Escaping The Viet Cong: Ike Camacho’s Incredible Journey From Hiep Hoa To Minh Thanh

Ike Camacho was born in June 1937 and grew up southeast of El Paso, Texas, in Fabens. His father was in the trucking business, but died in an automobile accident when Ike was 13. Ike, his sister, and his mother then moved to El Paso, where his mother ran a cafeteria to support the family. As a boy, Ike enjoyed hunting, fishing, and playing centerfield on a baseball team. In 1955, Ike graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School. He recalls when an Army recruiter visited his high school, driving a 1955 Buick convertible he paid for with his jump pay. The recruiter described the “Buddy System,” where friends could join the Army together and serve at the same location for their first three-year enlistment. Ike had completed two years of Junior ROTC (Texas mandated it), and when he and three other buddies visited the recruiter, that opened up options for him. Ike and his friends all served together for the first three years, and they all had been promoted to Sergeant before they reenlisted for six more years. He and his three buddies ended up serving a full career each. Ike remarks how much having participated in Junior ROTC helped them in Basic Training. In JROTC, they learned marching, dismounted drill, weapons assembly, and marksmanship. Their experience in high school earned them special responsibilities and privileges during basic training. During basic, he enjoyed the obstacle course and night infiltration. He was assigned to the 11th Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, and completed jump school at Campbell. He was assigned to the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 11th Airborne Division, and after earning his wings, he got an airborne tattoo. He loved serving in the 11th and remembers being transferred to Augsburg, Germany, where the found the locals to be very friendly. He transferred to the 187th and deployed with that unit to Beirut. Lebanon, in July 1958. When the 187th returned home, Ike was a Sergeant, and he became an Airborne Instructor at Ft. Bragg. When his First Sergeant was looking for volunteers to go to Okinawa with the 503rd and establish an airborne school there, he jumped at the chance. He served with the 503rd in Okinawa from 1961 to 1962. In 1962, he transitioned to Special Forces with Billy Waugh because “Special Forces needs troops,” and he completed survival training and underwater demolitions training in Okinawa. He really enjoyed working with boats, but he found the Morse Code training challenging. He considered patrols and the survival, escape, and evasion training to be the most useful. Overall, he felt that the Special Forces training prepared him well for what he experienced in Vietnam. He describes his first deployment to Vietnam in 1962, where Special Operations was forming under the Agency, and he was given a $300 stipend to buy civilian clothes for the deployment. He carried one of the early AR-15s and was the first man to fire both the AR-15 and M-79 in combat. He describes the initial cartridge that was used with the AR-15 and how overpowered it was. He submitted a report on the effects of the bullets, resulting in modifications being made to the round to reduce the muzzle velocity. He remembers training the South Vietnamese to become jump masters and in techniques for aerial resupply. He describes interactions with Air America pilots and watching them patch bullet holes in their aircraft with tape. He enjoyed his tour in Vietnam with Special Forces, and once he returned to the States, he longed to get back to Southeast Asia because there were “fewer inspections.” He returned to Vietnam for his second tour and after arriving at a little landing strip at Can Tho, he decided to turn in for the night. He slept in his pants and boots, and around 2200 or 2300, the camp was attacked with mortars. He grabbed his weapon and took shelter under a water buffalo (Army water trailer) and remembers looking out between the wheels and covering the gate with his M2 carbine. That night he was scraped with shrapnel on his legs, but it was nothing serious. Others were more seriously injured, though, and he describes giving blood transfusions and calling for a Medevac. He considers the mortar barrage his “welcome back” to Vietnam. Later, they went into the cane field surrounding the camp and found enemy mortar positions hidden within the tall sugar cane. Next, his team replaced an outgoing team at the Hiep Hoa Special Forces Camp. It was a quiet camp until it wasn’t. About a month later, on the night of November 22, 1963, the same day President Kennedy was assassinated, over 500 Viet Cong attacked the 219 defenders of the camp including the Special Forces Detachment A-21 and members of the local Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG). Hiệp Hòa is in the Plain of Reeds in the Long An Province (now part of Tây Ninh province) just northeast of the Parrot’s Beak. He describes one of the Lieutenants who was assigned to the team, and how he liked to call mortar fire missions on flags the VC hung across the river. Ike remarks, “We wasted so much ammunition on those stupid flags.” He then digresses to discuss a conversation he had while in captivity with one of his interrogators. The Vietnamese said to him, “I want to tell you why you can’t win the war.” He was a finely dressed Vietnamese, not in uniform, and he spoke perfect English. He asked if Ike knew about Dien Bien Phu, where they kicked the French out of Vietnam. He said, “Since 1954, we have been sending our Soldiers to the South,” and that they have been indoctrinating the South Vietnamese. Of course, Ike knew that the northern infiltrators frequently used terror, murder, and assassination to achieve their ends. While detained as a POW, he was interrogated two or three times a month, and he notes that one of the most lingering effects involved his reading comprehension, but with therapy, it is improving. That issue stems from his technique, while being interrogated, of always keeping his mind on something else. His interrogators told him, “You know exactly how far you can go before we punish you.” He then describes some of the punishment, including being lowered into an 8- to 10-foot-deep hole that was only slightly wider than his body. He was given a candle and an airtight lid was placed over the top of the hole. As he breathed, the candle began to flicker out, and when he stopped breathing, the flame returned, indicating the level of oxygen available in the hole. Eventually, he decided to just blow out the candle, and save that extra oxygen, since the hole was pitch black anyway. Ike then describes an interesting situation. He was authorized a tobacco ration, but he did not smoke, so he used his tobacco as a bargaining chip with some of the guards. He then backs up to describe the Battle of Hiep Hoa and how he was captured. He remembers the radio operator waking the Americans in the camp at 0400 to tell them that the President had just been assassinated. The news hit Ike hard, because the President had been killed in Camacho’s home state. Later that day, a 36-man team went out with CPT Doug Horne to conduct an area assessment near the Cambodian border to find a suitable location for another camp. That left Ike in the camp with the Lieutenant, SFC Kenneth M. Roraback (commo), SGT George Smith (medic), and SP5 Claude McClure (demo). That night when it was the Lieutenant’s turn to check the perimeter, he stayed in bed. The attack started from the inside, in conjunction with a mortar attack. Smith and McClure were lightly wounded in the explosions. Viet Cong sympathizers in the camp killed some of the guards and manned a machine gun inside the camp. When the Viet Cong attackers started entering the camp, they shouted “Don’t shoot! We’re your brothers! All we want is the Americans!” Ike began firing the mortar, and the Lieutenant said “we’ve got to get out.” Ike felt that God was with him, because the enemy had a sniper posted on a roof in the nearby village with orders to shoot Camacho when he began firing the mortar. In the attack, the sniper slipped off the roof and broke his foot. Ike learned the enemy’s side of the story when the sniper later became one of his guards. When the Lieutenant ran out into the cane field, Ike ran back into the camp to find the rest of the team. When Ike ran around the corner of the dispensary, he encountered an enemy machine gun crew, and he emptied his magazine into them (later Ike’s account was corroborated by another Special Forces Officer who was one of the first into the camp after the battle, and he found the dead machine gun crew as Ike described in his report once he escaped). When the Viet Cong finally entered the camp, Ike tried to hide but they found him. A VC grabbed Ike’s weapon by the barrel, burning his hand, while another gave Ike a butt-stroke to the back of his head, knocking him out. Ike and the others had desperately defended the camp, but they were overwhelmed. The Lieutenant escaped, but Camacho, Roraback, Smith, and McClure were all captured. When Ike came to, Smith was telling the VC that he was a Bac Si, a medic, and he needed to tend to the gash on Ike’s head. He ripped Ike’s t-shirt and made a bandage out of it. The VC then tied the prisoners’ elbows behind their backs and marched them out of the camp. As they left the camp, the Air Force dropped napalm close to them. The VC lined up Smith and Camacho to shoot them (Roraback and McClure were not with them yet) and just before the order to fire was given, another Vietnamese ran up telling the captors to keep the Americans alive. After marching for a few hours, Smith and Camacho were given a banana and a cigarette. The next morning, they were loaded into a sampan, covered with woven mats, and moved along a tributary of the Mekong River. At one point, they were given a bar of soap and told to wash. The Vietnamese brought out a transistor radio, and Ike heard CPT Horne describing the attack and saying that he’d lost four of his men. They were again moved by sampan to the Plain of Reeds, where another sampan carrying McClure and Roraback joined them, and the team was reunited. As they moved north from village to village, Ike was surprised to see pictures of Ho Chi Minh in many of the huts. Frequently their guards had to protect the captives from villagers who tried to spit on them and hit them. At one point, they passed an old rice paddy with “an outhouse” looking structure in the middle. One of the guards got four sets of black pajamas from the “outhouse” and made the Americans take off their uniforms. Now dressed like the Vietnamese villagers, the group saw helicopters in the distance, and took cover in a rice paddy, up to their necks in water. As they moved north, an interpreter told Ike he had to take off his boots, because he was leaving distinctive tracks. Smith, McClure, and Roraback had already been given Ho Chi Minh sandals, leaving Ike the only one still with boots. Ike, attempting to mislead his captors, tried to tell them that he couldn’t get rid of his boots because he had a very bad and contagious food disease, flat feet, or more commonly known as athlete’s foot. The Vietnamese believed him, and even though he had to put on sandals, he kept his boots by tying the laces and keeping them around his neck. They finally arrived at the main camp, and Ike was surprised to see a huge pile, “a pyramid of rice,” in the jungle (“I’d never seen so much rice in my life”). Once, he caught a glimpse into the supply room and saw a cache of supplies from the US, including sugar, flour, and condensed milk that had been stolen from ships and sold on the black market, remarking, “That broke my heart, and pissed me off at the same time.” When the interrogators questioned them about the protests against the war on college campuses, “it kinda hit me hard,” and he wondered if that was really going on in America. Ike remarks, “They were experts in jungle warfare,” and as an example, he describes digging a chimney tunnel to dissipate smoke from cooking fires. He notes the Vietnamese were eating good, but “we got the bad rice,” frequently having to pick mouse turds out of the rice before they ate it. At one point Ike challenged the interrogator who said, “we eat what you eat,” and Ike said, “bullshit,” and told him he saw meat and vegetables in the kitchen. Rations improved after that. They had good guards and mean guards (one they called Asshole and another was Anus). Even so, Ike was impressed by the discipline of the enemy troops. Once he saw a plane spraying Agent Orange, and the next day he saw leaves covered with residue (“like Karo syrup”). He describes his cage as wide enough for one person and six feet long. He then explains how he loosened one of the bamboo bars of his cage and worked it back and forth until he created a space he could squeeze through. Fortunately, he still had his boots, and he was waiting for the monsoon season to try and escape. He also had to wait for an opportunity where his leg chain was removed, as it was when a new Marine prisoner came in. One night, around the 6th or 7th of July, 1965, Ike seized the opportunity to escape, wearing his boots and carrying a jar of rice and a piece of plastic. He told Smith he was leaving. Once he escaped, he essentially walked in a circle around the camp before finding a stream to follow, which led him to a river, and he swam to get away. When he got out of the water, he was covered in leeches. On the second day, he ran into a patrol with dogs, but since “I smelled like them,” they did not find him. At night, he climbed trees to keep away from ants. On day 4, he heard mortar rounds being fired, and the next day he saw a road. Next, he heard an L-19 aircraft (Bird Dog) and then he found a rubber plantation. He saw an ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) compound, but was worried about approaching it dressed in black pajamas. When he saw a Red Cross Renault vehicle approach, he stopped it, convinced the driver (in his survival French) that he was an American, and made the driver take him into the ARVN camp. At the ARVN camp, he was questioned by the village chief, when he saw a Green Beret walk by outside. Ike called to him, and the Green Beret said, “Ike is that you?” and whisked him away to the nearby Special Forces camp, where Ike caught a helicopter to the hospital in Saigon. When he escaped, he only weighed 110 lbs., down from about 180. An intercepted message indicated that the Viet Cong were advertising a $500,000 piastre reward for Ike, dead or alive, and the Army sent Ike to the Philippines and then to Okinawa. In Okinawa, he ran into his buddy, Billy Waugh, who was seriously injured from a battle in Vietnam. The Army decided to put Ike and Billy into an empty set of Officers quarters with a couple of cases of beer. Ike recalls, “We drank that beer, man, and we cried and laughed, and cried and laughed.” Smith and McClure were later released, but Roraback became the scapegoat for Ike’s escape and was executed by the Vietnamese (although Smith and McClure did not witness the execution, they heard one shot, but his body was never recovered). Allegedly, Roraback was executed the same day, September 26, 1965, as Rocky Versace, USMA ’59. Ike was able to make his escape after a new prisoner, Marine Captain Donald Cook was brought in. The Vietnamese removed Ike’s leg chain and used it for Cook (discussed off camera). He discusses how the North Vietnamese were using terror as a weapon in the south, blowing up busses with civilians on board. He also reflects on how his faith and prayer helped keep him going in the prison camp. As he was making his escape, he prayed “Dear God, please help me” with every step. Once he returned, the official debrief from the Army lasted a month and a half. After returning from Vietnam, Mrs. Alexander (the legendary little old lady who handled Special Forces assignments at the Pentagon) assigned him to 10th Group in Bad Tolz, Germany, as a Team Sergeant. While there, he did an exchange in England with the SAS. His next assignment was back with 1st Group in Okinawa. He was then offered a direct commission in 1968 to Captain, and he had to attend “Couth School” at Ft. Benning. Ike retired in 1975. Ike felt that we would win the war until one of the interrogators described how the North Vietnamese had been infiltrating the South since 1954. As an example, Ike recounts a story of seeing a whole North Vietnamese battalion that must have infiltrated into the South on boats from the sea. Ike attends reunions yearly for the fellowship and to see his brothers. He is extremely proud of his service, noting he had always dreamed of being a Soldier.