Delta Force by Charlie A. Beckwith Page A

first-class guy. I trusted my life with my own sergeant major, Bill DeSoto. I was glad he was along for the ride.
    I also had with me a new operations officer. TommyThompson was to go home in two weeks, and Major A. J. Baker had just arrived in country. He was a great big boy we called Bo who had played football at the University of Arkansas. He had arrived in Nha Trang on the 19th and on the 21st he was with us in the jungle outside of Plei Me. What a way to get his whistle wet! I asked him to bring up the rear of our small column. We moved out.
    At approximately 2000 hours we were close enough to the camp to hear the shooting. I got the camp on the radio and they came in clearly. Someone said to me, “Come on in and join the party.” That made me angry. I knew people were dead and more were dying, and I didn’t perceive this to be a goddamn party. I had also decided not to go into the camp that night. My sixth sense told me if I attempted to enter the camp, those inside might take us for the enemy; and if anyone on the perimeter was trigger-happy, it would end badly. I radioed back to Pleiku and informed Bill McKean that I would enter the camp at dawn. Bill DeSoto and I did a quick recon of the unimproved single-lane dirt road we’d been moving parallel to, which ran into the camp. When we returned to the column, Bo Baker ran up and said, “Major, Tut’s back.” I followed him—there were the two Ranger companies. Tut said words to the effect that he would have lost face if he’d left me.
    We went on half-alert that night, that’s half the force awake and half asleep. I slept for three hours and was awakened on the 22nd before the sun came up. After Bill DeSoto got the column up we eased on about 300 yards to our left flank and began to slowly go down the side of the road. We hit a ridge above the camp, maybe 800 yards out, and from there I could look down into the NVA positions. I noticed a position the Communists had set up to ambush any relief columns that tried to enter the camp. For some reason it was unoccupied. I was damn glad. I told my guys and Major Tut it would take us too long to reach the camp continuing through the jungle. “My plan is to veer off to the east, hit the road just as it goes over the hill, then run like hell to the camp gates.”
    We evidently caught the enemy by surprise. Once on the road we dashed for the camp and took some light fire. A Vietnameselieutenant was killed. So, too, was a newspaper photographer who, without permission, had gotten on one of the choppers back in Pleiku and had come with us. He had long blond hair. The bullet took him through the side of the face. Four or five others received minor wounds. Within a half hour everyone was in the camp. The first thing I noticed on going through the gate was the Montagnard tribesmen who had been killed while defending the camp; they were still lying in the wire. I mean everywhere. Dead people. Oh, shit, I thought, there’s going to be a lack of discipline in here. If they can’t pick up that kind of thing then, man, there’s some problems in here. I was right. There were about sixty other dead Montagnard soldiers stuffed into body bags and stacked up like cordwood. The smell was terrible.
    The Special Forces captain in charge of the camp was Harold Moore. I let him know quickly that I was the new mayor of Plei Me. Shaped like an equilateral triangle, the camp sat in a slight bowl and was surrounded by barbed wire. There was a trench system that ran throughout the inside of the camp. About ten wooden buildings with corrugated metal roofs made up the interior. The outside of the camp was usually occupied by the Montagnard soldiers’ families. Needless to say, under siege the families were now all inside. The camp was crowded and it was dirty. A thick red dust covered everything. It was in turmoil. The Vietnamese camp commander, Captain Moore’s counterpart, stayed in his