Bill Reeder
MY FRIEND XANH - Bill Reeder in Vietnam
NOTE: This article first appeared in the VHPA Aviator magazine
2009 Vol. 27, No. 2. It is here in the Memories Book of the Battle
of Kontum web site with the permission of Bill Reeder.
I began my second tour of duty in Vietnam on December 7, 1971.
President Nixon’s policy of withdrawal through
“Vietnamization” was well underway. The burden of fighting the
war was being passed more fully to the Vietnamese and U.S. troops
were being brought home at a dramatic rate. Indeed, and ironically
in retrospect, the plan seemed to be going well. There was little
enemy activity inside South Vietnam and the insurgent guerrilla war
had pretty well ended. But the regular army forces of North Vietnam
were growing in strength just across the borders in Laos and
Cambodia, as our missions in support of MACV-SOG clearly showed.
The relative calm that had settled over the guerrilla war in the
South was not to last long. In the spring of 1972, the North
Vietnamese launched their major offensive of the war. It became
known as the 1972 Easter Offensive. It was not an uprising of the
insurgent Viet Cong, as had been the case in the Tet Offensive of
1968. Instead, this campaign was a series of conventional attacks by
the regular North Vietnamese army across the demilitarized zone
(DMZ) from Communist North Vietnam, and from sanctuaries in Laos and
Cambodia with advances designed to cut the country of South Vietnam
in half through the Central Highlands, and to strike the
Southʼs capital city of Saigon. The Communists failed in 1972
after some very hard fighting by the South Vietnamese army and air
force, and the determined help of those American forces remaining.
The offensive began in April 1972 with advances of North
Vietnamese forces toward Saigon from out of Cambodia, and attacks
toward the ancient capital of Hue from out of North Vietnam across
the DMZ. The final movement of this well orchestrated battle plan
came from northern Cambodia and southern Laos as the North
Vietnamese army attempted to replicate the 1954 successes of the
Viet Minh against the French in wrestling control of a wide belt
across the central part of the South, and destroying French military
capability in the process. In 1972, the Communist armies achieved
some initial success, but were denied every major objective. In the
north, they advanced only to Quang Tri, and were there defeated by
South Vietnamese airborne. In the south, they moved only as far as
An Loc before being defeated. And in the Central Highlands, they
captured some outposts surrounding Kontum, but were again defeated.
I recount this bit of history as background to a personal drama
that played out at this time for me, and for a South Vietnamese Air
Force pilot named Xanh Nguyen, or actually Nguyen Xanh by Vietnamese
name ordering, for they always place the last name first.
When the 1972 Easter Offensive began, I was an AH-1G Cobra attack
helicopter pilot with the 361st Pink Panthers, flying from the
American base at Camp Holloway, near Pleiku, in the Central
Highlands. Lieutenant Nguyen Xanh was with the VNAF Jupiter 530
Squadron, flying A-1 Skyraider fixed wing attack airplanes from
Pleiku airbase at the same time. We did not know each other, had
never met or even seen each other.
On May 9, 1972, I was launched at dawn on a tactical emergency as
mission lead of a flight of two Cobras to support the besieged army
camp at Polei Klang – almost due west of Kontum and not too far
from the Cambodian border. There were North Vietnamese infantry and
tanks attacking the base, and the situation was grim. We made
several runs and expended all our rockets, grenades, and machine gun
ammunition and headed to Kontum airfield to re-arm and re-fuel. My
other crew member in the front seat of the Cobra, my
co-pilot/gunner, was First Lieutenant Tim Conry from Phoenix,
Arizona. Tim was the most outstanding young officer I had known, and
for that reason, I tucked him under my wing as his platoon leader,
and from his arrival in the unit, he always flew with me. He
excelled as an aviator and as a man. And he would become a hero that
day.
On our way back out, we were diverted to a larger attack taking
place at another camp situated right at the Tri-Border, the spot
where the borders of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all come together.
The place was called Ben Het. There was a Vietnamese ranger
battalion of about 300 and two American advisors, Mark Truhan and
Bob Sparks. They were under attack by elements for two North
Vietnamese divisions (several thousand soldiers) supported by tanks.
The tanks had penetrated the perimeter, and enemy infantry occupied
much of the base. En route to Ben Het, I glanced toward Polei Klang
as I flew abeam. There was a lot of activity, and I could see A-1
Skyraiders in their bombing patterns. I then saw one of the A-1s hit
and crash in flames. The pilot ejected and I could see his
parachute. I radioed for permission to go to Polei Klang and cover
the rescue. Permission was denied. I asked again, denied, more
tersely this time, again. I didn’t yet know the degree of urgency
at Ben Het, but was infuriated at the moment for not being allowed
to help another pilot in obvious need.
I flew into a hornet’s nest at Ben Het. When we arrived, we saw
tanks within the perimeter wire, and enemy infantry everywhere. The
friendly survivors had consolidated in the command bunker at the
center of the camp and were fighting hard to keep the enemy at bay.
We fired some ordinance and then supported a special helicopter with
a new type of tank killing missile. When we’d expended all our
ordnance, we returned again to Kontum to once again rearm and
re-fuel. We then launched back out on our third combat mission of
the day, returning to Ben Het.
After take-off from Kontum, we were asked to escort a re-supply
helicopter into Ben Het. The beleaguered force was running
desperately low on ammunition, and had no more anti-tank ammunition
at all. We joined with a Huey helicopter carrying the ammunition
resupply, and escorted him into Ben Het, low level, on the tree
tops, as we’d done so many times before on our special operations
missions across the border. We approached the camp with guns
blazing, ours and theirs. In my front seat, Tim was laying down a
well aimed path of protective devastation with the mini-gun and
grenade launcher in our turret. I was firing pairs of rockets. At
the same time, we were engaged by numerous enemy small arms and
anti-aircraft weapons as we continued inbound. The Huey successfully
completed its critical mission, largely because of Tim’s carefully
directed suppressive fire. The Huey came to a very brief hover,
kicked off the ammo boxes and lifted out. We turned to cover his
departure and immediately began taking hits from several enemy
weapons. My Cobra came down spinning and burning. We crashed and
exploded a moment later. Tim and I just got out. He died later that
day. I had a badly broken back, burns on the back of my neck, a
piece of shell fragment sticking out of my ankle, and superficial
wounds on my head and face. I was in the midst of many hundreds of
attacking enemy soldiers.
Mark Truhan, one of the two American advisors at Ben Het, sent
out a force to try to get to me, but after a number of casualties,
they had to abort their mission. Gutsy move. Their own survival was
tenuous. I could crawl about in great pain, and did move to cover
and then out of the immediate area, able to evade my foes for three
days before being captured. I was interrogated for a couple of days;
treated pretty brutally. I was a physical mess. My back was broken.
My ankle wound had filled my boot with blood that was now dried
solid. I was three days unshaven. I’d had no control over my
bowels or bladder and had soiled myself badly. And I’d had several
leaches cling to my body, all of which I’d pulled off, except for
one which unknowingly was half way into my left nostril. My captors
got a laugh from that. I was questioned, beaten, threatened, and had
my arms tied behind my back with the ropes increasingly tightened
during interrogation, until finally both my shoulders dislocated as
my elbows were pulled tightly together against my broken spine.
Finally, the interrogations ceased, and I was marched for three days
to a jungle prison camp that, by my estimation, must have been just
across the border in northern Cambodia. I was given my boots back,
but no laces and no socks. After three days of walking, my feet were
like raw hamburger by the time I limped, in much pain, up to the
entrance to my first prison.
The site was typical of the image many have of a jungle prison
camp. It was carved out of the triple-canopy rain forest and built
of bamboo. The camp was surrounded by a bamboo wall that was
reminiscent of an old cavalry frontier fort in the American West.
There was one wall concentrically within another, with a ditch dug
between the two, almost moat-like. In the ditch were many punji
stakes – pieces of bamboo, knife sharp, dipped in human waste and
stuck in the ground. If you fell on these, you’d die of a wound to
a vital organ, or bleed to death, or at least die of infection if
you were not killed outright. Across this ditch was a log that one
had to balance across to gain entry to the camp. Inside the walls
were many bamboo cages that housed the prisoner population. There
were South Vietnamese military, there were indigenous mountain
people referred to as Montagnards or Mountainyards who had allied
with U.S. Special Forces, and there were two Americans, myself and
another helicopter pilot, Wayne Finch, captured a month earlier. At
least a couple hundred prisoners altogether.
Conditions in this camp were deplorable. We lived like animals.
We were kept in cages, most of which were not tall enough to stand
up in. That wasn’t necessary anyway, because they kept our feet in
wooden stocks. With my broken back, I could not lie back; so I slept
sitting up. And every night rats scurried through the cages and
nibbled on my ankle wounds, and I couldn’t move my feet in the
stocks, and couldn’t keep them away, and I hate rats to this day.
The only time we got out of these cages was for a daily toilet call
at the camp latrine. The time never seemed to be the same on any
given day, and if a prisoner’s internal schedule could not wait
for the appointed time (many suffered dysentery) then he went all
over himself in the cage. When they did let us out, it was a walk to
the “facility” in one corner of the camp. On my first visit, I
discovered that the latrine was a couple of holes in the ground that
you squatted over to relieve yourself. Problem was that many of the
sicker prisoners were not able to hold themselves until getting all
the way to the holes, and left their waste in piles all around that
area. Some of the very sickest prisoners, near death, were placed in
hammocks right next to the latrine, and they would either lay there
and soil themselves, time after time, or roll out of their hammock,
if they could, and take a couple of steps and go there on the
ground. The result was a substantial accumulation of human waste all
around the holes that were the latrine. Those able to control
themselves were forced to walk through that waste field and squat
over the holes. On return to our cages, we had no way to clean
ourselves.
I don’t remember water being a problem. It was delivered in
pieces of bamboo, and there seemed to be sufficient quantities. It
was supposedly boiled, but I still came down with bloody dysentery.
Food was a problem. Our diet was almost exclusively rice. We’d get
one grapefruit sized ball mid-morning, and another mid-afternoon.
Occasionally, we’d get the treat of a tuberous root called manioc.
It is very much like (and may be the same as) yucca in Latin
American countries.
My weight went from around 190 pounds to something around 120 in
just a few weeks. I was skin hanging on bone with beard that grew
very long over time. I did not shave for over five months. And I
received no medical attention at all. And no one fared any better.
The South Vietnamese next to me in my cage had a severe chest wound
that had been bandaged long ago, but I never saw the dressing
changed, and the hole in his chest wall was never repaired. He was
young and strong, but I’m certain he did not survive. We lived
like animals, and under these filthy, starvation conditions, without
medical care, it seemed that someone died almost every day. The
bodies would be carried out and buried on a hillside just outside
the camp.
On July 2, 1972, I was taken outside my cage and lined up with a
group of prisoners. There were about 25 South Vietnamese and one
other American, Wayne. I would soon learn that one of our group was
a pilot who had been shot down the same day I had, in an A-1
Skyraider at Polei Klang. The very same Vietnamese pilot I’d asked
to go rescue, but been refused. His name was Lieutenant Xanh. I
would never forget his name. Never. We were addressed by the
Communist camp commander and told that we were going to travel to a
new camp, a better camp, a place where we’d get better food and
medical care; where we’d get mail and packages from home. He said
the trip could take as long as eleven days, and that we should try
hard to make it. I envisioned another jungle camp, somewhat better
situated, staffed, and supplied, somewhere not too distant in
northern Cambodia, or just across the border in Laos. The comment
about trying hard to make it did not register in my mind at all –
until some days later. I set out barefoot with all of us tied
loosely to one another.
After a few days, we’d no longer be tied because we all
struggled to just keep moving forward. I was weak from malnutrition,
sick with untold disease, and suffering from wounds that were
infected and worsening with the aggravation of the journey. I soon
began to become plagued by more leaches, on top of everything else.
They’d suck blood and cause infections of their own. I must have
been a site. Lieutenant Xanh was there suffering the same
conditions, fighting his own personal demons, that every step of the
way, threatened to destroy your physical ability, or derail your
mental willingness to continue. And if you did not continue to
march, you would die. In normal life, you have to take some overt
action to die. You have to kill yourself. As a prisoner of war,
under these circumstances, that truth is reversed. You have to reach
deep within yourself and struggle each day to stay alive. Dying is
easy. Just relax, give up and peacefully surrender, and you will
die. Many did. They died in that first jungle prison camp, and they
died along the trail. Some would complete a day’s journey and then
lie down to die. Others collapsed on the trail and could not
continue.
The group would be marched ahead, a rifle shot or shots heard,
and the pitiful suffering prisoner was not seen again. We lost at
least half a dozen of our small band of 27 captives, and by the time
the journey was over, Wayne Finch, the other American in our group,
would be dead as well. The trip turned out to be not an eleven day
hike to a new camp in the same vicinity as the one we’d departed.
It turned out to be a journey lasting over a three months, taking us
several hundred miles all the way up the Ho Chi Minh Trail into
North Vietnam and then on to the capital city of Hanoi. It was a
nightmare, a horrid soul wrenching nightmare. Every step, every day
wracked my body with pain. My infections became worse; disease
settled in me. I was near death. My leg swelled at least double in
size, darkened in color, filled with puss. It swelled so much, long
cracks formed in the skin and puss and bloody stinky fluid oozed
from the cracks. I drug my leg like a pendulous sodden club, and its
every movement lashed my whole being with the most searing pain;
pain that kept my face contorted and a cry shrieking within every
corner of my consciousness; pain that was burning a blackened scar
deep into the center of my very being.
My bloody dysentery worsened, and I got three different kinds of
malaria and several intestinal parasites. And I hovered near death
as I tried to reach the end of each horrible day’s journey of
eight to ten awful, grueling miles. Each morning I’d begin a
personal battle to stand and loudly moan or scream to myself through
clenched teeth and pressed lips, as blood ran into my leg and
brought a surge of new pain as gravity pulled blood and bodily
fluids down into the carcass of leg and pressure grew against
decaying flesh and failing vessels. And there was Lieutenant Xanh,
suffering badly himself, but always encouraging me, always helping
as he could. We’d eat a paltry morsel of rice for dinner, and
he’d tell me this was not how Vietnamese ate. There were many fine
foods in Vietnamese culture. A Vietnamese meal was a delight.
Don’t judge the cuisine by what we were given to eat. I believed
him, and did not. And he was right, of course. I tried to maintain a
sense of humor. It was hard, but it was necessary. Your spirit is
the most important factor in survival, and a sense of humor, even
under the very worst conditions, helps maintain spirit, and in
spirit lives hope. And again, Lieutenant Xanh helped. He was always
concerned about me, and did all he could to help me remain positive,
to be hopeful. As bad as things got, I never gave up hope, not even
the day I would have died had it not been for Xanh. I mustered all
my will each day just to wake, stand, and take a step. Then I fought
hard for the remainder of the day to just keep going, to keep moving
along the trail. I could barely walk, but somehow I continued, and
survived each day, to open my eyes in the morning to the gift of one
more dawn.
On the worst day of my life, I fought so very hard. I faltered. I
dug deeper. I staggered on. I faltered again, and I struggled more,
and I reached deeper yet, and I prayed for more strength. And I
collapsed, and I got up and moved along; and I collapsed again, and
again; and I fought, fought with all I had in my body, my heart, and
my soul. And I collapsed, and I could not get up. I could not will
myself up. I was at the end of my life. And the enemy came; the
guard looked down on me. He ordered me up. He yelled at me. I could
not. It was done. And then there was Xanh. Looking worried; bending
toward me. The guard yelling to discourage his effort. He persisted
in moving to help me. The guard yelled louder. Xanh’s face was set
with determination, and in spite of whatever threats the guard was
screaming, Xanh pulled me up onto his frail, weak back, pulled my
arms around his neck and clasped my wrists together, and pulled me
along with my feet dragging on the ground behind him. Xanh drug me
along all the rest of that day. Occasionally, he was briefly
relieved by another prisoner, but it was Xanh who carried the burden
that day. It was Xanh who lifted me from death, at great risk to his
own life, and carried me, and cared for me, until we completed that
long day’s journey.
The next morning, I went through the normal agonizing ritual of
waking up, and standing, and dragging my leg through those first
determined steps. It was more of a struggle than ever before. I
mustered the will, and I went on. At the edge of the encampment was
a broad log that spanned the rapids of a river. I started across,
tried to balance. Pain awful, very weak, equilibrium gone. No sense
of balance, worthless leg is throwing me off; begin to slip off the
side of the log, then falling onto the rocks in the rushing water
below. Xanh and Wayne moved back off the log and came to my rescue.
They pulled me from the river and onto the bank. They pleaded for
the group to remain at this camp until I was able to travel again.
They were ordered away. They would not leave me. They were drug away
and forced across the log bridge at gunpoint. And they were marched
away with the rest of our prisoner group. I never saw Xanh again.
As far as my fellow prisoners knew, I was left at that camp to
die, as others had been. But for some reason, the Communists decided
to give me penicillin injections for several days. I began to show
some improvement. After a time, I was able to stand, and as soon as
I was able to walk again, I was put back on the trail, this time
traveling with groups of North Vietnamese soldiers moving north, and
accompanied by my own personal guard. It continued to be an
agonizing trip, but the worst was behind me. I even found the
opportunity to escape once when I got one turn ahead of my guard on
the jungle trail. But he quickly tracked me down, and once he
decided not to shoot me in his rage, he recaptured me, and the
journey continued.
Eventually, I joined with another group of South Vietnamese
prisoners as we entered North Vietnam. I was still in pretty bad
shape, and very much appreciated this group of South Vietnamese
prisoners who helped me continue my awful march north. One in the
group became a special friend, to whom I also owe my life. He is
Lieutenant Colonel Ke Nghiem. Ke had secreted a gold Cross pen away
in the lining of his uniform, for use to gain him some future
advantage during his captivity. Instead, at one point when I was
very ill with malaria, he traded the pen for six potatoes and then
ensured they were prepared and fed to me, one each day. Ke also
became my motivator and mentor in the ways of surviving in this
beautiful, but hostile land. My journey continued painfully,
agonizingly, but ultimately I reached Hanoi. There I went into North
Vietnam’s prison system, and ended up at the infamous Hanoi Hilton
from where I was released at the end of the war.
I inquired about Lieutenant Xanh after I returned to the United
States. I could not find any information. I asked Vietnamese
military students attending U.S. Army courses. No one could find any
information. After the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, I intensified
my search. No information. After several years, I was reunited with
one former member of my first group of South Vietnamese prisoners,
Tang van Pham, and also one from the second, Ke Nghiem. They sought
information for me. First nothing, and then word that Xanh had been
re-imprisoned after the fall of Saigon, and then the conclusion that
he’d probably died after years of imprisonment. But I still hoped
to find some information about what had happened to Xanh and maybe a
little about him and his family. I’d done internet searches in
recent years, always with no luck. Then a few weeks ago, I tried
again. I stumbled onto a site for pilots who’d flown A-1
Skyraiders in the Vietnamese Air Force, some from Xanh’s old unit.
I dropped a note to the webmaster, and within days found myself in
e-mail contact with Xanh, and then a phone call – the first time
we’d spoken in 35 years. I then saw Xanh a short time later in an
emotion filled reunion in Southern California. I met his wife and
spent two wonderful days sharing stories, good food, and enjoying
each other’s company. At our first encounter, I looked upon an
older man, but instantly I saw the soul of my beloved friend in his
eyes. I’d not seen him since I watched him forced across that log
and marched away, knowing that I owed him my life; what there was
left of it. But there in the jungle, I made a promise to myself and
to Xanh. Since he’d worked so hard to help me live through those
two toughest days of my life, I felt like I owed him my very best to
try to do my part to make his efforts worthwhile – to survive the
rest of my journey and somehow get home at the end of it. What
he’d done for me saved my life, and Xanh’s selfless actions gave
me even more determination to overcome everything between me and the
freedom that waited at the end of my captivity. Xanh Nguyen has
always been a great man, and now he is a great American. I am so
thankful he was my friend when I needed him, and I am grateful I
have found my friend again.
William S. Reeder, Jr., Ph.D. Colonel, U.S. Army (retired)
Bill Reeder USA - Saturday, June 06, 2009 at 05:53:28 (PDT)
