A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SCOUT
It has been said that Scouts had "brass ones the size of basketballs -- and brains the size of peas". Looking back, here's my arguments for agreement with the former, and perhaps some disagreement with the latter. (In defense of the original statement, today's modern Army uses Remotely Piloted Vehicles...)
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It started with a quiet nudge from the night ops clerk, somewhere around an hour before sunrise, maybe a bit more. (Now?? It seems like I just went to sleep!) One was supposed to get up and pre-flight the bird with a flashlight, but I usually took the time to stop by the mess hall and round up a cup of coffee and some of the best fresh-baked doughnuts ever made. (The night cook worked as a cement-mixer before he got drafted -- I asked.) Preflights always went better with coffee and a doughnut.
Weather permitting, we were off with what's known as "Morning Nautical Twilight" -- which means the ground is still dark, but it's light enough to have a reasonable chance of avoiding solid objects.
In the I Corps, we'd work the coast first, and let more light reach into he mountain valleys before we headed up that way. Turning the corner over a low "finger" into the next draw usually meant a surprise for both sides if someone was there. Better to do that with some daylight in there.
At Tay Ninh, west of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, now) the fog usually precluded an early start. We'd have to wait until a tinge of blue could be made out above and at least two telephone poles (about 1/8th of a mile) could be made out horizontally. From there, we'd make an Instrument Take Off (ITO) through to the fog tops, usually around 1500 feet above ground level. The fog bank usually ended just east of Tay Ninh and south of the Black Virgin mountain (Nui Ba Dinh), so we could drop down to our usual tree-top level and scout the northern and eastern portions, catching up on the western end as the fog burned off.
These were known as "First Light" missions. The object was to catch Charlie still moving on his trek the night before, spot the smoke from a late cooking fire, or just look around and spot anything "different" from a previous look. Every once in a great while, Charlie would resolve the detection problem by shooting at us. (At the cost of making other things less easy, of course.)
With luck, we'd either be back at home plate, or finish up at a battalion firebase in time for breakfast. Landing at a battalion base meant that we usually had a mission coming up with that battalion. It was a good time to get both breakfast and inbrief completed. Next to Brigade, the best cooks when I was there belonged to the 1/8th Cavalry!
Subsequent missions could be an insertion, an extraction, close-in reconnaissance of the perimeter of a unit already on the ground, a deeper reconnaissance, or a "snatch" mission, described in another article. As always, a unit in contact would override the scheduled missions.
(Note : see the article on Snatch Missions also in REFLECTIONS)
"Contact" could be anything from a single sniper to (once) an entire regiment. The best information the Scouts could get would be over the radio while they were inbound. Normally, that only described the grunts’ eye view, which was, of necessity, limited to a rather hasty look before both sides "went to ground". It would be up to the Scouts to sort it all out before the heavier stuff arrived.
The heavier stuff was either Cobras, Artillery, or Air Force ordinance (or all three), so the other requirement was to locate all the grunts and get them reasonably clear before the Scouts could mark targets. Easier said than done. Firefights had a way of getting everyone intermingled as both sides attempted to maneuver on the other. Most of the sweat was generated while separating the two sides, and then accounting for everyone before we could bring in the heavy stuff. The first hour was invariably the least organized and the most hairy.
The machine guns and grenades of the Scouts could provide support as close as one could see -- sometimes, within ten meters of the friendlies. However, the Scout's payload was too small to do so for long. Beyond the Scouts, the gunships -- either the 229th's "Tiger Birds" or the 2/20th's "Blue Max" Aerial Rocket Artillery were the best choice for the early stages of separation and covering fire.
The gunships, and later the Cobras, usually needed only one mark. After that, they were in close enough to make their own adjustments.
Once separation was achieved, the Scouts could call in the artillery and the Air Force, which meant a bit slower pace. The Air Force still required a run over the target to drop a white phosphorus grenade, which provided a white smoke cloud against a green backdrop for the fast moving jets. Naturally, Charlie didn't take too kindly to being marked. The usual routine was to drop the WP grenade when the Scouts started taking fire from below. Either the jets would take their cue from the smoke, or a light fixed-wing USAF Forward Air Controller (FAC) would launch follow-up smoke rockets to continuously mark the targets.
Artillery could be called by an Arty liaison officer (LNO) on the ground or in a Command and Control (C&C) ship, or by the Scouts themselves. The Scouts still had the best chance of finding the targets due to their treetop location. Calls for fire were part and parcel of the Scout's arsenal.
Once the dust settled (literally as well as figuratively), the Scouts would scoot back in ahead of the grunts to determine what was left. At the same time, Scouts could provide better BDA's (Bomb Damage Assessments) than the higher-flying FAC could provide. If the heavy ordinance missed, the Scouts would be the first to know. Time to drop back and do it again.
Scheduled insertions were usually more quiet, at least from the Scout's point of view. Depending on the commander, the Scouts could be called on to give the LZ a quick look just before the artillery prep went in, or they would be held back until the first squads were on the ground. Once grunts were on the ground, the Scout's mission was to cover the gaps in the perimeter being formed as the rest of the company was brought in. (A Huey could only carry from four to six grunts in that heat, and four or less in the mountains. A First Cavalry "lift" was from four to six birds, no more. Less than four was too slow. More than six was found to be too big a target, both enroute and in the LZ. Units who flew with massive "daisy chains" of lift birds tended to experience heavy losses.)
Once the grunt company was in, the Scouts would expand their search, and start working the intended route of the company in more detail as they expanded the search. (Simply following the intended route of march would be too obvious.)
Extractions were the reverse of insertions. The Scouts would provide perimeter security, then "clear" the LZ to insure no one had been left behind.
Finally, there was the "Last Light" recon of the entire Area of Operations, if no contact was in progress. This was similar to the First Light recon, only now the object was to catch someone moving (or cooking) too early. Particularly in the hill country, Last Light tours could also mean dropping in on a company and giving the CO a quick aerial view of his position. Sometimes, we'd get involved in a late-evening extraction of wounded, or a fire-fight would drag on into darkness, but that wasn't the norm. Charlie couldn't see any better at night than the Americans could, then.
There were a few memorable nights of working under artillery-dropped flares, but those nights were (thankfully) few and far between. Murphy's Law of night operations dictates that even flares fired from three separate batteries will simultaneously go 'streamer' at least once. Always.
Finished? Not exactly. There's the post-flight inspections, the debriefs, the schedule for the morning, a little hot chow, a beer or two (or three), and then maybe some sleep. The next thing was the quiet voice of the CQ in pre-dawn darkness. (Again?? Now?? I just got to sleep!)
What else was required?
The ability to read a trail -- was that grass always bent that way? How many people made those footprints? How long ago? Are they deep? Was the maker loaded down? Or was he light, as in a patrol? Which way do bicycle tracks point? That trailside bunker -- old, or new? What makes it so? If it is old, then why is some of the dirt at the entrance a different color? Why would there be a bamboo rack above the water-line in a side stream? It is certainly no fish-trap. The classic: Why are tree branches tied together with red tape? (Best guess is that the tier was color-blind; there was a supply complex underneath...) Tracking footprints in sandy terrain was a one-time shot. Get it right the first time; the helicopter's rotorwash eliminates any second read. Does it sound like a job for country boys? We had a few city-bred souls who did well, too.
In a firefight, one needed the iron discipline to NOT shoot until one was sure the friendlies were not in the line of fire. If it meant flying over the area and taking fire, then so be it.
Toss in the ability to fly among the treetops without hitting them (too often), the gunner's ability to hit anything, at any angle, with the first three rounds or so, the ability to read a map on the fly, and read it three kilometers ahead of the aircraft, and you have a Scout. No brains? Some. Common sense? Well, the ability to make sense out of fluid situations with mere bits of information, at least. But, not enough foresight to realize that the risks were accumulative.
As to why we kept doing it, I don't know to this day. The notion of getting into someone's back yard and raising hell was some of the appeal. The constant sense of discovery was some of it. Then there were the grunts. Somebody had to cover them, I guess. First, last, and always, the Scouts were not the reason everyone was out there -- the Grunts were.
by W. Sullivan - GAUCHO