Wounded Soldier, Healing Warrior

Allen B. Clark

Allen B. Clark grew up dreaming of becoming an officer in the United States Army. He would graduate from West Point and become an intelligence officer. Volunteering to go to Vietnam, he was assigned to Army Special Forces (Green Berets), where he was to go undercover using an assumed name. On June 17, 1967 Clark was at Dak To Special Forces camp when the camp came under attack by enemy forces..

Dak To, Vietnam
4:30 a.m., June 17, 1967

Muffled sounds of distant mortar fire infiltrated the quiet stillness of the predawn darkness. This sounded so familiar by now that, even though we were expecting a ground attack, I barely took notice and only glanced up briefly from the letter I was writing to my wife. The sounds came increasingly closer, though, when suddenly, from just outside the inner perimeter, I heard the alarming shouts of a Vietnamese man employed in our camp at Dak To (pronounced “dahk toe”). I quickly pulled out my .38-caliber pistol and dove behind a nearby jeep for cover. I recall not understanding what he was saying, but soon realized that mortar fire had begun dropping into our camp.

In a Special Forces camp, an American Special Forces team member or attached personnel such as I were responsible for a two-hour shift inside the inner perimeter all night long. The morning of the attack I had the last shift, from 4 to 6 a.m. Our duty was to walk periodically the inner perimeter to ensure that none of our Montagnards nor Vietnamese did sneak in to spike our mortars or knife us in our bunkers prior to an attack. An American with a radio sat on duty inside an underground bunker situated just outside the mess hall. His super-secret SOG (Studies and Observation Group) unit monitored the U.S. raiding parties in Laos and our radio relay site (code named Leghorn) across the border. Leghorn was a site up on a steep elevation in Laos and was used to receive radio messages from the SOG missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. If a team was in trouble, a message would go back for help to the SOG Reaction Force based in Kontum. Eventually, a North Vietnamese Army unit oversaw the position later in the war. In thinking about the enemy movement the previous evening, a ground attack was imminent. I shouted down to the SOG soldier to radio for flare/gun ships from Pleiku that would help us spot the enemy as they came at us from across the Dak Poko River or from any other direction. (Dak in Vietnamese means both “stream” and “village.” Thus, Dak Poko refers to the Poko River and Dak To refers to the village of To.)

By that time the mortar rounds were hitting closer, and our soldiers popped out of bunkers and tents to scramble to battle positions. I ran to my bunk building just outside the inner perimeter. Smoke from exploding shells stung my nostrils as I grabbed my AR-15 rifle and strapped on ammo pouches and a grenade harness in preparation for battle. Hurrying back into the inner perimeter, I took it upon myself to get our three mortar positions manned so we could get flares up and deliver counter-battery fire on the suspected enemy firing positions. I collared a tall, blond Quartermaster Corps soldier and ordered him to one of our three mortar pits.

In the fog of war, mistakes are made and I will always regret one made the night before. Right at dusk we peered at the high ground across the river to our south and saw figures there. In the haze of the upcoming darkness, we must have decided they were perhaps a group of villagers rather than any of our people or a patrol from the Vietnamese army post at Tan Canh a few miles away. As a consequence no air strike was called on the enemy, who were obviously setting up their mortar positions for the next morning’s barrage.