SOG: The Second Ashtray Mission
I: While I was home on extension leave, the first Ashtray convoy ambush and POW snatch mission was attempted. It was led by Major Frank Jaks, our S-3, who though still youthful and vigorous, had in his teenage years been an anti-Nazi partisan in Czechoslovakia. Although his hand-picked, all-U.S. team successfully reached the highway and ambushed a convoy — destroying several trucks and inflicting heavy casualties — they’d unintentionally killed the lead driver and came back empty handed.
The Second Ashtray Mission
Although Maj. Jaks wanted to lead a second Ashtray mission, the Joint Chiefs judged him too knowledgeable to risk his capture a second time in Laos. Therefore, so there would be an entirely new perspective, a different approach, it was decided that Ashtray II would involve a new group of men led by someone else. And much to my surprise, I was selected to be team leader.
The mission would be a joint effort of my Recon Team California and RT New Hampshire, led by Capt. Fred Krupa. Although Krupa outranked me (I was a staff sergeant), this kind of a “most-experienced-recon-man-leads” ethic was quite common in SOG.
In addition to the four Americans on each team, we’d also bring along four Montagnard tribesmen team members, for a total joint team of 12 — quite large since SOG recon teams usually employed only half this many men.
For three weeks we trained long and hard, worked out every last detail for the ambush, practiced drills for contact with the enemy and experimented with various demolition charges. And, of course, rehearsed that ambush over, and over, and over — both day and night. I was an unyielding taskmaster, but everyone understood so there wasn’t the slightest gripe; recall, these weren’t unwilling draftees, but seasoned Special Forces soldiers with most on their second Vietnam combat tour, although several were new to SOG recon.
After briefing our plan to Chief SOG in Saigon, he insisted that we run a short, two-day recon of the area we’d flee through after the ambush, to ensure we wouldn’t run right into a hidden enemy base camp. Capt. Krupa led this quick mission, which slipped in and out without incident while I finished other last-minute preparations. Two days later, our combined 12-man team was inserted by helicopter.
Night Ambush
It took us three days of slow, silent movement to reach Highway 110, a stealthy infiltration completed in the early afternoon of 29 March 1970, the day before Easter Sunday.
After laying in thick foliage until last light and even watching one truck dare to pass by in daylight, we crept forward to the road. I emplaced three claymore mines linked together by det cord for simultaneous detonation; they were aimed in a semi-circle to focus their blast on a truck’s front tire.
Then we laid face-down beside the highway and waited. Just before 10 p.m., the sound of approaching truck engines grew ever gradually until they seemed to roar like an approaching diesel locomotive — then finally, one rolled exactly up to where the three claymores were pointing and “KA-BOOM!” — I blew the mines and as fast, Yancey, Krupa, Woody and I assaulted the Soviet-made GAZ-63 truck which had lurched to a stop in front of us.
Virtually in three seconds, Yancey had the driver jerked from the cab and on the ground while Krupa slid a plastic restraint on his wrists.
“Fred Krupa snapped this photo of the ambushed Soviet GAZ-63 truck note bamboo & camouflage, plus my thermite grenade on hood. Our satchel charges blew it up, creating beacon fires for directing U.S. air strikes on the many NVA that massed to pursue us.”
I’ll never forget the amazing vision of Fred Krupa with his Kodak Instamatic and flash cubes standing in the middle of the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail, flashing away as I tossed a satchel charge in a truck and placed a time-delay thermite grenade on its hood. Seconds later, I shouted the order to withdraw, which Woody backed up with a whistle, just as we’d rehearsed — then a hidden enemy soldier shot Woody, bad, through both arms. Rex Jaco took hold of Woody and led him back toward the rally point and Krupa and Yancey dragged away the enemy prisoner.