Five Years to Freedom The True Story of a Vietnam Pow

1 Two huihelicopters pushed northward, two thousand feet above the swamp and rice paddy domain of the Mekong Deltas Vietcong legions, their blades beating a steady rhythm against the air. One of them, the unarmed oeslick,? carried Capt. Humbert oeRock? Versace, intelligence adviser with the Military Assistance and Advisory Group at Camau. The other chopper, flying slightly to their right front, was an armed helicopter, its landing skids heavy with rocket tubes and machine guns. Their destination was a small Special Forces camp twenty-six kilometers north of the provincial capital and in the center of a Vietcong-controlled zone. Rocky was a trimly built, twenty-six-year-old West Point graduate who had volunteered for a six-month extension after completing one year as an adviser. His slightly outthrust jaw and penetrating eyes were indications of his personality, but his close-cut, black-flecked, steel-gray hair looked as if it belonged on someone much older. He had recently been assigned as MAAG intelligence adviser in Camau and had witnessed some hard combat as the Vietnamese units his detachment was advising stood toe to toe with the best the Vietcong had to offer. The battles were typical of that period: Vietcong nighttime assaults; chance daylight encounters with an elusive enemy and the seeming impossibility of pinning him down; bloody ambushes; lack of adequate air support and artillery even though our pilots were flying the wings off of the available T-28s, the frustration that went with the oeold war? before the arrival of jets, artillery support, and American Combat units. This was the war known to the American advisers, to the isolated U.S. Special Forces detachments in their efforts to combat the Vietcong in their own territory. This was Vietnam, 1963. Small groups of huts, clustered along canal banks bordered by coconut palms and banana trees, passed below the open doors of the choppers. The countryside was deceptively peaceful. To shatter the illusion all one had to do was drop down into range of the weapons which were, no doubt, pointed skyward at that very moment, hidden by the foliage of the trees. Farmers worked thigh-deep in water, tending their rice paddies, their conical hats reflecting the sunlight. Water buffalo wallowed in the mud, oblivious to all around them. A graceful oespirit bird? hung motionless in the sky, oesuspended high in a rising air thermal,? its lonely world undisturbed by the passing helicopters. Ahead, now visible at the intersection of two larger canals, was Versaces destination, Tan Phu. A streamer of green smoke billowed up from the landing zone, a small rectangular area cleared for chopper landing. At Tan Phu there was only one way in or outby chopperand it wasnt safe that way either. The terrain one kilometer away from camp for 360 degrees belonged to Charlie. It was an isolated fortress manned by an American Special Forces A-Detachment, their Vietnamese Special Forces (LLDB) counterpart team, and four companiesabout 380 men on an average dayof the Civilian Irregular Defense Group. These were the Vietnamese and Cambodians from that area who had been recruited, equipped, and trained to resist the Vietcong in their home villages. It was a lonely spot for the Americans. The armed Huey made its first pass over the camp, a cluster of brown thatched huts surrounded by a mud wall, narrow moat, and several distinct barbedRowe, James N. is the author of 'Five Years to Freedom The True Story of a Vietnam Pow' with ISBN 9780345314604 and ISBN 0345314603.