WALKING ON THE WILD SIDE

By the late SGM ALFRED "AL" FRIEND, Retired, edit by Robert L. Noe

From 1957 when the first Special Forces teams in Vietnam began training the nucleus of the Vietnamese Special Forces and Airborne Ranger units, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) had strongly resisted any proposal that the SF be used in their basic mission of operating in the enemy's rear areas. This was due to a number of reasons; principally the caveat imposed that US Forces not engage in combat and they not go into Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam. Secondly, President Kennedy's blessing on Special Forces at Fort Bragg infuriated the higher commands who had been trying to squash SF for years. SF was the anti-gods who would not play the game according to the rules of war. Additionally, in defiance to Army regulations, when SF went into the field, they defied orders that the officially-damned regulations that the Green Beret would not be worn. As soon as they jumped into an operational area during maneuvers, SF violated the official regulations against "the wearing of the green" and gleefully turned many maneuvers into chaos. In an early 501s maneuver Louisiana, the SF turned road signs around, sending convoys of equipment, rations and fuel heading off into completely different directions than intended. Units preparing for an assault were visited at night, preceding their assault, and received a briefing by a "Lt. Col" who brought XVIII Airborne Corps' revision to their original attack plan, sending their regiment in another direction, in which they attacked one of their own units.

The confusion caused the Commanding General of XVIII Airborne Corps to stop the operations. All SF personnel were sent back to Fort Bragg and the maneuvers resumed. However, upon return to Fort Bragg, the Commanding General wrote a new regulation which made the wearing of the beret a Courts Martial offense. For Kennedy to make the Beret official rankled many a General’s heart. But Kennedy knew what he was doing. Impressed by reports of SF and its' exploits, but most importantly their dedication, improvisation and joi de vivre, made him feel these were the soldiers he wanted in Vietnam.

The other reason was that the Army did not have another unit capable of handling the myriad of operational concepts foisted upon it by the US and Vietnamese governments. In the early years SF teams were assigned the Village Defense, Mountain Scouts, Border Surveillance, Civilian irregular Defense Groups (CIDG), Catholic Youth, Ranger, and other programs which were the brainchildren of whichever "expert’s" star was in political ascendancy at the time. Some of these programs were demanded by the US Government and abhorred by the Vietnamese, while others - such as the Catholic Youth Program and the Regular Forces-Provisional Forces (Ruffpuffs) were pet (and non-productive) projects dreamed up by President Diem and his military and political advisers. American participation and funds were diverted to these programs to secure Vietnamese cooperation in other efforts.

Neither Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) nor MACV had the expertise or inclination to conduct these programs and SF became the dumping ground for every "ash and trash" concept that came along. With some notable exceptions, most MAAG units in the field preferred to conduct their training and advisory roles from the relative comfort of their well-appointed compounds in cities and towns. Few had any desire to endure the primitive living conditions, or share the dangers of isolation and combat with their troops as SF did. Consequently, when a new concept was to be tried, MACV requested more SF teams.

SF's first commitments in Vietnam were conducted and supported under the aegis of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with little or no control by MACV and MAAG. This situation created a deep sense of resentment towards SF on the part of many senior MACV officers, which did not dissipate when command responsibility passed from the CIA to the military in 1963. (In one particular instance, the CIA paid the SF Teams $16 a day in per diem, since the SF were responsible for providing their own rations. After they had assumed control, the military tried to make SF troopers pay this money back to MACV, but the CIA refused to provide any records and after a year the effort died.)

Proposals from the SF Headquarters in Nha Trang, north of Saigon for operations in the enemy's rear areas, particularly in Cambodia and Laos, where the Ho Chi Minh Trail provided a steady stream of troops and supplies into South Vietnam were trashed as soon as the strategists in MACV read the titles. Besides, since MACV now controlled the SF, they had some operational concepts on their own to try out.

As a result, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and their southern cousins the Viet Cong (VC) operated with impunity in the sparsely-settled countryside. One reason was the excellent camouflage discipline of the NVA and the fact that most of their movement was at night. While bombing raids on the trail caused some delays, the absence of ground action against their main supply route permitted the NVA to move staggering amounts of men and material into South Vietnam to prepare for an extended war. The NVA established power bases in South Vietnam from the rugged mountains of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) a strip of land extending from the Yellow Sea to the borders of Laos, established to divide North and South Vietnam and Central Highlands in the north to the jungles, rice paddies and flat expanses of the Mekong Delta in the South. In the South, in addition to using the natural camouflage of the jungles, the VC dug and lived in miles of sophisticated caves and tunnels. MACV intelligence analysts were certain that these bases existed, but the enemy's strict camouflage and security discipline made the bases almost impossible to locate by air reconnaissance. Since friendly ground reconnaissance was non-existent, the analysts could only speculate on their locations. What MACV failed to realize was what the cost in American lives would be when they were assaulted; the AIoui-Ashau region and the Ia Drang valley for example.

From the beginning of American involvement in Vietnam, our military forces were seriously impaired by a flood of political restrictions emanating from Washington; ostensibly intended to minimize American involvement in the conflict. But in war, as in sex, you can't be "minimally involved," you’re in it to the finish. The rules of engagement vacillated from not firing at the enemy, even if he was firing at you, to "only returning fire if the enemy was specifically firing at you;" (hard to determine if a whole bunch was shooting in your direction) to finally - as if in exasperation - "Go get 'em."

In the early 1980's, a 5-kilometer buffer zone was established along the Laotian and Cambodian borders, intended to prevent American participation from spilling over into these countries; a short-sighted anomaly, since the bulk of aggression was pouring into South Vietnam over these same borders.

The only American troops which might be in position to violate this caveat were the SF camps aligned along these borders. They also suffered the most from the enemy' utilization of the zone to Marshall their troops to attack the SF camps. Small wonder the battered teams began to feel the buffer zone was MACV's revenge and that a courts martial for violating the zone was preferable to filling the insides of body bags. Instead of stopping at the zone, they began to follow enemy troops across and attacking them in their bivouac areas. The SF were careful to insure that the map coordinates given higher headquarters for any troop movements or operations were well out of the zone. A little judicious lying, perhaps, but the A-Teams in the field had little or no support in the event they were attacked. Pre-emptive strikes on enemy buildups were vital to preventing them from massing its troops for the 3 to1 advantage they required before attacking one of our camps. The smoking ruins of camps which failed to maintain aggressive close-in and long-range patrolling programs in their areas became grim examples to other teams. One laconic SF troop remarked that fighting by the rules from MACV was like "bringing a knife to a gun fight."

The North Vietnamese, on the other hand, had no illusions about why they were in the fight. They were in it to win, at whatever the price they paid or the length of time it required. They subscribed to no international boundaries; theorizing that all of Indo-China would eventually be theirs. South Vietnam was only the first step. They seized whatever portions of Laos and Cambodia that were required for the Ho Chi Minh Trail and blithely denied (to a world that knew better) that they were there. The NVA knew exactly what rules and limitations were laid on the SF teams and often sent village chiefs in to MAAG headquarters to complain about SF border violations and the depredations they were wreaking in these areas. The NVA was smart enough to take these complaints to MAAG, since they knew they would receive little sympathy from the SF Commanders.

MACV finally dropped the 5K border zone - not in an official pronouncement, but simply let it die, due to the fact that the enemy were the only ones that wanted it observed, and nobody in the headquarters particularly wanted to go out and live with the SF teams to insure the regulation was obeyed.

In 1963-64, the increase in NVA manpower and material pouring into South Vietnam along the Trail could no longer be ignored and the previously-trashed plans were pulled out and dusted off. Two special units were activated to take advantage of SF's unconventional warfare capabilities: DELTA and MACSOG. Project DELTA, under command of 5th Special Forces group in Nha Trang, was responsible for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP or "Lurp" as it was commonly referred to) within the borders of South Vietnam. DELTA pioneered the LRRP effort in the country; developing effective techniques for reconnaissance (recon) and in later training teams for other units in-country.

Studies and Observation Group. (SOG) as the other group was designated, was directly under operational control of MACV. Although manning requirements remained the responsibility of the SF. SOG's responsibility was broad-based, including North Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Cambodia and certain other areas where US interests were involved. The Group was tightly compartmented and many of its operations remain classified today.

The original small team of volunteers for SOG came from Fort Bragg, but the beleaguered Special Warfare Center was struggling just to provide qualified SF personnel to the 5th Group needs, so in mid-1964 a call went out to the 1st SF Group on Okinawa for selected volunteers for the Group.

The 1st was already heavily committed to supporting its operational commitments in other Southeast Asian countries - as well as providing teams for Vietnam - so the call for selected volunteers E-7 and above raised the hackles of every SF commander on the island. Each company had commitments projected for a year in advance and the casualties suffered in Vietnam, coupled with dwindling resources at Fort Bragg to fill their needs, had seriously cut into the units' slim pool of experienced team members. Replacements were coming in from the States - both commissioned and enlisted - were no longer the seasoned veterans they had come to expect.

The ever-accelerating war in Vietnam was taking a heavy toll on SF personnel; more and more teams being demanded for ever-increasing requirements there while the Group still had to maintain their other-country requirements. The Old Guard of Special Forces were returning to Vietnam on their third, fourth and fifth tours and with each trip their numbers grew less; partially as a result of combat losses and partially as a result of burnout.

Finally the SF Headquarters sent a recruiting team to Phan Rang, which was the replacement depot for the 101st Airborne and began recruiting for new team members. They mostly wanted to take in paratroopers, since they were usually in pretty good shape, had advanced training and probably guts since they had enough to jump out of airplanes. A relatively short training program was needed to acquaint these new troops with SF life and sort out the specialties needed to fill teams.

But the new volunteers would not be fully indoctrinated into SF life in their brief training, where the veterans had been plying their trade for years. The recruits had only a few weeks to assimilate themselves into this new way of life. To the credit of most of them, they adapted well and the survivors of their tour in Vietnam formed the nucleus of the Special Forces of the future, having earned their berets with blood. Most of the experienced SF were getting a little long in the tooth anyway and SF was able to test the new men in the field, where it would be observed under fire whether they had the tenacity and feeling for Special Forces life.

Special Forces soldiers are a breed apart. Already triple volunteers for the Army, airborne and Special Forces, missions such as Vietnam were looked upon as just another part of the job. I have never served with a more dedicated group of men. The men in various units which compromised SOG personified this dedication to the Nth degree.

During the latter stages of the Vietnam War, SOG found that they had gone to the well too often and were running out of qualified volunteers. Many of the veteran troops had made three-to five tours to Vietnam and were burning out. SOG operations were demanding, both physically and mentally. The steady increase of NVA forces demanded more and more missions and many of the qualified SF troops were burning out. They then began to accept volunteers from non-SF units to be trained and fill the gaps. To their credit, most of the non-SF assimilated well into this new environment and performed well. SOG was a multi-service unit, including members from other branches of the service, including Seals and the Air Force.

A total of seven Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to this relatively small unit, a tribute to the kind of man who served with SOG.