Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association
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*****
Contributed by Bud Campbell
The Team assembled at Camp Pendleton. We got our three jeeps with trailers containing an enormous amount of junk we would never use and started the trip to El Toro Marine Air Base where we were to embark. It was a short ride, thirty miles or so. The Gods of War were laughing at this unlikely band of warriors even then because we took a wrong turn that quickly took us into the hills behind the base. After a lot of frustration, and many more wrong turns, we found a man walking along the road. We stopped and inquired as to the direction to El Toro. He didn't speak English! Here we were, eleven highly trained intelligence personnel, all of which spoke at least two languages. Unfortunately none of them were Spanish!
*****
Contributed by Bud Campbell
There are a lot of sights I have seen in this old veil of tears but none so indelibly burnt into my memory as those first sights after embarking in Viet Nam. The heat was unbelievable and the smell unimaginable. Trucks rolled by throwing up clouds of red dust that immediately caked your sweat soaked body. The humidity was so high you felt like you were going to drown. Next to our aircraft was one filling up with troops going to Okinawa and then home, their tour over. They looked like specters out of some grade B horror movie with their sunken eyes, drawn gray faces, and were as thin as rails. I recognized one of them, a sergeant I had known at Camp Pendleton. I couldn't believe it was the same person. He was at least thirty pounds lighter than when I had last seen him and his hair was gray! It was a sobering moment and we all wondered if we would look like that when we went home, if we went home!
*****
Contributed by Bud Campbell
We were sitting around the 1st Marine Division Club, drinking and lying as we had been since our arrival in Viet Nam two weeks earlier. A call came in that there was a wounded Viet Cong out at the Naval Hospital. The old hands were not about to give up a party to travel at night to the hospital, and besides here was this brand new Interrogation Team who had yet to interrogate a prisoner. As Team chief, and coincidentally, the one most reasonably sober, I volunteered to go.
The hospital was on the other side of Da Nang from the 1st Division and a goodly drive. There was something eerie, and a little frightening, about leaving the security of the compound to drive across a lot of empty space, through a town where there were untold VC, doing the same as any GI at night in a big city, and then across more empty space into the Naval Hospital. Wounded prisoners, like wounded GIs, were brought into the triage area where they were screened for the gravity of their wounds. The difference was that the prisoners were generally left until all the GIs, no matter how slightly injured, were treated.
There were a number of casualties being treated and I asked one of the Corpsmen where the prisoner was. "Over there in the corner somewhere." I finally found him squatting in a corner. His left arm had been blown off above the elbow. Ragged skin and a jagged bone were all that was left Surprisingly there was little blood. He just sat there, looking at me as I approached, expecting the worst, I'm sure, from yet another big ugly American. As the years and the tours, went by I got used to seeing people in much worse shape, and to my retrospective and everlasting shame, it never bothered me a bit. That's the way things were and in any case, there was nothing I could do about it. This was the first though. An old man, 60 or more, in what must have been terrible agony, just sitting there awaiting whatever fate held. This was war and this was to be my job.
*****
Contributed by Bud Campbell
Everyone, at least every soldier, has their first time to be shot at. What happens at that moment pretty much tells how you will react the rest of time you play the game. It certainly separates the men from the boys. Mine came after a few weeks in country when I was hitching a ride on a courier plane down to Chu Lai. A call for a Medivac came in while we were enroute. The pilot told us he was going to drop us at a small airstrip nearby while he picked up the wounded and he would be back for us in an hour or so. He assured us the place he was leaving us at was secure and we would be as safe as in our mother's arms.
There were five of us. A couple of finance types, a Doctor, a young airman, and myself. The young airman had an M-16 rifle. The rest of us, except the Doctor had .45 caliber pistols. It was hot, but other than that a rather pleasant summer afternoon. About a half an hour after we had been set down, out of the woods came thousands of VC -- well 4 or 5 anyway -- whooping, hollering and shooting! I naturally clawed for my pistol, and I clawed, and I clawed. The damn thing wouldn't come out of its holster! My fellow travelers, with the exception of the young airman, had looks of stark terror on their faces. With a look of disgust on his face the young airman let go a magazine from his M-16.
The VC ran back in the woods and the "battle" was over. I still hadn't got that damn pistol out, which is probably just as well because I might have shot myself in the foot. At any rate I had survived my trial by fire and was quite proud of the fact that I hadn't wet my pants!
*****
Contributed by Bud Campbell
The 1st Marines had made a sweep and rounded up several prisoners, VC suspects, as they always were, when they were brought in. One was unusual, a young man of military age, which was something that you just didn't find in the average village. They called me to talk to him. When I saw him he was the most disgusting sight I had seen in a long time. He was dirty, I mean filthy, and dressed in rags. He smelled worse than a latrine but was in obvious good physical shape. I started talking to him and quickly found out that he was one hard core SOB. I took him down into a small bunker where we could speak "privately" and for the next 12 hours we were face to face. I have never mistreated a prisoner but this time I did come close.
I had him by the collar speaking directly into his face, nose-to-nose, eyeball-to-eyeball. For those 12 hours I was closer to him than I have often been to a woman while we discussed the fact that confession was good for the soul. He finally broke down and confessed that he was an NVA Lieutenant who had been separated from his unit. He had been hiding out for the last three months in that village, a Leper Colony! There wasn't enough soap in all of Viet Nam for me to get clean that night!
*****
Contributed by Doug Brower
Mogadishu, January 1993
The biggest operation I participated in was the raid on the Bakaara Arms Market (made famous by Blackhawk Down, so I have to preface this with "the first raid" on Bakaara Market). I can’t remember the date, but it was months before the US Army raid in October 1993. We went on a company re-inforced size raid to remove all the weapons in the area (from historical records of the mission in Somalia, I believe this was the raid on 11 Jan 1993 called Operation Nutcracker and consisted of over 900 troops, many more than I remembered).
We were fairly successful. However, like all military operations, this one did not go as planned. The plan was briefed in the Mogadishu Stadium (another US Compound). Sand tables and models were all prepared and everything looked so organized and set to go smoothly. And, for the most part, it did go smooth. The models and sand tables just didn’t play out like they were supposed to. The grunts were to move in and sweep north towards a blocking force at the northern end of the market. The ad-hoc HETs were to sweep behind, interrogate detainees left cuffed and stuffed in their wake, and exploit the arms caches as they were discovered. PSYOPS was tasked to fly overhead and proclaim…something.
The first "not as planned" event came down when the PSYOPS birds overhead were completely unintelligible. I had a vocabulary of about 200 words in Somali by this time. I couldn’t understand a word. When asked, neither could my native speaking interpreter. The raid began as planned, and fortunately, we survived first contact. The plan didn’t.
While the grunts went forward through the market, we were questioning all the detainees and other personnel in the area as well. We learned that the biggest and best arms caches were to the west, not north. So the twelve-man detachment of CI-IT guys started to follow the information west, while the grunts continued north. In the end, we all came out safe (although a few casualties suffered from slingshot launched rocks). Our twelve-man team filled seven 5-ton trucks with weapons. The entire infantry company filled five.
*****
Contributed by Ron Bragdon
I had arrived in Hawaii in June, assigned to 1st ITT, HqFMFPac, at Camp H.M. Smith. The year was 1964. There I had re-met Bruce Jones and Bob "Slats" Slater, whom I had met in DLIEC (formerly NLS) at Anacostia Annex, DC. It was there that I met MSgt "Top" O’Leary. I also made the acquaintance of WO Dalrymple, who at that time was living on a sailboat in Pearl Harbor.
Camp Smith is located high on the Pali overlooking Pearl Harbor, and was once a hospital. Virtually everything is in a single building…the mess hall – the PX – the theater – the library – and the office. The only place I went outside the building was to the E club, which was across and down the street a little.
I was assigned a room about 100 paces from the office, and was able to use a head across the hall – just almost private use. The view from my room was nothing short of breathtaking. It faced south. On my left, at a distance was Diamond Head. On my left front was Honolulu. Directly below was Pearl Harbor. Off to my distant right were Ewa Beach and the Puuloa Rifle Range.
In August I received my first orders to go out on "in country" language training. I was bound for Shufly. I was eager and ready to go. I thought that I was pretty good at Vietnamese (Northern Dialect) and wanted to prove it. Also, since in 1964 very few people had war zone or combat zone experience, I wanted to get that Expeditionary Ribbon. (Oh how little I knew of the future).
I was to grab a hop from VR-21 (based at NAS Alameda) at Hickam, get off in Okinawa at Kadena, wait over a weekend there then grab a hop from VMGR-1 to Shufly. Well, I knew that that particular flight originated in Iwakuni. I also knew that a sister flight originated in Atsugi to go to Iwakuni, and that I could catch that flight and be in Iwakuni to catch my assigned flight there rather than in Oki. Since the VR-21 flight went on to Atsugi, and my former squadron (MACS-8) was deployed in Atsugi, guess what I did. (No, I did not visit Koza or BC).
The weekend was over, and both Japan and Okinawa were far behind me. The KC-130 was droning on and on as the East China Sea and then the South China Sea passed below us. Taiwan passed below. Glimpses were seen of Tinian and Saipan. We were already too far west to raise the Philippines. We stayed too far east to be bothered by China or North Vietnam.
Eventually, in the late afternoon, solid continental land was under us. It seemed the monsoons were early this year. (Later I found out that this day was not monsoonal, but that’s another story). We had evidently flown a goodly distance south of our destination because the land was on our left and the ocean on our right. After flying many hours, the pilot informed us that we would have to wait for a break in the weather to land. From the altitude, the land looked primeval and rain soaked. Finally, we landed.
Shufly was the "secret code name" for the Marine presence in Vietnam. Originally based in the Mekong Delta Region at Soc Trang, the Marines and Army had swapped locations and the Marines were then in Danang. At the time, HMM-365 under the command of LtCol Koler, was the resident helo squadron. The squadron’s nickname was "Koler’s Clowns", which they proudly wore as a patch and as the Squadron Logo. MABS-16 had half of its squadron there in support of the helo squadron. 1st ITT provided lingual support in both French and Vietnamese in all sorts of things procured locally. (A few stories are located in this region also). This was the billet originally manned by Captain Marr, who was mentioned in Bernard Fall’s book "Street Without Joy".
Bob Spitz was then the resident French linguist. He met me and brought me to where our quarters were. Night was almost upon us. I was eager to make a good impression.
I had unpacked, and Bob had brought me to the area where our office was. It was small, simple, and to the point. He was giving me the "lay of the land" when our conversation was interrupted by the manager of the E Club, one of the waitresses, and a Marine club member.
The waitress was in tears and totally distraught. Although she spoke some English, it was not in her at that time. The manager looked totally perplexed. The Marine was wearing an expression of "Gosh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!" It was my job to decipher exactly what had happened from the waitress.
Well… She spoke a Central Dialect, and I spoke unadulterated Hanoi. It was similar to a down-homer hick from Down East Maine trying to converse with a redneck from the Smokies. She pronounced many letters differently than I had been taught, and her choice of words was utterly different from how my teacher had spoken. I was beginning to get that feeling of inadequacy felt by the hooker watching her first customer go downstairs to demand a refund.
With much trying and patience, her words started to come through, as she calmed down a little.
It seemed that the Marine had been sitting at the bar next to the waitress station, his elbow on the bar. He had turned toward the waitress; his elbow still elevated, and bopped her right in the nose! On top of the obvious pain, she had taken it as a personal insult (as would nearly any oriental) – being struck in the face. Once she understood that it had been completely accidental, all was forgiven, and life went on.
I knew, on the very first night, that I had better learn the local dialect – and fast!
Welcome to Vietnam (oops … Shufly)!
The Shufly Compound circa 1963/1964
The red line is National Route 1, the Street Without Joy
The blue lines mark off the limits of the compound.
The view is generally to the west.
Updated:08/12/15
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