An Lao Valley Incident

by

Duane Vincent

145th Avn Plt CE

Date of Incident: Saturday, January 29, 1966

Binh Dinh Province, South Vietnam

Early stages of Operation “Masher”

The 145th Airlift Platoon had been working for several days out of Bong Son Special Forces (SF) Camp in support of Project Delta which was conducting Recon missions in the An Lao Valley.  I was the Crew Chief of a troop carrying “slick”, tail number 62045, call sign “Mardi Gras 6”.  The gunner was a Californian named Russell Issacs.  Nine of the ten helicopters in the Platoon were on the mission, six slicks, two gunships, and a “Hog,” while our tenth helicopter was back at our home base in Nha Trang undergoing maintenance.  Our mission, as I understood it, was to quietly insert the Delta teams into the valley, provide air cover with our gunships, and pick them up on demand.  Delta was to locate a large VC/NVA force in the valley then a Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, which was operating nearby in the Bong Son plain, would come in immediately, and destroy them.

The Delta teams in the valley were compromised almost from the start and I got an Air Medal for Valor for a ladder drop and covering fire during a five-man pickup on the side of a ridge on January 28th.  On the morning of January 29th, most of the Platoon was out flying Direct Support or Combat Assault missions in or around the An Lao valley.  Major Kevin Murphy, the Platoon Commander had gone off to the SF Camp to meet with Major Charlie Beckwith and other Delta operations staff.  045 was parked nearby in an adjacent graveyard where we had bivouacked the last few nights and Issacs and I were doing routine maintenance on the ship and our weapons.  All of a sudden, Major Murphy came running out and told us to “saddle up.”  One of the Recon teams was in contact and needed immediate pickup.  Major Beckwith arrived with three other Delta people (a First Sergeant, a radioman, and another Officer, I believe).  We immediately started the engine and Major Murphy got into radio contact with the rest of the Platoon.  They had either just landed or were on their way back to refuel and rearm at the camp airstrip and could not join up with us right away.  A quick decision was made for 045 to leave immediately in advance of the rest of the Platoon and to quickly locate the team.  We would then act as the Command & Control aircraft while the others made the pickup and delivered any required aerial gun support.  We took off with a crew of four (Aircraft Commander was Major Murphy, Co-pilot was CWO Southwell, Issacs and myself) and the four Delta members.

The weather was awful.  At that point it was cold, there was low cloud cover with a ceiling below 1,000 feet, and rain was falling.  I think that the best description of weather of that kind was in a Boston Publishing Co. book called “The Vietnam Experience/A Contagion of War.”  It noted “that a season of “crachin,” which is French for “spit” was prevalent in the area.  It described “crachin” as “A constant drizzle that could lighten to a mist or fall more heavily, crachin drifted down from slate gray clouds seldom higher than 3,000 feet.  Visibility usually extended no more than three miles.  In the early morning hours, low stratus clouds dropped below a 1,000 foot ceiling, and the fog that resulted lifted slowly, dissipating by middle-to-late morning.  Frequently, the fog persisted in the valleys, obscuring mountain ridges and peaks and creating perilous flying conditions.”

Since the ceiling was so low, we flew at an altitude of approximately 300 to 400 feet over the area just outside the SF camp and then over some farms, picking up speed as we flew.  Sitting in the open cargo door (pilot’s side), I was wearing my field jacket under my flak jacket and chicken plate and I had the visor down on my helmet in an attempt to stay warm and shield myself from the rain.  Each drop of rain that hit you hurt.  Even with this protection, the rain was still impacting on my hands and chin while water ran down my helmet visor, my neck, and inside my jacket.  The visibility was not good, but I could see fairly well along the ground from that altitude.  Few people were in view, but those I could see looked like farmers on their way somewhere.  Not far from the Bong Son airfield and before we had gotten to the narrow part of the valley, we suddenly broke into the open over some rice paddies.  Our altitude was still only a few hundred feet and in front of us and slightly to the left was a paddy dike lined with tall palm trees with another dike off to the far left.  I saw no people.

Almost immediately, I heard the sharp, sub-sonic cracking of small arms and automatic weapons and I realized that we were taking fire from the tree line along the paddy dike that we were flying towards at about a 30-degree angle (my side of the helicopter).  I started to deliver some suppressive fire from my M-60 into the tree line, working from the right to the left.  Major Beckwith, who was sitting next to me, began firing his M-16 over my right shoulder and the First Sergeant, who was sitting on the floor in front of me, also began firing.  I was leaning forward in my seat, holding the 60 with both hands, my right elbow resting on my right knee and my left hand under the weapon to steady it as I fired.  I only got off about 20 or 30 rounds when WHAM!  I had my right hand literally blown off the M-60's pistol grip and felt an almost equal impact on my right thigh.  The world seemed full of red dots while the pain was beyond my powers of description.  At that moment, time seemed to slip into slow motion.

I looked down at my hand and I could see smoke coming out of the hole in the top.  I glanced at Beckwith and I could immediately tell that he had a gut wound and was hurt much worse than I was.  I then looked up at the First Sergeant and the look of absolute total surprise on his face; combined with the red spots all over his face and head made me start laughing, more in pain than in mirth.  I held out my arm to him because I wanted him to stop the bleeding.  I’m sure that he had no idea why I was doing this, but eventually he clamped down on my arm and slowed the blood loss.

It then began to get confusing for me.  There was a lot of smoke and confusion in the helicopter and a very active radio net assessing the situation.  I thought that Southwell got hit in the butt with shrapnel when something came up through the floor, but I'm not exactly sure what happened after I was hit.  The helicopter was shaking furiously as we continued on, banking somewhat to the right. I could hear Isaac’s M-60 working and the pain in my hand and the fear of getting hit again or worse yet crashing, made me decide to keep at it.  I took my weapon in my left hand and starting firing again, one-handed, toward the base of the treeline, which was now very close to us.  As we banked over the tree line along the paddy dike, I could see people in uniform tracking us with their weapons.  All of us were firing furiously, aiming at anything that moved.  Beckwith was half lying on the seat and in a lot more pain than I was, and I could hear his staff telling him to hold on.  The SF Officer told him, “Hold on Boss, you’re hit pretty bad.  We’re going to have to get you back.”   He then got on the radio and he and Major Murphy decided to abort and go directly back to the SF compound.

The fight seemed to last a very long time but I’m sure that it was only seconds.  We flew back to Bong Son and landed just outside the perimeter wire of the SF camp.  They unloaded Beckwith, and Issacs came over to my side of the helicopter and held me up, putting my left arm over his shoulders.  He carried me over to the narrow path leading through the wire where we encountered a journalist who was blocking the way.  Russell starting yelling at him to get out of the way, but the guy was just standing there with his mouth open, fumbling at his camera equipment, trying to get it out and take a picture, I guess.  When we got to him, Russell shoved him over the roll of barbed wire, where he landed on his back on top of more wire and fell to the ground.  I don’t think that he ever said a word to us.

Issacs then took me into the aid station and stayed with me for a bit while a medic gave me some morphine.  Things began to get hazy for me and I remember that they were working furiously on Beckwith.  After a while I heard Major Murphy start yelling.  It sounded like he was getting really angry because they were not working on me, and the Dustoff chopper was not there yet.  I also remember someone trying to calm him down.  Eventually, a medivac chopper picked me up and took me to the Hospital in Qui Nhon.

When I woke up from my surgery, Col. McKean, the Commander of 5th SF, was sitting on the bed next to mine while members of his staff circled in the background.  I was pretty groggy but what I remember of the conversation was that the 145th had done a good job and recovered the survivors of the team that we were after.  Overall casualties among the teams inserted into the valley were heavy but that they had found a large number of VC and that McKean had requested that a B-52 strike take place before the enemy had time to flee.  When I asked him where the backup we were promised was, he told me that the 1st Cavalry was unable to carry out their end of the mission because they were bogged down in a fight elsewhere.  I also remember asking him about certain Delta members and expressing a great deal of anger over taking these kinds of casualties to find an enemy who was then allowed to get away.

Later on, I decided that I really appreciated his visit.  He made me feel like I had contributed to an important mission and that I had the respect of people that I thought of as among the bravest people that I had ever met.  It was also the only time in that war that anyone ever took the time to give me an explanation of how our efforts fit into the larger campaign picture and why it was worth it.

To this day, I still do not know what I was hit with!  In the hospital, Russell Issacs told me that it was a .30 caliber armor piercing round and that it had been given to Beckwith.  Since Beckwith was sitting right behind me, firing over my shoulder and the round went through my hand and then nicked my right leg, it had to have been the same round that hit him in the stomach.  We were both hit at exactly the same time and in his book, Charlie said that he was hit with a .51 caliber round.  The round made an M-16 size hole in the back of my hand and larger exit wound in my wrist.  If it was a .51 caliber, then it seems like I should have lost my entire hand.

Even though it has been a while since this incident, I still think about it often.  I spent a year at Madigan Army Hospital in Tacoma, Washington getting my hand repaired.  I then went back to college, graduated, went to work, got married and had kids.  Life has been good for me, but every day I remember the men I served with in the 145th Airlift Platoon.

Reconstructed from 35 year-old memories

By former PFC Duane D. Vincent

November 19, 2000

 A Man is Not Dead Until He is Forgotten

The Story of Frank N. Badolati

by Ray Davidson

                         

Frank N. Badolati

After a trip to the Vietnam Wall, the daughter of Goffstown, New Hampshire native, SSGT Frank Badolati wrote, “It was terribly sad and lonely, but there I found a place to cry and many people to share my tears. I don't believe I will ever see my father in this lifetime. I was only three the last time I saw him.” Daisy Badolati of the tiny Azalea, Oregon community goes on to say, “It has been a very difficult issue for me to deal with over the years, so much so that I made the greatest effort to accept my loss and [when the pain was just too great I would try to] forget ever having had a father.”

SSGT Badolati was a member of Detachment B-52, Project Delta, 5th Special Forces Group. Project Delta was formed in October 1964. Their missions included some of the most hazardous and critical actions in South Vietnam. Augmenting the 5th Special Forces (Green Berets) was a Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) Security Company, a group of South Vietnamese Special Forces, a South Vietnamese Ranger Battalion and a CIDG “Roadrunner” Company (Roadrunners were equipped with enemy uniforms, equipment and weapons).

“Stay Out of the An Lao Valley”

Operation Masher (January 24 – March 6, 1966) was the largest search and destroy mission up to that point in the war. Project Delta was selected to reconnoiter the Northern end of the An Lao valley.

This area of the An Lao Valley is covered with thick vegetation with a great deal of elephant grass, three to four feet tall, and interspersed with cultivated fields. Steep slopes bound the valley on both sides with anti-aircraft emplacements. Intelligence indicated that there were two Regiments of North Vietnamese in the valley supported by Viet Cong insurgents. With such a heavy concentration of enemy forces, the former commander of Project Delta, Maj. Art Strange, warned incoming commander, Maj. Charles “Charging Charlie” Beckwith, in July of 1965 to, “Stay out of the An Lao Valley. They have sophisticated warning systems and tracking dogs.”

Operation Masher and “Charging Charlie” ignored good advice. The operation required insertion of recon teams into the valley but problems plagued the mission. Beckwith decided to not augment the Recon teams with South Vietnamese counterparts (as was standard procedure), ground intelligence was unconfirmed, the weather was bad, helicopter and air ship support would be limited due to the ant-aircraft guns, and, as stated before, the enemy controlled the valley. The last time friendly forces were in the valley was 1958.

Beckwith choose to insert three teams comprised of American Special Forcers troopers. Badolati was assigned to team three along with SFC Marcus Huston (Team Leader), SSGT Billy McKeithe, MSGT Wiley Gray, SSGT Ron Terry and SSGT Cecil Hodgson.

L to R: Wiley W. Gray; Cecil J. Hodgson (KIA); Billy A. McKeithe;

Frank N. Badolati (KIA); Ronald T. Terry (KIA)

The mission quickly disintegrated. Team one had to abort with one wounded. A woodcutter in the hills spotted Team Two and they were ambushed losing four men and the other two were wounded.

Team Three made initial contact with enemy forces at around 9:30 on 28 January and again at about 12:30. During the first volley of fire that afternoon Badolati was hit in the upper left arm, the bullet almost severing the arm. SFC Hodgson applied a tourniquet while the team was still under fire. The team then broke contact and moved about 600 yards, stopping to provide medical help to Badolati. They immediately came under fire. The team then split into two groups to evade the pursuing enemy.

Gray, Hodgson, and Terry evaded the ambush site in a different direction from Badolati, Huston and McKeithe. The group with Badolati tried to use the cover along the steep slopes and after dark used a streambed to hide their trail. Finally Badolati stated that he "could not go any further" and for them to leave him behind. Ignoring his plea, Huston and McKeithe stopped in a concealed position two to three feet up the stream bank. Despite constant medical attention to Badolati's mangled arm, his condition continued to deteriorate. He died in the early morning hours of 29 January 1966.The remaining team members were forced to leave Badolati's body hidden in the boulders and scrubs with the hope to recover it with a Search and Rescue (SAR) team. The two survivors successfully evaded and were recovered later by helicopter.

According to Homecoming II records, Gray, Hodgson, and Terry successfully evaded the rest of that day and then settled into a hiding place for the night. At first light on the 29th, the three men began moving again and did not make contact with the enemy until 4:30 that afternoon. All three were lying in elephant grass when they saw seven Viet Cong soldiers standing four feet to the right and rear of them. They opened fire killing three of the seven. Shortly thereafter, Gray heard Terry yell that he had been hit and saw him holding his right side. Suddenly Terry’s body arched as another bullet struck him, it was obvious this second bullet killed Terry.

Gray could not locate Hodgson and decided to move roughly 20 feet to a more defendable position and waited in ambush for the enemy. A little later Gray heard both enemy and Hodgson’s weapons being discharged, then silence. Gray continued to evade the enemy and was recovered the next day by helicopter.

Charging Charlie was wounded on the fire support mission and left Project Delta the next week. Of the seventeen that went into the An Lao Valley seven were killed and three wounded.

In 1999 a note from a childhood friend left at the virtual wall said, “I had a crush on Frank as a young girl. He sent me pictures from Vietnam and a lacquered box for Christmas 1965, which still sits on my dresser. I was a freshman in high school [when Frank died]. I have never forgotten him. … the firepower was so intense you told them to go without you, and they left you wounded propped against the tree where your blood fed the shadows. Did you notice the silence of the birds? As you waited for the helicopter, did you remember the way the sun used to strike the corner of your house [in Goffstown] at first light? Did you think of the picnic where your buddies ran around the meadow chasing a greased pig? We danced in the clover and you held me so close I swallowed your scent. When nobody came did you wonder what would happen to the car you and a friend painted to match your jungle fatigues? And when the light faded, could you hear me call your name”

Frank Neil Badolati’s name can be found on panel 04E, Line 105 of the Vietnam Memorial Wall

Ray Davidson is a syndicated columnist. He can be reached at rayd45@aol.com.

 

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