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him again, and I have checked. A
West Point trained Signal officer who wanted to be one of the big boys, a
credit to his school and his service. Fortunately, there were only a
few such officers at the A Detachment level. Those that did serve as
Team leaders and team executive officers were generally well liked by the
team members, and performed in an excellent manner.
In all truth, however, it was the enlisted men, in
particular, the sergeants, that were the hard core of Special Forces at that
time. They served as troop leaders in both the Mike Force units and on the
recon teams. They bore the responsibility of training and leading in
combat of the native troops in their units and did a spectacular job of it.
As previously stated, 95% of all enlisted men had to be double volunteers, first
for Airborne training and separately for the demanding Special Forces training.
A lot of this occurred on Okinawa, when in order to get up to strength quickly,
several dozen men were transferred from the 503rd Airborne Infantry prior to
that unit being redesignated the 173rd Airborne and itself being sent to
Vietnam as a unit. All the 503rd men went to the 1st SF Group - then on to
Okinawa. Almost all of these proved to be superb soldiers once they were
in the field.
The popular notion that all Special Forces men were cold
eyed killers is a work of poor fiction. Many, if not most, of the men on A
Detachments had their wives or Mothers or girl friends in the states regularly
send items such as clothing, baby clothes, blue jeans, medicines and everything
else they could get to give to the native villagers under their care.
Several men adopted orphaned Montagnard children and by various means got them
back to the United States. Much personal money was spent on the needs of
those innocent villagers and not one man complained about it even when it was
not his own idea. This side of the story was not often told by the press.
The media wanted the “blood and guts” stories to dispatch home over their
byline. Most of the renowned reporters in Vietnam would distort any report
that did not fit their preconceived view point. Some would goad young
troopers into a senseless act such as cutting an ear off a dead person, then
write about it in the most revolting manner, while not mentioning their part in
it.
Very few were interested in the atrocities committed by the
“peoples army of liberation”, but they were like a duck on a junebug if a U.S.
soldier was involved in any such atrocities. When a Marine was shown
burning a native hut, it went world wide, but when the NVA burned 150 people to
death with Russian flame throwers, it hardly made the papers at all. Only
the Army reported it, and it was ignored.
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