Over 450 pages of true stories told by Special Forces (Green Beret) Soldiers!
Excerpts:
We were some 25 miles up river from the Yellow Sea and under some fire until reaching the ocean. If the Chinese had then intervened with an air force, we would have been in deep kirnchi for certain. I was firing my 105RRs and 30 caL machine guns from the deck house at targets along the river bank as was every one else. After what seemed a very long time we were clear and out to sea. I found out much later that the 187th had gone back to an airfield at P’yongyang two days earlier and had gotten out by air.

Well, on the night of TET (yep, you guessed it) the North broke the truce again and attacked the major cities again, but in much less strength than they had used the prior year. Still it requires only one well placed bullet to kill you. These were not the storied “Viet Cong” the press has made so much of, but were in fact hard core regular troops from North Vietnam, hardened by their long trip down from the North. They were well equipped with small arms, rocket launchers, mortars and rockets. True, they had little or no artillery, no air support at all and no Navy. Just think what they could have done if they had all the weapons our side had. Scary.

All of a sudden all hell broke loose. As we cleared the northern part of the village we had a hundred or so guys in black PJs in front of us (caught in the open). I called “District HQ” to see if they had RF-PF out on any kind of operation. The reply was “NO”. These were definitely Bad Guys.

I was 19, and gripped my car-15 like the old friend it had become. I looked down into the green and remembered when it was my favorite color. Soon we crossed over the red of Khe Sahn and then over the mountains on the border where there was often AA. We slipped past that and went on to our primary landing zone. The lead chopper veered off suddenly and we were on to the secondary. The first chopper dropped in with the 1-0; and half the team, me, and the others in the second for a total of eight men: three Americans. This time, we had a new guy along. They were now below us, and we could see tracers coming up at them. I saw the door gunner open up on the landing zone and the tree line.

It was Ban Houie Sai, Laos in May and the temperature was over a hundred ten degrees twenty four hours a day every day. We were on the air strip on the banks of the Mekong River in Northern Laos. The only shade was a piece of tin on four bamboo poles which LTC Kaplan had claimed for his CP.

Project Delta was assigned the job of raiding a North Vietnamese Army Division Headquarters, killing everyone we could find, and capturing all of their electronic equipment intact. The main job was to capture that main bunker and all of their equipment and records. This Headquarters was supposed to be in a large bunker complex on a knoll in the middle of a large valley. The US Air Force was supposed to provide fighter cover for our raid and they were also supposed to bomb the target to soften it up before we attacked. This raid was all based on photo interpretations of aerial photos.

I went into a little village/hamlet along the coast of Hondo one time called San Francisco. We probably pulled close to nearly every tooth in the village (they were rotten as could be from a lifetime of sugar cane and not fluoride; poor hygiene). They didn’t have a pot to piss in, but absolutely insisted on feeding us polo, plantains, etc. Sure didn’t want to eat their chow up, but didn’t want to insult them either. Being the SF guys we were, we whipped put our MRE’s started sharing with everyone (especially the kids), and had a feast.

I was at the Project Delta bar in Nha Trang one night when the guys presented Martha Raye with a medal that they had designed. It had some type of ribbon and on it hung a Full Colonel’s eagle. They called it the first and only presentation of the ‘Maggiebird’. She said, “This is the proudest day of my life.”