One hot July evening in '68 some of my fellow airmen were killed and wounded in an attack on the Udorn Air Base, just down the road from us.  There was no danger of their being completely overrun.  A mere harassment raid", this was officially called, though I'm sure it was just a little more than harassment to those wounded and to the families of those who were killed.   In that raid, two Thai perimeter guards were killed, and at least two Americans were wounded, one of them fatally, by an exploding satchel charge detonated by one of the sappers.

It was the Communists' mission to damage or destroy as many aircraft as possible, no matter what type they might be, and to generally disrupt operations of the air bases.   The TC, Pathet Lao and NVA would steal into Thai bases under cover of darkness.  Sappers would charge onto the bases with satchel charges and grenades, attempting to get near enough to a suitable target before detonating the charge.   Sometimes they sacrificed themselves in the process.  I remember hearing stories from flight line personnel at other Thai bases, who had witnessed cleanup crews going about the grisly task of policing up pieces of sapper bodies that had been strewn about the tarmac.

In the July, 26 raid on Udorn, their target was a C-141 Starlifter.  In this case, it was one being used as a medical evacuation plane.  It was unmistakable as such with the huge, conspicuous red crosses on its fuselage.  I remember having seen it sitting parked on the base for several days before the attack.  I took particular note of it, only because it was so unusual to see one there.  It was reported to the press that the raiders must have mistaken it for a B-52 bomber.  That story may have satisfied the press corps, but I found it totally absurd, as the two aircraft look nothing alike.  Besides, there were no B-52's stationed at Udorn, and how many B-52 bombers would display huge red crosses on their sides anyway?  Did it just happen to be the biggest, easiest target available at the time?  Or did the raiders know exactly what it was and specifically target it?  After all, this was a war - one they were fighting to win!  For them, there were no "rules of engagement."  Any target was fair game!

The raid began at about 10:00 PM. The happenings at the scene that night were related to me by a member of the flight line crew there. He had seen the whole thing, watching from a ditch where he'd taken cover when the shooting started. Unarmed, he had no choice but to hide and hope to survive it. The C-141 had been sitting on the taxiway, awaiting arrival of a diplomatic flight from Vientiane, which was rumored to be carrying two just recovered American POW's. I don't know who they were, or where they had been, but it seems their return was shrouded in secrecy. Upon landing at Udorn, they were to be immediately airlifted out to a hospital in the Philippines by the Starlifter’s medevac crew. It may have been coincidence, but the precise moment the Vientiane flight touched down on the runway, the attack commenced.

It was a heavy assault, concentrated primarily on the C-141, though I also learned from another source that at least one unexploded satchel charge was later recovered from the intake on one of the parked F-4 Phantoms. When it became apparent they were under attack, the commander of the C-141, Captain Robert Shultz, and his flight engineer, Tech Sgt. Paul Yonkie dove for cover - too late to escape injury. In a blinding flash that lit up the night, white-hot shrapnel from an exploding satchel charge invaded Sgt. Yonkie's chest and abdomen, and Captain Shultz's hands and wrists were slashed to the bone by the cruel shards of flying metal.

I don't know how many were involved in the raid, but the battle went on for thirty minutes or more on base before they could be driven back. And the fighting continued throughout the night in the surrounding area. It was rumored that the arming of the flight line personnel at the air base was initially delayed, because the First Sergeant, who had possession of the key to the weapons lockers was off base when the attack occurred. Fortunately, several minutes into the assault, someone else was finally found to open the lockers and distribute the weapons and ammo clips. Under the circumstances, it was fortunate we didn't suffer more casualties than we did. When word of the ongoing attack on the air base reached us at Ramasun Station, we were put on full alert. To put it mildly, it was a somewhat disconcerting sight - two armed MP’s inside the operations building, stationed facing the only door, with weapons at the ready, locked and loaded. My blood ran cold.

To this day, it’s difficult for me to reconcile why the rest of us were not immediately issued weapons with an attack under way just a few miles up the road. Actually I can, but the conclusions are disturbing. I would have felt at least a little better about the situation that night had I and my men been allowed to carry our own M-16's and not have to entrust our security entirely to a handful of armed guards, however well trained and dedicated they were! True enough, we were technicians and linguists, not trained as combat troops. But in other wars, even technicians and linguists had been provided means of self defense! We each had been trained in the use of the M-16, and we had been required to qualify with live ammo, before being shipped overseas. Furthermore, we had all been officially assigned a weapon and were required to sign for it upon arrival at our duty stations in country. Yet, while I was there at least, we were never drilled on what to do, nor told where to retrieve those weapons in case of attack. I never touched an M-16 while I was there. We were simply informed, "They’re in the armory." They probably were, but I had serious doubts we would be allowed to actually use them when the time came.

Today I have to ask myself, "Was it all just for show - something with which powers that be could cover their asses in case of a major loss of life due to hostile action in Thailand? Was it a measure of deniability for those who were calling the shots in this war, and a means of hopefully silencing angry bereaved families back home?" As a shift supervisor, I should have at least been made aware where the weapons lockers were located and given the means to quickly open them if we did indeed come under attack. But I was not. Unarmed as we were, if the enemy were to breach our perimeter defenses and overrun the post, we would have been "sitting ducks", much the same as the poor hapless men of LS-85 had been. Some loss of life is inevitable and expected in war. We all knew and accepted that. But some of it is unnecessary and is preventable. I kept thinking it was another tragedy waiting to happen. And had it happened, it would have been swept under the rug, just as the LS-85 incident had been.

Looking back on it now, we at Ramasun were ill prepared to deal with an enemy attack. The operations compound at Ramasun Station was located very near the perimeter of the post. Once inside the wire, it would take the enemy raiders only seconds to cover the distance to the ops building.  And if the guards in the towers had used their spotlights to illuminate the grounds, they themselves would become sitting ducks, easy targets for snipers. If the building was stormed, the two guards at the entrance might take out a lot of enemy troops, but in the face of a concerted rush by an enemy suicide unit, they almost certainly would have been overwhelmed. Still, we inside the building were supposed to remain unarmed at our radio receivers, carry on with the mission, and pretend nothing unusual was going on outside - just as the men of LS-85 had continued to man their RADAR and communications equipment to the last.  Indeed, in the event the post was overrun, in the last moments we would likely have been preoccupied, feverishly destroying equipment and classified documents and too busy to participate in our own defense! In our Security Service training we’d had it drummed into our heads that we were to take care of classified information FIRST at any cost! Our personal safety was a last concern.

This very policy is in sync with another possible, much more sinister reason we in the ops compound were not allowed to carry arms. I did not know it at the time, but I have since learned some disturbing facts from one in a position to know. An MP who had been stationed there at Ramasun, he states there were always contingency plans - standing orders among the MP force that no one in the compound was to be taken alive if the post were in danger of being overrun by the enemy. In a letter to me he writes, "The M.P.s were told no one at Ops was to be taken alive if we were overrun. Ops would be the final point of defense. We were told before Ops would be overrun the Air Force would be sent in to destroy it and the remaining personnel!" It’s a chilling thought to me, if it is indeed true. Now I have to wonder, were the armed guards I saw at the door of the ops building that night there to dispatch us, rather than to defend us from the enemy? In the event things did not go well outside the building, would they have turned their weapons on us? My mind recoils from such a prospect. It’s too incredible, too distasteful to accept, yet I have to wonder. Certainly, if this scenario was true, arming those of us in the operations building would have made their task much more difficult, in fact impossible to carry out.

As for possible air strikes, I knew then, and it’s a well documented historical fact, that Lima Site 85 had been destroyed just months earlier by Napalm strike by our own fighter-bomber aircraft out of Udorn. Though the nape was dropped on site-85 after the enemy had taken it, it doesn’t require too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe they might have preemptively done the same at Ramasun Station, if the situation had warranted. After all, there was at least some evidence that three of the men at LS-85 had been taken alive and made prisoners by the enemy. Like us, they were men who held Top Secret security clearances, and were in possession of vital information of great potential value to enemy intelligence. And we were fully aware the Communists had ways of making even the strongest, most well indoctrinated man talk. Certainly, what had happened earlier in the year at LS-85 was a "lesson learned" for those calling the shots in this war. They would want to insure they did not make the same mistake twice, would they not? They would surely take all steps necessary to see to it Ramasun Station would not be occupied, and its personnel captured alive by the enemy.

The post was but eighteen kilometers from Udorn, mere moments away by air. Within minutes after orders were issued, aircraft could be scrambled, and the post where we served would no longer exist. All that would remain is smoldering rubble. Ramasun Station would be obliterated from the landscape, and we who served there would be wiped out with it! Of course, on an intellectual level we understood going in, that we were all expendable to protect the security of "the mission." We had been told as much, many times over. It was an integral part of our Security Service training and indoctrination. In fact, we had been told that our operatives inside Laos had been issued cyanide capsules and ordered to commit suicide, if they were in imminent danger of being captured. Still, at the time, I don’t think any of us wanted to truly believe in our "heart of hearts" that we might actually be purposely sacrificed in order to prevent our live capture. That was the stuff of spy novels! After all, we were American boys! Uncle Sam had invested literally millions of dollars and years in the training of each of us. "Surely, we are of too much value to them alive for them to actually do such a thing!" At least we all consoled ourselves with that rationalization. It was a source of comfort and means of making the possible consequences of what we were involved in less intimidating in our minds. But I am a good deal older and wiser now, and I realize we were perhaps naive and overly optimistic in allowing ourselves to believe that at the time. But the young are by definition, naive and by nature, optimistic. Back then, not one of us, I’m sure, truly believed in our hearts we were ever going to die. That sort of thing only happens to others. But the undeniable hard reality remains, preserving the secrecy of "the mission" was everything!

Admittedly, these ramblings represent only speculation on what might or could have taken place that night at Ramasun, had the enemy chosen to hit us. In any case, we spent a restless, uneasy night waiting there in the windowless radio room, anticipating an attack that thankfully never came.  I can only imagine what the poor bastards manning the guard towers outside the building were going through.   They at least were armed, but I'm sure they would much rather have been in a fox hole in the ground than exposed, thirty feet up in those towers!  After that incident, I never slept quite as soundly or as comfortably at night on post.  "Yes, there damned sure IS a war going on, and it is here!"  Moreover, I was left with little confidence that I and my men would be given the means with which to defend ourselves if, and when the need arose. I felt closer than ever to the men of LS-85.

Back at the air base, after the flight line was finally secured, both Yonkie and Shultz were stabilized and immediately evacuated to the hospital at Clark Air Base in Manila.  There, Captain Shultz would recover from his wounds.  But after putting up a valiant struggle to live, Sgt. Yonkie finally succumbed to his injuries weeks later.  He was but 34 years old, and I understand he left behind a grieving wife and three young daughters.  The morning after the attack, I heard that Yonkie and Schultz had been seriously wounded and were air evac'ed out, but I didn't learn the particulars of their eventual fates until many years later, after I'd returned Stateside.  I didn't know Sgt. Yonkie personally, and I don't know if he had ever killed anyone in his life.  I doubt it.  He'd been on TDY there (Temporary Duty) from his unit's home base in South Carolina, and he was the unit's first casualty of the Vietnam War.  A so called "REMF", his only mission was to help airlift out our wounded, and he surely didn't expect, nor deserve to die in such a way.   But then, neither did any of the more than 58,200 American casualties of that war whose names cover that massive wall in Washington DC.

The "Domino Theory", which proposed that other nations of the region would fall under Communist control if South Vietnam were to fall, was not just some unfounded fear, despite arguments to the contrary.  The Communist sympathizers and revisionists of history, who would characterize North Vietnam's part in the war as simply a struggle to unite the two halves of their own country, are dead wrong!  For North Vietnam was actively promoting and directly aiding the Communist insurgents in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as the Viet Cong in South Vietnam.  And beyond that, the North Vietnamese were receiving massive aid from the Chinese and Soviet Communists, who would have loved nothing better than to see their brand of oppressive government spread around the world.

These are things to which I can attest from first-hand knowledge.  Aside from what I learned personally, listening in on Communist communications, I found from reliable intelligence sources, at least one of the raiders killed in that fatal July attack on Udorn was a Captain in the North Vietnamese Army.  At least one other raider, who had been captured alive, was also NVA.  His live capture was a stroke of good luck for our side, and a very unlucky one for him.  For days, he was exhaustively interrogated by our agents, before finally being handed over to the Thai authorities for further questioning. I don’t know, but the talk in the intelligence community was, his would be a fate far worse than death. He would pray to die before the Thais were through with him. This had been a rare opportunity to glean intelligence from one of the sappers. Usually in the raids on Thai bases, aside from the ones who sacrificed themselves as human bombs with satchel charges strapped to their bodies, most of the raiders would get away.  After a brief firefight, they'd disengage, melt back into the rain forest and retreat beyond the borders to find refuge in Laos or Cambodia, where our troops and planes were not supposed to follow. 

The Communist forces which were invading South Vietnam were using the sanctuary of Cambodia and Laos in the same way. The no man’s lands of Laos and Cambodia were KEY FACTORS in pertetuating the Vietnam War, thereby determining its final outcome.  This point cannot be overly emphasized! By their own admission, to the North Vietnamese, Laos and Cambodia were absolutely crucial to their success in South Vietnam.  The restriction of not being able to send our ground troops into those areas in meaningful numbers was the main factor which enabled the North to keep the ground war in the South alive, year after bloody year. Because we were never allowed to eliminate the Communists’ places of refuge, the war persisted, like some throbbing abcessed tooth. The American people gradually grew increasingly opposed to an ongoing conflict which seemed to have no end in sight. As time went on, more of the mainstream began to add their own voices to the voices of the radicals, who for their own reasons, had opposed the war from the beginning. That public fatigue with the war is what would eventually allow the American people to look the other way, as our political leaders finally pulled the rug out from under the South, ending ALL U.S. support for them. It’s what would allow America to look the other way and ignore the mass murder that would take place in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime and the many atrocities that would be carried out in Laos by the Pathet Lao.

I quote again, a telegram from the Vientiane embassy to the Department of State in Washington, dated March 16, 1968.  It points up a growing sense by our Lao allies that America lacked the will to do what was necessary to help them protect themselves in the face of determined Communist aggression.

Yes, we did send missions into Laos, trying our best to fight and win a "Secret War."  But they were much less extensive and less effective than they might otherwise have been, because of their necessarily clandestine nature.  That secrecy was a necessity imposed upon us by a recalcitrant American public and the politicians.   For our involvement in an officially "neutral" Laos would have been an escalation unacceptable to the anti-war protesters back home!  And any news of Americans involved in a shooting war in Thailand certainly would not have been well received by them either. But then, those who were protesting in the streets at home were not the ones sitting in a jungle, halfway around the world, risking life and limb for their country, were they?  Better we should let the Communists escape to regroup, re-supply and return in a few days or weeks and do it all again! 

Far from helping us, the protesters back home were virtually cutting our legs from under us!  Because of political expediency, we on the ground outside the borders of South Vietnam were to be kept unarmed and defenseless. And theater wide, we were to be bound by ridiculous "rules of engagement" and expected to observe artificial boundaries that our enemies were not obliged to observe. It was absolute insanity, a completely, indefensibly asinine way to fight a war - one that just would not allow us to win!