The Communists then tried to operate at night, and Marine helicopters responded with flares and night attacks. In desperation, the Communists then bundled the goods in waterproof coverings and put them over the side in the water, when the tide was moving in, hoping the tide would carry these bundles to the beach. This was effective in moving ashore such things as foodstuffs — rice and so forth — but there apparently was no feasible way to move in ammunition or heavy equipment. Furthermore, several times when floatable bundles of foodstuffs were put into the water to be floated ashore, an offshore breeze came up and overcame the effect of the tide and blew the bundles out to sea. The Marine hunter-killer helicopters would routinely shoot up the bundles in the water or attack the beachheads where the North Vietnamese coolies were extracting the bundles from the surf. MARHUK One operations continued for a month or so until the Communists gave up in frustration at their complete failure to ferry or float their goods ashore.
VISIT TO THE ARVN FRONT
In July 1972 the commanding general of the ARVN field forces in the Quang Tri region invited me to visit his troops near the front lines. Accompanied only by an aide, I flew into Saigon in “Blackbeard 1,” the helicopter assigned to the Oklahoma City for the use of the Seventh Fleet commander. The helo was refueled, and with an escort of several ARVN helicopter gunships we flew up to the headquarters of the ARVN group that had recently defeated the North Vietnamese troops and retaken Quang Tri Province. I was taken on a tour of the front lines, met with the battle-weary ARVN troops, witnessed the stacks of weapons captured from the enemy, and was able to see several Soviet-made tanks that had been destroyed by carrier aircraft or captured by ARVN ground forces. After a lunch of field rations, the group returned to the ARVN command bunker to receive a briefing on the battle and the role of the Marine helicopters in the deployment of the ARVN and South Vietnamese marine forces. At 1500 it was departure time for me, and my hosts were getting anxious because the general area of the ARVN headquarters in Quang Tri had been subject to long-range artillery fire from the 8-inch Chinese guns provided to the North Vietnamese. These had recently been firing into the ARVN headquarters area in the late afternoon. My host, the ARVN general, was anxious for me to depart at my scheduled time for this reason. I was equally anxious to get out of there. Upon arrival at Blackbeard 1, it was determined that there was not enough battery power to turn over the engine to start. The pilot said there was nothing to do except to replace a certain electrical component in the battery circuitry and that would have to come from the fleet. He arranged to get power plugged in to operate his radio and was able to call a Seventh Fleet unit to have a message relayed to the flagship that Blackbeard 1 was down — the term used for a nonoperable aircraft on the ground — in Quang Tri Province. He requested that arrangements be made to obtain the necessary part and have it flown into the ARVN headquarters with a mechanic for installation. The ARVN then provided one of their helicopters to return me to Saigon, where I would be picked up at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base by a helicopter from one of the carriers and returned to the Oklahoma City.
In the retransmission, the message became garbled, so it was passed to the flagship that commander, Seventh Fleet in his helicopter was down in Quang Tri Province. Operationally, as opposed to mechanically, an aircraft “down” in Vietnam meant that it was crashed, normally due to enemy action. The flagship unfortunately passed this information back to the Pentagon without confirmation, and there was a brief period of consternation until the Pentagon asked for further details and the matter was straightened out.
LIEUTENANT (JUNIOR GRADE) LEHMAN
In October 1972 I received a back-channel personal message from deputy chief of naval operations, Vice Adm. Tom Connolly, advising me that the president had directed Henry Kissinger, as national security advisor, to assess the effectiveness of naval operations in the war in Vietnam. This probably was brought on by Army or Air Force supporters, because all U.S. ground forces were being pulled out of Vietnam and the involvement of the Army and the Air Force had been substantially reduced. Admiral Connolly reported that Kissinger was sending his personal representative to visit the Seventh Fleet, and he was expected to arrive within a week. This member of his staff was Lt. (j.g.) John Lehman, USNR, who was being given carte-blanche authority to visit, question, and explore as he saw fit. There was apparently great nervousness on the part of senior naval officers in the Pentagon. They were concerned as to whether such a junior officer would be qualified to evaluate the performance of an entire fleet in this complex theater of operations. So it was suggested that Lehman be discouraged from traveling throughout the fleet or talking to anyone but senior officers who would be able to give him “the big picture.”
However, I had decided to take a different approach. Having gained some useful experience with visitors from the DoD and the White House during my previous tours as captain of the Enterprise and commander, Task Force 60 in the Mediterranean, I had come to the conclusion that the best solution was to push these representatives into the front lines — if they were willing to go. There they had a chance to see the action for themselves, rather than getting it second hand through flag plot briefings, which could be a real turnoff, especially for someone who was serious about finding out what was really going on. My plans were for Lehman to visit a destroyer on the gun line and observe at first hand naval gunfire support. Then he would ride in an A-6 Intruder to experience flight operations from a carrier and proceed with the strike group up to the coastline as it penetrated inland over North Vietnam. He would, for obvious reasons, observe from the relative security of an overwater position outside of SAM range.
Lehman arrived at about 1600 by helicopter from Saigon in blue service dress uniform, clutching his visored cap in the wind stream of the chopper. We moved him into a comfortable private state room, and the supply officer dug up a pair of khaki pants and a short-sleeve khaki shirt plus an overseas cap. This was the uniform of the day for the staff, and it was much more suitable for clambering into and out of helicopters hovering over destroyer decks. With the senior staff section heads, I presented a short overview of the mission and composition of the Seventh Fleet, which Lehman took on board without any difficulty and with few questions. Dinner there in the flag mess was, as usual, pleasant and productive. When I had relieved as commander, Seventh Fleet, the flag mess had been a sorry spectacle. It had been “decorated” by the wife of one of the staff officers to make it “not so severe and military looking,” with ornate plywood paneling, reproductions of Van Gogh paintings on the walls, and a trellis with plastic flower blossoms. This all was quickly removed. First, because the vibration and shock of gunfire had loosened the fasteners so that the panels were coming loose and the trellis had broken. But mainly because these flammable decorations were, by fleet regulations, “strip ship” items in wartime. Then the flag mess was restored to the traditional appearance of an officer’s mess on a warship, with haze gray bulkheads, the fire main pipes that ran across the overhead for damage-control purposes painted white, and the large valves with their massive brass wheel handles uncovered from their aesthetic plywood boxes, the paint removed, and the brass polished to a bright shine. Standard aluminum wardroom furniture was reinstalled, and all of the seats were covered in white duck, which had been the standard on board the ships on the Asiatic station, probably a holdover from the Royal Navy. The few pictures on the bulkheads were photographs of other Seventh Fleet flagships and previous naval ships that had borne the name Oklahoma City. All were historically significant and of some interest to Navy types. The staff did a lot of business in the wardroom, and we wanted it to look like a traditional place of business in a man-of-war’s cabin.