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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-06496 to 363-06508.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-06496 to 363-06508
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Title
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Article about Operation Game Warden
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Description
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Original title: "Warden", Keever's title: "River Warfare, Amphibious, Operations Meld U.S. Navy and Army", Article draft about Operation Game Warden and the United States' efforts to patrol the Mekong Delta and its tributaries, for the Christian Science Monitor
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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- Page 1
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Beverly Ann Deepe
38, Vo Tanh
Saigon, Vietnam
January 31, 1968
Warden page 1
for the first
(The U.S. Navy is again involved in river warfare
time since the American Civil War. This three-part report examines America's
Rice Paddy Navy in South Vietnam. This last article describes the unparalleled
patrolling operation, called Game Warden, conducted by the crews of the "Unsinkable
River Dragons".)
Binh Thy, South Vietnam
OPERat
American "little boat" patrolling along the major fingers of the
Mekong River is unprecedented in the annals of the U.S. Navy history.
For the first time in its 193-year history, American Naval forces are
conducting and "muddy-water" patrolling in nose-to-nose combat with its
enemy forces.
The operation, code-named Came Warden, is designed to blouk Viet Cong
movement of men and supplies across the major branches of the Mekong River.
operation
The
conducted around the clock for the past twenty-one months by 120 river-
craft has been deemed successful enough to be expanded to 200 patrol boats in the
near future.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 2.
Operation Game Warden is conducted by the U.S. Navy's 1500-man Task
Force 116 with Headquarters at Binh Thuy on the outskirts of Can Tho, the capital
of the Mekong Delta and South Vietnam's second most populous city.
Even America's last river xxx conflict, during the Civil war a century
ago, did not see inland patrolling of such magnitude and energy. The battle of
the Mississippi River involved conventional naval tactics of overpowering
Confederate forts and installations along the river banks, and once these were
defeated, to control wide expanses of the river until the next fort could be over-
run.
of 100 years go,
This Mississippi River operation, comparable to the tactical innovation of
And
the Mobile Riverine Force in Vietnam, was thus conventional in nature. Operation
Game Warden is, however, more counter-insurgency in nature, with emphasis on
"spinning-out" Viet Cong supplies from the local population.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 3.
The story of America's muddy water war in Vietnam began in 1965. When
American gound troops marched into the jungled areas north of Saigon, the Navy
was ordered to survey the problems of operating in the riverine environment south
of Saigon the second battleground. Here, in the famed Mekong Delta, was a
new world for the Navy as well as for American ground-pounding Army troops.
But there was more water than ground in the Delta. The mighty Mekong
River, one of the longest rivers in the world, rises 2800 miles away along the
mountain slopes of Tibet, flounders through or between the countries of South Asia,
until, in South Vietnam, it fans out into a lacework of tributaries, estuaries and
riverlets and empties into the South China Sea. It forms en route one of the
richest ricebowls in the world, producing livelihood for half of South Vietnam's
population. American sailors call this brown lifeline "the Mississippi of Southeast
Asia; the Vietnamese call it Cuu Long the nine-headed dragon. Waterways rather
than roads are the chief means of transport; 5000 miles of navigable inland waterways
-
finger through the area, compared to 1200 miles of once-upon-a-time roads, now mos
cut, mined or excavated by the Viet Cong.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 4.
often too
The Delta was a nightmare for military tacticians. Trucking troops to
battle was rarely possible. The high rice dikes hindered the use of the
"swimming tanks" the black, squat M-113 armored personnel carriers. Heli-
copters could ferry troops to the battlefield, but could not provide day-and-night
heavy fire support. Artillery had to be placed on solid high ground
far away to cover troops on the march. Even worse, some military camps simply
floated away during the flood times, when the snows of Tibet melted and gushed
southward. American Special Forces and their Vietnamese counterparts had to perform
drastic engineering feats to save their base camps sprinkled throughout the Delta.
Thousands of empty oil drums were dumped from low-flying aircraft and the Special
Forces built their radio shacks and barracks to float on the bobbing containers.
In some camps, the buildings floated, so that as the water rose, so did the
buildings. But this required too many oil drums. In other camps, they constructed
their buildings so that only the floors floated; as the water rose, the furniture, men
and rats all moved closer and closer to the ceiling. Their mortar pits and
artillery needed more stable platforms, so these were placed inside giant upright
cement cylinders. One Green Beret team built two-story thatch homes for the
dependents of their Vietnamese irregulars.
But, because Vietnamese babies do
not wear diapers, the families living on the first floor became increasingly
So the Americans built more houses, letting one family live on
damp and angry.
the first floor most of the year, but moving them up to the second floor when the
floods arrived.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 5.
"I was born in the Louisiana bayoux," one Special Forces commander,
a Negro captain, told me as he stared at his triangular island-campt surrounded
by marshland.
"But I left there twelve years ago. I had to come to Vietnam
to find Louisiana again."
By April, 1966, the Navy had partially answered this nightmare with
a new dreamboat which the sailors affectionately call the "Unsinkable River
Dragon." These are the PBR's
Patrol Boats, River.
The 31-foot fibreglass boat,
25. KNO
heavily armed and carrying a four-man crew, is a souped-up carbon copy of the
$16,000 cabin cruisers which have delighted water skiing enthusiasts in Puget
Sound and Miami Bay. But the vessel costs the Navy $85,000 with twin 220-horsepower
diesel engines, armor along the steering apparatus and special twin water jet
pumps replacing a propeller which would get tangled in river debris. As the
American Civil War startled naval warriors. with the advent of ironclads, tin-clads
and even cotton-clads, the PBR revolutionized today's muddy water Navy with two
common household products: fibreglass and styrofoam.
The fibreglass makes the boat half as heavy and expensive as steel
and fax the sailors are delighted that there is no rust to scrape off.
The honeycombed styrofoam, commonly used for Christmas decorations, acts as
flotation inside the boat. Both ingredients mean the boat is difficult to sink.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 6.
"Here's the world's most powerful Navy fighting a war with 31-foot
fibreglass boats," one sailor mused, as though the fact astonished even him. "But
I love this boat. The Viet Cong can shoot it to shreds, but the pieces will still
float. It's a giant ping-pong ball."
Other sailors frequently recalled, "In the days of John Paul Jones, we
said the Navy was made of wooden ships and iron men. Then we got iron ships and
Now we've added plastic boats and steel men."
iron men.
The
Almost two years ago, the 120 PBR's, like Indians on a cloverleaf warpath,
initiated 24-hour patrolling along 250 miles of the four main Mekong channels
the Fam Luong, K Co Chien, Bassac and My Tho. The operationsis officially named
Game Warden, but some sailors refer to it as real-life Terry and the Pirates.
operation was designed to stabilize the four major fingers of the Mekong, to erase
Viet Cong tax collection and smuggling of war goods and to re-establish Vietnamese
government control. In its first 19 months of operation, the Game Warden crews have
inspected 250,408 watercraft and detained 9,460 persons for improper identification.
The Viet Cong have suffered 1,226 boats destroyed or captured, 1254 guerrillas
killed and 308 fortifications damaged or destroyed.
REPORTEDLY
(more)o
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Deepe
Warden
www
page 7,
Initially, the Navy crews suffered nautical headaches galore.
Viet Cong
The crews
river barricades, made of coconut tree logs and mud, had to be lown up.
inherited old French charts and Army ground maps, neither of which showed sandbars
that could mysteriously appear in the middle of the main channel one day but be gone
the next. One officer grounded his boat "there was enough land on all sides of
the vessel to play football",-ene enlisted man laughed
and the boat had to wait ten
hours for the tide to carry it out again. Many of the smaller streams of the Mekong
had never been charted, or even named. So Juliet Canal, Route 66, Highway 101, Purple
Heart Alley, Meiss's Mire and Island No. 10 were platted on official charts, named
after major firefights, humorous incidents, radio call signs or the first patrol
officer to transit the stream. (Americans in Vietnam often the Vietnamese expression
"Number 10" to describe something bad, as distinct from "Number 1", which is tops.
this case, Island No. 10 is the nickname of Dung Island at the mouth of the Bassac
River, where the PBR's have had numerous firefights with the Viet Cong.
In
The nickname
is unrelated to the American Civil War island-battleground of the same name, which was a
key Confederate defense in the Mississippi River. After weeks of siege and bombardment,
Island No. 10 fell on April 7, 1862, and led to the fall of New Orleans 18 days later.
The Mississippi River has since washed Island No. 10 into oblivion.)
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 8.
At first, the Vietnamese river people were terrified of the PBR's, calling
them "Little Green Monsters," or the "River Dragons." Intelligence information
gleaned from the people was scarce. But the 1500 sailors, who proudly wear the black
berets, had been taught two weeks of Vietnamese language before leaving the United
States. Gradually, they struck up "how's the fishing" conversations with the
river villagers.
"We started handing out little plastic buckets painted in the yellow-and-
red Vietnamese government colors," EN2 Charles Cox, Sr., of Los Angeles recalled.
"Each bucket contained soap, towels, fish hooks, needles, thread and aspirins.
Suddenly, the sampans x came running up and down the river swarming all over us
to get the buckets."
EN2 Cox, a 42-year-old veteran of World War II and Korea, explained, "Soon
we were making friends on the river. I could pick the day the old gray-bearded farmer
from the island would be going to market. In four months, we knew most of the water
taxi drivers on the river. I remember one guy we kept asking if he'd seen any V.C.;
we knew his neighborhod was loaded with them, but he'd say nothing. Then, one day
he took his wife to the hospital with grenade fragments sprayed over her back.
V.C. had stored a hand grenade in their harden and as his wife was hoeing,
grenade exploded. Not only did it injure his wife
the
but the V.C. wanted to
charge him 700 piastres ($7) for the grenade. He was furious and after that, he
started to tell us a lot."
The
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
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page 9.
As the PBR's were often the only contact with the outside world for
many river hamlets, the sailors began taking flares, grenades and ammo to the
isolated outposts and to rush to their rescue when under Viet Cong attack. (A
favorite Communist tactic was not only to stomp a fx defeated outpost into the
ground, but also to add insult to injury by digging up the outpost and dumping the
Sometimes the Viet Cong
dirt into the river, leaving only a water-filled crater.
would string the heads of government soldiers on the barbed wire perimeter in
full view of all boat-passers.) Then, the river people began to ask the PBR's
for medical evacuations (one baby was born on a boat) and the sailors started to
transport a medical corpsman to the villages. They also supplied blackboards, books
and cement for schools that had fallen into disrepair. Some "adopted" children in
outposts, giving them dolls sent by families in the United States.
hairlips were sent to American plastic surgeons and were mended.
Children with
C-rations (called
Sea-Rate by the sailors) were liberally distributed to mal-nourished fishermen.
Some
Within months, the PBR's had made friends along the Mekong.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden page 10.
Systematically, the combat sailors, aided by Vietnamese policemen,
Hand
began searching for Viet Cong contraband and smuggled war materials. Under the
false floor boardsof sampans, they found weapons and large quantities of rice.
(One sailor also found a shark.) Under the U-shaped, palm-leaf roofs of sampans they
found rifles. One woman was found steering a barge-ful of 1000 nuoc mam jars;
975 were filled with the evil-smelling fish sauce; 25 contained assorted antibiotics.
Other medicines were found in babies' diapers or inside loaves of bread.
grenades in waterproofed (sacks were found attached to the underside of barges;
the sailors began using effectively metal detectors. They requested a Vietnamese
police-woman to xxxx accompany them to search the female passengers, who hid
Viet Cong tax receipts, reading "Your money is
helping to kill Americans," were found in youngsters' coloring books.
medicines in their blouses.
The
sailors destroyed and disproved communist signs along the river banks reading,
"The Viet Cong cross the river here and the patrol boats cannot stop us."
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 11.
Some of the
Each bloody firefight with the Viet Cong gradually shrank the coffers of
Communist tax collectors. Along the Ham Luong River villagers no longer had to pay
100,000 piastres ($1000) in Viet Cong taxes, but as one sailor observed, "We had a
firefight every day for four months to stop that." In appreciation, the river people
began to stop the PBR's and give the sailors bananas, pineapples and other tropical
fruit.
Motorized sampan owners wrote the U.S. Naval commander a letter saying, "Since
the day the PBR's arrived on the Ham Luong River, the heartless V.C. actions were
put to an end. For example, before the PBR's arrived, the owner of the Hung Phat
motorized sampan was captured and liquidated by the V. C. and a number of other
Atrocities HAVE
owners were forced to witness the execution. Now these storicities has ceased."
Firefights between PBR's and Viet Cong hidden on the river banks were
common; often, indexkx initially, one occurred every hour. During an 18-month
period, one sailor was in 289 firefights. Last year the boat crews suffered 23
per cent casualties; some sailors were wounded three times, but refused to leave the
war zone as they couldhave. In the trees, the Vietcong hung claymore mines, which
Vietcong mung claymore mines, which
Vietcone
splattered the crews with king-size shotgun pellets. One recoilless rifle round
squarely hit one boat in the engine, killing two crew members and flipping the
remaining two into the air. Intelligence reports indicate the two landed in the water,
swam ashore and were captured by the Viet Cong who paraded them around the remote
villages like cattle.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 12.
Recent 2 Cox, who has extended in Vietnam to serve 18 months, explained the
increasing xx measure of success of the black-beret sailors:
"When our patrols first started in 1966, the Viet Cong had wide
open control of the main rivers.
At first they would fight us from their sampans,
Then they started to
signal across the rivers with lights when the PBR's weren't around, but we picked
up the movment on our radars. After that, they moved in a security company on
each side of the river to protect their crossings and to divert the PBR's attention
Now they just sneak across in one or two
with a firefight. That also failed.
sampans and move like the underground railroad did in the Civil War.
but they soon found the PBR's could run and shoot faster.
stage things are now. We're just patrolmen on a highway."
That's the
During the past 18 months, the boat captained by EN2 Cox, a husky Negro,
He captained PBR-109, a "little boat"
took 60 hits
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a near record in the Delta.
number which gained fame when John F. Kennedy became president.
(More)
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Deepe
Warden
page 13.
With branches of the Mekong River now more and more under their control,
the "Unsinkable River Dragons" are beginning to operate increasingly along the smaller
streams and canals. Tix The success of this far more difficult and dangerous
area of operation will in part determine if the South Vietnamese government can
reestablish control over its citiznery in the Mekong Delta, where half of the
population lives.
As more and more American troops enter Vietnam's Delta war, they will
follow the river-borne concept laid down by America's Rice Paddy Navy. This
mini-Navy, alongside the world's gigantic nuclear-powered ships, has already
proved reminiscent of the words written by President Lincoln during th
America's last river war:
"Nor must Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins
they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, the rapid river,
but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a CDLX
little damp, they have been and made their tracks."
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Date
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1968, Jan. 31
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Operation Game Warden, 1965-1973; United States. Navy; United States. Army; Mekong River Delta (Vietnam and Cambodia); Riverine operations; Amphibious warfare; Tactics
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Location
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Binh Thuy Air Base, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.0852; 105.712
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B9, F9
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
