Ed Vick's Slingshot Tells a Riveting Tale Of the Brown-Water Navy along the Mekong

Special to Veterans Advantage

Slingshot tells a story about one mission in a River Patrol Force operation called Giant Slingshot in the Mekong Delta. “It is based on real events,” Ed Vick writes in the preface to his new book. “I first committed it to paper in 1970, shortly after I left the Navy. I was pretty angry at the time. I had volunteered for the Force and, like all of my comrades there, I did my best. But who was kidding whom?”

Indeed. Those who served in Vietnam, some 2.8 million men and women, did their individual and collective best under trying and difficult circumstances, which got more and more dicey the longer the fighting dragged on.

As Ed continues: “By the late 1960’s we weren’t trying to win the war. We weren’t trying to make South Vietnam free for democracy. The politicians were just trying to get America the hell out of there without 150 million voters noticing that we had spent a lot of human capital, and for nothing. We were going to abandon our Vietnamese allies and those Vietnamese civilians who believed in us.

“But we couldn’t steal away in the night. We had to try to save some face. We couldn’t make it look like a bunch of guys fleeing a bank job. So we took our time. We bought time. We bought it with the lives of the kids the politicians sent over there. What a waste.”

What Ed Vick novelizes in Slingshot captures many of his experiences and perceptions as a Lt. (j.g.) in the brown-water Navy. He served his second tour of duty in Vietnam, assigned to River Patrol Flotilla 5, Riverine Divisions 534 and 551, from December 1968 through November 1969. He could have had a cushy stateside post; instead, he volunteered for hazardous duty. And fighting the Viet Cong along the Mekong and its canals and tributaries was fraught with peril: the River Patrol Force took nearly 50 percent casualties. During Giant Slingshot, Ed notes, “nearly half the boat crews ended up dead or wounded or missing-in-action.

“Astounding just to think about that one statistic alone,” he writes, adding: “But even more astounding to me was that, against this backdrop of blundering politicians, murderous firefights and bad statistics, the River Patrol Force to the end remained largely volunteers . . . [and] finally, I should note, with melancholy pride, that the River Divisions that took part in Operation Giant Slingshot were later awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, to this day the highest honor that an American military unit can receive for its actions in combat.”

Tricky Mission

Slingshot tells the story of an attempt to rescue a downed American pilot, whom the Viet Cong are willing, they claim through a go-between, to release in exchange for a ransom. Despite the bravery of the Americans who volunteer to travel through murky canals to effect the rescue, duplicity and treachery prevail; despite the valor and heroics of the embattled boat crew, the rescue attempt ends in more death and more mayhem. Acrimony and accusations by cover-your-ass commanders eager to deflect blame and save their careers questions the rectitude of too many officers who saw service in the war zone strictly as a stepping stone to promotion.

This slim volume, which is self-published, is one of a handful of books to explore the role played by the brown-water Navy in the warfare that was waged in the waterways of South Vietnam. Larry Bissonnette, former commanding officer of River Division 593, writes that Slingshot “captures all the intensity, confusion and action of riverine warfare in Vietnam. It puts you right there.” Adds Stephen Watson, former national president of the Vietnam Association of the U.S. Navy River Patrol Force: This is the “first book that really hits home and tells what it was like to be a sailor in the River Patrol Force.”

(In fairness, it should be noted that I’ve written a jacket blurb, too, for the book, calling Slingshot “a riveting tribute to what America’s young men were willing to do for their country, and for each other.”)

Ed had taken notes and jotted down observations about Giant Slingshot three decades ago. Why did he commit to transforming memory into a tale that he self-published? Ed, who served as a member of the Executive Committee of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission and is now on the Board of Advisors of Veterans Advantage, cites a trio of inspirations:

An uncle down in Texas, a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force, knew he was dying. “You’ve got all these great stories,” a close relative told him. She brought him a dictation machine. He talked. She transcribed. And his stories are immortalized for future generations of his family in a spiral-bound book.

More personally for Ed, though, is the desire to “record this story for myself and for those with whom I served,” he said, “because every single young man with whom I served was a hero, and people should know that. In combat or out of it, I never saw the drugs, disloyalty or cowardice that too many people still like to associate with Vietnam’s soldiers. During my tour I was with good young guys trying to do the right thing, but whose efforts were perverted by the politics and the bureaucracy that surrounded the whole war effort.”

He wrote Slingshot, finally, for his family. “My great-great grandfather fought at Gettysburg, my grandfather served in the Army in World War I, and my dad was a hero in the battle for Okinawa. I wish I had some kind of feeling for what really happened in those places, where history was made the hard way.

“One day, I’m not going to be around any more, and I had all these notes in a closet and when I’m gone, I knew they’d just be thrown out. So a year and a half ago, I finally pulled the trigger.” And began writing.

Intense Effort

Ed found a rhythm writing in bursts: five, six, eight hours a day, for several days running, often foregoing regular meals. Then he wouldn’t touch it for a week or more before plunging back into it. To recreate dialogue, he would hold, and record, conversations between the characters. “I’d play all the parts,” he explained. “Then I’d almost transcribe these conversations when I was satisfied that they rang true. I really didn’t want to get into heavy emotional dialogue. I wanted language that was blunt, straightforward, almost matter-of-fact.”

Because, as one of the clichés of writers goes, all writing is rewriting, Ed would review what he’d written, eliminating adjectives that had snuck into the story along the way. Ed subscribes to one of Ernest Hemingway’s aphorisms: “I never met an adjective I could trust.”

“In many ways, the journey [of writing] is its own reward,” he said. “The experience of just doing it is really cathartic. When I finished the book, there was, finally, a kind of closure.”

His teenagers, Charlie and Jane, view his accomplishment with a degree of amazement, he reports. And he’s managed to sell, in the few short months since publication, hundreds of copies in Westchester, where he lives.

Slingshot is a welcome addition to the literature of the Vietnam war, one that illuminates an oft overlooked facet of that conflict. It also amplifies a theme that was always true but that also was for too long overlooked: the competence and commitment of the young men and women who did their nation’s bidding. Says Ed: “Thank god, we’re not blaming the warrior for the war any more.”

Amen.

Purchase Ed Vick’s book Slingshot.

Ed Vick also serves on the Board of Advisors of Veterans Advantage.