Posted on 06/13/2002 5:56:54 AM PDT by SJackson
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The general's name was Giap, I believe. He was also a general on our side and was given enormous influence in determining our strategy and tactice. After the war he laughed about it and remarked how stupid the Americans were to take his obviously destructive advice. Unless he's dead from old age, he's still over there and is viewed as a hero by the North. Clinton will probably have a cigar with him when he goes there for his visit.
Or the many lives that could have been saved in Cambodia. Johnson did more damage to this country than even Bubba did, and that's saying something.
Actually, I think Clark Clifford was the real subversive, Mac was more of a blowhard (as someone said upthread) and an ass-coverer. After all, he was a privileged actor, and he had to have some sort of justification for all that privilege......and so when things started to lose traction, Mac started looking for the door -- leaving half a million men in the field that he did so much to put there, and coming home in boxes at the rate of, what was it, 450 a week during Tet? While Clifford oozed into office with subversion dripping out of every pore, and actually bragged about it to his liberal shower-buddies after the war. I never had any use for that guy, none, zero, zilch.
I think the bottom line on those two is, Macnamara spent his time at DoD trying to convince us how great he was. Clifford didn't even bother.......he just came in and slimed everything and everybody, and then left. Dick Nixon and Melvin Laird shoulda fumigated the place after Clifford left.
Yes,and I can tell you that as a member of these teams,things had changed by late 68,and we were getting shot-up on a fairly regular basis. The reason for this seems to be that Tet-68 destroyed the VC,and the NVA started moving larger numbers of conventional troops down the trail for the build-up to take over.The smaller teams you refered to were recon teams,and the larger teams were the "Hatchet Force" platoons like used during "Operation Tailwind". I ran operations with both types of teams,and HF teams ALWAYS came out under fire. This is definitely true about the teams that launched out of Dak To.
You should also know that a lot of the teams had already made contact with NVA forces and been shot-up before a extraction was ever called for. They managed to escape from the NVA and call for a extraction after enduring several running gun battles. They were already sitting near a cold LZ before the call ever went out to bring the slicks in.
I'd sure love to have a beer with ya sometime. So many war stories - so little time. Didja ever hear of a couple of SF NCO's out of FOB2 (Kontum) named Snake and Squirrel?
It is real soggy, leadpenny! LOL! A bunch of us have already been there, done that!
Hey, my friend. Hope you put only the best through your kidneys. I think he liked Jack Daniel's.
First off,he wasn't SF and working in Laos,Cambodia,or North Viet Nam. He was a conventional LRRP recon man. Having said that,it seems like he had the misfortune to "work" the Ashau Valley area,and that was ALWAYS a MF'er. Nobody I ever knew in SF ever had any "beef" with these LRRP's,only sympathy. It was almost impossible to get in or out of that area without being spotted. Conventional and SF teams worked the VN side,and SF teams worked the Laotian side. The NVA were VERY concentrated in that area,and had elaborate cave systems set up with AAA pieces,12.7's,etc,etc,etc. that were almost immune to bombing and artillery strikes. By 69 EVERY spot in the Ashau Valley big enough to land a helicopter on had NVA "trail watchers" setting on it,ready to call in the tracker dogs and the Soviet Spetnaz-trained "anti-recon team" teams on your trail. Yeah,you could lose them if you were lucky,or even fight them off if you couldn't lose them. The thing is you couldn't accomplish your mission while you were doing all this and looking over your shoulder.
All this lead to SF even going so far as to insert recon teams by HALO (sky diving)methods at night.Imagine jumping at night into a jungle that is full of enemy troops,and the problems with getting hung up in trees,seperated from your other team members,etc,etc,etc. The fact that the army would even consider something like this gives you a idea of how hard it was to get into the Ashau Valley unnoticed. There are still a few of these guys left living and running around (including the guy who came up with this idea and who was the original HALO recon team leader. He's 74 now,and still jumping),and there IS such a thing as a "HALO combat wing". It wasn't approved and awarded until 20 years after the war was over,but there are a half-dozen or so guys running around who have earned the right to wear it. They are welcome to it. I can get the shivers just thinking about doing something like that.
He was only one source. There were others under suspiscion,such as a E-4 clerk who worked in Saigon,and even people who worked on the Senate Foreign Relations committee and on Kissinger's "peace"(puke,gag) team in Paris. PLEASE note that Bubba-1 worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a summer intern before he went to England and Russia. Re-read his letters to ROTC Col Holmes,and note the part where he says "I was already oppossed to the war even before I worked for the Foreign Relations Committee,and my work there exposed me to secret information most Americans weren't aware of that......". Fullbright was the one who got Bubba-1 the job there (and his scholarship at Oxford),he was the Senator who was the chairman of the committee,and he was also the one whose office was suspected of leaking this information to the enemy.
BTW,for anybody interested about this subject,get the paperback book "Operation Brightlight",and read about Ambassador Sullivan in Laos denying the US military permission to go into Laos to rescue shot down pilots and POW's who were KNEW where they were. You can also read about the suspiscions about other traitors such as the Saigon clerk,and the efforts US forces made to rescue POW's and shot down pilots,DESPITE all the bureaucratic efforts made to stop them.
He wasn't a subservise,he was and is a outright communist. Jim-mah Carter brought him back when he was president,and Clifford later sided with the commies in Nicauraga,. He hates America and freedom,and always has.
I got there in Sept of 68,and was medi-evaced in Nov of 69.
Except for the fact that I was back in the same country, it was two different wars.
That's the same thing the SF A-team guys who had been there prior to 66 told me. They said that in the early days,they mostly ran across VC who were poorly armed and poorly trained. They said the intensity level went off the scale after Tet-68 and the NVA moving in to take their place. There were alwasy NVA regulars manning the Ho Chi Mihn Trail.
From the perspective of morale, mission, drugs, belief in what we were doing, everything had changed.
I heard this from guys in conventional units there,but we didn't really have any of these problems in SF.
Didja ever hear of a couple of SF NCO's out of FOB2 (Kontum) named Snake and Squirrel?
I knew several "snake"'s over the years,but there was only one Squirrel. He and I sat next to each other on the flight from DC to Ft.Lewis,and I was his assistant team leader on a special "POW Snatch Team" SOG headquarters put together. I was also based at Kontum. I briefly thought about changing my code name to "Moose" (g) (BIG Bullwindle fan!) while Squirrel and I were on the same team,but this would have been too confusing to people who knew me. He was one of the best recon men to ever live. He survived at least 3 tours in VN and over 90 cross-border missions before he retired,and he then died in a construction accident sometime in the mid-70's.
BTW,Squirrel is mentioned by name in the book "Operation Brightlight". He was a member of the first Brighlight Teams that launched from the aircraft carriers to rescue pilots shot down in North Viet Nam.
You're going to have to pardom me,because I WILL refer to it as a war. It sure as hell looked like a war from MY point of view.
Interesting reading is Halberstam’s Best and the Brightest which gives a biographical look at the players. As a Harvard grad, Class of ‘55 he posits that JFK would never have supported the build up that Johnson did. Of course this flies in the face of his other theory that the Dems were saddled with the fear of another China loss.
TET68 was a watershed because of the way the media portrayed it. They portrayed it as a complete surprise to our intelligence community and a military defeat. They reinforced that view by continually broadcasting footage of wounded marines riding out on top of a tank at Hue and providing nightly broadcasts of the struggle to recapture the city. It was the only story for them. Walter Conkrite saying night after night how terrible it all was. The offensive, which was country-wide, had been defeated everywhere else. It was a major defeat for Giap and his staff; Charlie was never able to take the field again. From that point on the NVA regulars were the sole opposition. Giap and Uncle Ho were scared to death that the US and ARVN would come North, but the gutless wonders in Washington had no vision of that in their proportional response.
The NVA were finally successful because the DemoRat congress would not live up to their pledge to provide air support if the NVA invaded the South. The nightly news had long made us weary and we had no stomach to continue.
Another one I am saving some kidney space for.
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