

01:16:30.305 --> 01:16:33.305
in that we had twice as many weapons

01:16:34.352 --> 01:16:36.935
as we had people to shoot them.

01:16:37.135 --> 01:16:39.479
(audience chuckling)

01:16:39.479 --> 01:16:42.311
The problem with that is that you've also got twice as much

01:16:42.311 --> 01:16:45.394
ammunition, which adds to the weight.

01:16:46.791 --> 01:16:50.874
You had the twin 50's forward, the single 50 aft.

01:16:51.736 --> 01:16:54.903
Eventually within a few months we had,

01:16:56.473 --> 01:16:59.479
I think it was an M-70 machine gun on midships, which we had

01:16:59.479 --> 01:17:03.646
nobody to shoot, and a 40-millimeter grenade launcher

01:17:03.719 --> 01:17:07.552
also on midships which we had nobody to shoot.

01:17:07.959 --> 01:17:12.126
And then we also carried four M-16's, an M-79 grenade

01:17:12.654 --> 01:17:16.487
launcher, and my favourite, a 12 gage shotgun,

01:17:16.817 --> 01:17:20.984
a Remington Parkerized pump that could take five shells

01:17:24.065 --> 01:17:26.429
in the magazine and one in the chamber and they were

01:17:26.429 --> 01:17:29.995
so overpowered, or so much powder in them that they had

01:17:29.995 --> 01:17:32.578
to make them with brass shells.

01:17:34.448 --> 01:17:38.076
You could do some really bad stuff with that shotgun.

01:17:38.076 --> 01:17:42.220
And you need to realize that in many of the fights

01:17:42.220 --> 01:17:45.660
that PBR sailors got in, we're not talking miles away folks,

01:17:45.660 --> 01:17:48.189
we're talking as close as you are, looking 'em in the eye.

01:17:48.189 --> 01:17:52.356
This is a whole different kind of warfare for the Navy

01:17:52.364 --> 01:17:54.994
and probably the only people that deal with it

01:17:54.994 --> 01:17:57.244
on a daily basis are SEALs.

01:17:57.999 --> 01:18:01.116
But here you had raggedy sailors coming out

01:18:01.116 --> 01:18:05.283
of PBR school and they just thought it was a lot of fun

01:18:07.355 --> 01:18:09.820
just to shoot people but that's another whole story.

01:18:09.820 --> 01:18:11.946
(audience laughing)

01:18:11.946 --> 01:18:15.363
So it's a very different group of people.

01:18:16.571 --> 01:18:20.488
There were some very famous folks that came out

01:18:21.484 --> 01:18:24.234
of that group, both good and bad.

01:18:26.906 --> 01:18:28.573
So, that's about it.

01:18:29.706 --> 01:18:30.539
Yes.

01:18:32.972 --> 01:18:35.275
- [Third Audience Member] How did it all come to an end?

01:18:35.275 --> 01:18:36.954
- I don't understand your question.

01:18:36.954 --> 01:18:39.968
- [Third Audience Member] What I mean is if you had your

01:18:39.968 --> 01:18:43.034
periods of the dangers of the Delta, what finally did it in

01:18:43.034 --> 01:18:45.995
is when you turned it over to the South Vietnamese,

01:18:45.995 --> 01:18:47.828
it fell on the ground.

01:18:50.635 --> 01:18:52.989
- The turnover, most of the boats were turned

01:18:52.989 --> 01:18:54.572
over in 1969, 1970.

01:18:55.323 --> 01:18:57.360
By the end of 1970 all the boats were

01:18:57.360 --> 01:18:59.514
in the hands of the Vietnam Navy.

01:18:59.514 --> 01:19:03.354
The way they did the process, you would take onboard,

01:19:03.354 --> 01:19:05.290
in the Vietnamization Program, you take onboard

01:19:05.290 --> 01:19:09.389
a Vietnamese sailor on the crew and then two Vietnamese

01:19:09.389 --> 01:19:12.491
sailors, three Vietnamese sailors, ultimately the boat

01:19:12.491 --> 01:19:15.165
commander and then the division commander

01:19:15.165 --> 01:19:16.831
would be Vietnamese.

01:19:16.831 --> 01:19:19.515
So it was an evolutionary process.

01:19:19.515 --> 01:19:22.523
What I've read is that it worked well when you just

01:19:22.523 --> 01:19:26.044
had sailors but when the Vietnamese officer took over,

01:19:26.044 --> 01:19:30.211
the patrol frequency went way down and their willingness

01:19:30.220 --> 01:19:33.115
to take aggressive action went way down.

01:19:33.115 --> 01:19:37.282
By 1971 when most of the American troops of all sorts

01:19:38.237 --> 01:19:41.320
were out, the Vietnamese had the Con.

01:19:41.738 --> 01:19:45.067
In the Delta, it didn't make too much difference because

01:19:45.067 --> 01:19:47.966
as I mentioned earlier the war kinda shifted to the north.

01:19:47.966 --> 01:19:51.883
But everything I've read from both the American

01:19:52.186 --> 01:19:54.923
and Vietnamese side was Vietnamization did not

01:19:54.923 --> 01:19:57.673
go very well in the Delta region.

01:19:59.355 --> 01:20:02.506
At the end of the war, of course the North Vietnamese

01:20:02.506 --> 01:20:05.066
invaded from the north and they came all the way down

01:20:05.066 --> 01:20:06.569
and they took Saigon.

01:20:06.569 --> 01:20:09.002
The Mekong Delta was considered a backwater at that point

01:20:09.002 --> 01:20:11.018
so nobody needed to take it.

01:20:11.018 --> 01:20:14.510
The enemy didn't need to take it so it was never occupied

01:20:14.510 --> 01:20:16.677
until the final surrender.

01:20:19.725 --> 01:20:22.028
- [Third Audience Member] One more question.

01:20:22.028 --> 01:20:24.570
Did you ever have any forewarning that there could

01:20:24.570 --> 01:20:27.407
be an ambush around the Quang area somehow by surveillance

01:20:27.407 --> 01:20:30.824
or could you have I-R back in those days?

01:20:31.278 --> 01:20:33.307
- No. And that's why it's called an ambush.

01:20:33.307 --> 01:20:36.307
(audience laughing)

01:20:37.865 --> 01:20:38.698
Ha.

01:20:39.899 --> 01:20:42.794
We didn't know they were gonna have an ambush

01:20:42.794 --> 01:20:46.027
and they didn't know when we were gonna do it.

01:20:46.027 --> 01:20:48.027
So no, there was no GPS.

01:20:51.118 --> 01:20:54.967
Here's one for you folks, we didn't even have maps.

01:20:54.967 --> 01:20:57.546
The last map that they had was published

01:20:57.546 --> 01:20:59.379
in 1939 by the French.

01:21:00.621 --> 01:21:04.788
Myself and my patrol officer, a guy named Charlie Verellas,

01:21:05.082 --> 01:21:08.506
got into an Army helicopter and flew up and down our 40-mile

01:21:08.506 --> 01:21:11.977
stretch, took pictures with our 35-millimeter cameras,

01:21:11.977 --> 01:21:15.257
had 'em developed, pasted 'em together, took tracing paper

01:21:15.257 --> 01:21:18.757
and made hand-made maps of our river area.

01:21:22.448 --> 01:21:26.138
Then we sent a copy to the mapping agency in Washington,

01:21:26.138 --> 01:21:28.591
and I forget their name, and we said, "By the way, these

01:21:28.591 --> 01:21:32.758
"things are going to get wet and soggy so please print them

01:21:32.963 --> 01:21:35.880
"on something that'll repel water."

01:21:36.474 --> 01:21:39.724
What they sent us was sorta stretchable

01:21:40.443 --> 01:21:43.276
and you could change the map size.

01:21:43.996 --> 01:21:46.683
(audience laughing)

01:21:46.683 --> 01:21:50.850
They finally did do it right but it was after I was gone.

01:21:54.510 --> 01:21:56.314
Nobody asked me about the black beret

01:21:56.314 --> 01:22:00.481
which was another feature of the Brown Water Navy,

01:22:03.002 --> 01:22:05.502
in particular, Task Force 116.

01:22:06.799 --> 01:22:10.966
Anybody who was attached to 116 permanently or temporarily,

01:22:14.539 --> 01:22:18.706
like CAL-3, or the minesweep folks, or other groups

01:22:20.283 --> 01:22:24.450
that would come in were able to wear a black beret,

01:22:26.976 --> 01:22:29.417
and there's a long story that goes with that.

01:22:29.417 --> 01:22:33.466
That's what the Vietnamese River Patrol people wore.

01:22:33.466 --> 01:22:37.216
And it came with a long ribbon down the back.

01:22:38.122 --> 01:22:42.122
When you got your first firefight, you could chop off

01:22:42.122 --> 01:22:46.039
the long ribbon and that's how you knew who was

01:22:46.987 --> 01:22:49.154
a big dog and who was not.

01:22:51.099 --> 01:22:54.970
It was a constant fight, and I can say that Admiral Toole

01:22:54.970 --> 01:22:58.235
backed us up all the time because we wore them all the time.

01:22:58.235 --> 01:23:02.402
And finally, Commander Task Force 116 at that time I believe

01:23:03.691 --> 01:23:07.858
it was Burt Witham, in 1967 came out with a message and said

01:23:07.963 --> 01:23:12.130
"Okay, I might as well authorize it 'cause your guys are

01:23:12.218 --> 01:23:13.968
"wearing 'em anyway."

01:23:14.587 --> 01:23:18.523
So we were only allowed to wear them on patrol or around

01:23:18.523 --> 01:23:22.690
our base but occasionally folks would sneak up to Saigon

01:23:22.921 --> 01:23:25.803
with 'em and there would be Navy folks trying

01:23:25.803 --> 01:23:28.897
to run these guys down and find out where they were from.

01:23:28.897 --> 01:23:31.064
So that's the black beret.

01:23:34.105 --> 01:23:36.438
- [Moderator] One more. Sir.

01:23:36.714 --> 01:23:40.506
- [Al] I'm Al Brigg, I wanna add to his story there.

01:23:40.506 --> 01:23:44.618
We didn't have maps either and you become a gun ship pilot

01:23:44.618 --> 01:23:47.546
aircraft commander, we had to memorize the whole Delta.

01:23:47.546 --> 01:23:51.713
So we knew where the A-O-ones were off, riverine guys were.

01:23:53.036 --> 01:23:57.203
That story, secondly, we wore a black beret also and when

01:23:58.315 --> 01:24:02.186
we got in our first firefight, we had a ceremony where

01:24:02.186 --> 01:24:06.353
we snipped off and also when we had the first fuchette

01:24:19.299 --> 01:24:21.466
(mumbles)

01:24:26.329 --> 01:24:28.649
- [Moderator] Okay thank you very much.

01:24:28.649 --> 01:24:32.007
Again gentlemen for your time tonight and for all the guests

01:24:32.007 --> 01:24:34.247
for joining us, thank you very much.

01:24:34.247 --> 01:24:35.205
(audience applause)