Swift Boats at War in Vietnam by Guy Gugliotta

Author:Guy Gugliotta [Sullaway, Guy Gugliotta;John Yeoman;and Neva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2017-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

Rules of Engagement

Rich Kern

Lt. (j.g.) Rich Kern left the Navy in the early 1970s for a career as a freelance wildlife filmmaker based in Miami, Florida.

I had doubts about the rules of engagement almost as soon as I arrived in Vietnam. I was Officer-in-Charge of PCF 64, based in Cat Lo on the northern edge of the Mekong Delta. The rivers, estuaries, canals, and swamps in our op area had a fair share of “VC strongholds,” “Restricted Zones,” and “Secret Zones,” where everybody was supposed to be an enemy and you could pretty much shoot anything that moved, no questions asked.

But you had to be careful with this. Very early experience taught me and my crew that the inhabitants of these “enemy-held” areas displayed a spectrum of political commitments—from those ready to give their lives for Communism, to those who simply wanted to live as their ancestors had lived in the only place they knew as home. The VC typically took over an area and held it by intimidation. Villagers complied under fear of death. The best evidence that an area was really under VC control, we soon learned, was when somebody shot at you.

With that in mind, I was not really prepared for what happened the day I hitched a ride on a single-engine spotter plane for a leaflet drop over Dung Island, a long, narrow wedge that splits the Bassac River—a downstream branch of the Mekong—just before it empties into the South China Sea. Since Dung Island was a VC stronghold, the drop presented a welcome opportunity to learn more about the bad guys.

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