Combat Swimmer by Robert A. Gormly

a perfect system, but each time we showed up at a VC’s door we created havoc. And every time we went into a new area we provided the river patrol force with another piece of the VC puzzle.
    Since we’d been prescribed no strategy from above, we SEAL officers decided our “strategy” should be to kill VC wherever and whenever, terrorizing them by hitting them in their “safe” areas. I chose when and where to operate, and my decisions were based on one goal: to kill as many VC as we could without our missions falling into a predictable pattern.

6
    MEKONG AMBUSH: TAKING AWAY THE NIGHT
    Mid-April 1967, Lower Mekong Delta
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    I n total darkness on the Bassac River, the twenty-two-foot armored, reinforced-fiberglass SEAL Team Assault Boat (STAB) throttled back, slowed from twenty-five knots to five, and turned toward the riverbank. Six of us crouched expectantly in the boat. My adrenaline meter was pegged.
    I put my hand on Bump’s shoulder. “Are you all set?”
    â€œYep.” Charlie is a man of few words.
    Slowly he lifted the AN PVS-2 night-vision scope to his right eye. “I can’t see a damn thing at the insertion point.”
    â€œLook to your right, toward the canal.”
    â€œGot it. Looks like we’re on track.”
    â€œLieutenant,” said the coxswain, moving one of the earphones connecting him to the boat radio, “Mr. Baumgart says we need to come left five degrees, and we’ll hit the shore two hundred meters from the canal.”
    â€œRoger. Do it.”
    Lieutenant Satch Baumgart, our boat support officer, was in our armored LCPL, cruising near the middle of the Bassac, using the boat’s surface-search radar to guide us to our insertion point. Satch and his men from Boat Support Unit One in Coronado ran our specially configured boats. He was lying just off our insertion point, ready to give us fire support if we needed it. We were not using secure radios, because in those days the encryption device for our PRC-25 VHF radio was bigger and heavier than the radio. If we needed to communicate with the River Patrol Force Tactical Operations Center (TOC) at Binh Thuy, Satch would use a code book to “kack up”—encrypt—a voice message.
    Bump squeezed my arm. “Take a look at that shit.”
    I took the night-vision device and put it to my eye. The greenish glow of the scope revealed nothing but a solid wall of vegetation. I knew from the maps that the area near the Long Tuan Secret Zone was covered with thick nipa palm along the rivers and canals, but this was worse than I’d expected. Moving through nipa palm is no fun. The plants grow very close together and the stalks of the plants are solid. I never could figure out if it was a shrub or a tree—not that it much matters.
    We’d been operating for more than two months. Our rules of engagement called for us to do our thing in areas that were thought to be inhabited only by the VC. We, unlike other forces on the river, were allowed to fire before being fired upon. The PBR patrols had to take a round or two before they could return fire. Sounds like a strange way to fight a war, but the Mekong Delta was inhabited by many Vietnamese who weren’t VC. Unless they fired first or you were in an area designated a free-fire zone, U.S. Navy forces couldn’t shoot.
    Tonight, our ambush site was on a canal in the western end of the Long Tuan Secret Zone, one of the most hostile areas in the Mekong Delta and a designated free-fire zone. The intelligence guys thought the canal was a major transit point for VC in the area. I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about fishermen breaking the dusk-to-dawn curfew.
    â€œWe’re about a hundred meters out, Lieutenant.”
    â€œRoger. Slow down and let’s drift for a minute.”
    As the boat’s twin outboard engines went idle, we moved slowly toward the riverbank. We all listened. Ears are better than eyes in