From time to time Medic scours the internet for images or accounts of certain fire bases used during the Cambodian invasion of 1970. Among them was the short lived Fire Support Base Bronco, a remote muddy hole manned by the line companies of 1/7 Cavalry and bolstered by 1/21st Field Artillery. In forty-five years I have located only one image of Bronco, and only a handful of men who were on it.
Recently I discovered several videos of the base. Lacking sound tracks, even so the half dozen clips are mesmerizing. Here in all its filthy mud slick glory is the base we grunts trudged or choppered to for seven days respite after weeks of tense and tedious jungle patrols.
Poorly located, often flooded by monsoon rain, dug directly into the enemy’s backyard, Bronco, ringed with barb wire and two man bunkers, had a well stocked aid station, a mess tent, several Howitzer cannons, a commo bunker and TOC. For one solid week, aside from menial labor, we lucky grunts could feast on three hot meals a day, take showers beneath jury rigged barrels, relieve ourselves on mortar box crappers, read our mail without fear of ambush. Once or twice a night, when not asleep in the bunkers or on the ground outside, we pulled one hour shifts of perimeter guard. On the seventh day, re-supplied with food, water, ammo, we marched or choppered back into the Cambodia’s forbidding jungle to begin the dread cycle: either we walk into them, they walk into us, we mortar them, they mortar us, we ambush them, they ambush us, we walk into each other, or nothing happens, until it starts all over again. For infantry, life on a fire base, no matter how primitive or picayune–saluting and petty harassment were never far off–was much preferred to the sudden terror and constant uncertainty of jungle patrol.
Sitting in the comfort of my living room, I sat spell bound watching a sweated and shirtless artillery crew repeatedly lift, load, lock and fire high explosive rounds toward an unseen distant target. In another gloriously close up clip, I recognized a medic I knew as he patched up a GI in the dark dreary aid station. Elsewhere, a hard core soldier, officer or enlisted–it was hard to tell, while his hair was cut with an electric clipper, posed for the camera. From out of the blue, a C-47 Shinook, “Shit Hooks” we called them, floats down from the sky, lands in a small field between the base and the jungle; in the sweltering heat, a dozen grunts trudge from the berm to unload its cargo. Finally, I watched an exquisite clip of senior officers, flown in from the rear, casually traipse into view. Wearing crisp clean uniforms, those whose job it was to plan and order our daily missions, talk and joke as if on holiday. “Highers” we called them. Periodically, from the safety of their large, modern, well protected rear bases, they pinned hard earned medals on our sweat soaked uniforms.
I shared this gold mine of emotionally charged memories with a dozen Bravo 1/7 Cav vets who’d lived on Bronco, patrolled and survived it’s free fire zones. A lively email thread followed, as one man after another recalled life on and around the forlorn base.
Of life on Bronco, one man wrote, “How did we ever survive that mud pit?” Another man humorously recalled the constant threat of leeches. “On ambush discovered one the size of a pepper in the crack of my ass-fully engorged. Can’t remember who it was that administered the bug juice to release it. But I damn near bite my fingers off so as not to disclose our position when it hit my asshole!”
Recollecting the loss of two friends, a Bravo 1/7 vet wrote, “You guys ran into some bad shit while I was away. Pick and Weid got killed. I cried, then got really pissed. I went back to the company and then back out to the bush. I wanted to find out how the fuck they died.”
Toward the invasions end, shocked out and physically exhausted by the daily press of jungle slogs and sudden terror, a man reached his limits:
“I was in a daze after May 30th. On one patrol we stopped and I sat on my ammo can. When we moved out I just got up and left it. Later I wondered why I felt so light, and considered not telling the lieutenant. But I did and we had to go back and get it. That night the LT said, ‘Sergeant, I believe you’ve had enough. Sgt Cruise will take the gun squad and you can go in on the next bird.”
During this time of many emails I stumbled across the curious case of General Eugene P. Forrester. Unbeknownst to us First Cav grunts, who daily fought the ground war, carried out its plain and simple dirty work, and who paid the price in blood and bone, his shameful courage under fire had made headlines.
General Forrester, the assistant division commander of the First Cavalry in 1970, had been awarded the Silver Star, the third highest valor award for heroic actions, involving combat near LZ Bronco. But the New York Times reported that officers close to the general had instructed three enlisted men, who wrote award citations, to fabricate the generals gallantry in combat. According to the Times article: “Pvt. James Olstad, 22, said that he had invented the acts because he had no choice.”
The award citation stated that General Forrester, while flying with a co-pilot in his command helicopter on 9 June 1970, spotted U.S. troops near Fire Support Base Bronco in Cambodia taking enemy fire. The clerks said they had picked 9 June because one soldier said it was his birthday. The citation described how the general’s aircraft came under intense fire, that he bravely remained in position, called in and adjusted artillery on the enemy troops. The citation praised his delivering ammo to the besieged Americans, and lauded his courage in evacuating their wounded.
The clerks insisted that under extreme pressure, they had made up the entire event late at night on October 4th. “It is possible that Forrester could have seen a lot of action,” Private Olstad said, “but he certainly did not see this action and the award he accepted is for action that never existed.” He and his fellow soldiers were outraged at being gang pressed by higher ups whose careers would benefit from adorning a staff officer with trumped up glory.
The account, unintentionally comical, was filed by New York Times war correspondent and future National Book Award winner Gloria Emerson (who Medic met in Boston in 2000). But the story did not end there. General Forrester was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, for “extraordinary heroism” on the very same day he earned the Silver Star. An investigation was held. The medals were revoked. No one took blame and the general was never questioned directly about the affaire embarrassante, because, said a high ranking officer, “He is a modest man.”
Nor did the general escape scandal after Vietnam. After retiring from the military, General Forrester placed money in Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong, Inc, an investment firm with alleged connections to the CIA. Not long afterward the SEC claimed BBRDW had engaged in wide ranging securities fraud. In his defense, Ronald Rewald, head of the company, claimed he was a covert agent for the CIA who gathered intelligence, and that his firm was a cover for 22 CIA agents, and a conduit for money laundering.
The CIA denied Rewald’s allegations, and subsequently denied it had attempted to assassinate him. Renwald was convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison but served 10 and was released on parole.
General Forrester and several military officers were part of larger group of investors who sued the CIA for their investment losses. It is unclear if they recouped their money. It is alleged that BBRDW, now defunct, was set up by the CIA to replace the notorious Nugan Hand Bank, which made international headlines after it collapsed in 1980.
But what of the admirable low ranking clerks who had first exposed the incurious general? After all these years, could they perhaps shed a bit more light on the official story? Medic discovered that Spec/4 Richard Kempkens had died in 2013. General Forrester, who ascended to heavenly ranks in 2012, was buried with full military honors at West Point. His sterling biography omits his brush with stolen valor.
It is fitting that the last word on the curious case of General Forrester be given to a solider who appears in one of the clips of Fire Base Bronco. Says former Bravo 1/7 platoon leader, retired colonel and Silver Star recipient David Judge, “Forrester visited Bravo Company’s 3rd platoon in the field and told us that while a brigade commander in the 4th Infantry Division, his unit had killed 5,000 NVA! He put his arm on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘And there wasn’t one of them that I couldn’t put my boot on…’ Yeah, right. Regardless, one of his fake awards was presented for the “action” that took place while he was telling me of his battlefield success…I don’t recall any one shooting at us on that day.”
Addendum
In reply to this article Medic received email from Jim Olstad and Bryant Jordan, who were directly involved in the curious case of General Forrester
___________________________
The First Bronco Video
New York Times False Medals Story/Gloria Emerson
Gloria Emerson confronts John and Yoko
The Army Investigates General Forrester’s Medals
New York Times/BBRDW, Inc
New York Times/CIA Denies Assassination Attempt on Rewald
Wikipedia/General Eugene P. Forrester
The Curious Case of General Forrester
From time to time Medic scours the internet for images or accounts of certain fire bases used during the Cambodian invasion of 1970. Among them was the short lived Fire Support Base Bronco, a remote muddy hole manned by the line companies of 1/7 Cavalry and bolstered by 1/21st Field Artillery. In forty-five years I have located only one image of Bronco, and only a handful of men who were on it.
Recently I discovered several videos of the base. Lacking sound tracks, even so the half dozen clips are mesmerizing. Here in all its filthy mud slick glory is the base we grunts trudged or choppered to for seven days respite after weeks of tense and tedious jungle patrols.
Poorly located, often flooded by monsoon rain, dug directly into the enemy’s backyard, Bronco, ringed with barb wire and two man bunkers, had a well stocked aid station, a mess tent, several Howitzer cannons, a commo bunker and TOC. For one solid week, aside from menial labor, we lucky grunts could feast on three hot meals a day, take showers beneath jury rigged barrels, relieve ourselves on mortar box crappers, read our mail without fear of ambush. Once or twice a night, when not asleep in the bunkers or on the ground outside, we pulled one hour shifts of perimeter guard. On the seventh day, re-supplied with food, water, ammo, we marched or choppered back into the Cambodia’s forbidding jungle to begin the dread cycle: either we walk into them, they walk into us, we mortar them, they mortar us, we ambush them, they ambush us, we walk into each other, or nothing happens, until it starts all over again. For infantry, life on a fire base, no matter how primitive or picayune–saluting and petty harassment were never far off–was much preferred to the sudden terror and constant uncertainty of jungle patrol.
I shared this gold mine of emotionally charged memories with a dozen Bravo 1/7 Cav vets who’d lived on Bronco, patrolled and survived it’s free fire zones. A lively email thread followed, as one man after another recalled life on and around the forlorn base.
Of life on Bronco, one man wrote, “How did we ever survive that mud pit?” Another man humorously recalled the constant threat of leeches. “On ambush discovered one the size of a pepper in the crack of my ass-fully engorged. Can’t remember who it was that administered the bug juice to release it. But I damn near bite my fingers off so as not to disclose our position when it hit my asshole!”
Toward the invasions end, shocked out and physically exhausted by the daily press of jungle slogs and sudden terror, a man reached his limits:
“I was in a daze after May 30th. On one patrol we stopped and I sat on my ammo can. When we moved out I just got up and left it. Later I wondered why I felt so light, and considered not telling the lieutenant. But I did and we had to go back and get it. That night the LT said, ‘Sergeant, I believe you’ve had enough. Sgt Cruise will take the gun squad and you can go in on the next bird.”
During this time of many emails I stumbled across the curious case of General Eugene P. Forrester. Unbeknownst to us First Cav grunts, who daily fought the ground war, carried out its plain and simple dirty work, and who paid the price in blood and bone, his shameful courage under fire had made headlines.
General Forrester, the assistant division commander of the First Cavalry in 1970, had been awarded the Silver Star, the third highest valor award for heroic actions, involving combat near LZ Bronco. But the New York Times reported that officers close to the general had instructed three enlisted men, who wrote award citations, to fabricate the generals gallantry in combat. According to the Times article: “Pvt. James Olstad, 22, said that he had invented the acts because he had no choice.”
The award citation stated that General Forrester, while flying with a co-pilot in his command helicopter on 9 June 1970, spotted U.S. troops near Fire Support Base Bronco in Cambodia taking enemy fire. The clerks said they had picked 9 June because one soldier said it was his birthday. The citation described how the general’s aircraft came under intense fire, that he bravely remained in position, called in and adjusted artillery on the enemy troops. The citation praised his delivering ammo to the besieged Americans, and lauded his courage in evacuating their wounded.
The clerks insisted that under extreme pressure, they had made up the entire event late at night on October 4th. “It is possible that Forrester could have seen a lot of action,” Private Olstad said, “but he certainly did not see this action and the award he accepted is for action that never existed.” He and his fellow soldiers were outraged at being gang pressed by higher ups whose careers would benefit from adorning a staff officer with trumped up glory.
The account, unintentionally comical, was filed by New York Times war correspondent and future National Book Award winner Gloria Emerson (who Medic met in Boston in 2000). But the story did not end there. General Forrester was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, for “extraordinary heroism” on the very same day he earned the Silver Star. An investigation was held. The medals were revoked. No one took blame and the general was never questioned directly about the affaire embarrassante, because, said a high ranking officer, “He is a modest man.”
Nor did the general escape scandal after Vietnam. After retiring from the military, General Forrester placed money in Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong, Inc, an investment firm with alleged connections to the CIA. Not long afterward the SEC claimed BBRDW had engaged in wide ranging securities fraud. In his defense, Ronald Rewald, head of the company, claimed he was a covert agent for the CIA who gathered intelligence, and that his firm was a cover for 22 CIA agents, and a conduit for money laundering.
The CIA denied Rewald’s allegations, and subsequently denied it had attempted to assassinate him. Renwald was convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison but served 10 and was released on parole.
General Forrester and several military officers were part of larger group of investors who sued the CIA for their investment losses. It is unclear if they recouped their money. It is alleged that BBRDW, now defunct, was set up by the CIA to replace the notorious Nugan Hand Bank, which made international headlines after it collapsed in 1980.
But what of the admirable low ranking clerks who had first exposed the incurious general? After all these years, could they perhaps shed a bit more light on the official story? Medic discovered that Spec/4 Richard Kempkens had died in 2013. General Forrester, who ascended to heavenly ranks in 2012, was buried with full military honors at West Point. His sterling biography omits his brush with stolen valor.
Addendum
In reply to this article Medic received email from Jim Olstad and Bryant Jordan, who were directly involved in the curious case of General Forrester
___________________________
The First Bronco Video
New York Times False Medals Story/Gloria Emerson
Gloria Emerson confronts John and Yoko
The Army Investigates General Forrester’s Medals
New York Times/BBRDW, Inc
New York Times/CIA Denies Assassination Attempt on Rewald
Wikipedia/General Eugene P. Forrester