We remember: He served in Vietnam and was killed the next-to-last day of his tour

Elwood “Woody” Rice talks about his brother Staff Sgt. Calvin C. Rice Jr. The Vietnam War hero will be honored with a flagpole dedicated in Penn Park. York Daily Record

Army Master Sgt. William Wood felt agitated that morning. That was the word that came to mind – agitated.  

A heavy fog shrouded the hills just north of Forward Operations Base-3 in Khe Sanh, a military base on a plateau in the north, just below the DMZ, the demarcation between North and South Vietnam.  

Gary Lee Crone was a quiet, studious young man who joined the Army’s Special Forces. He was killed in January 1968 on the next-to-last day of his tour in Vietnam.

 (Photo: Submitted)

This wasn’t Wood’s first rodeo. He was hoping to get his small recon team to the base of Hill 471 before the fog lifted, the low clouds serving as cover from North Vietnamese troops perched atop the hill.  

It took some time to get the team together that morning, and by the time they left the base’s front gate, it was already 8:30 a.m. He knew from experience that the fog usually lifted at about 9 or 9:30 a.m., giving the unit a very short time to traverse the two kilometers to the hill undetected.  

Wood’s team consisted of Staff Sgt. Gary Crone, Sgt. Don Voorhees and Spec. 5 Mike Mahoney, accompanied by 10 Montagnard, the ethnic natives of the hills by the Laos border. The American Special Forces had a lengthy history working with the Montagnard, first as training officers to assist them in the Vietnamese civil war early in the United States’ involvement in Vietnam and later, as cohorts on special operations. 

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Crone, a country boy from the hills in northern York County, was “short,” as they say. His tour – his second in country – was set to expire the following day. Mahoney wasn’t part of the squad but came along as what was called a “straphanger,” slang for a paratrooper who tries to get on a jump without being listed on the manifest.

Wood didn’t know Mahoney, but Crone knew him – they were both from different parts of rural Pennsylvania – and asked Wood if it would be OK for him to tag along to get some experience in the bush. Mahoney, a 22-year-old from Towanda, Pa., a small town in the northeastern corner of the state, was a newbie, having arrived in Khe Sanh just two weeks before. 

Wood was apprehensive, but if Crone vouched for him, that was good enough. He knew Crone was a good soldier, and a good man, a quiet country kid who had been in the Army since 1959 who, at 26, was a battle-hardened veteran. He knew Crone was smart and studious, a voracious reader who spoke five languages. He was the kind of man you wanted by your side when things went south, was the bottom line. 

They set out, Wood would recall later, crossing a shallow valley that ran to the west of the base. The point man – one of the Montagnards – chose a path through some short weeds. Wood thought they were making pretty good time, under the circumstances. 

But he knew they were moving too slow.  

The fog was lifting.  

And Wood still felt agitated. 

His death was ‘devastating’

That was Jan. 29, 1968, the last day of Crone’s life. 

His death was “devastating,” his nephew Greg Crone said in a recent interview. His Uncle Gary was a source of pride for the family, a man who had accomplished so much in such little time. 

And the pain of his death still haunts his family. Greg Crone still can’t speak about his Uncle Gary without having the words catch in his throat and tears come to his eyes. His cousin Linda Frey cries every time she hears “Taps.”  

They would only learn of his service, and the last day of his life, later. Before his death, Crone had not spoken much about the details of his service. He really couldn’t. As a member of the Special Forces – the elite unit known as the Green Berets – a lot of the operations he participated in were classified. They never happened. He wasn’t there. 

A quiet, studious kid  

Gary Lee Crone was born on Dec. 3, 1941, the youngest of Ralph and Ruth Crone’s six children, having three older sisters and two older brothers. His father worked at the former Borg-Warner plant in York, his mother at a cigar factory. 

The family lived in Mount Washington, a tiny village near Zions View in the hills of northern York County. He grew up outdoors, hunting and fishing with his older brothers and his father, more of a means of putting food on the table than sport. 

His sister, Shirley Witmer, remembers he was a quiet child, and he seemed to always be reading something. He didn’t have any favorite books, his sister said. He read just about anything and everything. He wasn’t really into sports, like a lot of kids his age, and wasn’t an athlete, though he was tall, about 6-1, and lean.  

Upon graduating from Northeastern High School, he joined the Army. His family didn’t have a lengthy history of service in the military. His older brother had done a stint in the Army, but Shirley doesn’t know whether that influenced him. He had never really spoken about why he went into the service. He just did it. 

He joined the Special Forces and excelled at it. His nephew recalls when he’d come home on leave, he and his parents would drive into York to the train station to pick him up, Crone wearing his dress uniform and his green beret.  

Crone was always a quiet guy, his cousin recalled. He would tell a few stories about his service, what he could tell. He had traveled the world, Israel, Panama and other places he wasn’t allowed to mention.  

He told about training as a paratrooper and how scared he was the first time he jumped out of a perfectly fine airplane. His nephew said he told them he got used to it. He told them about going for SCUBA training. He was partnered up with another soldier, and they were instructed to stay within 10 feet of one another should they get into trouble.

Crone, though, couldn’t help but stray. The trainer’s solution was to tie a 10-foot length of rope around the necks of his two trainees, ordering them to keep it in place for a week. Whenever one of them went to chow, the other had to go to. Whenever one of them went to the head, the other had to follow. He was trained in emergency and trauma medicine and served as a medic for his unit. 

His trips home would always be events for the family. His mother would cook a big dinner, and the entire family would gather. Crone would head out into the yard with his nieces and nephews, throwing a football around or to play steal-the-base. He was just Uncle Gary.

It was a family event when Gary Crone came home on leave. Here, he posed for a photo with his parents, Ralph and Ruth Crone, in front of his mint-green ’57 T-Bird, at the family’s Mount Washington home.

 (Photo: Submitted)

One time when he came home, he had driven back from his home base in Texas in a mint green ‘57 T-Bird, a classic that he bought from his sergeant. His nephew remembered it had a white interior and looked like a mint Creamsicle. He also had a white T-bird with red interior. He loved those cars.  

After a big Sunday dinner, they’d settle in and watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and the Wonderful World of Disney on TV.  

‘No! No! Beaucoup VC!’  

The recon team was still 900 meters from the base of the hill when the fog lifted, Wood would write later. They were in the middle of the valley, out in the open, but their hike to the base of the hill was uneventful. They climbed the hill, diagonally, crossing its face toward a saddle between the hilltop and a peak to the southeast.  

“There was plenty of evidence that the (Air Force) had bombed the hell out of the general area in the past couple of days,” Wood wrote later in a description of the day’s events. “Those bomb craters had not been there two days before.” 

They came upon a field. The grass, Wood noticed, had been mowed in a swath about 300 meters wide. He didn’t think much of it, at the time, because usually fire lanes – lanes designed to funnel approaching combatants into a narrow area – were usually just a few feet wide. The wider swath indicated heavy traffic, he reasoned later.  

As they reached the saddle, the point man stopped.  

“No! No!” he yelled. “Beaucoup VC!”

Many Viet Cong.

The team huddled, and it was decided to press forward. Wood looked down and realized that he was walking on a path, the grass “worn down and beaten off by passing feet,” he wrote. He looked to his left and saw that the grass to the side of the path was also mowed, as if to clear a wide swath for a large number of troops.  

It was, he wrote, “just a fleeting glimpse.” 

That’s when they started taking fire. 

‘If I ever get out of this mess, I’ll settle down’ 

Crone had come home after his first tour in Vietnam, where he served with a unit called MACV-SOG – the acronym for Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group – a special task force in the Special Forces.  

During his first tour, he had been stationed up north, near the Laos border. His team would make excursions into Laos to try to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the path from North Vietnam that wound through Laos and Cambodia to the south, a main supply and troop transfer route for the North Vietnamese. His unit also took on missions up north, venturing into enemy territory to retrieve downed pilots or rescue prisoners of war, his family said. 

On one mission, his team was ambushed and pinned down. Retreating under heavy fire, they dropped their ammunition as they fled. Crone told the other men to continue retreating – some of them had families – and he dashed into the fire to retrieve the ammo.  

He told stories of jerry-rigging tin cans and string to communicate with members of his unit. He would always carry candy in his pack and when the unit visited a village, he’d give it to the kids. “They follow him around like the Pied Piper,” his sister said. 

In a letter to his sister, he wrote that there were several times that they came under heavy fire. The war was, well, war, not like it was in the movies, but real.  

He wrote, “If I ever get out of this mess, I’ll settle down.”  

His sister said, “He never made it.” 

Ambushed  

The VC was about five meters away, Wood estimated. Wood emptied two magazines full auto, but he didn’t think he hit anything but brush and trees.  

He looked behind him and thought he was alone. Then, he saw Crone, lying face-up in the grass about three or four meters behind him. 

He scrambled back to him. Crone had walked right into the teeth of the ambush. He had been shot through the cheek and the right eye. Another round shattered his right forearm. Wood searched for signs of life and found none.  

He scrambled back to the rest of the team. He told Voorhees that Crone was dead and asked where Mahoney and the Montagnard were. Voorhees didn’t know. They presumed the worst, that they were dead. 

Gary Lee Crone, far left with a cigarette in his mouth, served in Khe Sanh on the eve of the Tet Offensive.

 (Photo: Submitted)

As Wood retreated, he was shot through the knee. “It felt like someone slapped me with a ruler,” he recalled. Their radio had been shot, and he wrote a note that said, “In deep trouble. Team split. Some wounded. Need out. Wood.” He handed it to one of the Montagnard and told him to take it back to the fire base and give it to an American. 

A short time later, a Huey flew over and spotted him. Someone at the base had heard the gunfire and launched the gunship to investigate. 

He learned later that his small team had come across a force of 200 Viet Cong, heading south on the eve of the massive Tet Offensive of ‘68.  

The VC laid siege on Khe Sanh, a siege that would be the longest and deadliest battle of the Vietnam War. The siege lasted until April. Nearly 1,000 American soldiers and Marines lost their lives. 

Crone was one of the first to die, along with Specialist Mahoney.  

Listed as missing for three months 

Two soldiers in dress uniforms came to the door of Ralph and Ruth Crone’s Conewago Township home. They informed Crone’s parents that their son was missing in action. 

A team had been sent out to find him after a firefight, Wood recalled, but when they landed atop Hill 471, “all kinds of bad guys” opened fire on them, the sergeant wrote. After a prolonged firefight, he wrote, the team withdrew, without recovering Crone’s body. One man, Sgt. First Class Charles “Chuck” Tredinnick, was mortally wounded in the fight. 

Because Crone’s body hadn’t been recovered, he was officially listed as MIA. It was “very upsetting,” his sister recalled. “We had no idea if he was killed or captured by the enemy.” 

The siege of Khe Sanh dragged on until April 1968. When it lifted, Crone’s body was recovered, found where he fell, and sent home. 

He was buried with military honors in the Quickel Lutheran Church Cemetery in Zions View. 

Awarded the Silver Star 

The Army sent his belongings to his parents. His sister recalled the Army delivering several large boxes of books, all in different languages.  

Also among his effects were his medals. He had earned two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and a Medical Service Medal with two Oak-Leaf Clusters, among others.  

Some years later, he was memorialized on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. His name appears on Panel 35E, line 58, of the obsidian wall. 

Epilogue and eulogy 

On Sept. 25 this year, Crone’s family and friends gathered on a concrete bridge that carries Lewisberry Road over the Little Conewago Creek to dedicate the structure to his memory. The bridge is less than a mile from his childhood home; he fished in that creek when he was a kid. 

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In September, the bridge carrying Lewisberry Road over the Little Conewago Creek was dedicated to Gary Crone’s memory.

 (Photo: Mike Argento, York Daily Record/Sunday News)

An honor guard presented the colors. A bugler played “Taps.” Speeches were delivered.  

His cousin’s husband, Steve Frey, delivered the eulogy. At its conclusion, he read a poem Crone had written and that had been among his effects that were sent home from Vietnam: 

When I was young 

I was told over and over 

“You know nothing.” 

I searched, I listened. 

I saw, and still, 

I knew nothing. 

Now, as I lay here in the darkness 

And my blood seeps slowly into the earth, I open my eyes and see a spider, 

Mending his web. 

Now I know, that I still know nothing. 

 Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.

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