Commander Arthur R. Lee Recalls a Sapper Attack at Cam Ranh Bay During the Vietnam War

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‘I saw him run past me and smack into the fence surrounding the power plant,’ said one sailor. ‘He bounced off and tried to run, when someone shot him.’

The sapper lay face-down in a pool of blood in the sand. Another sapper, probably wounded by the petty officer, did not hesitate as he hurried past his fallen comrade. Blood poured from his body, too, and filled every footprint he made in the sand. He ran out the gate and into the darkness beyond. The corpsman and the supply clerk, firing from standing positions, kept aiming at the fleeing sappers, killing one as he passed just outside the wall at the gate. Dozens of their bullets punched big holes in the hollow-brick wall.

Medics climbed the ladder to the tower to attend the wounded there. The blast from the rocket had done its job when it hit the corrugated tin roof above the men’s heads. They were not wearing their helmets or flak jackets. One man had a bloody, deep gash across his chest. Wilkerson called the Seabees, who arrived with a crane. Two corpsmen carefully lifted the casualties out.

Altogether, we suffered one dead and several wounded. We had killed two sappers, and had probably fatally wounded a third man.

At that juncture we got a radio call from our small picket boat in the bay, just offshore from My Ca. The boat, which patrolled each night, was crewed by a coxswain and a gunner for the M-60 machine gun.

‘We have a swimmer coming toward us,’ the coxswain informed us.

‘Capture him if you can,’ was our order.

The boat pulled alongside the swimmer, and they dragged him aboard. It was one of our raiding sappers. He was docile enough, until they got him into the boat.

‘Then he came alive, and tried to take over the boat,’ the coxswain later recalled. ‘We struggled with him, and he tried to jam the throttle forward to dump us. We managed to subdue him by clubbing him over the head. He was a powerful man who wore nothing but a black bathing suit. I’ll tell you, we had our hands full.’

Around his ankle, the sapper wore a rubber strap with a single round of AK-47 ammunition. We deduced that this was the man who had provided covering fire from the sand hill at the start of the attack. He had that one round left — for what? Suicide? Perhaps. Maybe he had been swimming with his rifle, and had lost it before boarding the boat.

An explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team came to retrieve the bodies of the sappers. The one near our generator had not thrown all his charges before he was killed. I approached the body cautiously. Was he still alive, and would he roll over and pull the pin on a grenade? Did he have a weapon? Although he appeared quite dead and had lain in the same position throughout the firefight, I didn’t want to take unnecessary chances. I examined the body with my flashlight. He was larger than the South Vietnamese men I had seen. He was taller, perhaps my size, and with well-developed muscles in his arms, legs and shoulders. He wore only a black bathing suit, but around his waist was a black belt of heavy material. Affixed to the belt were about a dozen charges of explosives in solid 6-inch packs. At the top end of each charge was a thin copper-colored wire attached to the belt. All the sapper had to do was to pull the charge downward from the belt. The wire, as it pulled loose, armed the charge. Several bare wires, extending downward from the belt, gave a count of the number of charges he had already thrown. I had the strangest urge to reach down to touch the dead man — but I knew better than to tempt fate. What if the least movement would set off an armed charge?

The EOD personnel approached the body with caution. They tied a line around the wrist of the dead sapper and, from a safe distance, rolled him over gently. I stood back even farther as they proceeded to remove his charges.

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Vietnam War