During one period at Jackson, I had two companies of more than two hundred trainees each in cycle at the same time: One company was in its seventh week of training, and the other was just beginning its first week. We managed the training so that one NCO stayed with cach company at all times. The two other NCOs and I would train one company from 4:00 A.M. to noon, and the other from 1:00 to 9:00 P.M.
In other words, considering the talent and caring leadership we were about to bring to bear on this mission, it would be a piece of cake and a very rewarding experience for us and the new recruits.
After Lieutenant Colonel I Ioyt left, I called base camp and instructed my radio operator to have all detachment commanders standing by for a conference call when I arrived.
During the conference call, I advised the commanders of the new mission, then instructed them to move their units by "infiltration," so as to close on Fort Bragg by midnight. "Infiltration" means authority to move by individual vehicle over multiple routes, rather than by convoy over a single route. I didn't tell them how to do it, because I knew they would figure out the "how."
This was about 3:00 P.M.; they had nine hours to get back.
The next morning at 5:00, I met Lieutenant Colonel Hoyt at the company headquarters. He had followed through on his part. Not only had the names of personnel been slated against the battalion structure I had recommended, but the group selected for the visit to Fort Jackson was standing by and ready to go.
Before we left, I asked him for one other thing: "In order to bring these new troops on right, we need to have the barracks ready in advance, including having the beds made. The sooner we can get this done, the more time we'll have available for training the trainers before the new troops arrive." I knew that some of the older NCOs would probably bitch about making the beds, but I also knew that before the training cycle was over, they would see it was a wise move. This would be reflected in the attitude and motivation of the new troops, who'd have realised they were fortunate to be in the hands of caring professionals.
The day at Fort Jackson proved very worthwhile. We observed the training in action, talked with the cadre, and gathered up all the lesson plans to bring back with us.
After our return to Bragg, we spent the next three days getting organized and putting our common training areas in order. Then we went through a two-day train-the-trainer program, which took us through the first couple of weeks of the training cycle.
And then at 4:00 P.M. on the fourth day after notification, we received about five hundred new inductees straight from civilian life.
The next eight weeks proved a memorable and rewarding experience both for our cadre and the trainees. The cadre demonstrated incredible professionalism and caring, and the training battalion responded with incredible receptivity, motivation, and esprit.
Even though the trainees eventually ended up in Vietnam as individual replacements, many chose to make the Army a career, and some found their way back to Special Forces as outstanding NCOs. Others — the better-educated ones — ended up as commissioned officers.
Vietnam was also demanding ever more from Special Forces. Especially important at that time were trained B-Detachments, and this became our priority mission. For my final seven months in the 3rd Croup, we organized, trained, and deployed three B-Detachments to Southeast Asia (to Thailand and Vietnam).
Since increased emphasis was now being focused on counterinsurgency and advisory activities in Vietnam — organizing, training, equipping, and employing Montagnard tribesmen for thwarting the infiltration of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units; MIKE force reaction units; and advisory activities for South Vietnamese Army units — the main thrust of the tactical training was focused on tactical operations at battalion and lower levels, including the employment and integration of fire support, aerial as well as artillery.
I was in fact scheduled to deploy with each of the three units we sent over. But then, about a month prior to their deployment, I was told that I had not been cleared to go by the office of Officer Personnel Operations (OPO). The reason, I finally learned from OPO, was that I had been selected to attend the Command and General Staff College, and then I'd go to Vietnam (though this was not specifically stated, 1 understood that I most likely would not be assigned to a Special Forces unit there).
I left A Company, 3rd SFG, in late May 1966.
VI
VIETNAM
Special Forces had a long history in Vietnam.
In 1954, the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu by Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh ended French colonial rule in Indochina. Vietnam was separated into independent northern and southern halves, and Laos and Cambodia also gained independence. In 1959, North Vietnam adopted a new constitution, based on Communist principles and calling for the reunification of Vietnam. From the end of French rule until that year, the North had supported the Viet Cong insurgency in the South, though not as wholeheartedly as in the decade to come. The insurgency had nevertheless grown ever stronger in the countryside during that time, owing in part to Viet Cong success in persuading the country's people that their cause was better than the government's, and in part to the South Vietnam government's seeming indifference — or blindness — to security outside the cities.
In May 1959, however, the North's support of the Viet Cong took a big leap forward: The North Vietnamese Central Committee deemed the moment ripe to increase military efforts against the South. Corollary with that decision was a plan to construct a logistics network through southern Laos and parts of Cambodia (and bypassing the demilitarized zone then separating North from South Vietnam). This network came to be called the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Its construction proved to be the decisive act of the war in Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, in July 1959, twelve U.S. Special Forces teams (from the then 77th Special Group — later the 7th), together with a control team, arrived in Laos to help the French[8] organize and train the lackluster Laotian Army. This was a clandestine operation — primarily because the French were not eager to lose face yet again in Southeast Asia. The Green Berets arrived as "civilians," wearing civilian clothes and carrying "civilian" identification cards; and they were paid out of "civilian" (that is to say, CIA) accounts.
No obvious connection exists between the decision to build the Trail and the arrival of Special Forces troops in Laos, yet the two are intertwined. The continuing association between U.S. Special Forces and the Ho Chi Minh Trail turned out to be a major factor in the part Special Forces played in the war in Southeast Asia. The link took many forms — direct and indirect — and a few of them will be mentioned here.
The Trail itself was not a trail, of course, but a communications-and-transportation network, a command-and-control structure, and a system of troop-staging areas. Its facilities and capabilities — especially in its early days — were primitive, yet also astonishingly robust. One of its strengths was its very primitiveness. A freeway not only represented a vast expenditure of capital and labor, it was an easy target. A dirt road could support a much smaller volume of traffic, but most damage could be easily repaired by men or women with shovels. The traffic volume problem was easily solved by constructing a network of many roads — and by patience. And since these roads were virtually invisible under the cover of the tropical rain forest, it was hard to discern a definite target.
8
The French Army continued to advise the Laotian Army even after Laotian independence — though unenthusiastically. The absence of serious French interest in the enterprise led to U.S. Special Forces involvement.