A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy by Thomas J. Cutler Page A

way in the Mekong Delta. These dark green craft were a mere thirty-one feet long and were manned by a crew of four. They had no propellers; they were driven, instead, by a water-jet system that allowed them to operate in extremely shallow water. Because their fiberglass hulls provided no protection against enemy fire, speed and armament were their main defenses. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive
    Before the Americans could get to it, the second sampan reached the north bank of the river and disappeared into a channel too small for the PBRs. Williams knew that part of the Mekong Delta like the back of his hand, so he radioed the 99 and said in his South Carolinian drawl: “Stay with me. I know where he has to come out. We’ll get ’im.” The two boats raced, prows high, to head off the sampan. A short way down the riverbank they turned into a canal. Some months before, Williams had removed all of the armor from his boat, except that which surrounded the engines, in order to get more speed and to permit the 105 to carry more ammunition. She was a fast boat flying through the canal at about thirty-five knots. The trees lining the banks were a peripheral green blur to the Sailors on the dashing craft.
    As they raced around a bend in the canal, Seaman Rubin Binder, the 105’s forward gunner, suddenly shouted something colorful. Before them were forty or fifty boats scattered over the canal, each carrying fifteen to twenty troops. The sampans were so full of men, they barely had two inches of freeboard remaining. It would be difficult to assess who was more startled—the crews of the PBRs upon suddenly finding the waterway full of an enemy “fleet,” or the soldiers of the 261st and 262nd NVA regiments upon seeing two patrol craft careening around the bend and hurtling down on them.
    Binder’s shoulders shook violently as he opened up with his fifties. The NVA soldiers stood up in the sampans to return fire with their rifles. Williams had merely a split second to think: there was little room to turn around, there were no alternative routes to either side, and they were damned near among the enemy craft already. As he later said in an interview: “Ya’ll got to understand. There weren’t no exit ramp.” He pressed on.
    The banks erupted in heavy fire. The unmistakable thoonk of mortar rounds could be heard in the midst of the chattering of automatic weapons and the cracking of rifles. Williams swerved left a little, then right, as much as the narrow canal would permit, trying to give his after gunner’s grenadelauncher a clear shot. The enemy mortar rounds were not up to the PBRs’ speed and missed both boats; the small-arms fire was equally unsuccessful. In another few seconds, the 105 had reached the first of the enemy sampans. Although they were already at full power, Williams leaned on the throttles and ran right over the first boat—then another, and another. The enemy was reduced to chaos as soldiers spilled into the canal from the stricken sampans and still others were rolled into the water by the PBRs’ wakes. Soldiers along both banks fired at the boats as they streaked by, not realizing in the confusion that they were hitting their own men on the opposite banks.
    The waterway narrowed even more, but still the PBRs roared on. Two 57-mm recoilless rifle rounds lashed out from the right-hand bank, hitting the 105 in the bow on the starboard side, but passing completely through, emerging from the port side and exploding among the NVA troops on the opposite bank. Throughout, Binder and his fellow crew members—Castlebury, Alderson, and Spatt—were firing for all they were worth. Brass shell casings rained onto the fiberglass decks as hundreds of rounds spewed out in every direction. The 99 was likewise spraying metal at a phenomenal rate as she followed close behind. The North Vietnamese were suffering staggering losses.
    The two PBRs emerged from the