Tuesday, April 1, 2008

The Baby-Blue Scooter of Snoul, Cambodia





A snapshot of the battle at Snoul. That could be me on the back deck of the closest tank.

By Larry Doyle
My soldiers haven't been looting. They have strict instructions not to. We of course destroy or evacuate any war material–anything that's obviously identifiable as war material–or associated with the NVA. As far as civilian property is concerned, our instructions to them, and what we've been doing is just leaving it in place, hoping the civilians will come back in and recover it.
COL. GAIL BROOKSHIRE, June 1970


In 1970, the llth Armored Cavalry roared into Snoul, Cambodia under heavy fire from the communists who were using the village as an R & R center. There were bars, whorehouses and a school; there were two-storied buildings. All we had seen were grass huts and bunkers. After the initial volley of fire we called in two F-4s which ran the rats out and we went in. There was some minor looting and a nice scooter was taken by my platoon which was reported in the US. A couple weeks later we were ordered to return it and place it in the exact same spot. Orders from Washington. That's not what happened, I'm proud to say.

  It was sexy. A brand new, baby-blue motor scooter parked as pretty as you please with kick-stand down outside a building that was partially destroyed from the air strike minutes before. Like a virgin. It probably belonged to one of the North Vietnamese Army Regulars (N.V.A.) I saw running over each other in their haste to vacate the town.
I’d guess seventeen soldiers—in spurts of two, three, and four, literally running over the top of each other, dropping AK-47s and scrambling out of town directly in the line of fire of my tank—escaped death that day only because the tank commander was busy strategizing with an officer beside him, ignoring me as I shouted and shook him trying to get him to just pull the string that would surely kill at least three maybe ten. The gun tube was facing dead center down the middle of the road as they clawed and pawed their way over one another to a trail leading down a steep valley to my right. Just then the T.C. turned and said, “what is it?”
   “You just missed about 17 N.V.A. right in front of your main gun,” I shouted back. 
By then he had missed his chance for a confirmed kill and the 17 got away. One of them left his scooter, remarkably unscathed.
We had made a mad road-march to Snoul, Cambodia. Snoul was east, northeast of Phenom Penh, the capital, and northwest of Loc Ninh, Vietnam and was known to military intelligence as a Rest & Recuperation center for the NVA. Although small, it had a couple of two story buildings, bars I believe. After a long road-march, H-Company and HHQ were in the process of setting up a fire-base about 100 yards away from the city as G and F-Troops went on patrols inside Snoul and across the airstrip to the rubber plantation respectively. I guess the vacationers objected to a squad of armored personnel carriers cruising through their R&R center, because they promptly fired upon F-troop as they tried to enter the town and G-troop as they entered the rubber trees. For us the result was stray AK rounds skirting across the dirt coming from the town to our left causing the now dismounted Cav. troops to take cover on the right side of the tank. Immediately, G-troop took fire from directly in front of us with the same effect. Suddenly we were in a crossfire and there was no place to hide. The only perceivable threat to us was bullets scooting across the ground coming from two sides prompting us to mount up, again, just before the order was given to do just that.
We hadn’t been on the ground for a minute before we were back on these iron, noise-makers again. A curious feeling of security came over me as I took my seat on the back-deck rack again, dawned my steel pot again, and watched the diesel engines begin spewing smoke, once again.
When fired upon by the occupants, young, healthy (fast as jack rabbits) males, we simply called in an air strike and waited a couple of minutes for the jets to show and the bombing during which time the above frenzied evacuation of N.V.A. took place. That left the door open for us to enter without opposition, guns a blazin’, to survey the devastation, and add to it a little.
And devastation there was. A two-storied bar, from which we looted some cases of orange soda, had been destroyed; some burned out cars were seen; and some houses were expunged from the air strike. We were pretty sure no one was left in there, but “better safe than sorry” was more than a wise, old saying there, so we didn’t take any chances. In the name of safety we began shooting through windows, doorways, hell, walls. It was great. We used all the fun weapons, the M-79, 45 cal. burp-gun (which seldom worked), pistols, and the bulldozing power of a tank. But there in the ruination was this cute little, baby-blue, motor scooter shining like a diamond in the rough; standing upright like an item on The Price is Right.
The avarice in every one’s hearts over this pretty scooter was not unapparent. It was as if we had our vision setting adjusted from black and white to the color mode. Every one looked at that sexy scooter, then at our weathered, lovable, but gruff Platoon Sargent, Homer King.
He said, “Get it, they’ll just run RPGs back to Vietnam with the damn thing,” falling under, "war material."
There was but one draw back: With all the media attention the invasion begat, we were asked to accommodate a long-haired reporter who was not friendly to G.I.s. He was on his moral, white horse and presumed the Blackhorse immoral. We could have just run over it, but we needed a moral boost. We always needed a moral boost.
So, another tanker dismounted and hoisted this pristine machine on the back deck of his tank, strapped her down, and we continued on our merry path of what we did best: breaking things and shooting-up buildings. In all this mayhem I was impressed by the fact that no one shot the chickens or dogs which were running around. That the school was passed over needed no direct order but it was given. Managed chaos. This place was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the NVA, and when they fired on 11th ACR they invited the wrath of God and got it, by God.
So we kept the scooter which had the key in it. We were also given two cars by the rich Frenchman, who had been unable to capitalize on his rubber plantations around Snoul since the communists had moved in. One of these cars had a key, the other required hot wiring by one troop who claimed knowledge in such things but only managed to set it on fire. The one flaming vehicle provided a perfect backdrop for the troops tearing up and down the airstrip adjacent to Snoul in the other, which was now full of G.I.s both inside and out smoking joints, pretending to be cruising the streets back in the states. The Frenchman gave us permission to destroy these cars as a form of stress release. Honest.
It was in this FSB by the grass air-strip at Snoul where the memorial service for my friend, Paul Dailey, was held. I didn’t attend. I struggle with that now, though at the time it was an easy decision to make, one of bitterness and blame. I sat on the tank, fiddling with shit, watching and listening as the chaplain gave a fine eulogy which didn’t touch on the soul of Paul, the essence of the boy. He was eighteen; it was stupid.
The scooter accompanied us to the next base camp where one of our Chu Hoi defectors, whom no one trusted, got it and supposedly took it to Saigon to see his girl friend. Were this the case, his trust was diminished. Were it not the case, his trust was diminished. He took it somewhere. Although I knew a couple of Chu Hois whom I liked, this one was suspect. He wore expensive clothes even in the bush and when he disappeared with my scooter, that did it. He was gone more than a week then returned at about the same time we got orders all the way from the pentagon to return the scooter to the exact same spot we had gotten it. The Pentagon? What the hell was this about?
Our long-haired reporter friend had seen us steal the thing and had written about it in the states prompting a long yank on the chain-of-command. Return it to Snoul a week after wrecking the place? That would be injurious to our health. We tried to refuse but this came down from too far up. The whims of the long-haired cry-babies were undermining the safety of American troops, a trend of which we were just beginning to see traces of.
So, later that afternoon, we loaded the slightly less virginal machine back on the back deck for the trip back to Snoul, I'm guessing ten klicks. With our indignation increasing the closer we got to Snoul, it reached the pinnacle as we motored through a small village of grass huts where we were met on the side of the road by young, healthy males again, dressed in slacks and white shirts. They came out of the huts, arms around young, very young, pretty teenage girls—who were not dressed as well, either in style or amount of fabric—giving us the peace sign. These were probably the same jack rabbits who earlier were pushing each other down to avoid our air strike. This was a perfect ambush site, with plenty of civilians to impede our will to launch enough fire power for an adequate defense. We were already angry. Now we were getting provoked and getting scared, not a desirable blend of emotions for a platoon of tankers. Lined up on the side of the road as if watching a parade, these soldiers in civilian dress were mocking us at close range, about a half a gun-tube length to be precise.

Our gruff, tank commander had had enough. While motoring at a good pace, Sgt. King, using all of his raw faculty, traversed the turret towards one of the young, peace-sign-flashing studs such that the gun tube was pointed in his face about a meter away as we passed. So well did Sgt. King traverse at the same speed we were traveling, that the business end of the tube stayed in his the face of the soldier as the tank moved along down the road; it was a remarkable feat. His smile faded. Again we witnessed the jack rabbit mode of retreat. These guys were faster than their young trifles, fleeing into the jungle behind the huts.
As we rode past the vill, we were laughing hysterically at these murdering butchers running away like children. We were on top of the world, except for one thing: we still had to take that damn scooter back to the middle of Snoul, about a kilometer away, now, and this time with only one platoon and no air support. We were being punished by the liberal media and a non-supportive charge. But the consequences of this punishment could have more impact than a simple spanking of your kids, which I’m sure that reporter was opposed to, as well.
By the time we reached the air strip with Snoul on the other side, Sgt. Homer King’s ire was absolute. We stopped the column smack dab in the middle of the grass air strip where he made an executive decision in the interest of safety of his troops.
“Throw it off right in the middle of the air strip,” he commanded.
That ignited me and Tom Park, our driver. I untied the lashing that held the scooter on the back deck and kicked it off with fury. Tom dismounted came aft to line the thing up under his right track, then backed up one track right on top of the scooter and did the shimmy, twisting the steering wheel left to right, left to right, left to right. After Tom drove off, each of the other tanks followed suit, driving one track on the once pristine scooter, then doing the twist. Fifty-two tons of steel was no match for a Japanese-made motor scooter, especially in 1970 when the "Made in Japan" label was literally a joke. Looking back at the wreckage lying crumpled like a, well, a scooter crushed by a column of tanks, my emotions in a blender, I was jubilant, frightened, and pumped full of adrenalin; shaking with an M-16 hoisted upward and smiling as the shadows drew long I thought to my self, "What a metamorphosis I've been through!"

We avoided the village and took another route home. When we got there Sgt. King callously walked up to the Company Commander, saluted maliciously and announced, “Mission Accomplished.”

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