By Andrew P. O’Meara, Jr.
Colonel, United States Army, Retired
GCC/Staff
Sept 1, 2011

The following events occurred in South Vietnam during the summer of 1968.

The combat action had a history of bad blood. Following the assumption of command of the 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment by Col. George S. Patton, III, the Regiment earned a reputation for hard fighting based upon a series of victories over the North Vietnamese Army.

The success of the Regiment caused resentment by Patton’s peers, principally the 1^st Brigade Command of the 1^st Infantry Division.

Regimental intelligence reports identified contacts with the Dong Ngai Regiment, formerly a Viet Cong unit that suffered massive casualties during the Tet Offensive.

Rebuilding the regiments posed a problem for the enemy. Local recruiting was impossible – the young men of the region had been recruited and most had died in the offensive.

The unit was rebuilt with North Vietnamese soldiers to preserve a proud, battle-tested communist unit.

The Regimental Intelligence Section produced intelligence reports that identified base areas from which the enemy unit operated in the north western sector of our area of operation east of Lai Khe.

The 1^st Brigade Commander challenged our intelligence and requested that he be allowed to conduct a major operation in the area.

The Brigade mounted a large operation that swept the area and made no enemy contact.

At a dinner held at the 1^st Division Headquarters following the unsuccessful operation, the Brigade Commander announced that the intelligence reports of the Blackhorse Regiment were false – the base area identified by the Regiment was not occupied by the enemy.

Colonel Patton was in attendance at the dinner. He listened to the criticism of the Blackhorse intelligence, but he said nothing.

Following the dinner Patton returned to his Headquarters, went into the Operations Center and got the 1^st Brigade Commander on a secure radio net.

He then called me over and said the 1^st Brigade Commander told the Division Commander that their sweep of the northern portion of our area of operations found no enemy units – our intelligence was wrong.

Patton then handed me the hand mike and said straighten this out. I spoke to the Brigade Commander and said that our intelligence holdings were based upon solid reporting and that our intelligence summary was accurate.

Patton took the hand mike from me and ended the discussion saying our intelligence holdings were at odds with his report to the 1^st Division Commander.

The next morning Colonel Patton called for me to accompany him to the Division Headquarters for the Commander’s daily operational update.

Upon landing Patton headed directly to the Headquarters of the 1^st Brigade.

Their morning briefing had just ended as we entered the briefing tent. The Brigade Commander stood up and greeted Patton and then he spoke to me challenging my contradiction of his remarks of the previous evening.

I was not the same officer I had been when I joined a Vietnamese infantry company in 1962 during my first tour of duty, my baptism of fire.

At the time, I had no way of knowing how I would respond in combat – would I be equal to the challenge or not? After a year of combat operations, I was a proven fighter.

I had seen my friends die in battle. The communists took no prisoners when they overran villages loyal to President Diem or Roman Catholic villages that fled North Vietnam in 1954; and there were no survivors.

These villages contained the families of our soldiers, who had befriended me and treated me like a son. Their ashes mingled with the ashes of the huts of the village.

Their memory haunted me. I become an angry combatant, who fought to avenge the loss of my friends and their loved ones.

I had a hair trigger temper and minced no words – early signs of PTSD that haunted me years later.

I responded to the Brigand Commander’s challenge by saying: “The enemy was there before you went into the area. They were there, while you swept the area; and they are there now.

And I am going to find them and we are going to kill them.” My voice was loud, angry and showed no respect for the senior officer.

There was not a sound in the tent. The brigade staff was present and witnessed my angry contradiction of their Commander.

George Patton broke the silence and said to his fellow Commander: “Let’s go listen to the Division Briefing,” and he turned and left the tent. I followed him.

I would never have spoken to Colonel Patton in that fashion. He was my coach and mentor. He was more like a father to me than a Commander. But I had no respect for a man, who would denigrate my commander, my work and our unit’s reputation in the presence of the Division Commander.

He never did it again. Patton knew me and he knew that a confrontation would clear the air – it also made a life-long enemy. No apologizes were offered.

The man had been out of line attacking the reputation of the Regiment. My defense of the Regiment, while blunt, was called for and went unchallenged.

Shortly thereafter the Regiment launched a reconnaissance of the area in question. A squadron tank company led the reconnaissance through clearings that had once been the center of a French rubber plantation.

The squadron soon found itself in a hot fire-fight. It erupted when one of the tanks collapsed a tunnel complex, reveling extensive enemy underground facilities with combat tunnels leading to spider holes and well concealed, fighting positions.

The Air Cavalry Troop supported the unit in contact. Colonel Patton told me to join him as he headed to his chopper. We flew to the area of contact, dismounted, while Sergeant Major Squires had the pilot orbit the area so that he could maintain radio contact with the operations center.

I entered the tunnel complex with members of the Aero Rifle Platoon in search of documents that would establish the identity of the enemy. The Regiment cleared the complex after several hours of fighting.

When the area was secured, we flew back to the Regimental Headquarters. Our search of the tunnels revealed that we had made contact with the K4 Battalion of the Dong Ngai Regiment, as reported in the Regimental Intelligence Summary – the source of the earlier controversy and confrontation.

While we cleared the enemy tunnel complex, Sergeant Major Squires captured an enemy prisoner. He was walking along the railroad track that parallels highway 13.  Landing the chopper, Squires apprehended the man, who accompanied us back to the Regimental Headquarters sitting on the floor of the chopper.

The prisoner was turned over to the interrogation team, who searched the prisoner and began questioning him.

The search of his pack revealed wooden, hand-carved replicas of the seals of all of the South Vietnamese provinces in the region. 

The workmanship was highly skilled resulting in seals that could pass for the official seals of the provinces.  The owner of the seals could produce fake identification papers for communist agents or troops infiltrating the area.

The interrogation team asked for an explanation of how the young soldier had come to possess fake seals that posed a security threat to the provinces in question; but he was not talking.

When I turned in for the night and lay my weary bones upon my cot, the interrogation team was still hard at work.

At two o’clock in the morning Captain Ralph Rosenberg shook me. He explained that the prisoner was talking. He admitted he was the clerk of Nam Truc, the intelligence officer of the North Vietnamese Corps controlling enemy units north of Saigon.

Ralph explained that Nam Truc was one of the ten most wanted men in the Vietnamese III Corps Tactical Zone.

He continued saying that the North Vietnamese soldier agreed to lead us to the location of Nam Truc.  He volunteered the information that Nam Truc had a broken arm.

As I pulled on my uniform and laced my boots, Ralph produced a map. He showed me the location of the enemy Corps Intelligence Section. Ralph recommended an air assault at first light.

The enemy would have noted the missing intelligence clerk, flushed from hiding by the firefight with the K4 Battalion. The enemy would not linger long in a location that could be compromised. We had no time to lose.

I went to the sleeping quarters of the operations officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Dozier. It consisted of a small wooden shed built by the engineers to house fuel and lubricants for the 120 KW generator that powered the Headquarters.  He told the engineers to find a new home for their petroleum and he moved in.

The shed had a corrugated steel roof and wooden siding, an improvement over the tents shared by the rest of the staff. The shelves provided a secure location to mount radios that allowed him to monitor Regimental and Division radio frequencies.

With the volume of the radios at max he could keep track of reports of enemy contact through the night, despite the continual drone of the 120 KW generator a few feet away.

I woke Jim and told him over the roar of the generator and the radio traffic that we had a lead on the location of a senior enemy officer. He was the enemy Corps intelligence officer – one of the ten most wanted men in III Corps. We had captured his clerk, who agreed to show us his location.

We needed to launch an air assault at first light to have any chance of capturing the man. Dozier slept in his uniform less boots. I showed him the map with the target clearly marked.

He took the map and headed to the Tactical Operations Center. Dozier wrote the operations order, called the commander of the Air Cavalry Troop and told them to launch at first light picking up the prisoner and the intelligence team at the Headquarters, who would guild the troops to the target.

I stood on the edge of the helipad with Ralph, the prisoner and the interrogation team. The choppers set down and the commander motioned for us to accompany him in his command and control ship.

The sun was just cresting the horizon as we lifted off and headed in the direction of the target.

The Air Cav Troop commander directed his men to secure the area and an infantry squad accompanied us into a dense bamboo forest. We found nothing. We brought the prisoner forward to lead the way. He stooped to the ground in a small clearing under the bamboo foliage.

Brushing away the bamboo leaves with his hands, he exposed a wooden trap door counter sunk in a frame – the entrance to the enemy intelligence section.

I pulled the trap door open and looked down into the tunnel. A pair of eyes stared back at me. They were completely defenseless. Any resistance would be met by a grenade attack.

The first man to come out of the tunnel had a brace on his arm. He had to raise his arms above his head to exit the tunnel entrance. This was our man, complete with broken arm. In my best Vietnamese I introduced myself saying: “How do you do Nam Truc. I am Major O’Meara, Intelligence Officer of the 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment.”

He began to shake uncontrollably. We led him and the other prisoners to the waiting choppers for the return trip to the Headquarter.

Within a few minutes the birds were landing at the Regimental Headquarters. I said to the Ralph; “We should be able to get some valuable take from Nam Truc.”

 Ralph was quick to differ. He explained that Nam Truc had information on a much larger area of operations. We needed to take him to the Vietnamese III Corps, who alone had the background to formulate relevant questions and understand Nam Truc’s responses.

I checked the time. It was 0900 hours on 1 January 1969. We loaded Nam Truc in the back seat of our jeep alongside Ralph. The interpreter drove and I sat in the passenger seat for the trip to the Corps Headquarters.

It was New Years day and the Vietnamese Staff was on minimum staffing to allow the soldiers to have time with their families. We showed our identification at the gate and were admitted.

We pulled up in from of the building housing the intelligence section. It was a French colonial structure consisting of a long low stucco building with large veranda and large windows to allow the cool morning air to flow through the building.

The door to Colonel Cong’s office was open. As the III Corps G2, he was not observing the holiday. I knocked on the door and peered into the office. Colonel Cong was behind his desk and his expression was an angry scowl.

He wanted no interruptions. I stepped into the office and announced: “Sir, we have a New Year’s Day gift for you. We have Nam Truc out in the jeep.”

Colonel Cong jumped up and ran out the door and looked down into the jeep and spied his North Vietnamese counterpart. Colonel Cong began shouting instructions and guards came running. They escorted Nam Truc away.

I introduced Ralph to Colonel Cong, who immediately invited us in. We sat at a table in the center of the office. Colonel Cong shouted instructions and a soldier appeared with tea. When we were all served, he asked how we captured Nam Truc. We told our story.

The obvious question was why didn’t we take him to the American II Field Force Headquarters?

The obvious answer was that we recognized that Colonel Cong had no peers in the intelligence business. He would be able to obtain more information and make greater use of the responses.

After we finished our tea, Colonel Cong invited us over to his desk and showed us the papers spread across it. They were letters removed from a courier pouch on their way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

They were delayed long enough to be steamed open, photographed, resealed and replaced in the mail pouch for return to the courier. It was marvelous intelligence achievement.

Intelligence agencies are much like newspapers. Each one is in competition with the next to score the big story, which we had just given Colonel Cong.

He would never forget our New Year’s Day gift and our relationship with III Corps was exceptional throughout my stay in South Vietnam.  

 

Source: Stolen History

Editor’s Note: Colonel Andy P. O’Meara’s been featured in dozens of publications, published several exceptional titles including; ‘Only the Dead came home’ as well as ‘Accidental Warrior’.

He graduated with the 1959 class of WestPoint and continues his writing, advocacy work and research studies today.

One such program, ‘Science on the cutting edge: Hormonal impact on psychosocial dysfunction as related to PTSD’ is directed by O’Meara, Annie Hamilton, Scientific Researcher and Writer and several other figures within the military, intelligence, medical and scientific community.

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