Vietnam Rough Riders

A Convoy Commander's Memoir

Frank McAdams

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780700618989, 9780700618989
• eBook ISBN: 9780700621149
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militärische Biographien

“Black smoke drifted about the scene. The first thing I noticed was the huge crater yawning next to the damaged truck.”

In the Vietnam War, American “rough riders” drove trucks through hostile territory delivering supplies, equipment, ammunition, weapons, fuel, and reinforcements to troops fighting on the war’s ever-shifting front lines. But, all too often, the convoys themselves became the front lines.

Frank McAdams, a Marine Corps lieutenant, learned that the hard way during a tour of duty that began right after the 1968 Tet Offensive and the siege at Khe Sanh. In this compelling memoir he recounts his personal battles—not only with a dangerous enemy but also with an incompetent superior and a sometimes indifferent military bureaucracy.

A decidedly different take on the Vietnam experience, his chronicle focuses on the ambush-prone truck convoys that snaked their way through dangerous terrain in narrow mountain passes and overgrown jungles. When an ambush occurred, strong leadership and quick thinking were required of officers like McAdams to protect both the convoy’s mission and the lives of its men.

McAdams describes convoys he led through hot zones like the notorious “Ambush Alley” stretching from Danang through Hai Van Pass to Phu Bai in the north, and the provincial area in the south known as “the Arizona” that surrounded the villages of Phu Loc and An Hoa. He also highlights the fierce three-day firefight that ensnared him and his men near the Song Cau Du River at Hoa Vang, and provides a particularly gripping account of the fighting at Thuong Duc.

McAdams deals frankly with his fraught dealings with a commanding officer whose ineptness and treatment of his troops made the CO fear for his own life. And he writes movingly of his wife’s love and encouragement in the face of an emotionally tough separation and also of his difficulty in re-engaging with life stateside.

Fast-paced and compulsively readable, his book offers an insightful look at a largely neglected aspect of the Vietnam War, while reminding us of how frequently the crucible of war reveals one’s true character.

1

Down South

Upon being commissioned a United States Marine Corps second lieutenant on December 15, 1966, I knew that I was going to fight a formidable enemy. What I didn’t know was that I was going to have to fight others at the same time. And I would need an anchor.

In April 1945 U.S. forces suffered 80,000 casualties in the Battle of Okinawa. By 1968 Camp Hansen, on Okinawa, had become a processing station for U.S. Marines coming from and going to Vietnam. For those of us who were under orders to Vietnam in 1968 the destination phrase on Okinawa was “Down South.”

The watershed year 1968 began peacefully enough for my wife, Patty, and me. We were at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where I was completing the Marine Corps Motor Transport Orientation Course at nearby Montford Point. During World War II, when the services were segregated, Montford Point was known as the “black boot camp.” It was now the training ground for convoy commanders. With a weekly six-pack of beer or bottle of bourbon as bribe we were able to rent a vacation cabana on Onslow Beach in between the Atlantic shore and the Inland Waterway.

By the end of January one personal incident occurred in between three historical events. On January 21 the seventy-seven–day siege of Khe Sanh began. Two days later the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence gathering ship with a crew of eighty-three, was captured by North Korean patrol boats in the Sea of Japan for allegedly violating territorial limits. Three days after that my class, at Montford Point, graduated from Motor Transport School. Five days after that the Tet Offensive erupted in Vietnam, a planned wave of attacks striking more than a hundred towns and cities. Only one month into the year and the world seemed to be reeling. I cannot recall any year that began with so much tumult. Patty would be a witness to the coming events in Chicago while I endured them in Vietnam. Naturally, at that beginning, neither of us was aware that we were not only witnessing history; we were taking part in it.

While I was going through the Marine Corps processing at Camp Hansen, Patty remained at our rented apartment in Oceanside, California, next to Camp Pendleton. Previously I was warned, in the Marine Corps tradition, that wives had no place in staging battalion training prior to shipping out to a combat zone. It was a demanding four-week cycle and included many nighttime field exercises. I was assigned as the commander of a staging company with a staff of several well qualified noncommissioned officers (NCOs), some of whom were doing their second tour. Patty and I always knew our time on the front end of Vietnam would be limited. And we needed to treasure every moment. We accepted the fact that within the coming year she could be a widow, an issue discussed endlessly among family and friends. Following that reasoning, Patty accompanied me west to Camp Pendleton for the staging battalion phase. We were fortunate enough to find a nice rental on the beach in Oceanside. It was here where we watched Walter Cronkite’s historical televised editorial, a reaction to the twenty-five-day siege of the Citadel in Hue City during the Tet Offensive. We didn’t know it at the time, but Cronkite’s address that night, February 27, 1968, would not only ripple across the nation but also shake the inside of the Oval Office, ending Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

I still recall Cronkite looking straight into the camera:

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. … To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic yet unsatisfactory conclusion. … It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Sleep came hard that night. I had to be up at 5 A.M., known in Marine Corps jargon as “O-Dark-Thirty.” Cronkite’s speech echoed in my ears while I thought, What am I going into?

When sleep finally came I drifted into a recurring nightmare where four Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas, AK–47s held at high port, chased me through the Jackson Park Golf Course in my Chicago neighborhood. All I had was a .45-caliber semiautomatic sidearm. And no matter where I ran or hid they knew where I was and kept coming like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death.

The next thing I knew Patty was shaking me. I don’t remember moaning or yelling, just her shaking me. My T-shirt was drenched. This recurring nightmare began while we were at Quantico: “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in reverse.”

After a quick breakfast we got out on Interstate 5 and drove north to the Las Pulgas offramp, going into the base. When we arrived at my company headquarters it was still dark. I knew I had to keep up a façade during the intense training day in front of me. All through that day I was dragging my ass because of less than three hours of sleep, with Walter Cronkite’s image mixed with the guerrilla quartet. Somehow I made it through.

With training completed our departure date was March 3, Patty’s twenty-fourth birthday. We were scheduled to leave at night from the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro. Patty would meet me at the air station and we would say our goodbyes.

Wrong!

When Patty dropped me off at Camp Pendleton that day I attended to final administration procedures, making phone calls and signing documents. As the day got longer we got a sudden alert that our flight out of El Toro had been canceled. No reason was given. What would happen was that within two hours buses would arrive to take my staging company to Los Angeles International Airport, where we would depart for Honolulu and then Okinawa. After getting confirmation, I had to make the difficult phone call to my wife that our stateside time was over. I was going out in ninety minutes. Goodbye, I love you. The last thing she said to me was, “Be safe.”

When we pulled in at the backside of the Los Angeles International Airport the buses came to a stop next to a hangar. We quickly got out and formed into four platoons as the buses moved off to a Continental Airlines jetliner about 150 yards away to unload the baggage. My gunnery sergeant set the lines and called for a “left face!” He turned and nodded to me. I gave the command “forward march!” And the company began marching toward the jetliner. From the back rank someone started singing in a soft voice.

“From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. …” The “Marine Corps Hymn” that night spread from the back ranks to the front as we continued marching to the jetliner. By the time we arrived at the ladder the entire company was singing, “We are proud to claim the title, United States Marine.”

Patty’s words echoed in my ears: “Be safe.” Our good times and the training were behind us. She was still in Southern California and I was being processed to enter a combat zone.

The Okinawa processing took four to five days. The first thing that had to be done was to sign over a Class A uniform, which was tagged and held in a warehouse. If I was killed my body would be shipped to a Graves Registration station. What was left of me would be placed into the uniform. Then I would be shipped home.

Records and documents also had to be checked, along with signing insurance forms and submitting to a physical examination. Part of the physical included being injected with gamma globulin, a prophylactic for tropical diseases and blood thinner.

After the physical I went to an early meal at the officers mess. The movie that night was Tender Is the Night with Jennifer Jones, Jason Robards Jr., and Joan Fontaine. I lasted about forty minutes, sitting through this sophomoric adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of expatriates traipsing around Europe. I got up and went to the officers club. I entered the club, walking down the hallway. At the end of the hallway was a corkboard with various announcements. To the far end of the corkboard was the latest Vietnam casualty list from Navy Times. The headline stated “SEA SERVICE DEATHS.” The names were in alphabetical order—last name, first name—and the Vietnam province where they were killed.

I recognized three of the names from my Basic School class at Quantico. Another name was that of a tactics instructor at Officer Candidate School (OCS). For several moments I was frozen in place staring at the names. Then I turned, walked out of the club, and went back to my room at the bachelor officers quarters. I stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling, recalling my recurring nightmare and now the names of fellow classmates … even one of my tactics instructors. This was it, I thought. Most likely, within three to four months, my name would be on the corkboard and Patty would be wearing widow’s weeds at a military funeral. For some reason I thought of a scene in the 20th Century Fox World War II classic Twelve O’clock High. In the film Gregory Peck, as Brigadier General Frank Savage, has taken command of a “hard luck bomber group,” the 918th, flying dangerous B–17 cross-channel missions in the dark days of the war. At a briefing Peck tells the bomber crews, “Consider yourselves already dead; it will be easier to fly those missions.”

For three hours I laid on my cot staring at the stucco ceiling in those quarters at Camp Hansen. My life was essentially over because of a curious sense of adventure.

Over and over again a question kept rolling around in my head: How did I ever get to this point?

2

The Call

One could say that I had a “normal” boyhood in a big city. I was the second of seven children born to Frank and Irene McAdams. We were a large Irish Catholic family, Mary Irene (Molly), me, Michael, Joan, Dennis, Patricia, and Brian. Our formative years were in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, bordering Lake Michigan at 67th Street, where we lived in a thirteen-room house on South Shore Drive, across the street from the lakeshore.

My mother, Irene Geary McAdams, came from a politically connected Chicago family. Her father, Joseph Geary Sr., was the civil service commissioner and 4th Ward committeeman in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Both positions held the key to many city patronage jobs. Mom raised us with a three-point credo: “You get out of this life exactly what you put into it; if you start something finish it; and don’t ever be called a quitter.” Even in the dark reaches of night I can still hear her repeating those statements.

While in high school I had read about Peyton Place, Grace Metalious’s scandalous novel about ugly secrets in a small New Hampshire town. And I wanted to read the novel before seeing the film. When the paperback edition came out I bought it at a local drug store. The novel had a long spell atop The New York Times best-seller list. I would read the book late at night. During the day, while at school, I hid it in my underwear drawer. When the film was released I happened to mention to my mother that a bunch of us were going to see it.

Mom nodded and said, “I figured you would since you read the novel.”

I was caught off guard. “How did you know that?”

She smiled knowingly. “I came across it in your underwear drawer. Then I put it back.”

“You did?”

She nodded. “Yes, I was glad that you were reading something.”

My father, Frank J. McAdams Jr., was the captain of Notre Dame’s boxing team in his senior year. After graduation he enrolled in law school. By the time of Pearl Harbor he and mom were the parents of two with a third on the way. Still, my father answered the call and was soon a naval officer, the skipper of a medium landing ship. His ship, the LSM–201, with a fifty-five-man crew, made eleven beachheads in the Western Pacific. Then dad was wounded, in an artillery bombardment, on the second day of the Leyte invasion in the Philippine Islands. Three of the crew with him on the bridge that afternoon died instantly. Dad barely survived. When they took off his battle helmet the top part was in his hair; when they threw his kapok lifejacket over the side it sank, laden with shrapnel. The lifejacket did its job. The battle ended for dad that afternoon; but the effects of war didn’t. He was treated at four naval hospitals to get the nerves in his right arm to respond. Nothing worked, not even a portable whirlpool that applied hydrotherapy after dinner each night. Finally, six years after the Leyte invasion, my father’s right arm was amputated below the elbow because of dead nerves. Bluish shrapnel scars dotted the calves of both legs. In those years, after the war, he got on with his life as a practicing attorney in Chicago with an office in the LaSalle Street financial district. Dad and his partner and brother-in-law, William Kirby, were the defense team in the celebrated Preston Tucker trial.

His legal success in the postwar years was counterbalanced with two failed attempts for public office. It wouldn’t be until years later when the war’s true toll came in the Irish tradition of alcohol—“the creature.” Tragically, it resulted in the bittersweet end of a law career that didn’t reach its full potential.

Despite the missing arm, he could tie a tie faster than most men. I used to marvel at how fast he could tie his shoelaces with one hand. He would put his shoe up on a chair and move the fingers of his left hand so fast that I couldn’t keep track of the laces.

My parents often hosted backyard summer barbecues. One summer I brought a girl I was dating to the barbecue. As soon as we entered the backyard I introduced her to my father. He immediately offered her his left hand. Later, driving her home, she was silent. I sensed that something was irritating her. I asked what it was. “Frank, why didn’t you tell me that your father has only one arm? I felt so embarrassed when I went to shake hands.”

I thought for a moment. Then I said, “We don’t consider dad to be handicapped. He can do more things with one arm than I can with two, which he often tells me.”

In my senior year at Mt. Carmel High School, at the urging of my father, my brother Mike and I joined the Naval Reserve, a six-year obligation that included monthly weekend drills with the moniker of being a “weekend warrior.” The center phase of this enlistment included two years on active duty either at a naval station or on a ship-of-the-line. I started with the accelerated boot camp at the Glenview Naval Air Station outside Chicago during that summer. Upon graduation we were given the month and year of going on active duty, pending a school deferment. I was told that my active duty date would be October 1960. Right away I began inquiring into the process of getting a college deferment. I could continue with college as long as I was deferred from active duty.

During this time I applied to three universities. My high school academic standing had me in the “mumbling middle.” But I did fare better on the college board exams. Today they are called the SATs. My applications went to St. Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa; Tulane University in New Orleans; and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I chose the latter because it was the farthest from Chicago, a new environment. I attended Naval Reserve drills in Albuquerque in a building out near the airport dubbed the “dry-land battleship.” It was here where I decided to strike for the rate of a hospital corpsman. I found the classes interesting and challenging.

I was a dormitory student at New Mexico. And I quickly made new friends by organizing a flag football team from our wing in the dorm. It wasn’t just a college intramural league. This was a gateway to a new social life and beer busts up in the Sandia Mountains and out in the mesas. It was my time as a “party boy.” And I took full advantage of the opportunities.

Also, I managed to alienate the personnel staff at the Naval Reserve Headquarters. I had heard nothing from my application for a one-year college deferment from October 1960 to October 1961. The personnel office, headed by a senior chief petty officer who was a World War II and Korean War veteran, treated me like the “boot” that I was. At the conclusion of each drill weekend I would inquire about my deferment request. The answer was always the same: “It’s in the system.” As time rolled on I wasn’t just concerned—I was very concerned.

When winter turned to spring I made the decision to use my father’s connection to Senator Paul Douglas’s office in Washington, D.C. This became known as a “C.I.,” a congressional inquiry, a thorn in the side of any military organization. I was dealing with a ticking clock to get that one-year deferment. It was more than possible that my college years would be interrupted by orders to active duty. At the next drill that chief petty officer called me in for a royal butt-chewing, emphasizing the unnecessary paperwork I had caused. He ended the meeting by saying, “You haven’t heard the last of this, McAdams!”

The first time I heard the expression “draft dodger” was from my father. Often, during election time in Chicago, when a candidate’s résumé was being scrutinized, dad would check the candidate’s profile to see if any time was spent in uniform. He often explained how some candidates glamorize their service, even fictionalizing a combat record. Several times, while reading a profile, I would see him pause. He would then mutter, “What a fake.”

Once, at a political breakfast, after Senator John Kennedy had announced his presidential candidacy, the subject came around to the senator’s controversial wartime experience in the Solomon Islands, where his torpedo boat was rammed in a nighttime patrol. Kenned...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Glossary
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• 1 Down South
• 2 The Call
• 3 Quantico
• 4 Danang, RVN
• 5 A Memorial
• 6 The Captain
• 7 Thuong Duc
• 8 Investigation
• 9 Honolulu
• 10 A Letter
• 11 The River
• 12 Chicago
• 13 Going to Staff
• 14 Teacher
• 15 Kilo Mike Alpha
• 16 Kriegspiel
• 17 The Seven-Mile Stretch
• 18 Tet ’69
• 19 Homecoming
• 20 Camp Pendleton
• 21 A Moonlit Barbecue
• Afterword
• Photo Gallery
• Back Cover