EVERETT – The Snohomish River estuaries will echo with machine-gun fire next week.
Don’t duck for cover. No bullets will be whizzing by.
Real sailors and soldiers are expected to fire blanks as they re-enact a Vietnam War battle for the Discovery Channel show “Battle Zone.”
Filming is planned on Oct. 25 and 26, and episodes are expected to air beginning in January.
The production was almost derailed when county officials said no shooting of firearms was allowed in the park areas on Otter and Spencer islands.
The project hinged on winning permission from the Snohomish County Council to fire rounds of blanks.
Congressman Rick Larsen, D-Wash., lobbied the council, which quickly passed an emergency rule Monday to allow historical re-enactments in parks.
“This creates an exemption for historical re-enactments and leaves it to the discretion of the parks division,” County Councilman John Koster said.
Freelance producer Arthur Maturo applauded the move.
“They basically changed the law for us up there, giving us this exemption,” Maturo said.
“We assure them we’re not going to be hurting any wildlife. Sure, the blanks will scare the birds, but they’ll come back.”
The grassy islands and river sloughs make a great backdrop for a heroic gunfight in the hot, steamy Vietnam jungle, Maturo said.
“Though it’s not tropical with palm trees, it is green and has delta-type tributaries like the rivers in Vietnam,” he said.
“If it gets wet, it’ll just look like humidity.”
Maturo is bringing his crew to town to film the 13th and final episode of the Discovery Channel series.
His one-hour episode will portray a day in the life of a Vietnam-era Navy riverboat crew, called PBR for Patrol Boat River.
A rare, restored 1970 Navy PBR housed east of Arlington will ply the sloughs near Otter and Spencer islands for film crews.
No actors will be used. Instead, nine sailors from the Everett-based USS Ford and six Army soldiers will play the parts.
“We’re just depending on their natural ability,” Maturo said. “There’s no dialogue per se. We interview the hands-on combatants and tell the story through re-enactments and archival footage.”
Four Vietnamese actors from the area and elsewhere will portray Viet Cong, he said.
The Navy’s PBRs were made infamous in the movie “Apocalypse Now,” Maturo said.
Veterans chafed at the characterization that PBRs conducted covert operations and crews were high on drugs, Maturo said.
“We try to set the record straight here,” he said. “A lot of their job was trying to stop the flow of arms between the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, searching pans and junks. It was 98 percent boring, 2 percent terrifying.”
The show will feature the harrowing experience of PBR Gunner’s Mate David Larsen, who was 21 when he fought to rescue soldiers on the North Saigon River on Aug. 2, 1969.
Lugging his boat’s M-60 rifle, he killed one Viet Cong and held three others at bay, staving off a regiment of 50 Viet Cong and earning a Navy Cross, Maturo said.
The fight will feature up to 400 rounds of blanks fired from an M-60 machine gun, Maturo said, as well as blanks from M-16 and AK-47 rifles.
David Larsen himself, now 58 and living in Kansas, plans to come to town to watch the filming.
Maturo is coming to Everett after searching the country for a working Navy swift boat for a story. Failing that, he looked for a working river patrol boat.
The California-based producer found a PBR in New Orleans and the one east of Arlington.
Veterans who are maintaining the Navy boat near Arlington are thrilled the film project is coming to town.
“This is a great chance to show Vietnam vets in the proper light and tell the true story,” said Heinz Hickethier, president of the PBR veterans group Gamewardens NW, who lives near Bremerton. He advised Maturo on the Vietnam river patrols and helped scout the area for filming last month.
Hickethier is organizing a reunion Tuesday in Everett for 40 Navy Vietnam veterans from the state who served on river patrol boats.
“The only thing that disappoints them is we can’t be the re-enactors. We’re too damned old,” said Hickethier, 65.
Maturo has filmed three other “Battle Zone” episodes, but said this was his favorite.
“I can’t get over the help I’ve gotten from the PBR sailors and Vietnam vets and (Rick Larsen’s aide) Brenda White,” Maturo said.
When they’re done filming, they can decide whether they love the smell of Kimberly-Clark paper plant in the morning.
Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
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