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higher ranking officers is
rooted in the fact that ALL enlisted men were volunteers and once accepted
and underwent months of strenuous training before being awarded a Special
Forces qualifier. Each man was cross trained in at least one other
team specialty, where officers above the grade of Captain were often detailed
to a Special Forces unit without any special training at all. Very
few officers above the grade of Lt. Colonel had spent any time at all in
these units. What few Colonels there were in the early 60s had simply
been assigned to command. Some of these, notably Colonels McKean
and Spears were junior officers in W.W.II and proved to be nearly disastrous
to the unit. Others like Francis Kelley and Harold Aaron proved to
have a knack for Command of this different type of unit. Col. Kelley,
derisively called Splash for his liking of water jumps as opposed to the
rock hard DZ. on Okinawa, fielded the Black Jack operations where a unit
wearing native clothing and carrying mostly captured weapons roamed at
will in the Enemy’s rear, causing great damage to the enemy’s supply lines.
These small unit would stay in the field for several weeks always being
resupplied by air drop or living off of captured material.
Aaron, being an intelligence officer by training greatly
increased the reconnaissance capability of the unit. His strategy
was for the recon teams to locate the enemy and then use the air force
assets to strike them. This worked well and lessened casualties in
the recon teams. After Aaron the first “home grown Special Forces
Colonel; Robert Reault took command and was relieved by the Commanding
General in Vietnam and actually jailed, in a tangled case of proven double
enemy agent’s mysterious disappearance. His replacement was the clown,
Lemberes. His replacement was another home grown leader, Colonel
Mike Healy, the father of both Project Delta and the Mike Force which took
his name. I was involved in the very first Mike Force operation before
it was ever given a name. But, suffice to say that the force was
actually led in the field by Major Mike Healy and its objective was to
rescue Captain Herbert Hardy and myself. We had become separated
from our unit and were reported as missing. So, Iron Mike gathered
a force and came looking for us. He found us too. I was medevaced
to the 8th field hospital, but Hardy remained in the field and was killed
a day later. On that operation, we had been told to take a signal
corps Captain so he could earn a C.I.B. He panicked under fire and
caused a lot of problems until SFC Maurice Brewer knocked him stupid with
his 45 pistol and lashed him to a tree to prevent him from running away.
That was the officer who sent the message that Hardy and I were dead and
come quick and evacuate us, meaning him. When Brewer refused and
got a direct order to abandon us, he responded with his pistol and hammock
rope. The Captain was sent back to the states lacking a CIB, but
with a career killing report in his file. I never heard of
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