Don Droz with daughter Tracy REMEMBERED Lieutenant (junior grade) Donald Droz was the skipper of PCF-43, a "swift boat" assigned to Coastal Division Eleven. On 12 April 1969 he and Chief Hospital Corpsman Robert Worthington of Underwater Demolition Team 13 were killed in action when eight boats of CosDiv-11 were ambushed. Quartermaster 3rd Class Thomas Holloway , cox'n aboard PCF-51, was killed in the same engagement. A memorial initiated by Terry Boone mtboone@aol.com   7 Oct 2002

 

Notes from The Virtual Wall On 12 April 1969 eight PCFs of CosDiv Eleven were providing transportation and riverine assault coverage for a Vietnamese Marine sweep operation on the Duong Keo River. PCF-43 carried a crew of six, one TF-115 staff officer, ten men of Underwater Demolition Team 13's Det Golf (led by LTJG Peter Upton), and over eight hundred pounds of high explosives. PCF-43 got underway from her mother ship, USS WESTCHESTER COUNTY (LST 1167) about 4:30 PM and joined with the other seven boats about an hour later. PCF-31 was the command boat and took the lead, with the heavily laden PCF-43 bring up the rear. The eight PCFs entered the Duong Keo and headed up-river. At about 6 PM the boats were ambushed by a Viet Cong heavy weapons company equipped with rockets, recoilless rifles, machine guns, and small arms. The VC waited until the greatest possible number of boats had entered the killing zone and then opened fire. The PCFs responded by returning fire and accelerating out of the hostile fire area ... but PCF-43, in the "tail end Charlie" position and heavily laden, was very badly hit. A B-40 rocket exploded on the fantail, killing HMC Worthington and wounding two other men from the UDT team, while others were hit by small arms fire. Worse, another rocket exploded in the pilot house, killing the boat's OIC (LTJG Droz) and wounding the helmsman. With engines at full power and no-one at the helm, PCF-43 ran herself aground on the north bank of the river - directly in front of the VC emplacements. The 14 survivors found themselves in a frantic fight for survival. PCF-43's radios were out of action and the UDT team's handheld PRC-25 lacked the power to break in on the PCF radio net. Fortunately, the next boat ahead in the column, PCF-38, realized that PCF-43 was in trouble and re-entered the killing zone in support. She promptly was hit in the pilot house by a rocket, severely wounding her OIC and disabling her steering gear. Her cox'n was able to use her twin screws to steer the boat back up river and out of danger. The command boat, PCF-31, and PCF-5 then re-entered the fire zone, with PCF-31 pulling alongside the blazing PCF-43 while PCF-5 stood off to provide covering fire. PCF-31's crewmen and embarked Vietnamese Marines were able to recover all 17 men from PCF-43 - 2 dead, 12 wounded, and 3 untouched - and withdraw up-river. Shortly thereafter PCF-43's cargo of explosive detonated, demolishing the boat. Rather than risk a night passage down-river, the PCF force established a defensive position overnight. On passage down-river the next morning, the force passed PCF-43's wreckage. Summarized from the account by LTJG Peter N. Upton (UDT-13 Det Golf OINC) at http://www.mwweb.com/ndc/SwiftBoats/pcf43.htm Back home, LTJG Droz' wife was notified of his death - incorrectly, according to his daughter, Tracy: "The telegram the Navy sent on April 13, 1969 told us that my father had been killed while on PCF 51. "On March 16, 2001, while I was surfing the internet, entering my name and family members' names into a search engine to see if anyone had become famous yet, I made a gut-wrenching discovery. I found an article entitled, "The Death of PCF 43." It was an account of the last day of my father's life - with information no one in my family had ever known - written by a man who had been there, on my father's boat in the Mekong Delta, and who had witnessed him die." Tracy Droz Tragos (held by her father in the photo above, taken while LTJG Droz was on R&R) is an accomplished member of the filmmaking community. She also is the writer, director, and producer of a film, Be Good, Smile Pretty, "a first-person documentary that tells the story of one daughter's struggle to know and grieve for the father she never knew, the father who died in Vietnam when she was three months old." The film is one effort by the Orphans of War Foundation and is fully documented on the Orphans of War site. The Virtual Wall staff wishes Tracy Droz Tragos and her colleagues fair winds and following seas. God bless.

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