A Combat Reporter Remembers the Siege at Plei Me
by Joseph L. Galloway
 

(Note: The following story was written by Joseph L. Galloway, Co-Author of We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. It is used here with his permission. Joe is the only civilian who was decorated for valor in combat (BSM-V) during the entire Vietnam War by the U.S. Army.)

In mid-October 1965, the word passed that trouble was brewing up in Pleiku Province. The Special Forces Camp at Plei Me had come under siege. We headed that way in a hurry. By the time we arrived the airspace over the camp had been shut down. The enemy, this time a regiment of North Vietnamese Army regulars, had ringed the camp with Chinese-made 12.7mm antiaircraft machine guns and they had shot down two Air Force fighter-bombers and one Army Huey helicopter. The Army dispatched a team of Special Forces B-52 Detachment fighters commanded by Maj. Charlie Beckwith to land a mile or two outside the camp and infiltrate to stiffen the resistance.
 

A few reporters and photographers, and one very unlucky UPI television camera stringer, had gone in with Beckwith. On the final dash into Plei Me Camp the UPITN stringer raised up to shoot some film and was shot through the head by an enemy machine gun round. He had literally been killed before he shot a foot of film. If he had gotten a story UPITN would have paid him $100. UPI, in its inimitable cheap fashion, later refused to accept any responsibility for paying to send his body back to the U.S. for burial.

I had missed that jump and was furiously stalking up and down the flight line at Camp Holloway outside Pleiku. Who should suddenly appear but Capt. Ray Burns of Ganado, Texas. He like many of the pilots of the 119th Aviation Company at Holloway was a Texas Aggie. A homeboy. I had played poker and drunk copious quantities of Jim Beam with them all. Ray inquired as to my distress. I explained that I wanted to get into Plei Me Camp and couldn't find a ride. He said hang on; went and checked the clipboard at Flight Ops. Came back and told me what I already knew: the airspace was closed. Then he grinned and said he would like to see the place himself and if I wanted a ride he would take me. Just like that.

I have a photo I snapped from the helicopter door. The camp, a triangular shaped affair carved out of the red dirt of the Highlands, fills that doorway, puffs of smoke from impacting mortar rounds visible in several places. Ray dropped the Huey in rather precipitously to avoid the machine guns. I bailed out, the camp defenders flung some wounded aboard, and Ray was gone, shooting me the bird through the plexi-glass. A sergeant ran up and said, "I don't know who you are, Sir, but Maj. Beckwith wants to see you right now." I inquired as to which one was the good major. "He is that big guy over there jumping up and down on his hat," the sergeant replied. In short order I was standing before a man who would become a legend in Special Operations Warfare as the founder of the Delta Forces anti-terrorist teams.

The dialogue went something like this: Him: Who the hell are you? Me: A reporter, Sir. Him: I need everything in the goddam world; I need reinforcements; I need medical evacuation helicopters; I need ammunition; I need food; I would love a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey and some cigars. And what has the Army in its wisdom sent me? A reporter. Well, son, I got news for you. I have no vacancy for a reporter but I do have one for a corner machine gunner---and YOU ARE IT! Me: Yes, Sir.

drop supplies in the right place; in fact right on top of the right place. Huge pallets of crates of ammo and c-rations drifted right down onto the camp, demolishing at least one tin-roofed building and smashing other defensive emplacements. I reached out and grabbed a Newsweek reporter, Bill Cook, and yanked him into my trench right before he was about to be squished by a descending pallet. The snaps of the parachutes billowing all over the camp were pretty good, even if I say so myself.

Finally a South Vietnamese armored column arrived to the rescue. Bob Poos of AP and another old friend, Jack Laurence of CBS, were riding atop the Armored Personnel Carriers. I waved at Poos and asked him where the hell he had been. He gave me the one-finger salute. The North Vietnamese had left by then and the hills were silent for the first time in a week. The air stank with that never-to-be-forgotten smell of rotting human flesh. The hills were ripped apart by the airstrikes brought down on the machine gunners, a stark, shattered landscape. We spent one more night in the camp. Poos was assigned to my machine gun. The next morning the sky filled with helicopters, U.S. Army helicopters, as a battalion of the 1st Air Cav arrived to sweep those hills.

some of them with the remains of their gunners still chained to the weapons they manned. But the North Vietnamese had gone as suddenly as they had arrived. Only the dead remained.
 

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