SELECTIVE SNATCH MISSIONS
A Snatch Mission is one where you go and "snatch"
someone off the face of the earth - for a time, anyway.
The first Brigade Area of Operations in Quang Tri and vicinity included just
about everything Vietnam had to offer - coastal beaches, long sandy stretches
which resembled desert, flatland and hillside rice paddies, low jungle, mountain
jungle, hidden valleys, and open rolling terrain covered with elephant grass.
After the Tet offensive of 1968 and the immediate aftermath, the relief of Khe
Sanh, and a foray into the enemy's stockpiles
in the A Shau valley, things had calmed down a bit.
By May of 1968, contacts had been sporadic. Intelligence was wanting. Charlie
was out there, but not in the numbers he once had. He did not have the
wherewithal to mount any serious attacks. Instead, he was out to
rebuild his infrastructure, gather food from the villages, and prepare the
ground for the eventual movement of replacement forces into the area.
In the unpopulated terrain, traditional reconnaissance methods were used. Within
the populated areas, identification of friend and foe was a bit of a problem,
but workable. It is one thing to find someone, but a far
better thing to know where he intends to go. We had a need to figure out where
Charlie was going before he got there.
Now, in any given situation, the worker bees always have the best
"grapevine". In this case, the rice farmers were the key.
Enter the Snatch Mission. The idea was to look over the villages for likely
prospects for good information, such as village elders, and anyone who looked
reasonably sound and healthy. On the side, we could always turn up someone of
military age. It could be a deserter, a draft dodger (from one side or the other
- no one had a lock on that), a North Vietnamese infiltrator, or someone on
leave from one side or the other. It was all pot luck.
The Snatch Mission required a white team to scoot around and identify the
suspects, two lift Hueys from the 229th Aviation Battalion, and a pair of
gunships to fly cover. These were normally the "Tiger Birds" from the
gunship company of the 229th. Each lift ship would have a compliment of three
grunts (Infantry) to dismount and actually grab the suspect. A Command &
Control ship (usually from the Flying Circus) of the owning Battalion would
overwatch the operation.
The scenario would often see two teams operating near each other, each
comprising one scout, one lift ship, and one gunship, all overseen by the
C&C helicopter. These two teams would be far enough apart not to get in each
other's way but close enough to come to the aid of the other group if they
encountered any sort of trouble.
Once the Scouts identified a likely prospect, it was up to them to isolate the
target and secure the immediate area from any undesirable surprises. One of the
lift ships would then drop in, and the grunts would jump out and make the grab
while the Scouts flew close cover. The gunships were overhead and available if
things went sour.
On the grab, the C&C helicopter would record the coordinates where the
unsuspecting individual was "snatched". The suspect would be secured
and sandbagged, i.e., he would have a sandbag placed over his head in order to
reduce his visibility, and then loaded onto the aircraft.
The suspects were then flown to the Brigade's S-2 (Intelligence) offices and
interrogated. If they provided any information, they were paid for their
troubles, and then returned via helicopter to the point where they were picked
up. If they turned out to be NVA, then they would be handed over to the South
Vietnamese.
That was the official Snatch Mission. On the Scout side, it was a time to shine.
Quite often, military age males would disappear inside the hooches when they
heard helicopters coming. If caught outside, they would try to blend in with the
crowd. However, their calf and leg muscles were usually a dead giveaway, as were
their haircuts. Wading in rice paddies will not build up leg muscles in the same
manner as hiking the hills with a rucksack.
This meant that the Scouts would have to hover in and cut them from the crowd,
similar to a mustang cutting cattle. For the ones whose legs could be seen
inside a hooch, we had no good way of getting them out without risking the
grunts, so we had to resort to some trickery.
It so happened that the C-ration supplement packs issued at platoon level
contained several dozen bars of "Tropical chocolate" - a miserable
rendition of a Hershey bar (reduced sugar content.) While not exactly palatable
to any but the very hungry, kids would eat it. Indeed, they would fight over it.
One method was to carry the chocolate on board and randomly drop it in the
villages. Parents are the same the world over -- no one can resist watching kids
chase candy! We could get the whole village to turn out in order to watch the
kids. We would do this whether we had a "snatch" on or not. It became
a habit. When the time for a Snatch Mission came up, we could get a look at the
entire village, cut out those whom we wanted, and go on with the mission.
There was one other method, but it was reserved for obvious NVA - hit the
ridgepole of the hooch with the skids. With the proper amount of force, this
action would break the ridgepole and collapse the roof. The most human of
reactions is to RUN when the roof starts to fall in on one, even if it is only
thatched rice straw. The result is that our subject was out in the open, and
ready to be corralled.
There were drawbacks to this option. On one occasion, I managed to hit hard
enough to break the ridgepole, but also to get a skid hung up between the two
fractured halves. That took a bit of doing to work the skid free. The lead ship
(I think it was OX) wound up having to chase the miscreant down.
One of the benefits of close cooperation with the ARVNs: The I Corps commander
of the First ARVN Division had a good rapport with the First Cavalry Division.
Once he saw what Snatch Missions could bring, he gave orders throughout the
region for any civilian who heard a Scout helicopter coming to stop, remove any
headgear and shirt in order to show that they were not carrying any weapons, and
wait until the helicopters moved on. If they did so, they would not be bothered
(unless we happened to be on a Snatch Mission, of course).
On one morning, two rather nice looking girls took that directive to heart.
PHANTOM (Frank Vanatta) hovered up on them, only to watch them both strip down
to the buff while we were waiting for the Lift ship to drop in.
As Yellow One (the lift ship) approached, he literally cracked up over
the radio:
"How - How in the hell did you manage that?" he asked.
"It's the power of The Loach!" PHANTOM replied.
Snatch Missions could indeed get interesting.
story by W. Sullivan - GAUCHO