Friday November 20th, 1970
…exactly 50 years ago today.
We were awakened at 6am, had breakfast, and went about our morning as normal.
We were told to be at the mess hall at 11am, a little earlier than normal lunch. During lunch, we were told to go to our barracks immediately after we finish eating and get some sleep. To ensure we got sleep, LtCol Joe Cataldo, our doctor who would be going on the mission and into the compound with us, required every one of us to take a sleeping pill as we exited the mess hall. As we walked toward the barracks, the old timers explained that they had never had to do that before. It was pretty clear that this would be the night.
I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the compound and talking with other raiders about what they thought was going on. The time passed very slowly that afternoon.
By 5pm, everyone was awakened from our bunks and told to get to the mess hall for dinner then meet in the Theater at 1800 hrs.
By about 1730, we started filling the Theater. You could tell everyone was getting pumped for what we were about to learn. Everyone was talking and making guesses. By this time, we all knew we are going on some kind of rescue mission. We just didn’t know the when, the where, and the who.
At 1800, the Bull and LtCol Sydnor walked on the stage. The room got dead silent when the Bull began to talk. Bull was a man of few words. The briefing Theater was a short walk from our barracks. Inside, it had rows of simple wood seating like 2×10 boards on short metal poles—no seatbacks. It would seat around 100. There was an elevated stage with a screen. We had watched a movie there just a couple of days prior.
Bull reveals a large map (it was the area around Hanoi) and says,
“We are going to rescue 70 American Prisoners of War, maybe more, from a camp called Son Tay. The target is 23 miles west of Hanoi.
This is something our American Prisoners of War have a right to expect from their fellow soldiers. We are all part of the same military family. We want these men to know that they are not abandoned by their military family. No man should feel that way. That’s why we are going in there after them.
“You are to let nothing–nothing–interfere with the operation. Our mission is to rescue prisoners, not to take prisoners.
“If there’s been a leak, we’ll know it by the time the second or third chopper sets down. If we’re walking into a trap, if it turns out that they know we’re coming, don’t even dream about walking out of North Vietnam—unless you’ve got wings on your feet. We’ll be 100 miles from Laos. It’s the wrong part of the world for a retrograde maneuver. If it happens, I want to keep this force together. We’ll back up to the Song Con River if we have to and, by God, they’re welcome to come across that damned open ground. We’ll make them pay for every foot across that sonofabitch.”
For about four seconds, you could have heard a pin drop. Then, like a cannon shot, everyone bursts out, shouting, whooping & hollering, slapping each other on the back, raring like broncos, yelling “Let’s go get ‘em!”
Read the Raiders’ stories, in their own words, in Who Will Go.
Click Here: The book.
