[00:00:04] (Host) The incredible team at Honor Flight San Diego has done it again. If you listen to our two-parter on the how three Seawolves, that’s episodes 40 and 41, you know that theirs was the first Honor Flight that was made up entirely of Vietnam veterans from a single unit. Now I’m on the second such Honor Flight, this one full of Navy Seals and their predecessors, the Frogmen of the Underwater Demolition Teams, or UDT. We’re on our way from San Diego to Washington DC to tour the memorials to honor the service and sacrifice of these men as they catch up with each other. And most importantly, for you and me to hear the stories they share. Over the next two episodes, we’ll learn a little bit about the origins and training of the earliest Seal teams. We’ll hear firsthand accounts of some of their triumphs and tragedies in Vietnam. We’ll hear how the SEALS of today regard the men who pioneered the job, and we’ll hear about the unbreakable bond that connects these men to each other even after 50 years. Stick around. From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Founders of The Wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan, bringing you stories of service, sacrifice, and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict more than 50 years later.

Episode 77 The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, Part One. Right after this.

[00:02:58] (Host) When most people think of Navy SEALs, the images that come to mind are either from Hollywood or from the evening news. The big screen feeds us images of SEAL candidates enduring a brutal training ritual called Hell Week, or speeding across choppy seas in inflatable speedboats. Those are real. The small screen delivers images of SEALs fighting in the desert, in the mountains and in urban areas. Those are also real. But even taken together, these images can’t possibly provide a complete picture of what it means to be a Navy SEAL. That reality is unreal. The name SEAL comes from sea, air and land, and SEALs are trained to operate in all three environments. Historically, SEALs have always had one foot in the water, but today it doesn’t matter where the bad guys are or what kind of terrain separates us from them, they’re never beyond the reach of Navy SEALs. This elite force has its roots in the Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams. Frogmen have been blowing stuff up to make way for amphibious landings since World War Two, but their operations were deliberately limited to the high-water mark on whatever shore or beach they were assaulting. President John F. Kennedy, a former naval officer himself, decided that the Navy needed a new unit, one that could conduct unconventional warfare operations beyond the shore and into the hinterlands. In 1962, he established SEAL teams One and Two. They deployed immediately to Vietnam. At the height of the war, there were eight SEAL platoons in the rotation. The last SEAL platoon left Vietnam in 1971 and the last SEAL advisor in 1973. The earliest SEALs were mostly frogmen who had undergone additional specialized training. Bob Hayes was one of them. He’s a Plank Owner from SEAL Team One. For people who don’t know what a Plank Owner is, can, you can you tell people what that means?

[00:04:56] (Bob) Sure, in the olden days, when they built wooden ships, if you were part of the first crew on board that ship, they actually gave you a piece of the plank, the deck, an actual piece of the wood that helped build the deck of that ship, and that you became known as a plank owner. And obviously today they do it with, I’m sure, a certificate or something on a new crew, new cruiser gets built or something. But I was one of the original, what they call plank owners of SEAL team.

[00:05:23] (Host) In an empty meeting room at the BWI Hilton, I asked Bob what path had led him to becoming one of the first ever Navy SEALs.

[00:05:33] (Bob) This is a great story. My buddy and I in high school. We weren’t going to college, so we decided we wanted to be in the service and we were just drawn to that marine uniform. That was the best uniform ever. So we went down to, uh, the post office, because that’s where the recruiting stations were in those days. And we were set to join the Marine Corps. And there was a sign on the door that says, back in one hour. And we looked across the hall and the Navy guy was open. So we went in there and joined the Navy. And that’s exactly how I got in the Navy. And I joined the Navy to see the world. I got stationed about 50 miles from home, so.

[00:06:07] (Host) Nice. So you volunteered?

[00:06:09] (Bob) Yes.

[00:06:10] (Host) Yeah. And they stationed you 50 miles from home?

[00:06:14] (Bob) Well, a little more than that, but it was in Bayonne, New Jersey. I got I was able to select a school to go to.

[00:06:21] (Host) Join the Navy, see New Jersey.

[00:06:22] (Bob) Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:06:24] (Host) Nice.

[00:06:24] (Bob) But, uh, it was by choice. I had the opportunity to be a hard hat diver, and that just sounded very exciting to me. I mean, 17-year-old kid. And so I went to Bayonne, New Jersey, to the Salvage Diving School and left there as a hard hat diver. And I always joke, I spent my entire career underwater. And from there I eventually got assigned up to Bremerton, Washington.

[00:06:49] (Host) Oh, yeah.

[00:06:49] (Bob) In And the shipyard up there is a salvage diver. Made a couple tours on seagoing tugs as a diver.

[00:06:56] (Host) Bob, I’m sorry to interrupt. Did we talk about what year it was that you enlisted?

[00:06:59] (Bob) Uh, 1955?

[00:07:01] (Host) ‘55?

[00:07:02] (Bob) Yep. Yeah. And, I was up there, and this is certainly before email, and, I don’t remember exactly who or how, but a friend sent me a letter saying that he was in underwater demolition teams, and they lived on the beach down in Coronado, and I thought, that sounds really cool. And what he forgot to tell me was about the 18 weeks of training before he got to go lay on the beach in Coronado. So I came down to Coronado and passed all the tests. That was very minimal at that time to start unit training, which was about, I think, 1958, if I remember correctly.

[00:07:40] (Host) Okay.

[00:07:41] (Bob) And, got through it started out with a very large class, graduated 19 people, And I was assigned to the Underwater Demolition Team 12.

[00:07:52] (Host) Okay. And these were known as Frogmen.

[00:07:54] (Bob) Frogmen with our fins and a knife and a pair of swim shorts. That’s about it.

[00:08:00] (Host) Yeah.

[00:08:01] (Bob) These guys are legendary. Some of the things they did.

[00:08:03] (Host) Mhm.

[00:08:04] (Bob) So then I was a Frogman and just did what we did and made it at least one tour I think, you know, a typical Asian tour uh, where we had the sunbathe so we wouldn’t get burnt when we got on the Philippines when we were working in the water. So sunbathing was required on the way over. And then I came back and in 1961, I was at the end of 1960, I was notified I had been selected for SEAL Team and not a clue what SEAL Team was.

[00:08:36] (Host) So how were you selected? What were they?

[00:08:37] (Bob) I don’t even know what the criteria was, to be honest with you.

[00:08:40] (Host) And you don’t know. You don’t have any idea, like how your name was submitted for that or anything?

[00:08:45] (Bob) No, I’ve never been told how that was done, but they selected 50 enlisted people from all different categories and ten officers.

[00:08:53] (Host) So they just came to you and said, Bob, you’ve been selected and you said, selected for what? And they said, we’ll tell you in a minute.

[00:08:59] (Bob) Yeah. Exactly right.

[00:09:00] (Host) Wow.

[00:09:01] (Bob) And we went in this room and we were basically told, congratulations, you’ve been selected for SEAL Team One. This is President Kennedy’s idea of a special forces, if you will, for the Navy. And we kind of looked at each other, went, okay, now what? And they had selected schools we were going to go to, you know, Jungle Warfare School, uh, language. We went up to Camp Pendleton to learn basic infantry stuff, Fort Benning, jump out of airplanes and like I say, I made one tour in Vietnam, a very short tour in Danang. And, but I was very fortunate in the sense that I was there before the war really heated up. I was there in 63, I believe, or 64, one or the other. And I came back. And then the war took off.

[00:09:58] (Host) As much training as Bob received, SEALs would eventually endure even more. For example, their weapons training now included enemy weapons, because sometimes all you have to fight with is a weapon you took from a bad guy. Bob Conger became a SEAL in 1971. By that time, seals had developed a special training called BUDS or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs. That’s the training we know from the movies, the one where candidates ring a bell to signal that they want to quit.

[00:10:27] (Unknown) To fire it up. Fire it up. Fire it up. Hooyah Hooyah.

[00:10:39] (Host) Completing BUDS is a requirement to join the Teams, which is how SEALs refer to themselves collectively. Here’s Bob Conger.

[00:10:47] (Bob) In my day, if you wanted to go to, to the Teams, you had to spend a year-and-a-half on a ship first. You know, most of our missions require everybody to have the competency to conduct the mission. And that’s what BUDS reveals. We started with 120 trainees, 90 enlisted, 30 officers, and we graduated six officers and 22 enlisted. So there’s a huge attrition in the teams even then, in BUDS. Oh, yes. That was 1971. I mean, I’ve heard of some classes and this is very anecdotal, not researched in any way, but where they had even higher attrition. The notion is that the teams are made up of common men doing uncommon things. So the, the correlation with that was when my 120 classmates started BUDS in 1971. We had some guys that were Olympic swimmers. We had some guys that were trackmen. We had some bodybuilder types and that sort of thing. And I’ve talked to other people in other classes and almost everybody under understood or experienced the same thing is that those guys are almost the first guys to drop out.

[00:12:21] (Host) Is that right?

[00:12:21] (Bob) That’s right. And it’s because of the fact that if you can think of a particular individual sport, let’s say somebody like Michael Phelps in swimming. Absolutely, one of the best ever. But because he’s this fabulous swimmer, does that mean he’s going to be a good SEAL? Maybe? Maybe not. Because you need to have more than the ability to swim quickly in a pool. You need to be able to and once again, talking about a common men doing uncommon things, you need to be able to master yourself when you’re confronted with issues or situations or conditions that would defeat people. Like being too cold, being too tired, not having enough sleep, getting too hot, having to run too far. You know all of these things. Laying in the surf zone at night. On a cold night. In winter. With the waves breaking over you. And the only thing you’re doing is laying in the surf zone with your feet pointed out into the ocean. And your head’s just above the water. The waves are lapping over you, and you’re going hypothermic. So how long can you how long can you stand that? The trainees were told to go there, and what the trainees don’t know is when they’re going to be told to come out. They’d like to come out right now, but they’ve got to continue. Another minute, another ten minutes. And so you persevere. So it’s the person that can persevere when they’re most uncomfortable, when they’re when control is completely taken away. You know, like a normal person they get cold to put on a jacket. But in those situations, you continue to endure. So the guy, maybe that Olympic swimmer just can’t handle being that cold or can’t handle a ten mile run in 90 degree heat, full sun, no breeze, high humidity, maybe they can’t handle that. You know, or you know, they talk about Hell Week quite a bit. Maybe in the middle of sleep deprivation day for 5 or 6 or whatever, and you’re being asked to do these unbelievably difficult things, and you have no control other than to believe that what they’re putting you through is helping the individual or helping yourself understand what are my limits.

[00:14:56] (Host) Yeah.

[00:14:58] (Host) John Gulick joined the Navy in 1963 and three years later volunteered to become a Seal and go to Vietnam. We’re talking next to the fountain at the US Navy Memorial and Museum, one of the stops on our tour.

[00:15:12] (John) I went into the Navy and I was on a destroyer in Pearl Harbor. It was a great experience. The Fletcher, USS Fletcher. The original Fletcher class destroyer. And what year is this? 1963. Okay. And so I and then I.

[00:15:28] (Host) So the SEALs existed then. But you probably hadn’t heard of them yet.

[00:15:31] (John) I didn’t know anything about them. Didn’t know much about Frogmen, either. But When I was on that ship. After about six months, I happened to run into two Frogmen at the Subic Bay Navy Exchange, and I’d been on the destroyer. And the guys look like factory workers. No sun out of shape. All that. And then these two guys, they look like Greek gods standing there in their short pants and green short pants. Green short sleeve shirts. I said, who the hell are these guys? And I look around and I see they’ve got patches on, so I look it says Underwater Demolition Team 11. Those are some serious dudes. About that time, the Gulf of Tonkin incident happened, and they sent out an all Navy message to encourage people to volunteer for Frogman training. To UDTRA is what it was called then. And so I said, well, I got two more years and I might as well give that a shot. And so I had to extend a year and a half to do it. But then I went to went to training and got through and went to UDT 12 for about six months. And then the manpower needs were such that SEAL team needed a guy. And I volunteered to go and deployed to Vietnam in September of ‘66.

[00:16:58] (Host) So how long were you there?

[00:16:59] (John) I think it was five months. I’m not sure what the deployments were. They usually do. I think they’re doing six months now, but it’s they’re a way of doing it has always been relatively short periods. And then back home for about 18 months or thereabouts or a year, I think in Vietnam they were shorter than.

[00:17:24] (Host) Most of, the most of the ones I’ve seen. I’m reading this book, The Men Behind the Trident. And most of the ones in there are six months, roughly six-month deployment.

[00:17:31] (John) That’s about right.

[00:17:32] (Host) And, you know, I’m assuming that’s just because of the intensity of it, right? I mean.

[00:17:35] (John) Yeah, they want to keep people. They don’t want to burn people out. You know, I mean, but yet, you know, there are guys I, one of the guys I served with, he stayed in and retired as a Master Chief. He made seven deployments to Vietnam. Now, if let’s say there’s six months, that’s three and a half years there. That’s a long ass time to be doing that kind of work in that environment or any combat environment.

[00:18:03] (Host) The SEAL that John’s talking about is Gary Gallagher. He received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in the Mekong Delta in October of 1968. Gallagher had led his unit on a capture mission deep in enemy controlled territory. A pretty normal day at the office for SEALs in Vietnam, when they came under fire from a much larger enemy force. Gallagher returned fire while leading his unit to escape, exposing himself to mortal danger in the process. They got away, but not before Gallagher gave first aid to a seriously wounded companion and carried the man more than five miles to safety. One of the SEALs on this Honor Flight is RJ Thomas. In March of 1969, he found himself in a firefight at Ha Tien after the Sea Wolf gunship he was riding in was shot down by enemy machine gun fire. RJ was thrown more than 30ft in the crash and sustained multiple injuries, including bullet fragments in his chest and shoulder. NVA troops advanced on the crash site to kill or capture the survivors. They had no idea that Thomas was a competitive marksman, armed with only a 45 automatic and about 40 or 50 rounds of ammunition. Thomas dragged the unconscious pilot from the burning helicopter, resting his wrist on the pilot’s helmet to steady his aim. Thomas engaged the NVA contingent, which was about 100 yards out at that point. For the next 40 minutes, a Navy Seal with a pistol held off 10 to 20 NVA troops, picking them off one by one. Nobody knows how many he killed, but it was a lot. RJ Thomas was also awarded the Navy Cross. Perhaps the most celebrated living Navy Seal is Mike Thornton, who is with us on this Honor Flight as well. Thornton received the Medal of Honor for his jaw dropping heroics in Vietnam. And that story is. Well, we’ll come back to that a little later. Stick around.

[00:23:16] (Host) And now back to the episode. Today, there are more than 2000 operational SEALs at the height of the Vietnam War, there were just under 450, but there were rarely more than 120 of them in theater at any given time. In their early days, they primarily trained their South Vietnamese counterparts, but within a few years they were involved in direct action SEALs in Vietnam, carried out day and night ambushes, hit and run raids, reconnaissance patrols, and intelligence collection, often in the form of capture missions. Over the course of their involvement in Vietnam, this relatively small group of SEALs made an outsized impact, with 600 confirmed enemy kills and another 300 almost certainly killed. The intelligence they gathered made an impact far beyond those numbers. The enemy called them the men with green faces because of their camouflage, and feared them enough to put bounties on their heads as much as their exploits are celebrated the SEALs in Vietnam had their share of very bad days. Bob Conger told me about one of them late one evening on the patio behind the hotel near BWI. His story begins and ends with a SEAL named Melvin Spence Dry.

[00:24:39] (Bob) I met him the first time when I arrived at SEAL Team One from BUDS, and he and a couple other officers from UT had just come back from their deployments and were reassigned to Seal Team One. So they were new to Seal Team One. And but I liked Spence right away. He just had he was a he was a great guy, physically fit, intelligent man. Uh, and uh, very much embracing that ethic that I explained earlier in the piece about what it would be like to be a SEAL. And then I got to know him better because I’m going to SEAL advanced training with them. He’s going there because he’s coming from UDT and he needs it. I’m going to it because I just came from BUDS and I need it. So now we’re training together at this higher level and we developed a relationship there.

[00:25:34] (Host) In November 1971, Spence was given the chance to form his own contingency platoon, Seal Team One’s Alpha Platoon, and prepare it for a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific.

[00:25:47] (Bob) And then when he found out he had the contingency platoon, he asked me if I would like to be his assistant platoon officer. Even though I already had a platoon, it wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to be part of a SEAL platoon that was deployed, and being with Spence was an ideal situation. Then we started putting the platoon together with a mix of experienced guys that had been to, that had been deployed with SEAL team and UDT into combat operations and newer guys. So we deployed and then we did additional training, and then we got the word that we were we were sent to Subic Bay to train with the Grayback, which is a diesel submarine, World War II diesel submarine that used to be a Regulus missile launching submarine.

[00:26:41] (Host) In the late ‘60s. The Navy started converting the Grayback to support clandestine operations. It was modified to carry about 60 troops and for Seal Delivery Vehicles or SDVs. These were small, unpressurized mini subs that would launch from the Graybacks wet hangars or lockout chambers, which had been the vessels missile tubes. The SDVs were operated by two UDT guys and could carry two SEALs on board.

[00:27:08] (Host) It wasn’t sealed. You weren’t in a sealed interior. You were wet, fully wet. So you were you were Frogmen being driven around in a sort of a large submarine. So we got to Subic Bay and began training with the UDT, SDV detachment that was working and training with the Grayback. And we did that for a couple of weeks, three weeks, something like that. And then they were relieved. And so those people that had been training with the Grayback for a fairly long period of time, let’s say 4 or 5 months, they were now leaving and a new group came in that had no experience with the Grayback as of that moment. And so we did some additional training with them, and that was about the time that we received our orders. The captain of the submarine received his orders us as well. The submarine was going to go up into the waters at the mouth of the Red River, which passes Hanoi on its way to the Tonkin Gulf. And we knew we were heading north. We knew that there was an operation pending, but we had no intel.

[00:28:35] (Host) Heading north in this case meant North Vietnam enemy territory. What Bob’s team didn’t know then what only a handful of people knew was that they were going to be a part of Operation Thunderhead. Two American POWs in the infamous Hanoi Hilton were planning to escape, steal a boat and head for the ocean. The Red River starts in China’s Yunnan province and flows across what was then North Vietnam, right through Hanoi, and empties into the Gulf of Tonkin. The Grayback was a small but vital part of that highly classified operation, delivering SEALs to a location at the mouth of the Red River where they could intercept the escapees as they came downriver and coordinate their rescue.

[00:29:18] (Bob) What we learned at a certain point was that there was going to be a mission set up to go out a first night and a second night, and we were going to be launched off the Grayback, which was sitting on the bottom a few miles outside of the coastline near the Red River. We would be meeting up with 2 or 3 VIPs. That’s all we knew.

[00:29:49] (Host) Spence was involved in the first night’s mission. They launched the SDV, aiming to establish an observation post on a small island off the mouth of the river. They didn’t get far. The strong current took them off course, and they searched unsuccessfully for an hour before they had to abort. Searching in that strong current had drained their battery. So when they had trouble locating the Grayback in the red silty water at night, they scuttled the SDV and headed out to sea, where they floated until the next morning. A search and rescue helicopter picked up the four men and flew them to the USS Long Beach, which was the command ship for Operation Thunderhead. There they debriefed and made contact with the Grayback. Spence was in a big hurry to get back to the submarine before the second SDV launched. They planned to drop him and his crew from a helicopter into the water that night, but the second SDV with Bob Conger aboard had already launched. They ran into the same problem with the current draining the SDVs battery. They returned to the Grayback, which was still sitting on the bottom. They didn’t have much air left.

[00:30:58] (Bob) So there we were. And so we couldn’t notify the sub that we were back out of our SDV looking to be brought back in. They could have locked us back in, but we couldn’t get their attention because we couldn’t Morse code or anything on the hull. So we had free ascended to the surface. It was a moonless night, fairly rugged, fairly rugged sea state. And but somehow we all came together. I had mentioned about swimming, even as strong of a swimmer as I was, I was going against the current. So that’s what the SDVs had been fighting. Also that current.

[00:31:40] (Host) Meanwhile, the helicopter transporting Spence and his guys was having trouble locating the Graybacks beacon in the dark, heavy seas even after multiple passes. They didn’t know that the second SDV had already been launched and scuttled, nor that Bob and three other men were floating on the surface, waiting to be rescued when they saw a flashing light in the dark, windy night. They thought it was the Graybacks beacon. It wasn’t. It was Bob and three other men from the second SDV.

[00:32:10] (Bob) So then the other the other four now are arriving in this helicopter. And so. But we didn’t know the other four. We knew the helicopter was showing up. We didn’t know why. And when the when the group came down from the helicopter, the helicopter started picking up salt water. It was low, which it needed to be. The idea is to not be faster than 20 knots and not be higher than 20ft to drop. Frogs which are trained Frogs or SEALs are trained to do that. And because of the saltwater business, that of course is no good for the engines of the helicopter. The pilot, who’s kind of new to the game, was increasing altitude.

[00:32:59] (Host) While these guys were dropping.

[00:33:01] (Bob) Before, just at about that point. So he’s responding to the information about salt water. He’s adjusting to that. Meanwhile, Spence and Moki and the other two guys, they’re at their drop point. So? So they’re wanting to go. And so there’s this dynamic between the SEALs and the helicopter crew. And turned out we believe in retrospect that the Hilo was rising in altitude and increasing speed. It’d be better if it was ten, ten knots and ten feet above the water. 20 is like max, but it was higher in 20. It was faster than 20. And Spence was the first one out.

[00:33:48] (Host) With the helicopter running low on fuel. Spence decided they should make the jump. Three men followed him out of the helicopter into pure blackness. One of them later said that by his count, he was at least 50ft above the sea, and that the wind speed and direction added another 15 or 20 knots of forward velocity. When he hit the surface.

[00:34:11] (Bob) Say 10 or 15 minutes later, we all came together in the ocean. It’s dark and we don’t know how. Some have theorized that there was a vortex movement in the surface caused by the river’s current, but somehow we all came together. And, you know, it’s like finding eight needles in a haystack. You’re lucky to find one because the other guys weren’t swimming either. So they were partially injured. They were just trying to do what they needed to do to stay afloat, survive, and that sort of thing. So here we all came together. And so for the rest of the night, we were swimming on the surface, staying together. Spence was lifeless, so he had been injured being the first man out, Which should have been the slowest and the lowest, but still he maybe hit it in a wrong angle or something.

[00:35:10] (Host) The surface of the water.

[00:35:11] (Bob) Hit the water and it was a heavier sea state, so maybe the angle of a wave he hit was just wrong. The other guys all got sort of injured. We had broken ribs. We had other things along that line, but not to the extent that Spence experienced.

[00:35:37] (Host) According to the Navy’s death report. Spence had died instantly of severe trauma to the neck.

[00:35:48] (Bob) Now we’re all together. We spend the night in the ocean.

[00:35:52] (Host) And one of you is dead.

[00:35:54] (Bob) Yes. Spence had had died, and he was with us. And we kept him with us. And SEALs don’t leave anybody behind.

[00:36:10] (Host) The two POWs never made their escape attempt. They decided that their plan was too risky, and they were too afraid, for good reason, that their captors would take retribution against the POWs who were left behind. Unfortunately, there was no way for them to communicate that quickly to the world outside of the prison’s walls. The people who had been assigned to recover the escapees stayed on the job until eventually the operation was terminated. Eight months later, Hanoi began releasing all of its American POWs as part of the negotiation that ended US military involvement in Vietnam. Melvin Spence Dry was killed on June 6th, 1972, making him the last SEAL killed during the Vietnam War. He’s memorialized on the wall at Panel One West Line 38. We’ll be back in two weeks with more hair raising and heartwarming stories from the old Frogs and SEALs, which wouldn’t have been possible without the generous invitation from Honor Flight San Diego. See you then.

No video interviews are available for this episode.