Cam Sa Raid - MichaelDanKellum.com

Huey orbiting Hill 55 to the west headedeast, and the two Cobras near MMAF flewback to the south at 130 knots. The threeflight paths had a time and distance calculationpredetermined to make their turnstoward the target area so they would arrivesimultaneously from the north, eastand west.“I remember we flew out to sea andcouldn’t see the land anymore. Then weflat-hatted so low we thought we weregonna get our feet wet! The idea was tostay out of sight [of shoreline pickets] aslong as possible. The 46s turned until wewere headed back due west toward shoreand came in right over the sand dunes [4clicks inland off the South China Sea],dropping us right on the money! I wasamazed!” said Greene. VC commandersand bodyguards were caught flat-footed.“Our planned landing scheme was forme as division flight leader to land forwardand to the right in the LZ. My wingmanwould have landed to my left, perhaps 50meters. The second section leader wouldhave landed at my 6 o’clock, and ‘tail-endCharlie’ would have landed at the sectionleader’s left,” recalled Maj Jensen. “Bydesign, we would have formed a square50 meters on a side. Because there werebuildings and paddy dikes in our LZ, eachplane commander had to pick his ownlanding site, and that may have skewedthe actual landing pattern somewhat.”The HMM-364 helicopters carryingthe three squads and attachments landedfar enough apart to encircle the bunkersof the suspected VC cadre commanders’meeting area. The bunkers were adjoiningdugouts formed in what was a smallsemicircle so that they could stay hiddenin bunkers and still hold a conference asthough they were sitting at a corporateconference table, according to Kenny.The 63-man Marine/Vietnamese groundforce had action from the get-go. TheC&C “bird” and Cobras arrived at the“The VC were juststunned that thehelicopters came in sofast right on top of them!They were running aroundlike gnats on speed. ”—2dLt Gilford A. Robinsonsame time and menacingly orbited thefour insertion points over a 1,000-metersquare area.“It was a classic assault. We landed 20yards from the main VC bunker ... andwere ordered to not open fire so as not tohit friendly troops offloaded on the groundtaking prisoners.As we hit the ground, wecould see the VC in the bunker in front ofus and to both sides of the helicopter,”said Kenny.“There was a VC who jumped up 10 toMaj John Grinalds, 2/1’s operations officer, talks on an AN/PRC-25 radio in the aftermath of the Cam SaRaid,Aug. 4, 1970, as 2dLt Mike Greene, Platoon Leader, 3d Plt, Co G, 2/1 (tall Marine in the center of thephoto looking away from the camera), takes a moment to assess what his Marines have accomplished.20 yards in front of us and could haveeasily killed both Major Jensen and me.But he was so shocked, he decided to takeoff running and fired his AK47 back atus over his shoulder without looking. Therounds kicked up all around the front of theaircraft as he was shooting low. If he hadtaken the time to aim, I wouldn’t be here.”Greene enthusiastically recalled, “Weran off the ramps and could hear the ‘Pop!Pop! Pop!’ of AK47s taking us under fire!My guys aggressively started chasing thepeople who were firing at them. This wasa first for them to have legitimate targetsin broad daylight!”“I ran off the second helicopter to land.We caught them in the middle of eating.The VC were just stunned that the helicopterscame in so fast right on top ofthem! They were running around likegnats on speed. We weren’t supposed tobe operating that way,” said Robinson,who disembarked with his S-2 Reconteam and 3d CIT/ITT troops.Golf-3 and its reinforcements chasedthe VC all over the wide field that wassprinkled with bunkers used to protectthem from artillery fire. Cornered in abunker, some VC threw grenades at theMarines, who returned the favor by throwingin their own concussion grenades.Robinson noted that rather than trying tokill the VC in the bunkers with M26 baseballgrenades, the idea was to use concussiongrenades to stun them and takethem prisoner.“As we discharged the troops, Bob[Marshall] reached for his camera to documentthe scene. At that moment threemen popped up over a shallow dune to our1 o’clock about 50 yards away. One guyin a white shirt appeared unarmed, but theother two had AK47s and began to raiseGIL ROBINSON2dLt Michael R.“Mike” GreenePlt Ldr, 3d Plt, G/2/1COURTESY OF MICHAEL DAN KELLUM26 LEATHERNECK MAY 2011 www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck

their weapons in our direction. Bob orderedour gunners to fire. At that point, Iwas yelling at them, ‘Run! Run!’ but I’mnot sure if it was audible. Our aircraft,named ‘The Grateful Dead,’ was armedwith two .50-caliber machine guns and amini-gun, which fires about 6,000 roundsper minute,” noted Benson.“Our door gunner [crew chief SergeantKenneth V. “Buzz” Sawyer] and doorgunners [Sergeant Major S. D. Brant andLance Corporal D. J. Hyche] opened upon them as they turned to flee. One ofthem was lifted off the sand and appearedto be undergoing multiple hits and amputationsin midair while one of the othersbriefly appeared to accelerate from theimpacts,” recalled Benson. “I’ve alwayswondered who the guy in the white shirtwas and if he might’ve been one of theprincipal objectives of the mission.”“We spotted one male with anAK47 whofired three or more bursts at our [Huey]aircraft. The crew chief [Corporal DwightR. Williams] returned fire and killed theshooter,” stated one after-action report.“The door gunner, [Cpl John T.] J. T.Bouley, laid fire in front of three menrunning to make them stop. One had arifle and another a pistol. They split up astwo of the men lay down in the grass,while the third man with the pistol keptrunning. The door gunner shot the singleman in the leg. He fell and immediatelyshot himself in the head.”The suicide of what turned out to be aVC lieutenant colonel when he realizedthe hopelessness of the situation was ahigh compliment to the Marines’ successfulattack plan. Other high-rankingVC officers followed their colonel’s exampleand ended their lives inside thebunkers.Maj Duane JensenPilot, HMM-364 Sea KnightCOURTESY OF DOUG ORAHOODA POW from the Cam Sa Raid is escorted to an interrogation team on, or near, Hill 55. Most of the highvalueprisoners were taken back to Camp Lauer to be interrogated by 1stLt Tom Marino, 3d CIT officer, andthe ITT team. (Photo by Cpl Dwight Williams)Thrasher and McCaughey’s Huey tookone hit from ground fire in its “right transmissionand cowling” and saw “one VC/NVA male firing at the aircraft and tracersgoing by the windshield.”A VC fired several wild shots at theMarines and began to run from the field1stLt Pat KennyCopilot, HMM-364 Sea Knightat a fast clip. Greene pulled out a greensmokeflare and popped it. He reached forthe radio handset from his radio operatorat his side. “The pilots were begging forus to give them something to shoot. Atfirst I told them I couldn’t give them atarget to shoot at in this mess. So herewas this guy running away straight outbound.I called overhead and told them aguy 75 meters due east from that greensmoke, running like hell, had shot at me,so you can shoot at him.“Whereupon it was ‘WA-A-A-A-A!WA-A-A-A-A!’ and their guns turnedhim to toast. As far as I know, we weren’tshooting anybody that didn’t need it. Wedidn’t sustain one single casualty.”Robinson said one VC made it into atunnel near the river. The two teenageChieu Hois, Sundance and Butch, hadbriefed the Marines on the tunnels comingout on the river embankment. TheMarines ran for the river and shot the VCas he emerged from the tunnel. “The Intelligenceofficer, Gil Robinson, accompaniedthe raid and captured one of theViet Cong as he ran out of a bunker intoRobinson’s arms,” recalled Grinalds.Robinson said one of his S-2 scouts randown the ramp of the Sea Knight and im-www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck MAY 2011 LEATHERNECK 27COURTESY OF DOUG ORAHOOD

mediately tackled a man dressed as awoman, taking him prisoner. Greene saidhis own men were seizing prisoners ofwar rather than killing them as well.The final tally was 12 enemy troopskilled in action and 12 POWs (three werewounded in action), four AK47s, two K54pistols, one SKS rifle, 12 magazines, 12M26 grenades, two ChiCom grenades,782 gear, clothing, foodstuffs, medicalsupplies and two pounds of documentsincluding top-secret papers of the VC DistrictIII Da Nang (DIIID) personnel, organizationand activities. Among the 12 KIAswere several high-ranking VC leaders.Also, three POWs who were WIA includedthe District III Da Nang doctor,the VC tax collector for Region 606 andthe Region 606 hamlet economic cadreleader.Later, during interrogation of the POWs,they said that if they had been given fivemore minutes, the assault force wouldn’thave caught them. The margin of success,in other words, was a matter of five minutesor less!Later, during interrogationof the POWs, they said thatif they had been givenfive more minutes, theassault force wouldn’thave caught them.The VC who surrendered turned overimportant documents to the Marines. Sundanceand Butch showed the Marines howto look for other documents in the scatteredtrash piles around the bunkers. Importantlists of VC cells, planned upcomingactivities and enemy rosters were uncoveredhidden in the trash. With the Vietnameseinterpreters along from CIT/ITTand the two boys, the Marines were ableto interrogate the POWs in the field andobtain crucial information to act on inUSMCLtCol Bill Leftwich poses in front of 2/1’s May-June1970 activity map.real time. Robinson said the rich intellhaul led to other successful operations inquick succession.Another one of the keys to success forthe midday heliborne raid was Leftwichand Grinalds’ decision to leave their Vietnamesecounterparts out of the loop.“The major assumption the enemymade was that we would coordinate withVietnamese authorities, where their spieswere located, before we commenced anattack. We never did that, and, as a consequence,they had no warning,” statedGrinalds.By not coordinating their raid with thelocal “friendly” Vietnamese hierarchy,the Marines caught the VC commanderscompletely unaware and so sure of theirsafety they didn’t have the necessaryarmed escort. Nor could they scurry downinto their well-hidden tunnels or melt intonearby forests to await the Marines’ departure,according to Grinalds.“The results were beyond my fondesthopes. We’ve played cat and mouse withthem for a long time. We’ve had severalunsuccessful efforts to kill or capture thesepeople, and we feel this will have a significantlong-term impact on the direction ofViet Cong and North Vietnamese activitiesin the Da Nang area,” said LtColLeftwich. The firefight and roundup ofprisoners from start to finish lasted only25 minutes!It turned out to be a bonanza for 2/1.Golf-3, ITT and CIT, with help from above[Cobras, Huey and Sea Knights], cut thelegs out from under the VC command infrastructurein that part of the Quang NamProvince for some time. Leftwich laterwas awarded a well-deserved Silver Starfor engineering the bold heliborne attackand its star-studded outcome.Author’s note: This condensed excerptcomes from Chapter 12, “Book II, AmericanHeroes: Grunts, Pilots & ‘Docs.’ ”LtCol Bill Leftwich Jr., who orchestratedthe Cam Sa Raid, was killed in a helicopteraccident in the Que Son Mountains,18 Nov. 1970. To honor his memory, theLeftwich Trophy is given each year to themost outstanding Marine captain.Editor’s note: First Lt Michael DanKellum, USMCR served under LtCol Leftwichin 2/1 in 1970. He is the author of“Books I and II, American Heroes: Grunts,Pilots & ‘Docs.’” The books are availablethrough Navarro-Hill Publishing Group,P.O. Box 1088, Longview, TX 75606, orwww.MichaelDanKellum.com.28 LEATHERNECK MAY 2011 www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck