| About the Tales from the
Teamhouse Books The many authors are members of the
Special Forces Team House (list) which is owned by Bob Jack.
The US Army Special Forces is composed of men who are in excellent
physical condition, high intelligence to be able to think for themselves
fast with the ability to improvise and invent when needed. They are
trained to be a trainer, and a double volunteer for Airborne and Special
Forces to go anywhere in the world on a moment's notice. Their teams are
composed of experts in Communications, Medics, Demolition, Operations and
Intelligence and Weapons.
These are some of their stories.
Motto: De Oppresso Liber - To Free the Oppressed
Excerpts From Vol I:
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’. Martha Raye said, "This is the proudest day of my
life."
Several
weeks later, I was watching the Academy Awards program. We got it about a
month late on AFVN. Bob Hope presented her a special Academy Award. She
sniffled a bit and then said, "This is proudest day of my life."
Then there was a pause and she added, "Stateside."
Excerpts From Vol II:
We had gone less then a hundred yards from the village when we came to a
large bush. It was maybe 15 to 20 feet tall and about twenty feet round. I
started around the right side of the bush and had just cleared it when two
M-2 Carbines opened up. They were both on full auto and sounded as if they
were next to my left ear. In reality they were about 12 feet away on the
left side of the bush. As I dropped to one knee and spun to see what was
going on I saw a form hit the ground. From the time I heard the first gun
shoot and spun around was less then a full second but it seemed to be in
slow motion. I got back up and went over to take a look at who had been
shot?
Jay was to my left about 5-7 meters behind another tree, but on his feet.
He was carrying an M79 as well as his CAR (Carbine Assault Rifle). We
heard the gooks coming down the finger through the elephant grass. Jay
stepped out and when he saw the first individual, he let fly with a
canister round. It looked like a rotor rooter went through the grass. I
fired half a magazine and reloaded. We heard screams and some moaning, and
then it got deathly quiet.
We hit the ground shortly after dark and had a long night movement to
their HQ. When we got about 300 meters from the HQ the team stopped and
got on line. Scot Steel and I gave all our stuff to the other guys and we
loaded up our pockets with all the hand grenade simulators we could carry.
As a result of an unofficial request, I was sent out to scrounge some
spare “steel inter-locking runway strips” for construction of defense
bunkers. On an A-Team in Vietnam, miles from civilization we were rather
short on requisition forms. When we were told to go find something for the
team, we took that as an order from God to go out, find the stuff,
requisition it by any means possible (trade for it) (steal it) and bring
it back to camp. The best place to find this landing strip material is
where they are building landing strips for aircraft. They built them all
over the place.
When I got to Hai Yen in August or September 1965, Herb Spangler was the
Senior Medic. He and I amputated a foot off one of the Nungs who had
stepped on a bobby trapped 50 cal. round. All the toes were taken off and
part of the foot. We tried to get a medevac in, but to no avail. The Group
surgeon finally told us (via radio) to do a boot top amputation.
Excerpts From Vol III:
Rats were important to the Yards (Montagnard) in and around Dak Pek as
they were considered a delicacies.
Preven and I grabbed onto a small rock that just broke the surface,
covered our heads with seaweed, and tried to blend in as best we could. It
took an hour before the man finally floated out of sight. Even in the dry
suits we had grown dangerously cold.
The jumpmaster was a LLDB sergeant. I’ll never forget the guy because he
was relatively tall, skinny, and he had a big brown mole on the side of
his face that took up most of his cheek.
We were in Cochabamba, Bolivia, January 1984, for the purpose of training
a Bolivian Airborne Battalion. The drop zone was at an altitude of 8,000
feet above sea level. The jump altitude was another 1,250 feet above
ground level.
My wife back in the States was having a difficult pregnancy with our
youngest child, and I flew into Saigon to call home and check on things
every so often.
Flying in Vietnam from city to city sucked. You sat in the dirt, sometimes
for five or six hours, waiting for a plane to arrive, only to get bumped
off at the last minute by someone who outranked you.
By mid-afternoon FAC advised us that the weather was settling and that we
needed to get extracted before the ships couldn’t fly. FAC located a
small clearing for us and we headed that way simultaneously engaging enemy
troops and trying to locate our cowardly “little people.”
Operation
Ivory Coast AKA The Son Tay Raid
Available in the Amazon
Kindle Store
NOTE: I don’t claim that this document is 100% accurate. I
just don’t know. AND I’m not going to defend any of the controversial
portions of it. I put it out there as information. Take it or leave it. And
DON”T shoot the messenger.
WHAT MAKES THIS DOCUMENT DIFFERENT from any others about “The Raid” that
I (NOT being an expert on the history of this operation) have seen so far
is:
1) The list of assets
2) One sentence in the last paragraph
3) The included hand written briefer’s notes at the end
4) Lists of four (4) courses of action considered
HISTORY April/May 1991:
We stumbled across this briefing in the back of a secure file cabinet in the
US portion of the ROK Special Forces compound’s bunker when I was the J3
for SOC-K. I mailed a complete copy of it to my brother for safe keeping
with a post mark of 15 May 1991. If you read the briefing it is VERY
important to keep this date in mind as this may be one of the earliest
unclassified writings about this operation. (Note that the briefing was
written some time prior to 1991). If you can find something documented in
open source prior to that date, let me know. NOTE the briefer did not place
a classification at the top and bottom of each page. The 20 year hold for
declassification would have run out just one year prior to us finding the
briefing. At the time, there was little if any details in the public domain
about the raid. There was no Internet or World Wide Web to disseminate
information like there is today. I arrived at SOC-K in October of 1990, and
I can say for sure that the briefing was written prior to that date.
The briefer, who ever he was, had no expectation that this briefing would
ever be made available to anyone other than a close circle of ROK and SF
Special Forces personnel. Because of the list of assets included in the
briefing, I have sat on it for over 20 years. I just couldn’t bring myself
to believe what I read and still have serious doubts.
The detail found in this short briefing (1368 words) is incredible and could
have been written only by someone who had personal knowledge of the
operation. After all, at the time (prior to Oct 1990, the date I arrived at
SOC-K) where would the material of this detail have come from other than a
highly classified (TS) source? Personal knowledge is just about the only
explanation.
In addition to the Assets the briefer lists, in the last paragraph he
mentions something that I have never seen anywhere else. Let me know if you
catch this single sentence, and if you have ever heard that about the raid.
Notability, the briefer lists an asset something that may have turned out to
be a major obstacle to the mission! But the fact that it is even mentioned
gives credence to the briefing as it, too, was TS at the time.
At one point I asked SGM Jack Joplin, who was an SFC operator on the raid,
about the named Americans listed as assets. He said that he never heard a
thing about that, but he was a trigger puller and not in on the higher level
planning.
Also, the briefer had hand written notes at the end of the briefing
(included). The handwriting is distinctive. I doubt that anyone would
recognize whose it is though. If you do, let me know.
Anyway, there are several things in this 1368 word briefing that pique one’s
interest. Pass the links to the eBook on if you so desire.
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