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End-of-Tour
Interview with Capt. Daniel Waldo Jr., et al.
70th Engineer Battalion
Interviewer: Maj. Paul B. Webber
Q: I'd like to begin by first asking you to provide me with some biographical
data on yourself just for the record, if you can just generally give me some
background information.
Waldo: My name is Daniel Waldo, Jr., Captain, serial number OF XXXXXX. I
graduated from
Q: Would you keep in mind here, what we're trying to do is just get basically a
commander's viewpoint of the operation, to include some of the problems that
you had, some of the
frustrations you had, and also the way you just went about accomplishing your
mission of upgrading this airfield and providing for the facilities that
eventually you hope to put in
there. You might begin by first telling me how you first received the mission
and generally what went on when you were told you were going to have to move
out with your company.
Waldo: It was about January when I was XO to the Company, Capt. Hall; Capt.
Philip Hall had the Company at the time. We had gotten word of the mission up
there to upgrade the runway, to put in a GCA and a TACAN pad for the Air Force
to move their equipment in on, and to make another parking apron to be able to
park three additional C-130s. There already was an existing parking apron. We
went up a couple times up to Kham Duc to look at it around January and
February, and our original completion date was 1 April, but then the mission
was postponed. For a period of time we were all ready to move out. We had
loaded up the equipment that we were taking with us, had it all prepared, had
the CONEXs all loaded, people ready to go, and then they cancelled the mission
and we didn't hear any more about it and we were touch-and-go on whether we'd
be going up there or not up until early April, about the 1st of April. And the
1st of April we got the word that USARV was planning on giving it a go again
and wanted to know how long it would take us to be prepared to go. Based on our
prior schedule, we told them we could be ready in a week to 10 days. About the
6th or 7th of April, they said it looked like it was a definite go. On the
night of 8 April is when they told us to be ready to leave on the 9th. So the
first planeload left on the 9th. As far as preparing, each platoon had a CONEX
to put all their tools, or two CONEXS to put their tools, platoon equipment,
ammunition, whatever they needed to take care of their platoon, and then we had
additional CONEXS for the motor pools to put all their equipment in, supply,
commo, the CP to put their equipment in. The equipment had to be stripped down
so it would fit in C-130s, which didn't make much modification of any equipment
except for the 5-tons taking the headache boards off. We loaded up eight 5-tons
that we were taking up with culvert material that we would need, some timbers,
and some other items, building material that we thought we'd need. Moving up there, there's a camp up there,
and then another platoon, and then another day or two of equipment, and then
another platoon, and we had planned on taking seven days to get the whole
company and everything up there. We would have made it in six, except one day
the weather was so bad they didn't even leave Pleiku Air Base. They told us in
advance that they wouldn't be able to get up there.
Q: When you got to the construction material, did you have to haul that up
there from here, or how did it get there?
Waldo: Yes, sir. Now, that was due to follow. The first seven days was to move
the company and equipment up, and then there was to be about four or five days
of hauling up material, and then there was a set schedule within the next week;
so many beds, cement, M-881 matting, and RC-3--were supposed to come up in
another week, so that you would pretty well space out the materials, much that
were needed. The only materials that had to be shipped up were the RC-3, the
M-881 matting, and cement.
Q: Do you have any idea about how many sorties this took to move you up?
Waldo: There were between three and four sorties a day for seven days to get
the equipment up, and we had... Up to the last count that we had, there was
somewhere around 50 or 60 sorties that had come in, all totaled, to move the
equipment.
Q: To keep you re-supplied after you were up there, too. All right, what was
your initial efforts after you arrived up there, say, when you had your company
close in after the first week?
Waldo: Well, as soon as the first platoon got in there, they started working
around the perimeter, getting it squared away, getting the hooches that we were
going to live in squared away.
The second platoon, when they arrived, they joined the effort. The third platoon, when they arrived, they
did too. The third platoon closed in on a Saturday morning, and the rest of
Saturday and all of Sunday was nothing but everybody working to get the
perimeter squared away and the hooches squared away; and then that Monday
morning is when we began going out on the different projects and actually
starting work.
Q: Did you have all the material you needed to start your work that day?
Waldo: Pretty much so. One platoon had to open a road to a sand pit, recon and
open a road to a sand pit that we needed to get the sand from. That took a day
or two to just recon. There were two possible routes to get sand from, and it
was a matter of finding which one had the best source of sand and which one was
the most accessible. And on one recon, we lost a jeep due to the failure in the
road. The foliage was so thick along the road that there was a hole in the road
that was covered up by foliage and the jeep hit it and the road slid from under
and it rolled down, and we immediately crossed that leg off our list of which
way we were going to get the sand. So after a couple days reconning, they went
out, they had the tools, the equipment; just the platoon tools and equipment is
all they needed to go out. Two bridges had to be reinforced, one had to be
completely rebuilt, and then there was a fallen tree, a rather large tree, that
was on the way, a couple of washouts that had to be taken care of, and some
earth slides, though there was no problem there. Another platoon had started
patching the runway. They had everything they needed--the air compressors up
there to start chipping out the failures, digging it out so that we could put
the patches in. And the other platoon was working on putting in the M-881
matting for the TACAN and GCA pads, and they had... We would like to have had
our dozers there, which was another problem that came up, but we got a grader
on it and the grader was able to handle it.
What happened on the dozers was, they were supposed to get two C-124 sorties to
get the dozers up there, and they kept hemming and hawing about it and they
said, "No, you can't have it, they can't do it, they can't land there,
they can't do this, they can't do that," and it looked like we were not
going to get the dozers up there at all, which would have been impossible to
complete the mission. Then they were thinking of bringing up 6s, but one day
some major flew in, Air Force major, to look the runway, and he said he came up
to see what the winds were like, the runway was like, the conditions were like,
and all this sort of stuff, and he went back and figured it out on paper and
figured he could land an EPF the next morning for the C-124, but he said it
didn't look good at all; he didn't like it, because both ends of the runway
have big hills and it was a matter of you have to drop in and get up.
Q: How about describing that just a bit. I've had somebody else say something
to that effect. What is that strip like in relation to the terrain around it?
Waldo: The strip was built by the French in the early '60s. It was a real good
strip.
Q: Early '60s?
Waldo: Right. This is what I've been told. I'm not sure; I've never looked into
it any further than that. It was supposed to be a hunting lodge for DM at the
time, ???? Go up and hunt
elephants and tigers. It was a 6,200-foot strip, but 1,200 feet of it on the
south end was not usable due to they had a plane crash there at one time and it
burnt and made some bad spots on the runway. But at both the north end and the
south end there were two large hills, and instead of getting a straight
approach... Well, you could get a straight approach from the
north end, but you have to come over the hill and then drop real quickly onto
the runway On the southern end, instead of making a direct approach, it was too
hard to make a direct approach, you had to make sort of a curved-in pass to
come in.
Q: Come in front of the hill.
Waldo: Right, just to get by it, and it was real thick foliage all around the
runway. In fact, when you fly into the place, fly into Kham Duc, it's just
nothing but real thick jungle and then all of a sudden there is it, the Special
Forces camp and the strip. The only thing that's up there are the Special
Forces camp and there was a village there, the village of Kham Duc, and all it
had in it was about six or seven non-dependents and the rest were dependents of
the CIDG people there.
Q: That's what the village consisted of?
Waldo: That's all it consisted of, maybe 100, 200 people.
Q: How did you get along with the Special Forces people, and how did you...
Waldo: Real good, no problem at all. They went out of their way. They had been
waiting for January for us to show up. They liked the idea of having more
Americans around the area, people that could carry a weapon. They had had some
scares earlier reference... They had worries after Long Vay fell of tanks
coming in. It was close enough to the Laotian border and there had been enough
activity between Dak Pec and Kham Duc as far as the NVA working on the roads
and that they had some tear that there was a possibility that they may go after
Kham Duc and try and overrun it or possibly bring tanks in. There were only
eight, well it
varied between eight and 15 or 16 Americans that were there, so they were very
happy to see us and happy to see what we were going to be doing on the runway,
plus having the equipment and people there to help them with little things they
needed.
Q: I'm going to ask you, now, how persuasive were they in saying, "Well,
we need a new bunker over here," or...
Waldo: Well, we had a real good working arrangement. We told them that anything
that they needed done, we would do if we had a piece of equipment that was not
being used or the time to do it. Our mission there came first, but if we had
equipment standing by, we'd definitely do whatever they wanted. So Capt.
Hendrickson, who was the American advisor, and they had a 1st lieutenant
Vietnamese camp commander, got together and they gave us a list of about 10 to
12 different things that they wanted done to include building a tank ditch at
one part of the camp to putting up a tank berm around the front of their camp
so that if they did get attacked by tanks, you'd have to raise up and show your
belly. They wanted an ammo pit dug. The town itself was planning on expanding
and having more people, so they wanted a
certain area in the town that had a lot woods and undergrowth cleared away for
them. Their parking lot/basketball court needed to be graded off, so we went
and did that. There were a lot of little things that we could do for them.
Q: Did you have any DEFCON between you and the Special Force people in the
event you got an attack, say, a night ambush or something like that?
Waldo: That was... Our only connection with the Special Forces up there the
whole time we were up there were under our own chain-of-command's control
basically. III MAF, being up in their area, did have some say on some things,
but as far as us and the Special Forces there, the only connection we had was
with the defense of the camp. We had everything organized between them and us
what would happen if something happened. We had radio
communication, special radios just to communicate between their camp and our
camp. We would fire some H&I fire; they would fire some on other nights.
They'd let us know. We did some night work and we informed them that we'd be
out on the runway out in the area, and they informed the Vietnamese on their
gates and around the area that we'd be out there, don't worry about it. Then
when we came in at night, we'd tell them we were all closed in. It was all
squared away in case anything happened. The basic plan there was they would
stay at their camp and defend it, we would stay at ours. If either one of them
got overrun, they'd try and make it to build up the other one. But if they were
close enough that if they tried to overrun one, they'd go after both of us.
Q: How far apart were your camps?
Waldo: Just across the runway. It was...
Q: Four hundred yards?
Waldo: No, not even that. Maybe 200 yards at the most. And then the only other
plan was that if it got overrun and we couldn't get out, then we had an escape
route to take out that
only my people and the Americans and the Special Forces team knew about.
Q: What would you be trying to do? Escape to where?
Waldo: E&E away from the camp to a pre-located pick-up point where we would
go and make radio contact and let them know that we had to get out.
Q: The dozers you need basically to clear the area for your new apron? Was that
it?
Waldo: Yes, sir, that's it. Had to get the rough earthwork done down there.
And, as I was saying, this major came up and he said he didn't think he'd make
it in, and the next morning, all of a sudden he had one of the nicest days we
had up there. The sky was just beautiful, and the C-124 came in He landed and
he brought our one dozer in and took off and was supposed to come back and pick
up our other one here at Pleiku and fly it up. He picked it up, flew up, and he
flew around the area, and all of a sudden he disappeared, and we found out
later he radioed in and said that he was being shot at, which nobody believes because
he was saying he was being shot at from two locations where there had been no
activity at all He did not like the idea of having to fly in there at all and
could hardly wait to get the plane unloaded and get out. Later on, we think we
know what happened. He said he saw a
flak, and they didn't have anything up there at the time shooting at planes. We
had C-130s all the time and none of them got shot at. Well, what happened is
the group pilots, when they flew up one day in the Beaver, another plane was
flying somewhere near them that was dropping propaganda leaflets, and it looks
like something flashing right by; and we think that's what happened to him. He
had a plane dropping propaganda leaflets near him and all he could see are
these things flashing right near you. We think that's what scared him. I'm sure
and the Special Forces people are sure that he didn't get shot at. But
eventually, a couple of weeks or so later, he showed up again with the other
dozer. He said he didn't want to come, but he had too many people telling him
he had to come. So we finally got both dozers up there working.
Q: Do you have any recollections of any particular headaches that you got
trying to get your work done as far as the engineer project went, things that
didn't go as planned, or things that you were supposed to do that you couldn't
do or something like that?
Waldo: The biggest problem we had at one time... Well, there were a lot of
little problems. First of all, they decided that we'd put in a solid cement
patch as opposed to concrete
patches due to the difference in the flexibilities in the pavement that was
already there, and we were playing around and we'd start digging out holes and
were ready to start patching, and we were waiting for Group soils lab to send us
the formula for the soil- cement ratio formula for what we should use up there.
None of us had ever worked with it before and we got held up a couple days
there because of that. We were waiting for it to show up and it didn’t come and
it didn't come. Finally it did come After looking back on it, I was speaking
with Mr. Forest, the civilian advisor up here at Group, who gave us all the
advice and everything we needed on soil-cement, because he's an authority on
it, and he convinced us on it, it's a good way to do it. However, that air
strip was so well built that its base course and the cobblestone that they had
set down on top of the macadam was so good that we should never have ripped it
up in order to put the soil-cement patches in.
Q: They had a cobblestone ??? surface?
Waldo: Underneath the asphalt, and it was just thick and well-laid. You could
tell they took a lot of time and effort. But we had ripped it up and now, if
anybody ever goes back, that stuff is probably the way not to do it. Don't use
a soil cement. Just go in with RC-3 and just put down layers and build up the penetration
asphalt that's there. But that was one problem,
waiting to get the soil-cement formula. The rains didn't bother us too much. Occasionally,
we'd get bogged down because of it, but they were basically out of their
monsoon season, so we were in the dry-weather season. The dozers or lack of the
dozers held us up.
Q: I recall the Group actually requested that the mission be postponed because
they thought the thing was going to be in the middle of the monsoon season.
That's looking at air weather data.
Waldo: I don't know where they got their information, because they kept saying
the same thing to us. When we went up in January and February, when we first
thought we were going up there, there was an American on the Special Forces
team that was serving his second tour at that Special Forces camp, and he said
that that's when they were going through their monsoons that they ended about
the first of April. And even when we went up, planning on going up again, he
told us the same thing.
Q: In fact, you did not have much rain.
Waldo: We didn't have that much rain at all. We had light showers every now and
then, but it was just due to the fact that it's up there in the mountains and
the clouds come in. It was not the monsoon season and the rains didn't bother
us at all.
Q: Did you get shut down at all for lack of supplies?
Waldo: Right. We went about seven or eight days with no planes being able to
make it in. It was right near the end of April and planes just couldn't get in.
It was so cloudy and so
overcast. We could hear them, they'd be flying over, but the strip is such that
it's got all these ???? Around that they won't come in unless they can see the
strip, so they have to have a break in order to get in. We were being re-supplied
with C-130s. Some Caribous did make it in, but not as many as usually did to re-supply
the Special Forces. We went about two days on using Special Forces diesel. They
gave us diesel in order to run the equipment. We had about two days that we ran
on their diesel and about a day and a half that we were down due to lack of
fuel. That was the only thing; just the fuel is what held us up. So actually,
if it wasn't for the Special Forces, we would have had about three and a half
or four days of no equipment running.
Q: As it was, a day and a half is all you...
Waldo: Right, a day and a half is about all we were out. In fact I came running
back here. I got a flight out of there. I went to Cam Ranh and from Cam Ranh
came up to Pleiku, because I
couldn't understand why we weren't getting anything. I thought somebody was
goofing off back here on us. And when I got back here I found out that
everybody in battalion was pushing like crazy, but the planes just couldn't get
in. They were leaving
Pleiku, but they couldn't...
Q: What about a chopper lifting up a bladder and something like that.
Waldo: The only thing is, it's too ???? for them. The only thing they could
have done was possibly go on into Dak To and then they would have had to drop
the bladder, sit down, fuel up, pick up the bladder, and come on up, and
choppers just weren't that accessible to fly that distance. But that was
probably the biggest problem we had there. If you didn't have the fuel, you
couldn't work.
Chow was getting low. We lived on C's the whole time we were up there.
Q: C-rations the whole time?
Waldo: The whole time we were up there we were eating C- rations, just because
we didn't have the facilities and couldn't count on the re-supply of any fresh
food.
Q: How did you like that?
Waldo: Didn't.
Q: You didn't.
Waldo: It wasn't bad.
Q: At any time?
Waldo: We did have some soups. Occasionally the mess sergeant would make ??????
meal out of something that one of the re-supply planes did bring up, but still
like something along those lines.
Q: But you had no refrigerator.
Waldo: We got fresh eggs on one re-supply run, so we had eggs and pancakes one
morning. But it was basically C's the whole time. In fact, when I came back due
to lack of during that
period when we didn't have any supplies, one of the things that I came back to
do was to try and get us switched to B's or something else just as a variety.
And, in fact, just before we had... The last plane that came in to re-supply us
before we had to evacuate did bring in B's, and we never used them.
Q: I guess that pretty well covers... I know your task assignments and
basically what you had to accomplish up there, so I don't think we need to go
into that. Did you have any problems with visitors up there trying to tell you
what to do or bypassing the chain of command or anything like that?
Waldo: Not at all. The only visitors that we had that came up that said
anything about the project was either the Battalion S-3, the Battalion
Commander, or the Group Commander, so there was nobody out of the chain of
command that...
Q: Anyone from III MAF?
Waldo: The only people... Special Forces came up, but the only thing they were
interested in was our connection with Special Forces. In other words, they'd
come over, look at our perimeter, look at our defensive ???? We had a couple of
Special Forces light colonels from
Q: What is this GCA and this TACAN?
Waldo: The GCA pad, I can't explain both of them myself. The GCA pad is a
Ground Control Air, and a TACAN is another sophisticated pad.
Q: What for, landing?
Waldo: For being able to instrument land and being able to guide the planes in.
Q: I assumed as much; I just wanted to be sure.
Waldo: That's why... The Air Force was due to fly in all this elaborate radar
and electrical equipment, and that's why we got a big kick out of all the
newspaper reports about the fact
that the camp was not important and that it had no strategic or military value,
but yet we knew that they were getting ready to bring in multimillion dollar...
Q: They were building up for something special.
Waldo: something was going to be up, although they never told us what it was
either.
Q: Describe how things started to get a little warm up there as a result of
???? Now during this time, prior to the NVA push on the camp, contact was very
light.
Waldo: Contact at Kham Duc had been light all the time, and we had made several
joking comments to the Special Forces there that now that we were there with
all our equipment, whatever VC or NVA were around the area would see all the
equipment and they'd start figuring something was coming too, and we told them
that we were going to bring increased activity for them, and it was a big joke
between them and us. About two or three weeks after we were there, they made
some contact around the area, and it got so they were making more and more
contact in and around the area. Then one day they had a patrol going out that
made contact and got rather involved just two to three miles east of the camp
and right on a mountain that overlooks the camp, and they ran and overtook,
after a couple-hour firefight, they took the top of the hill, and when they got
there the NVA had been well dug-in and they had a sand table of the whole camp
laid out.
Q: When was this?
Waldo: This was about three weeks before the big activity started. Then we got
word from the Special Forces chain of command that they thought the 2d NVA
Division was moving out of
Laos, coming somewhere near Kham Duc, moving into the Da Nang AO, because Da
Nang was at a point that if they could get this division in there, it would
upset the balance of power in Da Nang. And the Special Forces then went on a
mission of sending out patrols, trying to spot and locate this 2d NVA Division
so that they could get some indications of when they moved, what they were
moving, what direction they were moving in, and everything like this. And they
had increased contacts then and a detachment from there is down at the Camp
Ngok Tavak, which is about 5-10 miles south of Kham Duc, and they had increased
activity. In fact, about two weeks before the activity started, they brought in
a platoon of Marines, or I guess a battery because they had two l05s with them,
and their mission was to go down to Ngok Tavak and
defend Ngok Tavak.
Q: Is there a road between the two that you go over?
Waldo: There is a road, but you can't drive it. In fact, they were putting in a
request through channels at the time for us to go from, after we finished that
mission to build the road, from Kham Duc to Ngok Tavak because they had, I forget
how many rounds a day had to be gotten in to Ngok Tavak ???? and they didn't
have the air availability to do it. So, they moved in down to Ngok Tavak. And
everything, the activity increased and then about the 5th, 4th or 5th of May,
they said they thought that the NVA Division had passed Kham Duc. All along, we
figured that they would not touch Kham Duc because if you are engaged in any
large scale because it would pinpoint them and they'd have a source of getting
after them. We thought there'd be a possibility that we'd be harassed and
mortars and that, just to pin the Special Forces down at Kham Duc while the
Division passed by. So about five days prior to when everything exploded, we
figured that they had long been gone. Everything
started on about 0200 hours on 10, and at that time we came under mortar attack
at Kham Duc. Now, when I say we, Kham Duc came under mortar attack. The Special
Forces camp took all the rounds. On our side of the runway, we didn't take any
rounds at all. And at the same time, we got word that Ngok Tavak was under
heavy attack This went on... The mortar attack itself lasted, I guess, about an
hour at Kham Duc. We all went on alert and everybody stayed in the bunkers till
daylight, and at daylight we got word that they were going to reinforce Ngok
Tavak because they were still engaged down there.
Q: Was this the first mortar attack?
Waldo: This was the very first one. There was no activity against the camp
itself the whole time. Then they were moving a might force that was at Kham
Duc. They brought Chinooks in to move them to reinforce Kham Duc.
Q: From where? Do you have any idea?
Waldo: From Kham Duc. Kham Duc to Ngok Tavak, rather.
Q: Oh, to Ngok Tavak. Okay.
Waldo: They were taking the might-force people out of Kham Duc and flying them
down to Ngok Tavak.
Q: In Chinooks.
Waldo: In Chinooks. And they had moved some down when one of the Chinooks got
shot down at Ngok Tavak and another one got hit while it was on the ground. It
got worse and worse, and then it finally got to the point that they had to
evacuate Ngok Tavak. They got some of them out by chopper and the rest had to
E&E back to Kham Duc, and they were picked up en route back to Kham Duc. They did find ......
Q: Did some of them actually get back to Kham Duc after the...
Waldo: Yes, sir. They started walking back, and somewhere between Ngok Tavak
and Kham Duc they were spotted by choppers and choppers picked them up and
brought them in.
I see.
Waldo: But the Marines at Ngok Tavak got torn up real badly. They had something
like 13 KIAS and 20-plus WIAs. They had gotten in the perimeter right where the
Marines were and they were just flying all the medevac choppers right into Kham
Duc and they were just piling them up right there. The doctors, the Special
Forces doctor and two medics I had with me were over there just patching
everybody up, and then they brought in a whole bunch of medevac choppers and
then a Chinook or a C7A Caribou flew a whole bunch out.
Q: You were right there watching all this.
Waldo: Right. And then, this was all during the morning.
Q: of the 10th or the 11th?
Waldo: The morning of the 10th. It happened at 0200 on the 10th, that night.
And then about
REPORT2
OF 3
Q:
Had you been in contact with, personal verbal contact with the flexible forces
team chief at any time that morning?
Waldo: Right.
Q: He still thought it was just a case of a mortar attack?
Waldo: No. They knew something was up because of the
fact that they were going after Ngok Tavak and trying to overrun Ngok Tavak, but we figured until conditions were such that we couldn't, we'd just keep working on the project. In fact,
what happened
about a week and a half, maybe two weeks before this all happened, Capt.
Henderson, who was the advisor, went back to
another job, and they flew in Capt. Silva, the commander. But
the night of the 9th, when the Marines were getting well moved in and
ammunition was going down to Ngok Tavak,
Capt. Silva flew down
there on a resupply flight and couldn't get back to Kham Duc. And
when Ngok Tavak got hit
then, he got wounded down there and he was medevac'd.
So the morning of the 10th, Capt. Henderson was flown back in to take over the
camp, and I had spoken with him that
morning and he said they weren't sure exactly what was happening, that there
was rumors in the wind that some American infantry
element may be flown in to help secure Kham Duc. And in fact,
before the mortar attack came in the morning of the 10th, as I
said, we had people out along the runway working, and they told us
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 22
we had known by then that they were going to send in somebody from the Americal Division to help reinforce it. And
then about
again it was concentrated all around the Special Forces camp. Due to that, they
pinned my people down right on the strip and we got word out to them to just take cover wherever you are and keep your head low.
That's what they did, until I got word from my third
Platoon that was down at the southern end of the air strip
that
they had movement in the woods and that they were engaged in a
firefight. That's when the firefight started down
there. It
lasted for about an hour and a half, maybe two hours.
Q: What were they doing down on that end?
Waldo: Well, right next to the Special Forces camp, on the south of the Special
Forces camp, there's a little training camp just on the knoll of the hill
where, when some CIDG come in,
that's where they stay during training. And what it
appeared was that they were trying to get up and take that camp. There was
really nobody in it or just a few people, and it
looked like they were trying to sneak in and take that camp. And
if they could get in that camp with the bunkers that were there and the trench
line, they could really raise same hell in the area, and it appeared
that that's what they were trying to do, get up into that camp.
And they didn't expect my people to be down there and
spotted
them, so they got in a relatively goad size firefight. We sent a couple of
5-tons down to resupply them with ammo.
Q: You had radio communications with them?
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 23
Waldo: Right. We had radio communications with them.
Q: Who was the OIC of that ammo?
Waldo: Both Lt. Schrope and Lt. Morris were down
there. I don't recall whether they were there at the
time it started, but it was Lt. Schrope's platoon.
Shortly after it started, he got
down there and then Lt. Morris went down with some more
resupplies and I was getting ready to go down with
more ammo just as they said that they were starting to break contact and the
mortars had lightened up. So rather than keep them
down there in that exposed position, then I told them to pull back out.
Q: Was that platoon working on the strip down there?
Waldo: Right. They were working down at that end of
the strip, but they had taken cover on the side of the strip during
the mortars coming in.
Q: Oh I see, yeah.
Waldo: And so, when the mortars ceased and it looked like the NVA were breaking
contact, that's when I pulled them all back into our
perimeter, and then that was when we stopped working on the project. The rest
of that day, then, the Americal Division
flew in a battalion from the 196th. Actually, a company from the 198th came in
first and then the battalion from the 196th came in.
Q: During this time, did you have any communications with the battalion back
here?
Waldo: No. The funny thing was, we went up until about
two days, three days before this, we had no communications whatsoever with 42,
nothing at all. We would send couriers back on different
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 24
flights. We had had radio trouole. We had a 74 that
wouldn't
work and we couldn't get it to work, and we sent parts back, and the battalion commo sergeant came up just a few days before this and
finally got our radio in operation. So, during the bad
time when we really needed it, we did have communications back here,
real good communications. So, we informed them, we
called back to battalion. Well, we called them in the morning and told them
that we had had the mortar attack, that we had no casualties,
no
damage, and we were going back on the project. And
then we kept calling them continually then once the activity started.
About, right around noontime, between 1200 and 1300 hours, I was in my TOC. We
were trying to get some things squared away for the perimeter and general
planning for what was going on when...
Q: Well, had your mission changed?
Waldo: No, our mission was still the same.
Q: When ??? started coming
in?
Waldo: Our mission was still the same. Here's where
our mission changed. I was in the TOC and Gen. Stillwell, Maj. Gen. Stillwell,
came into my TOC.
Q: Is he from, what, the 196th or...
Waldo: No. He was the Deputy Army Commander or the Army Commander under III
MAF. He was the number one man as far as the Army goes I believe, under III
MAF, or the deputy to the number one man. He came in and asked me how things were,
if we had any casualties, any damage, and one thing or another. And then he
informed me that there was going to be a battalion from the 196th
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 25
Light Infantry moving in to help defend Kham Duc. And he informed me then that
my orders from III MAF were that I would be OPCON to this Infantry Battalion
and that I'd take all my orders from a Lt. Col. Nelson, who was the Battalion
Commander. He also said that all Americans would take their orders from the
Battalion
Commander, which would include, then, the Special Forces and then it would just
be up to Capt. Henderson to try and get the
Vietnamese to go along with the orders that he was receiving from Col. Nelson. So that's when our mission changed. We were
strictly OPCON to this battalion.
Q: Did you contact Col. Nelson then?
Waldo: He hadn't, he wasn't there at the time.
Q: Oh, I see.
Waldo: Shortly after Gen. Stillwell walked out, Gen. Koster
walked in, Maj. Gen. Koster, who was the Americal Division
Commander; the two of them flew up together. And we went over the whole thing
all over again and we got everything squared away, and he told me as soon as
Col. Nelson came in, which would be shortly, to see him and make whatever
arrangements we needed with him to
get squared away. .....
Q: Did he mention anything there about the possibility of an evacuation?
Waldo: No, none whatsoever. No.
Q: Okay.
Waldo: Then, later that afternoon, well, all during that day, then, at
different intervals, mortars would come in.
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 26
Q: Ground attacks?
Waldo: No ground attacks at all. It was all mortar. As the Americal
Division people would be arriving--they came in in
C-130s--they started going after the planes, trying to hit the
planes. And then the parking apron was right next to
our camp on the other side of the runway from the Special Forces, and this was
the first time that the mortars started hitting on our side of the runway. It didn't hit our camp. They went after the parking
apron as the planes came in.
Q: They must have observed fire, then, from some high spots around there.
Waldo: Right. I don't know
where the NVA had them, but they had a good FO, because he was definitely
putting them where he should put them. This went on all through the day as the Americal arrived. When Col. Nelson arrived, I went over and reported to him and told him what my orders were.
Of course, he already knew that we would be, and he was rather elated over the
fact that he had a whole Engineer Company under him now. He took both our
dozers and our bucket loaders and they went right to work digging in a
battalion headquarters for him. An officer that was going to be bringing in the
artillery came and saw me, and we squared out an area that he wanted cleared so
that he could clear out the area to bring the tubes in on Saturday.
Q: What day was this now? Friday?
Waldo: This was still all day Friday, Friday afternoon. And as his people, as
Col. Nelson's people moved out into different...
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 27
The way they set up the perimeter was, as you look at the runway, we are on the
west side of the northern end, and then the Special Forces camp was directly
east of us on the other side of the
strip. So he moved one of his elements north of the
Special
Forces camp and they would cover that sector. We covered the
northwestern sector. Then he tied in the rest of his people all the way around
and tied in, then, around the back of the strip
into the Special Forces camp.
TAPE 1, SIDE 2
Q: From the east? North to west, or east south to
west?
Waldo: The strip runs like this. Here's north.
detector teams, minesweep teams, and attach them to
each one of
his companies and elements to sweep the area that they were
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 28
setting up in and out in front of it. This lasted a couple hours, checking
everything out. And then, as I say, our equipment was
digging them in, clearing areas away.
Q: Was most of their perimeter in the cleared area or was it in the jungle
area?
Waldo: It was just in the clear area before you get into the jungle area Part
of it was mixed, actually, and they had no
barriers or anything. It was just a matter of digging in. Our
trucks hauled stuff around for them. At this point, we had a
whole, all our M-881 matting was there, and at this point we said the heck with
it, we didn't care what anybody said, and we started breaking open the M-881
matting and gave it to them as overhead
cover and bunkers. The C-130 pilots that were there, we started moving them around. We had the only operational forklift at the time,
and he unloaded all their equipment that had to be unloaded by plane, plus he moved around all the equipment for him. There was
still a lot of ammunition that had to be moved around,
and the forklift did this. So the remainder of the day we did nothing but
support. We supported them for the remainder of Friday. And
about 1900 hours that night was the last mortar attack came in,
and that whole Friday night, early Saturday morning, there wasn't a thing. It
was just peaceful and quiet the whole night; nothing happened.
And bright and early,
Q: Again with mortars.
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 29
Waldo: Again with mortars. And then that was,
the whole day was just on and off. They'd come in and
mortar for about 10, 15 minutes and then nothing for an hour or two, and then
they'd
mortar again. All during this time, they still hadn't
hit our
camp.
Q: What about the other posts? Do you know if they had
any probes?
Waldo: No, they had nothing big on any of the outposts. The outposts normally were manned by CIDG from the Special Forces, but they moved...
On three of the outposts, they put jeeps up there with 106 recoilless and the Americal reinforced it with American troops on the
outposts, and they didn't have any large activity at
all. That morning about
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 30
Kham Duc. The NVA were
interested in either keeping everybody
pinned down in there or actually trying something there. And
when the water was cut off, we figured he was starting to play around with the
water supply, knowing that was our only water supply. So
I had sent out a patrol along with the Americal to
check out the pipeline. That was when the Huey got
shot down, and they were
right near the area. Lt. Lainer and these other
people were right near the area, so they went right over to the chopper, and my
people, along with the Americal, secured the chopper
and the area around the chopper and also went out and tried to find his rocket
pellets which he dropped. He ought to rotate it in, so he landed without
ruining the plane, but he was out there in the boonies.
And my people and the Americal,
they went out and secured the
chopper until they could get the crew out. And one of
the
Chinooks that was actually bringing in supplies and was going to go back to get
supplies, he set down and picked the Chinook up, or picked the Huey up and took
him out, and nobody got hurt from
that. But then they knew that they were also in the
mountains
setting up 50s, firing at the planes. The remainder of that day there was
nothing much until about 1400-1500. I got a call that Special Forces wanted to
see me because they wanted me to talk to their Lieutenant Colonel back in
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 31
pulling us out of the area. So I told him what we
needed and then informed him that before I could leave the area, it would have
to be cleared by Col. Nelson, that I was completely under him now.
So they said, "okay, don't worry about it." I came back, called
Battalion, told them that somebody was trying to extract us,
and that...
Q: Called here.
Waldo: Called back here to Pleiku, told them that I
was... They knew I was OPCON at that time, then, to this Infantry
Battalion, although I couldn't tell them who put us that way
because I didn't have any SOI that covered the Americal
and they didn't have it back here, but through finagling around they got
the idea that a couple of Generals had visited us, and that's what happened. So, they knew what the situation was, but they
didn't... They knew my OPCCN situation, but they didn't
know the situation about the evacuation or anything. In fact, Battalion
was completely lost. The only thing they knew about it was
whatever I'd radio back to them. So I told them that
the Special Forces was trying to evac us, but that I
told them that we
couldn't leave unless the Americal told us or if I
got word from here, yes or no. It was at that stage of the game.
The Air Force had sent in a tailpipe element, one of these
jeeps with all the big radio equipment in the back of it that
controls the air, and there was a Major attached to that Later on in the
afternoon, he came up to me and wanted to know what we needed, and I told him
that I just told Da Nang.
And he said,
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 32
"Well, Tan Son Nhut wants to know." He
said, "USARV is the one
that's going to pull you out," so I gave him all the facts and I told him
that I couldn't leave until the Americal Battalion
Commander told me to go or unless I got word from my own chain of command. I
went and spoke to Col. Nelson and he said, "No." He said, "I
don't know anything about it," and he said, "You stay
here until I tell you otherwise." So I said,
"Well, that's the
way I'm playing it right now." So we played this game
all day
long between the Special Forces, the Air Force, and the Americal
and calling the people back here about whether we were going or
wouldn't go or would go, and finally about 7:00 or 8:00 that
night, I finally got word from back here in my Battalion that we would be
extracted, that arrangements were being made to send up C-130 sorties, they
hoped Sunday but they couldn't be sure, that we should start getting the
equipment ready and be prepared to
move on.
They told me what equipment, if I had to leave, to leave, and what equipment,
if I had to leave, what to bring back. What I mean here is,
we had a lot of problem getting this forklift up
there because the Air Force claimed it was overweight. They'd
flown it up there twice, but I'd been told that if we had any
trouble, leave the forklift, abandon the forklift, and I had been given
detailed instructions what to do with my D7Es, because no
C-124 was coming to get them, and to bring out what I could on the C-130s.
Q: ??? and bring it up ???.
.VNIT.214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 33
Waldo: So, we had started preparations that night to leave the next morning.
People loaded up all their gear, we loaded up the CONEXs,
we made rosters of who'd go on what flights, and
finally that night, before we went to sleep that night, we were
sguared away that starting Sunday morning we'd be
getting five
flights in the morning and five flights in the afternoon. ???
that night was five planes, a total of 25 sorties,
five planes in the morning and the afternoon for two and a half days till we
got everything out.
Q: Did you have any problems, then, with Col. Nelson? Did he
agree that this was...
Waldo: No, because I had told him earlier that I was going strictly by his
rules unless I had gotten something from my chain of command to counteract it,
that I wouldn't go by the Special
Forces or the Air Force Major; it would have to come either
through him to stay or go or from my Battalion to stay or go.
Q: So this was perfectly okay by him when you started telling him that your
battalion was going to...
Waldo: At that time, he told me... Well, actually, it was late Saturday
afternoon when I was talking to him about it,
telling him that I was in a bind because I had three or four light colonels
telling me one thing and I didn't know which way to turn, and that's why I told
him that this is the way I was going to play it. If he told me to stay and my
Battalion told me to stay I'd stay; if my chain of command said to go, that as
long as my chain of command was willing to back me, then I'd go no matter what
he
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 34
said, and he pretty well understood the situation and agreed. And he informed
me at that time, Saturday afternoon, he said that--all he referred to him was
as a General; I imagine it was Gen. Koster, I'm not
sure--had just left Kham Duc.
He had been in and out the whole time and was flying back to make the decision
on whether
everybody would be evac'd or
not. But as I said, Saturday night it was squared away
that we were going to be evac'd, agreed by my chain
of command and the other one. ???? going back to make
the decision. So the way we sat that night, then, and
we were all
squared away; we were prepared to move. We had the equipment
lined up.
Q: Was the dozer disassembled?
Waldo: We had started disassembling the dozers. The dozers we had planned to
move out on the last day so that we'd have time to get
the rest of the...
Q: You assumed it was going to take two and a half days.
Waldo: Right, two and a half days, and the dozers were
planned to go on the second and third day. So,
as I said, it was real easy to move out because we had rolling stock. All our
CONEXs, the ammo we were going to leave with the
Infantry, the C- rations that we had here we were going to leave with the
Infantry, all expendable type items we were leaving, and we were going to
leave the CONEXS. So basically, everything I had to
put on a
plane we would either be able to drive on or walk on. So
that's the way it sat Saturday night, and everybody went to sleep.
As I said, the whole time we were sleeping on our perimeters
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 35
in our bunkers, and I was sleeping in the TOC, and about 3:00 in the morning
one of the radio operators woke me up and said,
"Something's not going right." So I said,
"What do you mean,
something's not going right?" And we were on the Americal
Battalion's push the whole time. And he said,
"They're having
trouble someplace." And, sure enough, as it
progressed on, all
the outpost was being attacked. During this time, then, I was
back in communications with the Battalion, and they kept saying, "Yeah,
the planes are going to come up to get you, the planes
are going to come up to get you." And I said,
"okay." I said, "Just let them know that we'll be ready and it
doesn't look good, so as soon as they land, I'll load them and we'll get the
hell out, and what we can't get out, then all well and good." So he said,
"Okay. The planes will be out; no sweat."
By daybreak,
Q: How did you find this out?
Waldo: Through the radio reports coming back. Some of the... At one outpost, they had two or three men
that were
wounded inside the bunker and a few more that had gotten out and that were just
down the slope, and the NVA were all around the
bunker, but, miraculously, didn't bother them. The
other outpost radioed back that they had to leave their position, that they had
gotten overrun and...
Q: This radio traffic, then, from the outpost to the Battalion CP that you
were...
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 36
Waldo: Right, that's how we found out.
Q: I see.
Waldo: That morning, the sky was relatively clear, but there was a lot of
ground fog. The Special Forces camp came under a real heavy ground attack on
this east side, and there was
reported...
Q: A real ground attack.
Waldo: The first real ground attack. And there was
reported movement around the northern and southern end of the strip, enemy
movement, and there was a real thick ground fog right up to our barrier and
right around the Special Forces, and it was perfect for them. And we didn't get any activity in ours at all, any ground
attack. Finally, it cleared up and the sky was clear and the jets and the Sky
Raiders and everything came back in, and it was that morning that we had the
first B-52 riddled on Hill 676. The hill that I told you before that they had
assaulted a couple weeks ago and they found the sand table, well, this was
what they thought was one of the prime positions that one of their FOs were in, and they had a B-52 raid on that that morning.
Then, it was that morning somewhere around
Q: Excuse me. Were you having tac
aircraft support in the area during that attack?
Waldo: Right, all the time. We had, Friday was a lot of choppers, gunships.
Saturday was a mixture of gunships and Sky
Raiders, and all day Sunday it was nothing but fixed-wing. In
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 37
runway and he had been hit. The whole tail end was aflame and you could see it
coming right in. The pilot tried to bring it in as easy as he could, but he was
losing all his power. The crew were standing by the
doors getting ready to jump, and it landed and
managed to get the tail end, which was aflame, pretty well set
down. But when he went to get the nose down, it went
too hard and it hit hard and rolled, and you could see the crew falling out of
it. It took a few minutes, and then all of a sudden it went up in
a ball of flames, and by some act of God, they all got out of it. All of them
got out of it. In fact, when my 1st Sergeant, who was evac'd later on, was up in the hospital where some of them
were, and they told him they all got out of the Chinook. And
at the
same time he went down, right in the middle of the strip down here at the
southeast end of the strip, a Sky Raider went down. He
just went diving right in on the side there and the pilot of it
jumped, parachuted out, and he made it in.
At this time we realized that things were in a bind, and I radioed back and
said, well, they kept saying the planes were
going to come in. And I said, "Well, if they come in, you'd best tell
somebody that they ought to have some fire escort or some
sort of escort, because they're not going to be able to just fly right in and
pick us up and fly right out because they've already had two planes shot down
today. And it was shortly thereafter
that the word came down that we would go out with just people.
Q: Okay. How did you get this?
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 38
Waldo: What happened was, the Americal Division
called us, the Battalion called us, and said a C-130 was coming in and that I
should load up all the people, that I load it up as full as I
could. So I said, "Okay. Are we still taking equipment?" He
said, "No." He said, "Right now, take your people." So I
called back to Battalion and told them that it looked like we were going to get
out, but it was just going to be people and what we could carry, and they said
to me, "Okay, disable the equipment so it can be recovered at a later
date."
Q: What time was this about?
Waldo: Oh, about
meantime, they had called and requested that we go out and do
whatever we could to get that Chinook off the runway so the planes could land,
and that's when Lt. Lainer
went out with my bucket-
loader operator and tried to move it out of the way. And
they had moved part of it and then, as they moved this other part, as I was
saying, Lt. Lainer was trying to tell the bucket
operator to slow down, but he went into it too fast and flames shot up
underneath it. Smoke engulfed them, so they had to get out. In the
meantime, we were frantically trying to get one of our dozers back together
again, because it was disassembled, so that it could
go down there.
Q: Did you have the blade off it?
Waldo: We had the blade off and the push arms. The tracks were still on. But basically the blade and the belly pan and
items like that. So all the mechanics were working like crazy
to
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 39
try and get the dozer back together again.
Q: Were you still getting mortar around?
Waldo: All Sunday was continual. It was no more sporadic; they were doing it
all the time. And so finally the bucket loader was
gone. We couldn't use it. At the time, I had thought
it was really gone, but, as I said, later on somebody
was able to jump up on it and move it out. So they
finally got the dozer squared away and the dozer went out and he started moving
it as the C-130
appeared. So, this is when I had people ready to go to
get out of the area and to get on to this C-130. The way that our camp was set
up in this area here was, we had a front gate right here and this went down to
the parking apron, then the runway ran right
here, and our perimeter went down and around like this, and we had trenches
around the whole thing. And I had my first platoon...
Our defensive perimeter normally was just like this, first,
second, third, and Headquarters, so in order to get these people out, I had my
1st and Headquarters people prepare to get on this C-130. So the dozer operator
went down and cleaned it all off.
In the meantime, they had called me and asked if the C-130 could land even if
we couldn't get it cleared, and I had told them yes,
if he would land it as close to this end as he could or else just fly over the
Chinook and came in. But anyway, it was cleared
enough. He came in, he landed, and he went right up into the area where the
Chinook was, turned around.
Q: The Chinook was not cleared off the runway at that time?
Waldo: It was pretty well cleared. It would have been
more
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 40
cleared if the C-130 pilot wasn't so anxious to set
down, but we had gotten all the big chunks out. There were little pieces lying
around
Q: Well, then, he was able to taxi right by it, past it.
Waldo: Right. Well, he taxied right up to it and then
turned around. He had enough landing room without going deep into all the mess.
So I had people standing by to get on that plane, and
they were all in this area here getting ready to go out. And
as the
C-130 came in and landed, a whole bunch of the Infantry people on this side
started running down the airstrip after them. As soon as he stopped, they were
loaded up.
Q: From the Americal?
Waldo: Right. We had... What I had planned on doing
was, as soon as he got down here and stopped taxiing, we'd
run the
people out, because the mortars were coming in all around. They were coming in
around
then just run them down and get them in. I guess due to prior
experience, the Americal people knew you had to run
after the
plane as it was coming in, and that's just what they
did.
Q: At that time, did you know that there was any plans
to evacuate the Infantry as well?
Waldo: No, because they just told us that we were getting all our people out,
and they never told me that they were going
too. It wasn't until later on, right around the C-130
time and
.VNIT 214, Capt- Daniel Waldo 41
after it came in, that they informed us that everybody was being evacuated and
that this Major, in conjunction with... The Air
Force Major, in conjunction with the S-3 of this Battalion, we'd
coordinate what people would go on what planes.
Q: You learned that at the time the C-130 came in. Okay.
Then who had the authority to evacuate the area?
Waldo: Well, actually they were going to move this other Infantry element out
first. They were supposed to go out first
thing in the morning, and they were from the 198th. Some of the people that were left from the 198th were going out first, and
then we were going out second.
Q: On the second plane, the second element.
Waldo: Well, it would have been the second plane, but they decided,
when things got bad, they decided to keep this 198th
company there and get us out first. The original plans were this other element
was going to go first This was before things got
real bad. In fact, they were going to try and get them
out
Saturday, so they were still planned on going out before we were. But then when
it really got bad and they realized that something was going on, that they were
going to try and overrun Kham Duc,
they decided to keep that Infantry element there and get us out
first, so that's why we were supposed to get on this first C-130.
Q: Well, then, what changed the plans?
Waldo: Them running and getting on the C-130 before we
could.
Q: Yeah, but obviously they were told to go.
.VNIT 214, Capt. Daniel Waldo 42
Waldo: We don't know, because... This
is the way it went.
Q: In other words, as far as you know, you were still
supposed to get on that plane.
Waldo: Right In fact, I called the Major and asked him what the story was and
he said, "Well, you were supposed to load," and I said, "Well I
can't load it with all these Infantry
people," and a lot of Vietnamese civilians, too,
got on the plane. And I said, "Can't do it,"
so he said, "Well, okay, just stand by your radio. We'll get coordinated
on the next one," and all, and so I said, "Okay, no problem." It
served them right. Either
mortar started coming in around the plane too, and I don't
know
whether it was mortars, debris from the Chinook or whatever it
was, but he got a flat tire and had to pull into the parking apron and they all
unloaded. He couldn't get off. And
then they
started sending in... Well, from here on it was a real confusing deal. They had
Chinooks come in and take some people out.
REPORT
3 OF 3
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US Army: Kham Duc -3 of 3 |
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Last update: 2004-01-23 |