Will America Ever Recognize This Samoan War Hero?

Welcome to the third installment on “How the Marines Pulled Off an Impossible Rescue Mission in Cambodia,” a Beast Files series for Beast Inside members only.

U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Fofomaitulagi Tulifua Tuitele moved quietly through the trees on the tropical island of Koh Tang, looking for the enemy.

The jungle was thick and humid. The triple canopy blocked the tropical sun as Tuitele pushed deeper into the bush. Each step was measured. His eyes fixed up ahead searching for movement. The flick of a branch. A flash of color. The crush of a dried leaf.

Tuitele heard the thump of incoming helicopter rotors and stopped. He waited for the Khmer Rouge to open fire on the American aircraft. Some branches moved as the Cambodian soldiers got the gun into position. Tuitele moved around the machine gun nest in a wide arc as the Khmer Rouge shot furiously at the incoming helicopter.

Tuitele and his men—Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 9^th Marines, based on Okinawa—had landed on the small island in the Gulf of Thailand to free a ship full of American merchant sailors, taken hostage by the Khmer Rouge for sailing into Cambodian waters. It was just two weeks after the evacuation of Saigon, and America smarted from its defeat in Vietnam. President Ford had ordered the Marines to take the island and free the sailors.

It was supposed to have been an easy task—but bad intelligence had underestimated the number and experience of the Khmer Rouge fighters on Koh Tang. Seven of the 10 American helicopters spearheading the mission had been downed or damaged beyond repair. The Marines had landed in isolated pockets on the island—divided between the deadly West Beach and the isolated East Beach—and were scrambling to survive under heavy fire.

None of them knew they were fighting to rescue hostages who had already been freed.

As the first wave of Marines landed on Koh Tang, the Khmer Rouge had ferried the sailors off the island and to a nearby vessel. They’d asked the ship’s captain to call off the assault. But it was too late—the invasion had already begun. And now the Marines were dug into the beaches, trying to hold off the enemy’s machine-gun fire.

Tuitele—“Sergeant T,” as his men affectionately called him—knew that in order for his unit to survive, something had to be done about the machine guns. And so he’d set out into the jungle, armed only with an M16 and a grenade launcher, to see what he could do about it.

When Tuitele reached the machine gun nest’s right flank, he slowly walked forward using the noise from the helicopter and the Cambodian’s firing to mask his movements. His M16 was level as he closed. It was impossible to get a clear shot in thick jungle. He had to get close.

As he reached the edge of the fighter’s position, he opened fire.

The opening burst killed one Khmer Rouge soldier and wounded the second. With his magazine spent, Tuitele snatched a machete lying on the berm and slashed and stabbed at the second soldier until he stopped moving. The Khmer Rouge soldiers were shirtless, with kramas— scarves—wrapped around their heads. With both soldiers dead, Tuitele searched the machine-gun nest. He liberated a couple of grenades, a pair of AK-47s and some cigarettes and sandals.

As he worked his way back toward the beach, Tuitele found what appeared to be another Khmer Rouge position. He flipped off the safety of his M16 and fired in its direction—recon by fire. When he finally got to the bunker, which was indeed a fighting position, it was deserted except for a bloody trail leading away from the beach. Unlike the machine gun nest, this position was fortified with logs and a trench. On the fire was a rice pot.

“It was a nice big bunker,” Tuitele said. “Someone was in a real hurry when they left.”

Tuitele guessed that the men he’d found and killed in the machine gun nest were probably in the bunker when the fighting started but pulled back once the Marines hit the beach. Tuitele looted the bunker and headed back to the West Beach. When he got back to his men, he dropped his prizes—cigarettes, sandals, guns, and more—in the sand. The Marines looked at him, stunned.

He didn’t want to spook his men, so he tried to keep it light.

“They’re having a garage sale on the other side of the island,” he said.

One of the company’s officers stopped Tuitele as he worked his way down the line passing out cigarettes.

“Where have you been all morning?” the officer said.

“Looking for some souvenirs, sir,” Tuitele said.

Tuitele handed out AK47s, canteens, binoculars, rubber-tire sandals, and Cambodian cigarettes “like he was Santa Claus,” said Al Bailey, an 19-year-old private fighting under Tuitele.

Another Marine on the beach looked at Tuitele’s sleeves. The sergeant’s olive-green uniform was stained with blood.

“Sgt. T,” the Marine said. “You’re bleeding.”

Tuitele looked at his arms.

“It’s not mine,” he said, moving down the line to pass out smokes. “You should see the other guy.”

Pfc. Gary Hall, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove and Pvt. Danny Marshall arrived on the same wave as Tuitele. The three Marines set up their machine gun on the right flank of the line. Overhead, American fighters strafed the jungle, beating the Khmer Rouge fighters back.

When Tuitele got to the middle of the line of Marines, handing out his loot, the men told him some Khmer Rouge soldiers were hiding at the top of a tall tree nearby. When the helicopters came in, they opened fire.

An M60 machine gun was set on a tripod in the sand. Tuitele took the gun off the tripod and opened fire from his hip, raking the treetop with several bursts. The rounds smashed into the clump of jungle. Fighters fell from the tree and crashed onto the jungle floor. If the rounds didn’t kill them, the 70-foot fall did. There was no more fire from the tree afterwards.

When Lt. Col. Randall Austin, the 2^nd Battalion commander, was finally able to land in a helicopter on Koh Tang on East Beach, more than a half-mile from the Marines on the West Beach, he radioed for a patrol from Tuitele’s unit to link up with his reinforcements. Ten Marines headed for Austin’s position in a single file line into the jungle. Bailey was in the middle. He had a bad feeling that they were walking into an ambush.

“I felt it in my bones,” Bailey said. “You could feel the enemy’s presence.”

Up front, he watched the point man stop and crouch down. Using hand signals, he told the others the enemy were up ahead. A lieutenant leading the patrol ordered Lance Cpl. Ashton Loney, a charismatic, jovial family man, who worked in the company armory, to take point and keep moving. Loney walked another 60 yards down the trail when the jungle exploded in tracer rounds and machine gun bursts. Loney’s head exploded like a pumpkin, Bailey said. Half his skull was gone before he hit the sand.

The Khmer Rouge were set up on a little berm overlooking the trail and had the Marines pinned down. Bailey hit the sand and laid on his back as rounds cut down the trees and tall grass around him. Soon, the Khmer Rouge soldiers started to lob grenades. The Marines followed suit, firing from their backs and throwing their own grenades. Explosions shook the ground. A grenade explosion knocked Bailey unconscious and shrapnel ripped into his face, neck, and back.

When Bailey regained consciousness, Khmer Rouge soldiers were laughing at dead and wounded Americans from the cover of the jungle.

“Come get dinner, GI!” one shouted.

A Marine nearby was crying for his mother. Bailey slapped him until he regained his wits. Every man in the squad was wounded. The thick jungle masked their movements as the Marines slowly retreated back to the perimeter on the beach. Bailey got to his feet and helped his unit mates back to the perimeter. He threw one man over his shoulders and carried him back to the corpsman before going back. Bailey made the walk three times, taking Loney’s body out last.

“Getting hit with shrapnel and the concussion caused an out-of-body experience,” Bailey said. “I found an inner strength given to me from God.”

Bailey was later awarded the Navy Achievement Medal with a valor device for his actions.

Back at West Beach, Tuitele asked for permission to lead another patrol to the East Beach and link up with Austin’s men, but the commanders denied his request after the ambush. Commanders also denied Tuitele’s request to push deeper into the jungle and attack a nearby village. The Marines were ordered to consolidate on the beach and set up a defensive perimeter while they waited to for helicopters to take them back to the Navy ships.

The terror of the first few hours was over, at least. The battle settled into a series of short bursts between long pauses. Tuitele worked the line, making sure his men were focused on the jungle, until he finally heard the roar of jet engines high above.

A fast mover.

The roar of the American fighter’s engine was growing louder. All of a sudden, the sand around Tuitele leapt into the air. Twenty-millimeter rounds bit into the sand. They were getting strafed by the American fighter.

“I almost shit my pants,” Tuitele said.

The rounds exploded 10 feet away and were getting closer. Tuitele raced down the line toward his company commander and the radio.

“Abort! Abort! They’re shooting at us! ABORT!” Tuitele screamed.

Tuitele saw his commander frantically talking into the radio.

Taking a knee in the sand, Sergeant T took off his helmet and pulled out an orange panel. He kept one in his helmet for just this reason. Tuitele found a stick and fastened the orange panel to it, so it stayed flat. He set it near the line so the pilots up above could see it.

The Marines—friendlies—have an orange panel, he told the lieutenant.

From the air, the orange stuck out in the sea of green vegetation allowing the American fighter pilots to adjust fire on their gun runs.

As the Marines on West Beach dug in and prepared for a long night, they received word that helicopters were on the way to take them off of the island. With shrapnel wounds all over his body from the ambush, Bailey was relieved when the unit’s gunnery sergeant pointed to a helicopter landing nearby.

“I want you to get the fuck out of here, this next chopper is your ride out of Dodge.”

Bailey got out of his fox hole and ran for the helicopter. He tore through some bushes and caught a thorn the size of a concrete nail in his knee. Pain shot through his leg, but he ignored it. His ride was waiting.

The helicopter was in the surf. Bailey waded into the waves and swam around the left side of the chopper, near the rear rotor blades. A hand reached out of the crew compartment and pulled him into the helicopter before it lifted off.

Bailey was evacuated back to a Navy ship in the Gulf of Thailand. It hovered over the deck and he leapt from the helicopter to the ship’s deck. When he got into the passageway, Bailey spotted a stainless-steel mop bucket. He filled it halfway with water and drank every drop. Sailors and corpsmen shepherded the wounded to sick bay. Bailey’s last memory was getting a shot before surgery.

“As I was drifting out I was thinking, I made it, thank God,” he said.

Back on Koh Tang, Tuitele was told he’d be tapped when it was his turn to board the helicopter. The pilots had to fly without running lights because as soon as they were lit, the night filled with enemy tracers from the Khmer Rouge gunners still hidden in the jungle. The helicopters came in fast and hovered over the beach. The Marines ran toward the rotor noise and jumped onto the ramps. With each helicopter flight, the men’s perimeter got smaller.

Tuitele finally got tapped as the second-to-last helicopter arrived. He hustled down the beach, making sure the other guys boarded first. The helicopter started to hover over the water as the last of the Marines climbed aboard. Tuitele had to run and dive for the ramp. He clung to the cold steel, his boot dragging through the surf, and then in the wind as the pilots juiced the engines. As the helicopter started to climb into the sky, Tuitele felt his fellow Marines drag him inside.

The CH-53 flew straight to the USS Holt, a destroyer off the coast of Koh Tang. It was the closest ship to the island and cut the travel time from the island to safety. The pilots wanted to get back to the beach were the men on both the East and West beaches were also getting evacuated by these helicopters. But the USS Holt was a frigate and didn’t have a landing platform big enough to accommodate a large cargo helicopter. The pilots only had a couple of inches of play before the blades hit the ship.

Unable to land, the pilot of Tuitele’s helicopter rested one wheel on the landing pad and dropped the ramp. Tuitele and the rest of the Marines jumped from the side of the ramp to the deck of the USS Holt. The now-empty helicopter flew off to pick up the last of the Americans on Koh Tang as Tuitele headed toward the galley. He was wet. His uniform was stained with blood and sweat. As he walked deeper into the ship, Tuitele handed his ammunition to a sailor. Everything was in chaos.

Back on the island, Pfc. Gary Hall, Lance Cpl. Joseph Hargrove, and Pvt. Danny Marshall were still on the right flank of the ever-contracting perimeter. Set up on a rocky outcrop, the men held their ground as their fellow Marines raced to the incoming helicopters.

Everything was moving quickly under the cover of darkness. Commanders checked fox holes to make sure no one was left behind. When the last helicopter—Knife 511—took off, the pilots radioed commanders when Marines onboard said there were still men on the ground.

Hargrove, Hall and Marshall were still on the beach.

With Marines evacuated to different ships, it took a while to get accountability. For a few hours, Tuitele was considered missing in action. After a roll call, it was discovered Hargrove, Marshall and Hall were still missing.

Air Force Staff Sergeant Robert Velie, helping to coordinate the battle in the skies over the island, told Newsweek in 2017 that he heard American voices on the radio asking when the helicopter was coming back to get them.

“We were told to lay cover fire [for the choppers] and they'd come back for us,” Velie says the Marine on the radio told him.

He thought it was a Khmer Rouge trick until the Marine on the other end of the line provided an authentication code. He alerted his commanders that Marines were left behind but was told everyone was off the island.

Velie was ordered to never discuss the radio call.

Rumors ping-ponged around the passageways. A SEAL team was going back to the island to get the missing Marines, but it was deemed too dangerous and rejected. U.S. forces were recalled from the area, ending America’s military involvement in the region.

That night, Tuitele couldn’t sleep.

“All I could think of was the three guys missing and their families,” he said.

What happened to the Marines left behind remains an ongoing debate.  

In his 2001 book The Last Battle, Ralph Wetterhahn argued three Marines were left behind on the island. Critics attacked him citing inconsistencies in the Khmer Rouge accounts, but there is a consensus among Cambodian war crimes investigators that Hargrove, Hall and Marshall were left behind.

“Based on the extensive evidence I have seen about the 1975 Mayaguez affair, I am convinced that several U.S. Marines were captured alive on Koh Tang and later executed by the Khmer Rouge,” Craig Etcheson, a war crimes investigator, said.

Dr. Peter Maguire, one of the few war crimes investigators to interview soldiers from both sides of the battle, is convinced the three Marines were left behind and executed by the Khmer Rouge, pointing to first-hand sworn testimony from the Khmer Rouge 164th Naval Division about the capture and execution of Americans on Koh Tang.

Khmer Rouge platoon commander Mao Ran told Maguire a tree-cutting detail spotted an American drinking from a well several days after the battle.

“When we investigated the area, we found boot marks which we knew had to belong to an American soldier because our men only wore sandals,” Ran said.

The Khmer Rouge soldiers tried to capture him, but he was killed during the struggle. Experts think Hargrove was the first one killed.

Em Son, Koh Tang Island’s garrison commander, told Maguire in 2003 someone was stealing from their cooking pot so the soldiers set an ambush for the thief.  That night, Khmer Rouge soldiers waited for the Marines to come down and captured the last two Marines—likely Hall and Marshall—without a fight. Son said the Marines were hungry and didn’t have any fighting spirit left. They surrendered without firing a shot.

None of the Khmer Rouge soldiers spoke English, so it was difficult to talk with the Americans.

“They just used body language and drew pictures on the ground to tell us that they had just been left behind,” Son said.  “We could just understand that they had been left behind and had not been assigned to be here.”

Son said the Marines weren’t tortured or even bound. The Khmer Rouge soldiers just took their weapons and let them rest.

“Immediately after they were captured they asked for rice to eat,” Son said. “We cooked rice in the night and let them eat.”

The two Marines were taken to Kompong Som on the mainland where they were executed on the beach and behind a hotel. Son said the men were beaten to death.

The mystery surrounding the loss of Hall, Hargrove and Marshall casts a shadow over the battle.

“Even worse, Marines, SEALs, and Air Force pararescue were ready and willing to return to the island but were told to stand down by their political leaders,” says Maguire, the director of Fainting Robin Foundation, a Wilmington, North Carolina-based nonprofit established to support independent scholars, independent journalists and veterans. “[President Gerald] Ford, and above all, Henry Kissinger, were more interested in making political hay than saving American lives. This type of behavior is typical of American policy makers like Kissinger who have never been in a fist fight much less a firefight.”

Kissinger defended the Ford administration’s actions after the incident, brushing off criticism they used unnecessary and excessive force. In 1976, he said a Congressional report criticizing the Administration used “misleading information” and “a misunderstanding of government,” according to a United Press International report.

In a new book, When the Center Held, Donald Rumsfeld—who worked as President Ford’s White House Chief of Staff—argues the Mayaguez Incident was a success because it marked “a turning point for Ford” that demonstrated “his command at a time of international crisis.” 

Rumsfeld notes the names of the Marines lost on Koh Tang are etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.  But leaves out that the last three names—Hargrove, Hall and Marshall— were not killed in what he calls the war’s last battle but left on the island to die.

But the battle will never be forgotten. Over the past year, the injustice of leaving the three Marines behind on Koh Tang is one reason Maguire and veterans of the battle are fighting to recognize Tuitele’s actions during the rescue mission.

Tuitele stayed in the Marine Corps until he retired in 1989. He took a job with the U.S. Postal Service, retiring in 2003. He now lives in New Mexico with his wife. Bailey, now 63, got out of the Marine Corps in 1977. He lives in Southern Maryland where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Potomac River. A retired arborist, he worked at the White House and the Department of Agriculture for 36 years.

Bailey now spends his days on the water.

“I’m getting to be an old son of bitch,” Bailey said.

Only recently has the valor of Tuitele come to light. Maguire spearheaded an effort in March to get Tuitele recognition for his actions on Koh Tang. Even though Tuitele was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal, Maguire called the award woefully inadequate.

“The witnesses describe his repeated instances of personal courage and leadership far beyond any expectation and beyond his rank and experience, and the tremendous impact that his actions had on the Khmer Rouge enemy in that fight,” Maguire wrote in a May letter to American Samoa's Rep. Aumua Amata.

Amata’s office filed an “Application for Correction of Military Record” in May and Tuitele’s case is presently under Congressional review, Maguire said.

The Congresswoman’s office did not return calls from The Daily Beast seeking comment.

To Maguire and survivors of the battle, Tuitele’s heroism has gone unnoticed for too long.

“Many more lives would have been lost for not the actions of Staff Sgt. Tuitele,” wrote Bailey in a letter included in a packet to Rep. Amata. “His talent and experience were needed on that fateful day … Whatever courage I displayed that day, I drew from that courageous man.”

Bailey’s letter was one of four from Marine eyewitnesses on Koh Tang Island. Maguire says the Marines would have been overrun if not for Tuitele. Maguire reviewed Tuitele’s original award submission and noticed the Secretary of the Navy reviewed it in 1975.  Only the nation’s highest medals—the Navy Cross or Medal of Honor—require that kind of oversight.

“The original submission of award must have been for an award requiring either Secretary of the Navy’s approval (Navy Cross) or his review before sending to the Commander in Chief (Medal of Honor),” Maguire said.

It’s an honor that Maguire believes Tuitele deserves.

“Clear evidence of valorous action on the level of Medal of Honor or Navy Cross exists,” Maguire wrote to Amata. “We cannot today know the reason why the original award submission was downgraded to Navy Commendation Medal with Combat Device but the evidence from friendly and enemy sources on the scene shows this award level to be unjust and inadequate recognition of the extraordinary heroism of Staff Sergeant Fofo Tuitele.”

The Mayaguez incident remains a footnote at the end of the nation’s most unpopular war. But for members of the Koh Tang “beach club,” as the battles survivors are known, the rescue mission is a defining moment in their lives.

And many of those lives, by their own admission, were saved by an angry and determined Samoan.

Catch up on this Beast Files series—preferably with a flashlight under the covers. Part I: 'How the Marines Pulled Off An Impossible Rescue Mission in Cambodia.' Part II: 'These Marines Went To Rescue Hostages—Who Weren't There.'