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Authors: Christopher Robbins
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they would land in my proximity and I could just grab them and throw them down the hill. Each time they fired into that grotto the bullet shattered and the rock shattered, so we were taking constant gashes and hits from this stuff.’
A group of Meo, led by Huey Marlow, a partially deaf former Green Beret seconded to the CIA, counterattacked. Armed with an automatic shotgun and with a score of grenades strapped around his waist, Marlow battled his way up the mountainside together with a handful of Meo. A machine-gun nest, which had been set up by the North Vietnamese the moment they took the peak, was destroyed. Marlow shot-gunned the crew and managed to rescue an American forward air guide who had been in hiding on the mountaintop. They retreated back down the hill in the face of brutal hand-to-hand combat. (Marlow was awarded the Intelligence Cross, the CIA’s highest award, for his night’s work.)
The battle continued through the night. Back at Long Tieng the Ravens heard the news over the radio and rose from their beds at 4:00 in the morning to take off in the dark and fly up to Lima Site 36, at nearby Na Khang. At daybreak they were on station at the Rock, ready to direct a combination of Laotian T-28 fighters and U.S. jets against the enemy, while Air America helicopters flew in to lift out the surviving Thai mercenaries and Meo guards. ‘The Air America guys were going in and landing and taking off in single-pilot helicopters,’ said Art Cornelius, who was directing air from a Bird Dog, ‘while these armed, two-pilot Jolly Greens were extremely reluctant to go in. They stood there, hovering on station, and even though they could see what was going on their HQ kept holding them back.’
It was exactly as Ambassador Sullivan had feared. The Air Force, which had been quick to commit men to the Rock over all objections, was proving extremely reluctant to commit its own rescue helicopters to get them out. The political consequences of a USAF Jolly Green shot down over Laos, a country in which U.S. military forces were absolutely forbidden to operate by international treaty, would be enormous. So the Jolly Green, manned by crews reputed to be among the bravest of the war, was ordered to hover timidly beyond the range of the guns. The rescue relied on the raw courage of the Air America pilots, sneered at by the unknowing among the military as overpaid mercenaries.
Sliz had abandoned all hope of survival until he saw an Air America chopper directly over him. He was hauled up into it. ‘My mind was still active in spite of everything, and then I saw a drop of blood and there was this sergeant keeling over.’ The sergeant had been shot as he was being rescued and died before the helicopter landed back at its base.
The Ravens directed air strikes all day, flying until they ran out of marking rockets or gas, when they returned to Site 36 to swap airplanes. They flew until 8:00 at night, when it was time to count the dead. Reconnaissance pictures of the site showed from between seven and nine men hanging from the mountain in web strapping, apparently having tried to lower themselves down the side. The whole operation has been so shrouded in secrecy that even today the final tally of American dead is uncertain. Only four Air Force personnel were saved, which left twelve unaccounted for, while the number of CIA paramilitary officers on the Rock remains classified. Relatives of the dead were told they had been killed ‘in Southeast Asia.’ [16]
In the face of such a reversal it only remained to knock out the radar on the Rock to deny it to the enemy. ‘They bombed that sucker for a week, trying to destroy the radar so the enemy wouldn’t have it,’ Art Cornelius said. ‘It broke my heart.’
The loss of the Rock, unremarked and unreported back in the States, was a serious setback for the Americans. One quarter of all bombing missions over North Vietnam had been directed from it. (The loss may have been a factor in
A group of Meo, led by Huey Marlow, a partially deaf former Green Beret seconded to the CIA, counterattacked. Armed with an automatic shotgun and with a score of grenades strapped around his waist, Marlow battled his way up the mountainside together with a handful of Meo. A machine-gun nest, which had been set up by the North Vietnamese the moment they took the peak, was destroyed. Marlow shot-gunned the crew and managed to rescue an American forward air guide who had been in hiding on the mountaintop. They retreated back down the hill in the face of brutal hand-to-hand combat. (Marlow was awarded the Intelligence Cross, the CIA’s highest award, for his night’s work.)
The battle continued through the night. Back at Long Tieng the Ravens heard the news over the radio and rose from their beds at 4:00 in the morning to take off in the dark and fly up to Lima Site 36, at nearby Na Khang. At daybreak they were on station at the Rock, ready to direct a combination of Laotian T-28 fighters and U.S. jets against the enemy, while Air America helicopters flew in to lift out the surviving Thai mercenaries and Meo guards. ‘The Air America guys were going in and landing and taking off in single-pilot helicopters,’ said Art Cornelius, who was directing air from a Bird Dog, ‘while these armed, two-pilot Jolly Greens were extremely reluctant to go in. They stood there, hovering on station, and even though they could see what was going on their HQ kept holding them back.’
It was exactly as Ambassador Sullivan had feared. The Air Force, which had been quick to commit men to the Rock over all objections, was proving extremely reluctant to commit its own rescue helicopters to get them out. The political consequences of a USAF Jolly Green shot down over Laos, a country in which U.S. military forces were absolutely forbidden to operate by international treaty, would be enormous. So the Jolly Green, manned by crews reputed to be among the bravest of the war, was ordered to hover timidly beyond the range of the guns. The rescue relied on the raw courage of the Air America pilots, sneered at by the unknowing among the military as overpaid mercenaries.
Sliz had abandoned all hope of survival until he saw an Air America chopper directly over him. He was hauled up into it. ‘My mind was still active in spite of everything, and then I saw a drop of blood and there was this sergeant keeling over.’ The sergeant had been shot as he was being rescued and died before the helicopter landed back at its base.
The Ravens directed air strikes all day, flying until they ran out of marking rockets or gas, when they returned to Site 36 to swap airplanes. They flew until 8:00 at night, when it was time to count the dead. Reconnaissance pictures of the site showed from between seven and nine men hanging from the mountain in web strapping, apparently having tried to lower themselves down the side. The whole operation has been so shrouded in secrecy that even today the final tally of American dead is uncertain. Only four Air Force personnel were saved, which left twelve unaccounted for, while the number of CIA paramilitary officers on the Rock remains classified. Relatives of the dead were told they had been killed ‘in Southeast Asia.’ [16]
In the face of such a reversal it only remained to knock out the radar on the Rock to deny it to the enemy. ‘They bombed that sucker for a week, trying to destroy the radar so the enemy wouldn’t have it,’ Art Cornelius said. ‘It broke my heart.’
The loss of the Rock, unremarked and unreported back in the States, was a serious setback for the Americans. One quarter of all bombing missions over North Vietnam had been directed from it. (The loss may have been a factor in
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