I joined the Army in mid 1966, and; I scored well on tests and had a high GT score. I was lucky to go to Infantry OCS after BCT and Infantry AIT. In July 1967 after graduation from OCS, I went to airborne school at Benning and then drove to Ft. Bragg, NC for the Special Forces Officer’s Course. When the SF enlisted talk about the map reading and navigation course being tough- it is. I seem to recall it took me at least an hour or more just to navigate the swamp area alone. Trying to find a marker in a knee deep swamp was not very easy. After earning my SF 3 prefix, I next went through our jumpmaster course run by senior SF NCO's in early January 1968. 3-4 men who I went through OCS, airborne and the SFOC with all flew to Vietnam on the same flight with me out of Travis AFB on June 10, 1968. We all got to the 5th SF Group and I volunteered for C&C Detachment (Code for MACVSOG). I asked for FOB 2 (Kontum). I was switched to C-5 "Daniel Boone" at Ban Me Thout East by the 5th Group XO. He remarked, “You will be in on the ground floor of a new C&C Det.” I darn sure was in on the ground floor as gradually we lost more and more men. In fact, all three C&C Detachments had close to 100% casualties if one counted our wounded.
There is one man on this site who claims tankers had more casualties than Infantry or any other MOS in Vietnam. He wrote he was near the DMZ. He needs to get his facts straight as 11B’s alone had over 18,900 KIA’s. Both of the 1LT's I finally got in Dec. 68 were shot up and/or burned by napalm they called in on NVA troops in Cambodia on 4/24/69. Both are dead. I had watched my former Montagnard Company march out the day of CCS in Ban Me Thout East before the TS COSVN raid just west of the fishhook area in III Corps. I will never forget how wonderful the SF senior NCO's are. In my life Jesus and His father were always very important. I got into fly fishing for trout as a boy. I fly fished the Eagle River west of Vail, CO. I used to fish the Green River from near Flaming Gorge on the Wyoming side and I fished Cody,WY. down to the Wind area.I want to fish Montana.