A Terrible Day at LZ Two Bits
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
The importance of the FAC to the Vietnam Conflict was brought home to me on one terrible foggy day. Time, like the fog that day, has blurred and dimmed some of what happened. Call signs and units are unsure; conversations, places, and times have been lost or maybe confused. I’ve changed some of the names, but most of the events of that day remain as close as yesterday. What follows is certainly a war story with a moral, a lesson.
It was another monsoon day in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. That morning I awoke early and was still lying in my cot when Sergeant Thomas stepped into our GP Medium tent and set a canteen cup of coffee on the shaving stand we had fabricated from ammo boxes.
I thanked him for the coffee and told him I would be over as soon as possible to the operations center to relieve him. Thomas told me not to hurry. The weather had grounded all the aircraft, and our ALO would be working in his tent for a while. Thomas joked that even Charlie was sleeping in. Thomas left, and I lay there for a moment, listening for signs of life on Landing Zone Two Bits, a decapitated red clay hill north of the junction of the Song An Loa and the Song Lai Giang Rivers. LZ Two Bits was quiet. I heard nothing: no helicopters, no artillery, no small arms fire, and no vehicles. I tried to remember a morning at Two Bits when it had been this quiet. I couldn’t.
I lifted the mosquito net out of the way and crawled over the low sandbag wall that surrounded my cot. I took a long drink of the lukewarm coffee, and, in the dim light of the single light bulb hanging from the center pole of the small tent; I dressed in my jungle fatigues. About ten minutes later, I stepped through the tent flap, pulled my poncho tight around me, walked around the tent’s sandbag mortar shield, and headed toward the Division-Forward Tactical Operations Center.
Thomas was right; the weather was down to the ground. The thick fog hung low obscuring the machine gun bunkers and fugas cans that punctuated the triple barbed-wire fence perimeter that snaked around LZ Two Bits. The monolithic operations bunker, constructed of huge timbers and a couple of thousand sandbags, sat in the center of the old Special Forces compound just south of the small air strip, about a 100 meters walk for me.
Before entering the operations compound, I made a short detour to the field mess area and went through the chow line. I made a bacon and egg sandwich, piling on the bacon to disguise the taste of the powdered eggs. I wrapped the sandwich in a napkin and again headed to the operations center. By the time I got to the operations center my jungle boots and fatigue pants below my knees were splattered with red mud. LZ Two Bits was awash in red mud, and it coated anything that moved through it. I brushed my boots off as best I could before stepping on the center’s wooden beam floor. The operations sergeant major wanted the floor kept clean for the general’s visits.
I walked over to the radio console where Thomas and I worked and put my sandwich down. I stowed my poncho and M16 then sat down in the folding metal chair beside Thomas and checked the radio log. Before midnight there were a radio check and a request for an immediate reconnaissance flight from a U.S. unit working in the 1st Cavalry’s western area of operation, but the request was denied – no aircraft available. After midnight, other than the hourly check-ins with the Direct Air Support Center (DASC) in Nha Trang, the log was empty.
“Nothing’s going on so I’m headed for the rack. They may ask for that recce flight again; they sounded kind of desperate. I checked with Weather this morning. This stuff will be around through tomorrow. Our birds are grounded for weather,” Thomas reported. I knew the aircraft grounding could be a real problem.
After Thomas left, I walked over to the Army G3 Operations Officer, Major Miller. Miller, a short muscular West Point graduate dressed in highly starched jungle fatigues and spit-shined boots, was studying the 1 to 50,000 scale map that covered a large area of the timbered wall. Miller turned to me. “Hey Air Force, let’s do somethin’ about this weather. I got some troops out there who are trying to get home.” Miller tapped at a spot on the map with his grease pencil.
“Sorry about the troops, sir. This stuff will be around for a while.” I said.
“Yeah, I know. Well, other than a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) working over in the west, everything is pretty much at a stand down. I have a few preplaned strikes for tomorrow, maybe half a dozen. I’ll give them to you later.” Miller turned back to his map and began to mark troop positions on it with the grease pencil. I returned to my area and ate my sandwich. At 0650 hours, it was time for a radio check with the DASC. I picked up the mike.
“Ragged Scooper, Ragged Scooper, this is Ragged Scooper two-zero-alpha, radio check over.” I listened through the crackle of the static. After a few seconds, the DASC answered.
“Roger, two-zero-alpha, this is Ragged Scooper. I have you loud and clear, over.”
“Ragged Scooper two-zero-alpha, I have you the same, sir, out.” I answered then hung up the mike and made an entry in the log for the radio check. After retrieving a fresh cup of coffee from the big urn in the corner of the operations center, I settled down for what I figured would be a boring twelve-hour shift. I pulled the latest John D. McDonald book from my pocket and began to read about Travis McGee’s problems with women and murder.
About two hours later, I heard my call sign on the radio.
“Ragged Scooper two-zero-alpha, this is Ragged Scooper-zero-five mike, over.”
I recognized the call sign of the TACP attached to the LRRP’s unit. I knew he would be calling for the team that was operating in the An Loa valley, the same team that wanted the reconnaissance flight. I answered and waited. A moment later, they called: “Roger Ragged Scooper two-zero- alpha, this is zero-five-mike. I have an immediate air request, over.”
A call for immediate air always made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It meant an army unit had closed with the enemy and needed an air strike to destroy the enemy force. As zero- five-mike passed the target location and description, a North Vietnamese command post with running generators, radio antennas, troops in the open, I wrote it down on an air request form and advised zero-five that FAC control may not be possible. This was a hot target, and I immediately went to Major Miller to get the air strike cleared.
Miller checked the target location on the map. The map with the target was an old map, but the target location and description matched an earlier situation report from the LRRP. He asked me about the weather. I shook my head and told him we had no FACs available. Miller said that he didn’t have any artillery that could reach the target. He cleared the strike.
“Do what you can, air force.” Miller said, shaking his head.
I checked Weather again but got the same forecast so I called An Khe, our headquarters. An Khe was closer to the target and maybe their FACs could get off the ground, but An Khe was also socked in. I was running out of options, and the LRRP troops in that hostile valley were running out of time. My ALO came into the operations center about that time, and I explained the problem. He suggested that we use a “Sky-Spot.” With the current weather conditions, it was the only way to get the ordinance on target. For those who are not familiar with the term, Sky-Spot was an air force name for dropping bombs by radar. Simply put, the aircraft, working with a radar site, flies to a ‘spot in the sky’ and drops his bombs. However, the technique is not nearly as accurate as a FAC-directed strike, and the bombs can occasionally be more than a hundred or so meters off, but it is an effective method of putting ordinance on a target at night or during bad weather. The key is getting an accurate target location.
I passed the sky-spot option to zero-five-mike and heard him relay it to the LRRP unit. They were not happy but agreed. For greater accuracy and a better view of the situation, an eight-digit coordinate (accurate to ten meters) location for the target and for the team was required and, after a few moments, the team passed the two encoded eight-digit coordinates. I decoded the coordinates and showed them to Miller. The target was on a hill and the LRRP troops were on a hill a thousand or so meters away. He marked them on the map. “Take ‘em out, air force, let’s give them some righteous fire,” he grinned.
I called the DASC and requested an air strike by Sky-Spot using the encoded coordinates and target description. The duty officer at the DASC told me to stand by. I always disliked the wait, and as much as I disliked it, I knew it was worse for the LRRP troops hunkered down in that distant valley. Targets in Vietnam were seldom static and could vanish quickly and completely. Sometimes, before the jungle swallowed them up, they inflicted terrible damage on those seeking them out. Nearly twenty minutes had gone by between the time I had received the call for help and had requested the air strike. Those minutes had rushed by. Now, the minutes slowed to a maddening crawl. I paced the floor in front of my radios. Finally, I heard the call. I checked my watch; it was 0930 hours.
“Ragged Scooper two-zero-alpha, this is Ragged Scooper with your frag, over.”
I answered and began to write down the information on the airstrike request form as it was passed over the static-filled radio net.
“Call signs are Silver zero-one and zero-two, two fox-one-hundreds, eight mark-eight-two slicks, time on target is one-zero-one-five. Check with Bongo on standard frequency, over.”
I answered that I had received all the information clearly, and I signed off. The target was assigned two F100s with Silver 01 and 02 call signs. Each F100 would be carrying four-Mk 82, 500 pound bombs configured for high altitude drops. The flight would be controlled by radar station Bongo and the flight would be on target in forty-five minutes. I passed the information to zero-five-mike and briefed that I would call ten minutes before “bombs-away” so that the team could take cover. I also asked that the team ensure they were still at least a kilometer from the target. The kilometer distance is a safety margin for high altitude bombs that may miss the target. After a moment I heard them reply that they copied all the information and were at a safe distance away. Now the real wait began.
When I turned in my chair, I noticed that most of the eyes and ears in the operations center were directed toward my corner. All the voices of the radio messages had been calm and professional, but the undercurrents of urgency, maybe life- and-death urgency, moving around the voices were obvious. A team was in trouble on hostile ground and needed help, and this morning the enemy had an old ally with him, the weather. All the incredible firepower that could be mustered by the 1st Cavalry and the United States Air Force could do little against such an inescapable enemy. The saturated air, fog filled and heavy, glued helicopters to the ground and hid targets from Air Force eyes.
I set one of my radio’s frequencies to the Bongo frequency and waited. Everyone else in the operations center waited with me. Everyone went about their work but their ears were tuned to my radios. Finally, when the tension inside the operations center was nearly as thick as the fog outside, the radio spoke with a hissing flat-toned voice. The F100s were checking in with Bongo. It was 1005 hours.
While Bongo directed and cleared the flight, I asked the team to confirm they were one kilometer from the target and to take cover. The team confirmed their location. The final ten minutes seemed to drag by but finally I heard, “pickle,” the bombs were away and I breathed a sigh of relief.
After a few moments, I heard zero-five-mike call the LRRP. No answer. Zero-five-mike called again. No answer. On the third no answer, I began to feel uneasy. I picked up the mike and called the team. No answer. I tried again. No answer. I realized the operations center was as quiet as the radio. Major Miller and most of the center were watching and listening. Miller turned back to his radio, picked up the mike, and called the team. No answer.
My feeling of uneasiness was now turning to an overwhelming sense of dread. My mind was racing like the radio calls to that hilltop. “Sweet Jesus, don’t let it be,” I said to no one in particular as I considered the possibility that something terrible may have happened; we may have hit the LRRP troops. My ALO called the TACP at An Khe and had them try to contact the LRRP. In the background, I heard Miller yelling that he wanted a helicopter in the air now. One thought added to my sense of dread: when I decoded the target location and passed them to the DASC, did I make a mistake? Did I pass the wrong coordinates, the troop location, to the DASC as the target? It would be easy to do in all the excitement of trying to get the target hit. With no FAC in the air over the target and LRRP troops to confirm the locations, the mistake would go uncaught until the bombs struck. The thought made me sick to my stomach, and I tasted old coffee at the back of my throat.
“We’re launching a chopper from An Khe. They’ll work their way into the team and make contact.” Miller said to my ALO and me, but the words were not penetrating. A terrible image, filled with dead LRRP troops, seemed to take over, I wasn’t sure I could stay together much longer. I walked over to the console, sat down, and picked up the air request forms I used for the strike. I decoded the target coordinates and wrote them down below the coding then I showed them to Miller and he confirmed them. I then picked up my mike and called the DASC. My ALO had explained the situation to the duty officer and I asked him to read the un-coded coordinates. My heart was in my throat as I listened to the eight digits given in two sets of four. The coordinates matched. I was almost ecstatic that I hadn’t made such a terrible mistake. I had to take a deep breath and close my eyes for a moment so as not to act giddy. Then, of course, I felt incredible guilt for feeling that way.
The minutes slowed down again until, nearly twenty minutes later, Miller came over, and I stood as I guessed the worst from Miller’s stony face. He told me and my ALO that the chopper got through and found the LRRP troops at the target coordinates, and the goddamn bombs were right on target. The chopper pilot had said that two bodies were in the trees but the rest couldn’t be seen. Miller shook his head with disgust. “Goddamn it, when we kill our own,” he said.
Later, I heard, though never confirmed, that the LRRP team’s leader was new in country. He had probably read his old map wrong and placed the target at the actual location of his team. Reading a map wrong was not unusual, old maps had mistakes, but the errors were usually caught. Unfortunately, no one caught the mistake this time, and men died or were severely injured.
The night of that terrible day, in the warm dark time before sleep would take me under, I did not think of home and my wife and daughter. I thought of a group of wet and tired men hunkered down among the trees on a hilltop watching an enemy-held hill across the way and waiting for it to explode. I thought about them probably hearing my voice on the radio telling them help was only a few minutes away. I was sure they heard the bombs coming down through the tree canopy above them. I wondered what they thought of in that last one or two seconds. I hoped it wasn’t of me.
Always, always, always know where you are.