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Doing Special Operation in Vietnam meant losing your identity.
Soldiers would go on missions, often behind enemy lines or actually into North Vietnam, with absolutely no
identification. Their uniforms bore not markings. The numbers on their weapons had been removed.
If they were captured, they had no hope of survival. Among the hundreds of POWs in North Vietnamese
hands by the end of the war, not one Special Forces soldier was released by North Vietnam.
It was a tough job, often a terrifying job, and it was one that Tim Kirk volunteered for.
Kirk grew
up in Dayton, Minnesota, and was, by his own admission, "a rebellious youth."
He quit school during his senior year at Elk River High School, and his father gave him a couple of options. "My dad said,
'Well, you're not going to hang around here. You can either find a job or join the Army.'"
And so, in March, 1965, at age 17, Stephen Timothy Kirk joined the Army for a three-year enlistment.
Boot
camp was a Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, and during the training, the young men were given a talk on the possibility of going to parachute jump school and joining the Airborne.
"Our company commander
knew exactly how to play me. He said, 'Kirk, don't even think of signing up for jump school. You'll never make it.' I said, 'Where do I sign?'"
Jump school was a Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Kirk went on
from there to parachute rigger school at Ft. Lee, Virginia. He finished both schools and was assigned to the legendary 101st Airborne Division as a parachute rigger.
As a member of the 101st at Ft.
Campbell, Kentucky, Kirk still wasn't a happy camper. "I've got something in me that wants to be the best of the best. I wanted to be the elite. I got this desire to go into Special Forces."
At 18
years of age, though, he was too young to volunteer for Special Forces. Some bargaining with the U.S. Army allowed him go into Special Forces if he agreed to extend his enlistment for a year. At Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, he became Special Forces qualified in January, 1967, and he was assigned to the Third Special Forces Group as a parachute rigger with an MOS as an expert in light weapons.
"The
training was very intense, and it went into a lot more detail. I learned about every weapon from a .45 pistol to a howitzer. We learned tactics. We learned hand to hand fighting."
Kirk's goal was to
be assigned to Vietnam. "I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Now that I look back, I really wonder what I was thinking."
He telephoned Mrs. Alexander, who handled all the personnel requests
for Special Forces, and asked for transfer to Vietnam. In about three weeks, he had orders, and was on his way.
"We landed at Cam Ranh Bay, and I remember getting off the plane and walking behind the
jet wash from the engines, and it was so hot. I walked another 100 feet or so, and then I realized, it wasn't just the jet blast, it really was that hot everywhere in that country."
Cam Ranh Bay was a
fairly secure area, but it was still pock marked with shell holes and other reminders that the newcomers had entered a war zone. Kirk was assigned to the Fifth Special Forces Group, Command and Control
North at Forward Operation Base 1. His first stop was at Nha Trang, just north of Cam Ranh Bay, where the Special Forces were headquartered.
"I was unsure what Command and Control North meant, but
everyone I talked to said, 'Be afraid.' I was starting to get a sense that maybe this Vietnam thing wasn't such a good idea."
In May, 1967, Kirk left Nha Trang for Phu Bai, a base about 75 miles south
of North Vietnam and the location of FOB-1. "Everything started to be really clandestine at that point. They brought us in a room and had us sign a lot of documents."
The Special Forces at that point
of the war were doing secret missions into Laos, Cambodia and even North Vietnam. The missions were for reconnaissance, to extract downed flyers (called Bright Lights missions) and to take out "targets
of opportunity."
The American soldiers on these missions carried no identification on their person or on their equipment. The teams got their choice of wearing the black pajamas, tiger stripes, or
regular Army olive drab. If they were captured or killed, the U.S. would not even acknowledge they existed.
In fact, it was well known among the SOG (Studies and Observation Group) personnel that
being captured was not an option.
While in-country, the Special Forces did carry an identification card that said they were allowed to go where they wanted. There was a telephone number on the
card that a suspicious gate guard could call.
"We called it our 'Get out of jail free card.' It explained that we were working for an agency of the U.S. government. We were allowed to carry concealed
weapons anywhere we went. The card indicated we were not to be questioned on our actions or what we were doing. It was pretty serious stuff. Of course, there were a few who used that card to get out of
trouble."
Kirk arrived just after a large operation in the A Shau Valley, in the northern part of South Vietnam, had gone amok, and 26 Americans had been killed.
He was assigned to work with a
team of "indigenous Vietnamese." These soldiers had been recruited into the Special Forces and were mainly made up of the Montagnard people from the highlands, and the Nung, or Vietnamese of Chinese
ancestry. They joined mainly because the pay was astronomically better than their other choice, being drafted into the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Kirk's team was made up mainly of Nung
volunteers. "They were very good soldiers, excellent soldiers. They only thing they required was that they trusted you. Once they were okay with you, they would do anything for you. But once they sensed
fear on your part, they got scared too."
Kirk carried a modified M-16 with a shortened stock and barrel, and he was assigned to a reconnaissance team. Once again he went through a training
period with his men. "The whole purpose of the training was so that out in the field a group of six to 12 men know exactly what everyone else is doing. The men learned hand signals and tactics, and how
to respond to any situation. They also had to learn to move quietly, soundlessly through the countryside."
When a reconnaissance team was brought in via helicopter, the goal was to melt into the
jungle without a trace. The last thing it wanted was to engage the enemy. "If you end up in a fire fight, you'll start out facing just a few North Vietnamese who were guarding that area. Within 15
minutes, you'll be facing a platoon. Fifteen minutes after that, you'll be facing a company. Fifteen minutes after that, you'll be facing two companies."
If contact with the enemy was made during an
insertion, the plan was to use maximum fire for about two minutes, and then hightail it to another location and disappear. "You wanted to break contact as quickly as possible and evade."
Kirk recalls
one recon mission that got interesting. His team was assigned to check out the highland area atop a limestone bluff on the Laos-Vietnam border, a few miles from the U.S. base at Khe Sanh. It was about a
month before the siege of that base began, and the North Vietnamese were marshalling artillery for the attack.
The team originally went in as part of a larger operation. When the other troops left,
the recon team was left and they tried to cross a river to get to the Co Roc Mountain, the site of the bluff. "The river was too high, though, and we almost lost our point man."
The next day, the team
was again inserted, this time behind the bluff. "They tried a couple of false inserts, and they kept going until they found a spot they could get in. They gave us our coordinates and left. We didn't find
out until the next day that they were the wrong coordinates."
The team knew the direction it wanted to go, and it moved stealthily through the country for the next couple of days, checking in by radio
now and then.
"On top of Co Roc Mountain, we found a lot of troubling issues," Kirk said. "There were very well used trails and we found track marks from heavy equipment. And the spider holes (used by
the North Vietnamese to duck into during an air attack) were not hand made, but were done by an auger. That was very unusual. We started getting pretty nervous."
They called in their coordinates and
were told by the "cabbie rider," the expert flying in the air to direct traffic and support in the area, that there was no way they could be there. They checked their instruments again and radioed that
position again. A discussion ensued between the team and the cabbie rider about where they were, but it was interrupted when the Nung team sergeant hollered loudly, "Dung li" or "Stop."
"After three
days of quiet and never talking above a whisper, the loud command was pretty shocking." The men turned and found that a North Vietnamese force was advancing on them.
"We began to fire on them, and we
saw several of them go down. It all happened so fast. There's screaming and shooting. It gets chaotic, real chaotic in a hurry, and that's where all the training comes in. We bailed over the side of the
cliff and beat feet down the side of the mountain. I had the radio, and I'm trying to call in an air strike. I got pretty excited and I quit using code. I was just giving the coordinates straight
out.
"The cabbie rider decided he needed to remind me to use code. I told him, 'Every son of a bitch in the world knows where we are except you. Give us some cover on top of that mountain.'"
Gun
ships were soon on the way, and the team was able to break contact with the enemy. Their mission was not over, however. "Because there were heavy equipment tracks, they wanted to know more. They wanted
us to go back up the mountain and see if we could capture any of the wounded North Vietnamese."
Another recon team was brought in to double the strength of the unit. There was only one problem. During
its escape, the men had laid anti-personnel mines, called "toe poppers," along the paths to cover their withdrawal.
Darkness was falling by that time, and they had to dig in for the night. "That's
kind of super-scary, because you know that they know you're there. But no one came in that night." In the morning, the combined team carefully made its way up the mountain, through its own mine field, to
the top of the cliff. "We found plenty of blood trails, but no wounded and no bodies. They had been removed."
There was sporadic fire all around them as the NVA tried to locate the team, and the
American force finally sought shelter in some eight-foot high elephant grass. It wasn't long though, before they could smell smoke. The enemy had set the grass on fire.
There was only one clearing in
the elephant grass where a helicopter could land, but smack in the middle of the clearing was a large tree. They radioed for an extraction, but they first had to deal with the tree.
"We tried to blow
it away with our M-79s (grenade launchers), but we were too close and they wouldn't detonate. And so we started hacking at the tree with our knives. The trunk was about 16 inches thick."
In the
meantime, the group was assaulted on one side of their perimeter. "We had enough people and a tremendous amount of fire power." The first attack was beaten back, but by now the fire was only about 100
feet away, and the second enemy assault came from two directions. The Americans could hear the choppers coming in.
Most of the men were protecting the perimeter, but Kirk and three others were
chopping frantically at the tree. Just as a new assault came in, the tree went down. The helicopters were able to land.
"It took three choppers to get all of us out, but we got out. We didn't lose one
person. We figured it took about 10 minutes to chop through that tree with knives. It's amazing what you can do."
Three weeks later, the assault on Khe Sanh began. The Special Forces had a small
base at Lang Vei, about six miles southwest of Khe Sanh, that was overrun by a large enemy force on Feb. 6, 1968.
Kirk had gone back to his base at Phu Bai after the previous recon mission, but he was
now assigned to a "hatchet force" that was going to Khe Sanh to help defend the besieged base. Khe Sanh was mostly a Marine operation, but the Special Forces had a Studies and Observation Group compound
there.
"When we got there, everybody else had already dug in, and we had to start from scratch to create our defensive position. And the whole time we were under some pretty intense fire. But it got a
lot worse."
Kirk's unit was comprised of one lieutenant, three sergeants and 80 indigenous soldiers.
On the night of Feb. 5, the men could hear the attack on the Lang Vei compound, but there was
nothing they could do about it. At dawn they were informed that Lang Vei had been overrun. "At that point they didn't know who if anybody was still alive. They just knew it was ugly."
Word finally
came in that there were Americans still alive, but they were just barely holding out. A disagreement ensued between the Special Forces and Marine officers about rescuing the Lang Vei troops, further
slowing down a relief party. "We didn't know about any of that political crap going on. All we knew was that our buddies were out there, and the Marines were not going to get them."
The Special Forces
command asked for volunteers, and every man in the compound stepped forward. Not everyone could go, but hatchet force of about 40 men was formed and put aboard helicopters.
"Just by coincidence, I had
received a telegram that day that my first daughter was born."
The choppers headed for Lang Vei. Two large Chinooks held most of the troops, while several of the smaller Hueys flew shotgun. Kirk's
squad was put aboard one of the Hueys.
"When we got over compound, we looked down and it was totally decimated. There was nothing left of the camp, no bunkers, no buildings, it was just flat. We
found out that the survivors were in a bunker a little ways away in an old camp that had been abandoned."
Looking down, Kirk could see the bunker and he could see troops all over the old camp. He
believed that the troops were Americans. He tapped the shoulder of the Huey pilot and told him to go down.
"The pilot looked at me like I was crazy, but I signaled I wanted him to go down." With the
other choppers circling and providing support, the Huey landed about 50 or 60 feet from the bunker. The troops in the compound Kirk had hoped were friendlies, were not.
"There was so much fire coming
in, it was unbelievable. Mortar fire. Automatic weapons fire. We could see the Americans in the bunker, and we ran for them. They started coming out. Some were wounded badly, some were walking
wounded. They were all banged up. They all looked really bad. Only about half of them had weapons."
Kirk helped carry some of the soldiers to the medevac helicopter, and then was ordered to take
his squad and protect the southwest perimeter of the landing zone.
"We headed for our position, and at one point I ducked down behind some cover. I realized after a moment that I was behind a stack of
bodies. There were bodies everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them. There were weapons and bodies everywhere you looked.
"We were taking heavy fire from a machine gun and a mortar team. I grabbed the
M-79 from one of my guys and started firing as fast as I could at that machine gun. I bet I fired 20 rounds, but we knocked it out." An M-79 fires 40 millimeter exploding rounds, something like grenades.
Kirk turned his attention to the mortar team. When they tried to flee their position, he caught two of them with an M-79 round. "After that, there wasn't much firing from the area in front of
us."
The call was given to pull back, and Kirk and his team were on the last helicopter to leave Lang Vei. They rescued 14 Americans. The mission took about 45 minutes.
For his efforts, Kirk
received a Bronze Star for heroism. A few weeks later, he earned one of South Vietnam's highest awards for another daring act.
Back at Khe Sanh, the siege went on. "There were times where we were
taking 1,200 to 1,500 rounds of artillery every day. It was so bad that guys wanted to go on patrol. They felt safer outside the compound than in it. If an artillery shell hits within 20 feet of you,
you're dead. That can make you nervous after a while."
"After a while, though, you adapt somewhat. I can't say you get used to it, because you never get used to it. But you can hear when they fire the
artillery and you know you've got the count of seven to find some shelter. Like if your taking a break to go to the can, you know you've the count of seven to get back in a trench."
Kirk led his team
as part of a larger force that set up an ambush position near Khe Sanh village, a couple of miles from the base. They were hoping to catch the NVA coming down a ravine.
While they were waiting, Kirk
noticed a few North Vietnamese go into a hut in the village. "I felt we could make a capture, get a prisoner, if we did it right. I took my point man and team sergeant with me, and we got to what
probably was a burial mound not far from the hut."
Kirk's plan was to stand up and throw a grenade into the hut, and for his two men to fire at whoever came out – and to take a prisoner if
possible.
"I pulled the pin on the grenade, and I stood up. Just as I stood up, an NVA soldier stood up five feet in front of me on the other side of the mound. I don't think either one of us
knew the other was there. The team sergeant took him out, but in the meantime I had been pretty startled and when I threw the grenade, it landed 20 feet in front of the hootch. So the whole thing
turned into a disaster. The grenade went off, the guys came out of the hut, and we ran back to our positions about 75 meters away.
"I got there and jumped behind some cover, and it was at that point
I realized my point man wasn't there. Our whole platoon was putting down a hellacious fire, but I could hear him calling me. 'Tung-Si Tim, Tung-Si Tim.' ("Sergeant Tim.")
"I was scared shitless. Part
of me wanted to just leave him out there. I didn't know what I was going to do."
One of Kirk's fellow non-coms came over and said, "You know you've got to go get him."
"So I did what I had to do.
I bolted out there, it was about 40 meters, and I put him on my shoulder. There was lots of fire. I could hear them going by. But I was kind of on auto-pilot by that time. I made it back to the
perimeter."
The action had two outcomes. The first was his relationship with his squad. "They would do anything for me after that." The other outcome was the awarding of the Cross of Gallantry by the
South Vietnamese government.
Kirk earned a second bronze star for his overall performance during his time in Vietnam, and he also won the Army Commendation Medal for his leadership in defending the
perimeter at Khe Sanh.
After 77 days at Khe San, he and his unit were relieved. "Most of that time was in the same uniform, with no showers."
He recalled one other incident at Khe Sanh that spoke
to the mysteries of war. At one point, a group of GIs were gathered in a trench when a mortar shell hit a few feet away. "It just knocked us all down. It just knocked the wind out of us and we went,
'Wow.' The amazing thing is that not one of us was hurt."
Looking down the trench, though, the men could see a piece of plywood fall away and an arm flop down from a sleeping hole built to the side of
the trench. A piece of shrapnel had traveled 100 feet down the trench, ricocheted off something to make a left turn, gone through the 3/4th inch plywood, and hit a GI sleeping. The shrapnel went right
into his heart and killed him instantly.
The men who had been a few feet from the blast didn't get a scratch. "I've often wondered through the years, 'Lord, what was the purpose of keeping me alive
during those times?'"
By the end of Khe Sanh, Kirk was near the end of his tour in Vietnam, and he was shipped home in May of 1968. In January of 1969, he was back for a second tour. "I don't know why
I went back. I still don't know."
He was there about a week when he got wounded. "I was at Na Trang, which is a relatively safe place, when I got hit by a mortar round."
He was hit by shrapnel, and
his hand and arm were broken. Despite his injuries, he was sent to a base at Ban Me Thout, but wasn't able to participate in any missions because of his wound.
"By the end of March, my enlistment was
up. It just wasn't the same. I'd been home and seen my daughter. It just was just different. I decided to get out."
At home, he said his reception in his small home town was good. He found a job, and
"lived a pretty crazy life." He worked for Control Data, went to Forestry School, and eventually ended up doing construction work for over 20 years. He fought and licked an alcohol and drug problem, but
in the process, he was divorced.
After a major heart problem, Kirk was told he could never do physical labor again, and so he returned to school, eventually earning his degree in organizational
administration from Northwestern College in Roseville, finishing at the top of his class. He now serves as a building inspector for the city of Richfield.
He had four children from his first marriage,
and he and his second wife, Sheila, have two children. She also had two children from a prior marriage.
Kirk and his wife live in Elk River. He has served as chaplain for Chapter 470 of the
Vietnam Veterans of America, and he is active in the Special Forces Association.
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