Chosen Soldier - Dick Couch [116]
I was assigned to the student ODA of Sergeant First Class Nguyen Pham. When I arrive at the base camp, Pham’s ODA is preparing to attack a petroleum storage site. The designated team leader had just given his warning order, and the team is busy preparing for the mission, which amounted to preparing charges to destroy an oil storage tank at the target location. The team leader calls them into the briefing tent for a quick thirty-minute patrol leader’s briefing, straight out of the Ranger Handbook. The student leader races through the briefing, but slows as he goes through the actions on target. The team moves outside the tent, where there is a crude sand table of sorts—two-by-fours nailed together on the ground with loose dirt for sand. The petroleum site is represented by a tin tuna can. After a short rehearsal, the student ODA rucks up and leaves the camp to patrol to the target site. Sergeant Pham and I drive there and await the arrival and attack by his student team.
Sergeant Pham speaks with a halting accent that says English is his second language. He is five-ten, slender, angular, and with a very precise manner. I perceive both strength and a sense of purpose in Sergeant Pham.
“First Group?” I ask, thinking he would be assigned to the group with responsibility in Southeast Asia.
“That is correct.”
“Vietnamese?”
He smiles. “Correct again. My father was an ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)] officer. We came to this country when I was a little boy.” The smile broadens a little. “Perhaps, Captain Couch, you and my father fought together.”
“Perhaps,” I reply, “I had that honor.”
“We allow the students to go through the briefings quickly,” Pham tells me while we wait for the student ODA to appear, “but without omitting any steps in the mission-planning format. This gets them thinking about tactical application of explosives they will use in Phase IV. On these training missions, we grade them on their actions on target and specifically on the construction and placement of the charges. We also spend time with them in setting up the briefing tent and establishing security. This briefing tent becomes a secure isolation facility in a tactical situation. The isolation and briefing areas are also the responsibility of the engineering sergeants.”
We are about fifty meters from the target, an old, disused oil tank. The tank is part of a mock-up air-base complex just off the Luzon Drop Zone at Camp Mackall. Nearby there’s an old plywood control tower and several aircraft with welded oil drum fuselages and sheet-metal wings. At a small campfire near the oil tank are two role players in black uniforms and AK-47s with blank firing adapters.
“What about the explosives?” I ask, knowing they can’t use real charges at Camp Mackall. And I happen to live just a half mile down the gravel road from the drop zone.
“Everything is real except for the explosive charges. They use real time fuse, real blasting caps, and real det cord. It will make a bang, but it will not damage the tank.”
Our attention is captured by the bark of an M240 machine gun from a fire-support position in the nearby woods. The two guards return fire, but they are quickly overwhelmed by the skirmish line that sweeps toward their position. Then there follows the normal shouting and shooting that accompanies the A-team as it makes its assault. After firing dies off, the team leader takes charge.
“Set security! Prisoner handlers, search the EPWs! Demo team, set your charges!”
The soldier kneeling next to one of the team leaders calls out the time. “Ninety seconds…Two minutes!” He carries one of the team’s two radios and is in contact with the B-team leader, who has moved his men from the fire-support position to secure the perimeter. When the demo team leader has charges in place, and the patrol leader has inspected them, he calls, “Fire in the hole!” Then things stop.
Sergeant Pham