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David Mitchell
I had a story that I was going to share back at the end of the year (Dec 31) because that would have been the anniverary date of the story as it broke to all of us at Vinh Long Airfield. But it seemed so much other stuff was occuppying our Forum conversation that I decided to save it for a quieter time.
It is a remarkable story and it occurs to me that maybe it fits better as a sort of "Easter" story - that is to say a story of rising from the dead (metaphorically speaking).
Part One:
I had only been one week at my new home at Vinh Long Airfield, still not yet on flight status which would come any day as I waited for my various pills (malaria and anti-diarrhea) to take efffect. It was New Year's Eve day and something had just happend. I wasn't exactly sure what at first, but the buzz going around the airfiled made it seem big. As we learned the details, I realized it was really big!
That afternoon, the C.O. of one of our two sister companies - "Dutch Master" Troop, was flying as the Air Mission Commander (AMC) of his Troop and had made an incredible rescue while flying their mission deep in the southern Delta near the edge of a really dreaded area known as the "U-Minh Forrest". The "U-Minh" was the only section of real dense jungle in all of the Delta (yes, jungle existed abundantly further in the North, but not much in the Delta) - which was mostly vast open areas of rice paddies laced by thousands of large and small canals. The "U-Minh" was a relatively minor portion of the Delta that ran along the south-western coast of the Delta - maybe 10 miles wide by about 60 or 70 miles north and south along the edge of the gulf of Thailand.
When I say thick jungle, I mean thick! So thick that our squadron was rarely given an assigent to fly our search mission (the low-level "Hunter-Killer" teams) which I have described. There were two reasons; first our mission was a visual search, and the dense canopy of the U-Minh was just too thick to see anything through it. And secondly, If one of our "Scout" ships (the Loaches) had gotten shot down (a not infrequent occurance), there would have been absolutely no chance of us getting down in there to get the crew out.
(Nevertehless, we did "work" the "U-Minh" a few times. In my 18 months, I believe I flew a search over the U-Minh about three nerve-wracking days, which was about three days more than I wished I had, as those three days ranged from uneventfully boring, to quite bad.)
So much for setting the scene. On this day, "Dutch Master" Troop was flying their mission, and after one of their searches the AMC (air Mission Commander) was turning back to the nearby staging and refueling area at Ca Mau ("Cuh Mow" - the southern most staging area we ever used - and a fairly large city today).
(my maps again - see U-Minh Forest in lower left - about 45 minutes southwest of my home in Vinh Long)
As they flew away from the area they had just searched, one of the door gunners yelled out on the intercom that he could "see a guy running in the open back there!" He thought the guy looked different - maybe American. As they turned around and headed back toward the guy it was clear that he was taller and whiter than any VC or NVA soldier. He was running alone across an open rice paddy, waving his arms. They went back to get a closer look at him, but they went in "hot" - weapons ready - as they approached - not sure of what they were getting into.
He was an American, with a beard, in black VC pajamas. They picked him up and began gathering information as fast as he could talk. (I assume they gave him one of the door gunners helmets so he could speak over the intercom to the pilots.
They had picked up Special Forces (green beret) First Lt. James Rowe, who had been a prisoner of the VC in the U-Minh forest for over 5 years! Moments before the pickup he was being transferred from one prisoner holding area to another and escorted by two small VC guards that he had overpowered and broken free of, where the "Dutch Master" door gunner had sighted him running in the open.
At first the crew could hardly imagine how crazy important this was, but they soon made radio contact with someone who knew exactly who he was. He had been a prisoner of the VC, moving about the "U-Minh" and held in bamboo cages (about 4x4x6) for all of those 62 months! And he had been a nusisnace for all 5 years - escaping and being caught about 5 times.
I would remind you that there were POW's held not only by the NVA in prisons up north, but also by the VC right in our back yards in the "South".
*And on one of those three days that I worked over the "U-Minh", we sighted what appeared to be an empty camp, just evacuted, with several of those very same bamboo cages - empty. We think we might have just missed someone by perhaps just minutes. A tiny campfire appeared still hot.
Rowe was the only survivor of several guys who were taken in an attack in which they were overrun. He survived multiple diseases, malnutrition, torture, horrible food, and the repeated witnessing of his 3 or 4 buddies giving up the will to live, and dying one at a time.
This is the first photo taken of him after the recovery as he was getting off the Dutch Master ship (Huey) at the helipad at Ca Mau.
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