First Mission

By Denis Chericone

I’d been watching things for about a month when Bob and Chuckles decided it was time for me to get to work. Our commanders, Pitbull and Q, were ordered to send a team to snoop out Co Roc Mountain after receiving intel that something was bubbling up in the area. The most difficult part of the operation would be approaching the massif without being detected. This meant a long walk through the bush—the enemy bush.

The approach on a SOG objective was perhaps the most intimidating aspect of the missions, the biggest gamble with the highest stakes, period. Although helos offered easier access, they weren’t very stealthy, and so, for this op, the team would have to be inserted out of sight of the mountain. I’d be fying in a backup “chase” chopper in case anyone was hurt during the team’s insertion, as a lot could go wrong when placing a team in the bush. There were many variables, most of which we had no control over.

SOG’s long-range reconnaissance had become much more vulnerable by late 1967. Through a solid spy network, our enemy had learned of SOG’s activities and was devising countermeasures to devour our missions. Casualties began increasing, and gathering information had gone from dangerous to deadly. A day earlier, with a concerned reluctance, one of the older guys told me to be on my toes. He said the operation was tempting fate. It was too obvious, he said, especially now, especially there.

As he looked out to the mountain, he speculated softly, “Co Roc’s time never arrived. It should have, though. It should have been a memory by now.”

Even though I was a rookie, I understood, and the mission made me wonder. The massif was such an evident objective. Of course, we’d be sending someone in to check it out, but more than a few of the guys had reservations. It just didn’t feel right. Something hung in the air, but I brushed it off as a rube’s shivering jitters. Sleep was evasive that night.

Heading out

We left the base early, at dawn, and headed into Laos. The morning fog hung onto both ships as we strained for altitude, and I couldn’t ignore Co Roc when we flew over the Special Forces camp at Lang Vei. The camp was so close that it could almost hold hands with the mountain. Co Roc was a cold presence looming in the background like a sentinel guarding the passage. Our altitude was about the same as the mountain’s crest, and as we few past, I was startled to see a large bird drop from one of the overgrown outcroppings near the summit. It plummeted, spread its wings, caught an updraft, and disappeared into the mists hanging on to the mountain. Deeply awed by the sight, both the crew chief and I shared a surprised smile as we made our way more deeply into the forbidden and lush lands of Laos. Sliding away from the door and leaning against the opposite wall of the ship, I began thinking my imagination hadn’t been wrong and that the massif was, indeed, a holdover from the age of dinosaurs.

Co Roc was a brash icon of Vietnamese resistance. It held secrets and represented their version of “Fuck you!” for those who believed the country was simply there for the taking. It had endured and served as a headquarters and artillery bastion in the war against the French. Shaped like an inverted bread pan, it was a mile-long massif, a little less than a mile high, and heavily overgrown with flora and laced with tunnels and caves. A nightmare for those unfamiliar with its tangled web of passageways, dead ends, and paths to nowhere, French commanders had wisely avoided contesting its presence. And now, twenty years later, not much had changed since the French had come and gone. It was still an artillery stronghold and supply headquarters, and the various attempts made by SOG to penetrate the austere defiance of the mountain hadn’t made much progress. It was all just too costly to pursue in the long run. So, Co Roc remained a mystery, impervious, and aloof to the intentions of the Americans. It wasn’t until the stomp of the siege overwhelmed us that we understood how vital the mountain was to our enemy’s intentions and how we had squandered an opportunity to reduce its impact.

We were about ten miles over the Laotian border and swinging into a wide arc so we could approach the mountain from its blind side. The team stood a better chance of remaining undetected this way. I slid over to the door and began scanning the bush below. Our ship was maybe thirty-five hundred feet up, where the air was very cool, and we had a clear view of the lead ship.

Detection

As we dropped lower and slowed, I heard loud metallic thuds banging hollowly against the sides of our helo. The crew chief immediately brought his weapon to bear, and I instinctively grabbed my rifle. The insert ship began swerving to avoid the ribbon-like streams of red and green tracers trying to bring it down. We were in the middle of nowhere, a nowhere filled with anti-aircraft weapons, and I was amazed that the wilderness was so loaded with peril. I slid back to the wall aft of the door and saw the lead ship leaking brown smoke from its engine compartment. Definitely not good.

As both ships began to climb again in an effort to reach the protection of the clouds close above us, the smoke turned black, with flames slapping the fuselage. The tracer streams were thicker and edging closer in their attempts to bring us down. We were almost there when a bright flash followed by a concussion wave rocked us loopy. We were shuddering as I grabbed a steel rib of the ship wall and pulled myself to where I could peer out at the stricken insert ship, now slowly beginning to spin out of control. Men in flames were being tossed from the pinwheeling craft as it spun its way down.

Struck dumb, I froze in place, watching the dying helo explode against a ridge in a frightening blast of flames and smoke just as we banked into a patch of clouds. The crew chief grabbed me, yanked me back from the door, and returned to his place behind the machine gun. We broke through the clouds in a steep descent, making for the crash site as the chief opened up on something below. Our ship was now violently shuddering from our evasive maneuvering and the impact of ground fire as the thuds began sounding like popcorn.

An icy claw of certainty slithered up my spine like a hungry snake, whispering doggedly, This is it. You’re dead, boy. Just fucking forget about it.

For some goddam cloudy reason, I started getting really pissed off. I don’t know why, and at that moment I really wasn’t giving it much thought; yet, when I look at it now, maybe anger was all there was for the entire piece of shit. I began screaming at the ground. It fit the sudden emptiness, the now barren meaning of everything. Goddam! They were gone!

Just before we banked again and leveled off a few hundred feet above the bush, I saw the crash site bleeding black smoke. Then our ship turned abruptly. We tried approaching from another perspective. Nothing doing. Not today. Not here. Usually SOG pilots were sorcerers; get outta here good. Flying down the enemy’s throat being their main mojo, their old reliable, the premier move in their airborne bag of tricks, but not today, not on the dark side of Co Roc. Death had been waiting. It took what it wanted and left us raddled and bewildered over how we’d survived.

Retreat

We broke off, turned sharply, and a mile further along, we made another freezing rush towards cloud cover, this time turning towards home. I was covered in numb with cold sweat blowing across my eyes, and was just grasping the significance of what had happened. By the time we reached the FOB, I was breathing hard, trying to catch up to my breath. The shock of the explosion and our subsequent escape had amplified my vital functions. It felt like I wanted to piss, shit, chuck, scream, and cry all at once. Later, in the med tent, I tried to explain what happened, but I kept stumbling over my words, unable to make any sense even to myself. The men understood and were patient. They knew where I’d been and that I was trying to come back to myself. No one else was doing too well, either. We’d just lost part of the family. When I looked, there was a pint of whiskey in my hand. I immediately drank deeply, and it leveled me out some.

Everybody in camp was completely stunned by this event. Losing them rippled through our small compliment like a quake. It was the first time in my life I felt the expanse of vulnerability. I knew, at least now I did, I knew about something that no one wanted to know about. SOG and its operations existed in a tough-shit world, a world where a simple roll of the dice decided whether you made the next sunrise. You only had so much control, and it was elusive. Eventually, I discovered this was the root of my fear. Our lives were up for grabs, and wading through the unknowns of survival accomplished nothing more than blurring the focus necessary to outlive the theology of probability. That’s the hard take, but SOG was even much more than that. It taunted the odds, goaded them, teased them, and sometimes they bit back—deeply.

The FOB responded quickly. Two helos were in the air within an hour to return to the impact site and search for survivors. Crisscrossing the crash area over and over, the searchers finally gave in to the obvious and headed home. It was all no dice, with more men for the MIA lists. There was nothing more anyone could do to alter the outcome. Not today. Not tomorrow, and at least, never.

Bob

While everybody was out searching, I kept running through the whole thing again and again. I couldn’t shut it off. It was like I was in a theater I couldn’t get out of. It kept happening again and again, more and more.

Before getting on a search helo, Bob sat me down, got up in my face, and looked me over, his eyes blazing straight through the moment as if eternity were floating somewhere behind my face. “You’ll be all right. Let it go. There’s nothing else. Let-it-go.” It had the blunt impact of an order, but its essence and intention were something else. He grabbed my shoulder, and then he was gone. I followed him outside and watched him roll aboard.

After reaching altitude, the two helos turned towards Co Roc. I felt myself getting lost in the idea that our enemy had been waiting for us. It was like they’d jumped out of a cloud or something, like they’d been tipped off, in detail. Years later, as the war lay smoldering in our memories, I was told by an old FOB friend that during the war, SOG had been infiltrated by North Vietnamese agents and that some of the people we believed to be loyal employees had been feeding critical operations information to field units of the NVA. He also told me that our enemy had been training anti-SOG squads to erase us before we could accomplish our mission. It explained a lot, and it all made sense.

I went back inside and sat on a bunk. I let myself drift back to the day when I’d first arrived at the FOB and reported to the med tent. Bob had been gearing up for an operation and prepping mission stuff on his bunk. He didn’t know me, my name, or the reason I was there, but he did know I was a rube. He looked at me with a casual smile and mentioned that second-guessing the NVA always made for bad outcomes. It was then that I noticed how meticulous,almost reverent, he was in handling his gear. He suddenly began laughing and then looked off for a bit, his smile growing more buoyant.

“You know, kid, It’s truly fucking amazing what you learn when people really want to kill you.” When he looked around with radiant contentment the wind kicked up outside, brushed aside the tent flap and blew a rescue panel off his bunk and onto my boots. When I handed it to him he took a good look at me and said “Welcome to the hardest school in the world.” and he laughed some more.

Of course, I hadn’t understood it then. Hell, I had never even considered understanding anything like that before, but now as the helos faded into Laos I knew, knew that in the course of things, deadly things, there’s a moment, a point, a place where your life winds up trying to escape you, trying to flee the vast unknown you’d just discovered laying all around you, an unknown you were now getting ready to explore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — From Denis Chericone’s LinkedIn biography: “While in the military I was posted to a remote and very isolated US Army Special Forces A camp, An Loc. While there I was in charge of a twelve bed jungle hospital where I treated everything from amputations to leprosy. I lived amongst the people of the area, the Gerai and Rhade Montagnards. This was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. They were Vietnam’s equivalent to the First Nations people of the Americas. Sociologically light years more sophisticated than the people of the industrialized west, the Montagnards exposed me to me a deeper understanding of the qualities that comprise the essence of being human.”

Denis is a writer, both of poetry and prose. You can hear Denis reading his poetry at the Oregon Poets Satyricon Poetry Series.

Denis is also a talented pianist. In 2021 he placed first in the music division of the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival (NVCAF), which resulted in an invitation to perform at the 41st NVCAF in 2022. Click here to hear Denis’ 2021 winning performances, which included one original composition, on our YouTube channel