Recon For Generals - Memoirs of CPT Ron Radcliffe
Date unknown (Late 1971?),
Transcribed by Ghost Writer. maybe Darrell Scott a friend - July 2021
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We had been working in Cambodia and at 4:00 P.M. we were about finished for the day. We didn’t usually go out after that time because if shot down in Cambodia we would be there overnight. I was called into the headquarters tent at Tay Ninh East, a little airstrip next to the big airstrip. There were two generals: General Hollingsworth and General McCaffrey. An intelligence officer, a major, was with them. They gave me a briefing. They had some radio research which means radio spying. They determined there might be a North Vietnamese Headquarters operating in a certain area of Cambodia. They asked if I would go there and look for it late in the afternoon. I said, “I’ll do it.” My crew was happy about it.
My crew chief was Ron Brochu and my observer was Neu (?) who had red hair. Brochu was six foot four and weighed a lot. He wanted to be a scout crew chief and went to our platoon leader. He was told he was too big and ammunition would have to be left to take him. He asked, “What weight do you want me to get to?” “You get down to 190, you can be a crew chief.” He put on a poncho and ran around the runway for a couple of weeks until he dropped to 189. Then he became a scout crew chief. He was a great crew chief.
We took off and headed towards where they thought the headquarters was. It wasn’t there but we found it about five kilometers away. We saw it from about half a mile away because it was a square about half a mile on each side. It was in a grid pattern like tic-tac-toe with a border around it. The pattern was made of mud walls about three feet high with cut outs for machine guns. There were very strong bunkers which required a direct hit from a 750 to 1000 pound bomb to be killed. On the south east corner was a house with two palm trees: one near the house and another fifty feet from the house. There were four bad guys standing in front of the house. They heard us coming and were ass-holes and elbows trying to get out of the way. Two dived in the door of the house. Two froze in place, hoping they wouldn’t be seen because the eyes pick up movement quicker. The problem for them was it was broad daylight. I flew right to them and hovered overhead at about forty feet.
One is on a knee and has a RPD, a drum fed machine gun. The drums have about a hundred rounds. The other one had an AK-47. Both were frozen and I was hovering over their heads. I watched the one on a knee very slowly raise his head until he made eye contact with me. Then he had this look of being disgusted with himself because he was freezing in broad daylight with no cover for concealment. He brought the RPD up to shoot us. I told Brochu, “Shoot him.” Brochu opened fire on him and the other one took off running for the tree farther over. Brochu shot the one kneeling and we chased the other one around the tree until Brochu shot him at the bottom of the tree. I put smoke on that house and the Cobra rolled in on it and put rockets in the door. They had something explosive in there because there were more explosions than the rockets.
We flew around some more and it was obvious this was the headquarters we were looking for. I called the Huey which was at about 2000 feet and said, “This is it. I’ll mark it if you want to put an air strike on it.” They said, “Standby.” So I flew around. Every time someone ran out of a bunker, we would shoot at them or throw grenades at them. The Huey crew called the Air Force Forward Air Controller (FAC). Their call sign was Nail. We called them Nail FACs. They called back and said, “We can’t bomb yet, we need permission from the province chief.” I said, “Go ahead and do that, we’ll try to keep them from running away.” It took an hour. The FAC had to call the Seventh Air Force in Saigon who had to call the American embassy in Phnom Penh. They had to send someone out to find the province chief and ask if we could drop bombs there. He said, “Yes.” While we were waiting we shot at anybody trying to get out. They wanted to get out and go to some Cambodian villages. There were three within a kilometer of the compound. If they could get into those villages we would not shoot them. We had 24 grenades and 2600 rounds of ammunition for the machine guns. We used all of it. Finally after an hour, the Air Force said, “We can bomb now.” I said, “I am going to mark the four corners. Three with smoke and one with white phosphorous. I’m marking the northeast corner with a Willy Peter because they are always shooting at me when I go there.” I believe they had orders not to shoot at us. Whoever was at the northeast corner was disobeying those orders. This was before the invasion of 1972. I marked three corners and when I came up on the northeast corner, that sucker opened up on us again. Bullets came through my instrument panel, my front windows and went out the door right by my face. I got some shrapnel in my right leg which was my second purple heart. It felt like somebody threw wet sand at me. It didn’t really hurt, it just stung a little. I put the Pete down on that guy and said, “We are out of here.”
The FAC asked, “Would you like a B-52?” I said, “No we can’t use a B-52 because there are villages on three sides within a 1000 meters.” A B-52 strike, also called an Arc Light, would have gotten at least two of the villages, probably all three. It couldn’t be a B-52. It would have to be TACAIR only. That would be F-4 Phantoms, A-7s, Skyraiders, and those types of aircraft. They put a lot of strikes on that place.
As time went on, there was the offensive of March 30, 1972. Tay Ninh had a one or two day attack on it and they backed off. Ahn Loc over to the east was attacked by tanks and heavy artillery and was under siege for about a month and a half. They were surrounded by bad guys and nobody could get in or out. We took off and went back to Vietnam. We counted up the ammunition we had left. I had ammunition for my CAR15 which is now called a M4. I had ninety rounds of ammunition for my .38 pistol. For my machine guns I had three bullets left and no grenades left. Also no smoke grenades left. We used damn near everything.
When we got back a medic came out and I stood on the side of the runway with my pants down while he tweezed some shrapnel out of my knee. Then I was told to get it X-rayed. That was a pretty exciting mission. When I was in the hospital, General Hollingsworth sent me two letters. He said, “We are still kicking their asses.” I still have those letters. He said that on the news one day and got in trouble with Nixon because Nixon wanted him to say the South Vietnamese were kicking their asses. He sent me those letters because he knew I could have been shot down in Cambodia and been stuck in the dark. He didn’t really order me to go, he asked me.
Maybe we can get Ron to send a photocopy of the letters that we can post.