The CIB
©  Jim Meade

For anyone that doesn’t know, the CIB is the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. As an AF type, I didn’t really know the significance of it but soon learned that having one was an absolute necessity for acceptance as anything other than a rear echelon *****(REMF) or FNG (***New Guy) when working with Army troops in a combat zone. As soon as I had this figured out, I set about trying to get the required number of combat operations out of the way in order to elevate myself to equal footing with my Special Forces team mates. I do not know what the requirements were for other units or other time periods but for us it was three ground operations where contact with the enemy was achieved (hopefully in a winning situation).

On first arrival at my duty station in VN, a Special Forces B Team compound, it was apparent that although the SF guys were quite happy to have the AF there supporting them, we were always going to be considered a necessary liability when it came to ground combat operations. Being the only AF enlisted man that was permanently assigned there, I felt it was going to be an awfully long year if I didn’t learn to fit in with the SF guys like I was one of them. I had two strikes against me right at the start, I was AF and I was a straight leg (or just plain leg). That meant that I wasn’t a qualified parachutist while all of them were airborne type troops. I managed to get around this problem by insisting that Air Force people weren’t stupid enough to jump out of our perfectly good airplanes. They accepted this explanation good naturedly but insisted that I needed to know how to do parachute landing falls (PLF’s) just in case I ever needed to jump out of one of our perfectly good airplanes. I didn’t tell them so, but I had learned how to do PLF’s in aircrew survival training so they were a little surprised when I proved to be quite accomplished at it on the first practice jump. We practiced jumping off of all sorts of objects, thankfully the Sgt Major put a halt to it when we were getting ready to start jumping from the roofs of the buildings

Click on image for full size map

After a few weeks, and much badgering, my chance to take part in a ground operation came about through an unlikely set of circumstances. The AF had decided that our TACP (our ALO/FAC in particular), would make a good story for the AF Information Office to use as a Training Film and in recruitment efforts. At the time, mid-65, our AO (Area of Operations) was one of the most beleaguered in all of South Vietnam. In the preceding couple of months, the Viet Cong had managed to overrun nearly the entire Province. At that time, the Province was known as the Phouc Long Special Tactical Zone, which apparently meant that it was critical to the defense of Saigon and that it was, for all intents and purposes, in the hands of the Viet Cong. Song Be, Bu Dop and Dong Xoai Special Forces camps had all been overrun and another at Bu Gia Map had to be evacuated. Through close cooperation of ARVN forces and their U.S. Advisors, the Special Forces, U.S. Army Aviation and the USAF, the camps lost to the VC were quickly retaken and the enemy was being pursued aggressively. Our ALO/FAC, Capt. Larry Reed (Viper 3), had been shot down and wounded three or four times and was still there flying missions. Considering that we only had two or three FAC’s at any one time, one aircraft maintenance man/crew chief for the (O-1’s) and I as the radio operator, we were able to perform what was considered an extraordinary number of reconnaissance and bombing missions to keep the VC from regrouping and launching more attacks. Quite often it would be the case where a special forces troop or another pilot would be hand pumping fuel into the plane while the crew chief checked the engine, a pilot loaded marking rockets and I would be in the plane copying down details (scribbled on the windshield with a grease pencil) from the previous missions flown.

As nearly all friendly activity in the Province had been devoted to rebuilding and reinforcing defenses after the attacks by 762^nd & 763^rd VC Regiments in May-Jul, ground combat operations had been limited to small patrols. In nearly all instances, contacts with surviving elements of the 762^nd and 763^rd were made. Operations to clear the roads between Song Be and Dong Xoai and Song Be and Bu Dop were planned as a show of force and to rebuild confidence with surrounding villages. An operation to re-locate the people of several villages to a more secure area was also planned. The AF Public Affairs Office was most interested in observing and filming the re-location operation.

First (1) came the road clearing operation to Dong Xoai. This particular operation had been done once before with mixed results. The teams from both locations had wound up fighting their way back to their bases. After several weeks of a bombing campaign it was felt that most of the opposition would have either been killed or moved on to easier pickings. As before, a couple of CIDG companies, with SF team members were to proceed North from Dong Xoai while we, elements of the 36^th ARVN Ranger Battalion, a platoon of CIDG and four of us from the SF team were to proceed South and make a link up. I was the radio man for the command element that stayed to the rear of the rangers and was located just to the South of the old abandoned French plantation airstrip at Phouc Binh (around 20kms SW of Song Be). Light and sporadic contacts with small numbers of VC were encountered throughout the initial linkup phase of the operation. During the RTB (return to base) both columns came under moderate to heavy attack in coordinated actions. The Dong Xoai (S) troops found themselves under threat by VC attacking out of the Michelin Than Loi rubber plantation and the Rangers from Song Be (N) made contact in the vicinity of the Phu Rieng plantation. They were used hit and run tactics that made it difficult to use our airpower effectively. The Southern units fought there way back to Dong Xoai with only a couple of slight casualties. The Rangers ran into an L shaped ambush (set up forward of our location with the Command group) that halted their movement to the North. By this time, it was getting too dark to use fighters on the target and we weren’t sure of the exact location of some of the Rangers. SF SP4 Roberts, our interpreter, and two or three CIDG troops with us attacked the leg of the ambush from the rear and the rangers attacked the other leg of the L and routed the VC. It was apparent that there were significant elements of the two VC Regiments still operating in our area. Shortly after this, the 173^rd Airborne Brigade, with supporting Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) forces, conducted a sweep throughout the area but made very little contact with any sizable enemy force.

Next (2) was the resettlement operation and the USAF camera team arrived to film the story they wanted. There were two photographers, one for the aerial shots and another to film the ground operations. This time, since we would be trying to protect a large number of civilians, we put in numerous air strikes on known and suspected VC concentrations that might interfere with the movement of the villagers. Most of the occupants of the villages were quite prepared to move to a more secure location although some were not at all pleased with the thought of abandoning their homes. As it was, the VC were confiscating a large portion of their produce and they were living on the edge of starvation. Our ALO (Capt Reed) and I were at the FOB for the initial stage of the operation. He then went back to Song Be to arrange with the other FAC’s (Capt Fred Huppertz (Viper 4) and 1Lt Stretch (Viper 6) to fly continuous air cover for the operation while I went forward with the command element again. We encountered sporadic resistance but thanks to the softening up we had done with the airstrikes and the FAC’s flying CAP (combat air patrol) overhead, all attempts by the VC to mount a significant attack was dealt with swiftly both from the air and on the ground. Again, we had only a few troops receive minor wounds on this operation.

The Song Be to Bo Duc road clearing operation came next (3). This time we were expecting heavy contact but it didn’t eventuate. The night before the operation began, the ARVN Infantry sent patrols and roadwatch teams out to try and assess what sort of enemy activity could be expected. They managed to kill a couple of VC bicycle couriers but that was the extent of the contact. The entire Ranger Battalion was taking part in this one along with a significant number of SF and CIDG troops. I was in a jeep with the SF Team C.O., the Sgt Maj and George our interpreter. We were third from the last in a long column of vehicles heading North. It was even slower going than the column that went to Dong Xoai had been. The road was cut/trenched in numerous places and there were many streams that had to be crossed. Not far into the trip we came to the spot where the ARVN had caught the couriers the night before. The bodies were lying on an embankment , up off the right side of the track with a couple of ARVN soldiers and one of our Advisors waiting to report to the C.O. The thought was that the couriers had either been on their way to alert VC forces or had already alerted them and were on their way home. We proceeded on to Bo Duc without any contact at all. As the village had been cut off from outside supplies for quite some time, there were four or five truckloads of rice and other staples to be handed over to the village chief for distribution. Our C.O., the Ranger C.O. and the Sgt Maj went ahead to participate in the handing over ceremony while everyone else got busy getting the vehicles turned around for the return trip. As there was just enough room to turn around, the column would make the return trip in the reverse order, with us now being third from the front of the column.

While sitting and waiting for the ceremony to conclude I became curious about the Sgt Majors choice of weapons. He had brought along a shoulder fired recoilless rifle that might have been left over from WWII or Korea – it looked like what I remember being referred to as a Bazooka. He had a canvas bag full of rounds for the thing, they were about 7 or 8 inches long and 2 ½ - 3 inches in diameter - looked similar to the rounds used in the M-79 grenade launcher - only longer and with a pointy tip. When he came back to the jeep he showed me how to load it (called it an RR-75 I think) and told me to stick with him if we ran into any trouble on the way back. On the way up I was supposed to stay with Colonel, now, George (the interpreter) and I would switch places and he would stay with the boss.

The drive back was much quicker than it had been on the way up since all the trenches had been filled. Just about where the two couriers had been shot the night before (the Rieng Rieng rubber plantation), two mortar rounds hit just up in front of us. One round dropped in just in front of the lead jeep and the second just behind it. All three, maybe four, rangers in the back of the jeep were hit with shrapnel, I couldn’t see what the condition of the two in the front seat was. The jeep rolled off the side of the road and stopped while the truck immediately in front of us was apparently disabled. Rangers were bailing out of the truck and rushing to the jeep that had the wounded spread around the back seat. Then, machinegun and small arms fire started raking the column from our right. There was a steep embankment up to the left so the C.O. immediately drove off the road to the right and down into a depression with what was obviously the machinegun position straight ahead. It was in what looked to be a huge pile of dead rubber trees. Unbeknownst to us, at this point, an SF troop and a couple of Rangers had been very near the site from which the mortars were launched (an old abandoned temple) and had knocked it out practically immediately. Small arms fire was coming out of the plantation for the entire length of the column.

Even before the jeep had come to a complete halt, we were rolling off the sides and down behind a slight rise in the ground. I was flat on my belly and firing away on full automatic although I’m not at all sure I was actually hitting the target. Just as I reloaded another magazine, the SMaj fired the recoilless rifle. The right side of the pile of trees got pretty wobbly. He shouts at me to reload him and I have to work my way backwards to reach the spare rounds and load it without sitting upright. Just as I slam the shell in he starts to aim towards the left of where the previous round hit, this left me looking down the back end of that thing. I duck to bury my face in the ground and whoosh, off goes my helmet and glasses. If I had been just a second slower I’m sure my whole head would have been taken off. I couldn’t see very well then but it looked like the entire pile of trees was slowly subsiding. Just then, I could make out several maroon berets of the Rangers running up and firing into the pile while dozens more were running into the rubber trees firing and screaming as they went. It was an exhilarating moment and I was proud of the Rangers.

I quickly recovered my glasses and helmet and we went back to see what could be done about the wounded. The truck that had been right in front of us was disabled and was pushed off the side of the road by the one behind. The wounded were loaded into that one and they took off at top speed to get back to Song Be. The jeep that the wounded had been in had all four tires ripped with shrapnel but miraculously the two men that had been in the front seats were unharmed. The SF guy that had helped to knock out the mortar came forward and requested permission to go back and level the temple. The C.O. suggested that we leave that up to the Rangers as we didn’t know if it still had any religious significance or not. We reformed the convoy with us now in the lead. Personally, I was feeling a bit useless. Everything had happened so quickly that I hadn’t even had time to think about air support.

When we pulled back into camp at Song Be, cute little Co Minh (one of the girls that worked in our messhall) asked where we had been – we were a filthy looking lot. When the Colonel told her Bo Duc she said "Choi Oi! Dinky Dou!" meaning Wow and You’re Crazy. I knew what she meant and that CIB didn’t seem quite so important any more.

Soon after, either the 1^st Cav or 101^st Airborne units did a sweep through that area with the same sort of results that had happened with the previous sweep by the 173^rd. The VC were obviously avoiding going head to head with American units.

We suspected, and intelligence reports seemed to confirm, that the units that we had encountered on the Dong Xoai operation had probably disappeared into War Zone D and the ones on the Bo Duc operation had probably moved up closer to the Cambodian border.

Another operation was planned that would be conducted solely by SF and CIDG troops operating from Bu Dop. We strongly suspected that our previous plans had been compromised in the coordination of our operations with the ARVN. The plan was for the troops from Bu Dop to sweep to their West towards Loc Ninh and set up a blocking force to prevent the VC from escaping across the border into Cambodia. American units (I believe it was 1^st Inf Div) were to be prepared to make an air mobile assault once the enemy had been blocked. Every available man at Bu Dop was going to be needed to pull this off. It was decided that I could relocate up to Bu Dop and operate my radios from there just as well as I could do it from Song Be. Plus, I’d be able to give the SF radio man (SFC Trimiar, a friend that had previously been at Song Be) a hand to operate the SF radios and man the camp. Only the two of us, along with a handful of CIDG, would secure the camp while everyone else would be on the operation. This meant that Trimiar and I would have to take turns with the radios and keeping the CIDG moving about the camp to make it appear as if there were more men present than there really was. This was an awfully risky situation and we’d be goners for sure if the VC had the least inkling that there would be so few men in the camp. Capt Huppertz (Viper 4 and now the ALO) flew me and my equipment up to Bud Dop the day prior to the operation.

The camp at Bu Dop made Song Be look like Club Med. I managed to squeeze my radio gear into their commo/medical bunker and familiarize myself with the camp without being too obvious. The radio man that would be going out with the ground troops (I think it was Sgt Steele), Trimiar and myself worked out a plan for the handling of messages during the operation. All of Steele’s messages, other than radio checks, would be shackled on one time pads (encoded). As Trimiar and Steele were familiar with one another’s voices on the radio, I would get Trim to handle the radio if there was any difficulty due to atmospherics or distance. After taking a couple of more walks around the camp and stopping to peer out past the mine field towards the Cambodian border, I was pretty sure that volunteering for this wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do. Nevertheless, I was there and it was a little too late to be having second thoughts.

At around 0200 the troops started departing the camp in silence – it was sort of eerie watching so many men disappearing into the night with little more than an occasional clink of metal against metal. They had only gotten a few km outside of camp before the lead elements made contact in the early morning ground fog. They had stumbled onto a small bunker complex that was secured in no time at all. They discovered a substantial cable running from there further towards the West. We received a quite lengthy shackled message that we relayed back to Song Be for further relay to our Battalion Hq at Bien Hoa. We didn’t bother to take the time to decode it ourselves and assumed that this was probably the notification for the 1^st Infantry Division to prepare to launch. Not long after, our troops came across a substantial bunker complex which he put bombed with two sets of fighters. The team entered the complex and had a brief but fierce battle with the surviving defenders. It was apparent that the main vc force had made a hasty departure thatl put an end to any hopes of blocking their escape into Cambodia. On examining the bunkers they made an unusual find. One of the bodies was dressed in a uniform that indicated that he was not Vietnamese. I gleaned from the radio traffic that I monitored, that whoever it had been didn’t look like a Vietnamese either. We received another encoded message that was relayed on back to the SF headquarters at Bien Hoa. All was quiet for awhile, other than a message telling us to be prepared for incoming helicopters and to have the team prepare to mark an LZ.

Not long after, a swarm of helicopters passed overhead on their way towards ours guys at the bunkers. We didn’t find out until some time later that Gen Westmoreland himself was on one of the choppers and wanted to look at that body personally. To this day I do not know what the nationality of that strangely uniformed body might have been. From the excitement in the voice that reported the find, and the interest at such a high level, I suspect that he may not have been Asian at all. Finding Chinese advisors in Vietnam was not all that rare so it was most likely of another race.

Jim Meade in background

The following day, after the troops had returned to Bu Dop, Viper 9 (1Lt Kaiser) landed to pick me up and return me to Song Be. We (he) decided that we would take a look along the border and see if we could spot where the VC had crossed over into Cambodia. It would have been a significant force so there just might be some telltale signs even though they were very adept at disguising their movements. Somewhere between Bu Dop and Loc Ninh to the West we found some river rapids that looked suspect. The water between the sets of rapids looked as if it had been clouded with silt. We couldn’t detect any movement and proceeded further to the West. We came up on a large (permanent – semi permanent?) village complex that neither one of us had heard of before. At that point, I wasn’t at all sure that we were still on the Vietnamese side of the border. We had done so much circling around the rapids, at varying altitudes and angles that I had sort of lost track of which was which. I took several photos of the rapids and one or two of the village complex just out of interest. On the way back to Song Be, the Lt and I decided that it might be best just to keep the details of this flight to ourselves. It wasn’t until just recently that I thought to have a look at the photos as negative images – now I can see we were probably right and had indeed found the crossing points. (See the photos and negative at the end of the narrative.)

The senior U.S. Advisor and SF B Team Commander, Lt Col Roy, submitted my name along with a couple of others for the award of the CIB. The recommendation was duly turned down by 7^th Air Force as the USAF doesn’t have anyone with an Infantry MOS - which they said was necessary for receipt of the award. I just found out recently that the regulation had been amended, sometime in 63 or 64, and could have been awarded to just about anyone that met the Commanders criteria. It really didn’t matter anymore as everyone on the team knew I was no longer in the New Guy or Rear Echelon category.

With further magnification it can be seen that the stones across the river look to be too orderly to be nature at work.

The top two crossings appear to show signs of considerable activity along the river banks.