Hunting in the Shadows

 

 

   Bullet Points:

** VBIEDs – Think of a fireship, then pull forward 400 years and think of an ancient Russian tank.

** Among things one can know: The “Joe Biden” presidency is whirling around the drain in plain sight, and with it, the Globalist hopes and dreams of making everybody eat bugs while they take away everything you own.

** During WW2 (Russia: Great Patriotic War), who treated POWs worse, Germany or Russia? I think that the question has to be filtered by which POWs. American, British, and French prisoners were treated better than Russians and Poles by the Germans. Somehow it’s shocking to the NYT that Ukrainian POWs are being treated badly by Russia.

** The Department of Defense is letting too many retired military officers trade their military service and experience to foreign governments for cash…  more here.

** “The top factors dissuading junior officers from pursuing command were too many requirements, lack of control, time away from home, high stress, and toxic culture within the SWO community,” the report states.

** A growing number of aircraft and ships from the U.S. and Canada searched Tuesday for a submersible vessel carrying five people that disappeared on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic.

** Since the administration of Bill Clinton, the old political system, which was corrupt, but still kept peace and order tolerably well, has degenerated, slowly then rapidly, through the stages of criminal racketeering scheme, to Banana Republic regime, to freakish and satanic child-castration death-cult.

It is a small step from bribery and extortion to treason, but a large step from there to sodomy, pedophilia, genital mutilation, and devil-worship. The Old Gods of child sacrifice, self-mutilation, and all the unholy practices of Moloch and Ashtart have returned, merely under new names of choice and pride.

 

Cover art by Jules Smith – thank you so much on Mike’s behalf.

Hunting in the Shadows: Borneo and Vietnam 1964-1968 – by Mike Watson Will be available on Amazon this week both in paperback and on Kindle. It has been submitted for publication. A few segments of the book have been published here on VM as teasers.

Order a Paperback!

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Oh, you want another teaser?

A Visit to Can Tho

Mid-morning on a very hot, humid, Mekong Delta, day, Nga, our other four team members (Khan, Minh, Dung, and Suong), and I, flew into the Can Tho airfield.  Our aircraft, an Air America Beechcraft 18, also known as the Beech 18 or Twin Beech, had brought us down from the Bien Hoa Air Base.  We were the only passengers.  On our exiting the aircraft, the pilot confirmed that he would be back to collect us in four days, not including that day, at the same time unless advised to the contrary.  After leaving the aircraft Nga and I went to flight operations, located under the control tower, where, as pre-arranged, we collected the keys to two International Harvester Scouts.  These vehicles we found, fully fueled, parked in the carpark at the rear of the building.  Leaving the airfield, the whole team drove into town, in these two vehicles, and located our safe house.  After checking it out, and clearing it, we moved in.

Changing into a set of our “about town” tailored tiger stripe fatigues, with Bao Chi stenciled above the upper left shirt pockets, Nga and I now, to all intents and purposes, looked like a pair of foreign correspondents on an assignment.  The other team members also changed into civilian clothes.  We all then set out on foot, in our pairs, as we always did when we went to a different town, even if we had been there before, to explore/reconnoiter the city.

Can Tho was the largest city in the Delta, situated on the south bank of the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, with its narrow back lanes and wide, tree-lined, mostly unpaved major streets.  Its large floating market, and many small shops and restaurants, made it a very pleasant locale to be in.  The busy waterfront, with its fishing boats, ferries, and other rivercraft coming and going, seemed to be an integral part of the scene.  We saw many pedal and motorized cyclos plying the streets.  There were also numerous, well-patronized Lambros, many of which appeared to operate on regular routes.

During our stroll, which was effectively our reconnaissance of the town, Nga and I stopped for lunch at the Restaurant Mekong.  The restaurant occupied the ground floor of a two-storied shophouse, with ornate security screens covering its curtained glass front doors, above which its name was set out in chrome lettering, situated in a row of similar two-storied shophouses.  Here we sampled the local cuisine, mostly fresh seafood, which, as to be expected, was delicious.

We were there to eliminate one Nguyen Van Binh*.  He had been the target, although unnamed on that occasion, from our earlier end-of-course mission in Vung Tau.  Binh had been released from detention some weeks earlier, either by paying a substantial bribe to his gaolers, or as was more likely, through the machinations of Communist sympathizers/agents within the South Vietnamese government system.  We were never told which.  He certainly had not been released legally, as a participant in the Chieu Hoi program.

So Binh, once again, ended up on the Units target list.  We didn’t know precisely why, but suspected that it had to do with how his release had been facilitated.  Arresting and interrogating him a second time, given nothing of great value had been obtained from him on the first occasion, would it seem, serve no useful purpose.

His previous arrest, causing the Communists to lose a considerable amount of money, and his subsequent interrogation and imprisonment, albeit short-lived, had not adversely affected his career as a Communist tax collector.  He had been promoted and was now the chief tax collector for Can Tho, and the surrounding province.  To facilitate his operations, he now practiced as a notary.  To this end, he had established an office on the ground floor of a shophouse and lived upstairs.  The office was situated on the road leading from the city to the Can Tho airfield. 

As was usual with the Viet Cong clandestine operatives, he kept a low profile.  He must not have been adept at that, because he attracted the attention of our Intelligence Section for some reason, hence our initial abduction of him in Vung Tau, and which now had resulted in our having been sent to dispatch him on to his next life.   

The US Special Forces B Team Compound was located up the road from his office, and adjacent to the airfield.  The compound, a roughly square establishment, comprised a number of buildings constructed of waist-high, cinder block walls, thence with screens up to their palm-thatched roofs, and with concrete machine gun bunkers positioned at each corner of the complex.  The Special Forces residents called their compound, The Alamo.  Despite passing it on several occasions, on this and subsequent visits to the city, I never saw Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, or Colonel Travis.

Following the team’s reconnaissance of the city, we identified and confirmed the target’s premises.  I recall it being a two-storied shophouse, at the city end of a row of six similar two-storied shophouses.  All were uniformly painted a brilliant white, with blue doors and window shutters, and blue-tiled roofs.  As I mentioned, the office lay north of the town center, on the road to the airfield, roughly halfway between a bridge, over what appeared to be a major canal and a T intersection with a roundabout.  Most shophouses had metal roller shutters, which normally covered the ground floor when a business was closed.  Binh’s shutters had been replaced with a plate glass door and windows. A metal concertina grill provided after-hours security.

Surveillance commenced.  We established that Nguyen Van Binh was the sole occupant of the premises.  We noted that his black hair was somewhat longer than it had been in Vung Tau, that he had put on weight, and that he was far better dressed, now wearing a European-style three-piece suit, rather than a grubby white Tee shirt and blue jeans.  From all appearances, it seemed that he did practice as a notary.

He had a steady stream of visitors in the mornings.  Most carried a small satchel with them.  They arrived and departed between 0900 hours when he opened for business, and 1200 hours when he closed for lunch and the early afternoon siesta.  Very few of these morning attendees stayed very long.  Most of these visitors appeared, from their dress, to be country people.  We surmised that they were his low-level provincial and village tax collectors depositing their takings.  Those that stayed longer appeared, from their mode of dress, to be townspeople. We surmised that they were people actually seeking his notary services.  Following lunch and the early afternoon siesta break, with him re-opening at 1500 hours, he had few, if any, visitors between then and 1800 hours, when he closed for the day.

At our team planning meeting, it was decided that Nga would enter the shop late on our second full day of surveillance, posing as a foreign journalist.  She would seek to make an appointment with the target to conduct a civil marriage ceremony, between herself and a fellow foreign journalist, at 1730 hours the following day.  Nga and I would then attend the target’s office, posing as the prospective bride and groom, and kill him.  Neither Nga nor I were particularly worried about him recognizing us.  When we had abducted him in Vung Tau it was dark, and he only got a quick glimpse of us before we sapped him and put a cloth bag over his head.  

Nga and I, because of our serious personal relationship, actually considered letting him really marry us before we killed him, but saner minds (Khan, Dung, Minh, and Suong) prevailed.  Had we gone through with a civil marriage ceremony, it would have caused the pair of us a couple of unnecessary problems, both personally and professionally.

There would have been very serious problems with her family.  Nga’s marriage would trigger a major social event, given her family’s standing in the community, particularly in Cholon, and that they were from the former Mandarin class.  The ceremony, given the family, was staunchly Roman Catholic, would be conducted in the Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica.  A lavish reception, in an upmarket restaurant in Cholon would follow.  Even though her parents were aware of our relationship, whether I would be considered suitable marriage material is probably debatable.  Her eldest brother, the ARVN Ranger company commander from II Corps, was also aware, he had put two and two together very quickly, after seeing the two of us together on one of his infrequent visits to Saigon.  He never said anything to us nor, as far as I am aware, to his parents.

Our marriage would have caused us problems within the unit too.  Even though personal relationships between operatives were not actively discouraged per se, particularly if the operatives concerned were on different teams, they were most definitely not encouraged either.  Given the size of our unit, its close-knit personnel make-up, and the nature of our work, personal relationships between operatives were though, perhaps, inevitable.

For the South Vietnamese, it was their land, their country, their home, and their life, both past, present, and future.  They tried, with varying degrees of success, to live as normally as possible.  In many cases, for the Vietnamese, the war had been ongoing on the day of their birth and would, in all likelihood, still be ongoing on the day of their death.  For the Caucasians, no matter how much we loved the people and the country, the reality was that it was not our land, not our country, and not our home, and, eventually, no matter how much we repressed the thought, we were going to have to leave and go home.

That Nga’s and my relationship had gone unnoticed, other than within the team, among my housemates, and Nga’s friend and our fellow operative Hoa, probably owed more to good luck than good management, although we were very discrete.  Had we married, one, either, or both of us, would have had to go to another team, as having a married couple on the same team, would have been seen as having the potential to impair operational efficiency.

The personal relationships of my housemates, Duke, Bron, and Tom, were no less interesting.  Duke never kept his girlfriends for long.  Many of his relationships were measured in days, with some being measured only in hours, a few lasted into weeks, and, on only a couple of rare occasions, did they endure for a month or so?  The remarkable thing about Duke’s lady friends, while they were all from good families, with many of the families being very wealthy, and with not a hooker amongst them, was that they were not exactly the type of girl you would take home to meet your mother either.

Bron was in an off-again-on-again relationship, mostly off, with a Pan American Airways ground hostess based at Tan Son Nhut International Airport.  The woman, a German, had previously been married to a US soldier.  He had taken her from Europe to the United States, where she had gone through two, possibly three, more husbands.  She apparently required a lot of attention, being what is commonly called “high maintenance”.  Uncharitably, she was categorized by some as a “gold digger” but, in Bron’s case, he was not rich, although she might have had her eye on his not inconsiderable life insurance policy.  None of us, Duke, Tom, nor I, could understand why Bron persisted with her.  Maybe he had a masochistic streak at the time.  Later, completely out of the blue, he up and married, in the full Vietnamese Buddhist marriage ceremony, the girl who was secretary to Felix and Colonel Tran, and they had a beautiful little daughter together.

Tom was happily married, as far as I could see, his wife and their three teenage sons living on Okinawa, which is where he had met her, during one of his first deployments there.  She managed the fleet of island taxi cabs her family owned and operated.  On most of his stand-downs, he flew back to the island, to what, effectively, was his home.  

In addition to dispatching our target, Binh, we decided to eliminate anyone else on the premises at the time Nga and I arrived, unless they departed on our arrival.  Were this to happen, we envisaged it only being a potential problem if they were townspeople, as their presence would be more easily missed.  Were they country people, we thought we would have at least a couple of days’ grace before anyone would become aware of their having gone missing. 

As a backup plan, if a marriage ceremony could not be arranged, we decided to have the whole team to contain the premises.  Nga and I would then enter the building that night, at the end of the second full day of surveillance, using our lock-picking skills, and kill him.  If we did that though we would have a full day in Can Tho, before our scheduled departure, unless we could arrange an earlier pickup.  This entailed the risk that, while we waited for our flight, the deceased target would inevitably be discovered.  That would alert the local Viet Cong Infrastructure to our (action team’s) presence in the city.  As it turned out we had no cause for concern.  The marriage ceremony was scheduled as planned.

Just prior to 1730 hours, at the end of the third full day of surveillance, Nga and I arrived at the notary’s office.  Khan and Dung, driving one of the International Harvester Scouts, had dropped us off a short distance up the street from the premises.  Nga being resplendent in a red silk ao dai, with her long, dark hair cascading down her back and, unusually for a bride, carrying a large, red leather, handbag.  I wore a dark suit, crisp white shirt, and red tie.

On entering the building Nga engaged the target in conversation, while I discreetly twisted the lock on the front door into the locked position and flipped the open/closed sign to closed.  Fortunately, for them, there wasn’t anyone else on the premises.  Binh led us into his office at the rear of the premises.  He sat behind his desk, and began pulling forms out from a drawer, and not looking at us.  Nga opened her handbag, and we both reached inside and withdrew individual .22LR Colt Woodsman suppressed self-loading pistols.  All the while the target was unaware of our actions, as he concentrated on getting his forms in order.

Nga asked, “Comrade Binh.  Do you remember us?”  When she spoke, the target looked up and froze.  

I said, “Does Vung Tau ring any bells?”  He sat, nodding his head, looking wildly back and forth between Nga and me.  

Nga said, “Remember we told you then, that if you crossed our path again, we would put you to sleep permanently?”  He nodded.  

I said, “Well, today is that day.”  Both Nga and I then fired several rounds into his head.  Once we were satisfied that he was dead, and to make doubly sure, I placed the muzzle of my pistol in his left ear and squeezed the trigger.  We then policed up our spent shell casings.

As the safe was open we decided to have a look at the contents.  Besides a few account ledgers, there were also numerous documents and a large quantity of money, mostly Vietnamese Piasters, with some US Dollars and French Francs thrown in for good measure.  We managed to cram all of this into Nga’s large handbag, as well as into a briefcase that we found sitting alongside the desk.  Once we were satisfied there was nothing further of interest to take, we left the premises.  On our departure, we made sure the front door was securely locked behind us.  Khan and Dung promptly arrived, picked us up and, after about twenty minutes or so of driving around Can Tho, to ensure we were not being followed, we arrived back at the safe house where Suong and Minh were waiting for us.

The following morning, after a team breakfast at the Restaurant Mekong, highly recommended to the others by Nga and me, following our lunch there the day of our arrival, we secured the safe house and then traveled to the Can Tho airfield.  After parking the Scouts in the car park, at the rear of the control tower, Nga and I returned their keys, as pre-arranged, to flight operations.  We all then sat in the shade awaiting our flight.  It was more comfortable there, sitting outside looking into the terminal.  The hard wooden benches inside, provided for outgoing passengers, did not look very inviting.  The Air America Beech 18 arrived on time, flown by the same pilot who had brought us on our outward journey.  We boarded and had an uneventful flight back to the Bien Hoa Air Base.

On our arrival at our headquarters, we lodged all the documentation we had taken from the target’s safe with the Intelligence Section.  If Nguyen Van Binh, or Comrade Binh as he was known to his compatriots, was as thorough in his record keeping in Can Tho, as he had been in Vung Tau previously, these documents and account ledgers would prove to be valuable sources of information.

The monies, which we lodged with Felix and Colonel Tran, would again go into the fund the unit maintained, for the widows, children, and orphans of those unit members who had previously been killed in action or died of wounds, or for those members who had been, or would be, incapacitated.  After we completed our debriefing, the after-mission reports, and the associated paperwork, which, because the mission was a straightforward neutralization, and had gone smoothly, we stood down.

 

Congratulations to Sergeant John Heidt, US Army on his promotion. (LSP’s son)

John told me that his next move (after sergeant school) is jump school. He’ll need to learn the words to Blood on the Risers.

I’ll never forget my first static line jump.

And I’ll never forget my first jump into the ocean, which is a whole different thing.

 

The Army jumps into the ocean too.

U.S. Army Paratroopers conduct a water jump into Biscayne Bay, FL from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The jump was made by members of the 478th Civil Affairs Battalion, Psychological Operations Company, and the 982nd Combat Camera Company (Airborne) to keep current on qualifications. Filmed on May 15, 2018. Film Credits: U.S. Army Video by Staff Sgt. Austin Berner

Honest Question: Does the Army practice “you rig it, you ride it” for all jumps including requals like the one above?  I wouldn’t want to ride one that I didn’t rig. But that’s just me.

 

Just Because