A history of warfare in biographies, commen Library of War covers the human side of the battlefield. Our mission is to provide a name with a face of the ferocious World Wars and military engagements that have been a large part of our modern age. Our Facebook offers essential war history, timeless photos and deeply rooted stories that incorporate many sides of the battlefield. The Library of War's mission is this: We showcase military history through the eye's of family members who remember their fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, and children, regardless of the winning side. The Library of War Facebook is genuinely a one-source locale for holding that crucial information about a deceased loved one through provoking pictures and descriptions. Whether that soldier was Missing In Action, or Killed In Action, Library of War helps to express that War is a very personal thing with many deep emotions attached and that it is hell.
The American Huey Museum located in Bunker Hill, Indiana is an organization with some 17,000 + members and growing rapidly.
The organization was founded for the distinct purpose of preservation and education to pay tribute to the veterans and families of the Vietnam Conflict.
The organization plans to build a 30-thousand sq. ft. the facility that would house some of the helicopters and educate generations of Americans about the iconic Huey helicopter.
Find out more about its mission and organization by visiting their website. Photos by Charlie Clark see more photos on Library of War.
The Israel Defense Forces #IDF "The Army of Defense for Israel", commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahalare the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force, and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces differ from most armed forces in the world in many ways. Differences include the mandatory conscription of women and its structure, which emphasizes close relations between the army, navy, and air force. Since its founding, the IDF has been specifically designed to match Israel's unique security situation. The IDF is one of Israeli society's most prominent institutions, influencing the country's economy, culture, and political scene.
In January 1991, Somalian President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown by a coalition of opposing clans, precipitating the Somali Civil War. In September 1991, severe fighting broke out in Mogadishu, which continued in the following months and spread throughout the country, with over 20,000 people killed or injured by the end of the year.
These wars led to the destruction of Somalia’s agriculture, which in turn led to starvation in large parts of the country. The international community began to send food supplies to halt the starvation, but vast amounts of food were hijacked and brought to local clan leaders, who routinely exchanged it with other countries for weapons. An estimated 80 percent of the food was stolen. These factors led to even more starvation, from which an estimated 300,000 people died and another 1.5 million people suffered between 1991 and 1992.
Operation Provide Relief began in August 1992, when U.S. President George H. W. Bush announced that U.S. military transports would support the multinational U.N. relief effort in Somalia. The U.S delivered 48,000 tons of food and medical supplies in six months to international humanitarian organizations trying to help Somalia’s more than three million starving people.
When this proved inadequate to stop the massive death and displacement of the Somali people (500,000 dead and 1.5 million refugees or displaced), the U.S. launched a major coalition operation to assist and protect humanitarian activities in December 1992. Operation Restore Hope.
The Battle of Mogadishu. A part of Operation Gothic Serpent, took place on 3 - 4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States and Somali militiamen loyal to the self-proclaimed president-to-be Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
The initial U.S. Joint Special Operations force, Task Force Ranger, was a collaboration of various elite special forces units such as U.S. Army Rangers, 1st SFOD-D “Delta Force”, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; Air Force Combat Controllers, Air Force Pararescuemen, and Navy SEALs from the Development Group (DEVGRU).
Task Force Ranger was dispatched to seize two of Aidid’s high-ranking lieutenants during a meeting in the city. The goal of the operation was achieved, but initially only intended to last an hour. The operation spiraled into an overnight standoff and rescue operation extending into the daylight hours of 4 October.
U.S forces saw 18 men killed in action, with an additional 73 wounded. Somali forces saw 500 men killed in action, and an additional 800 wounded.
The body of a U.S. paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is lifted up to an evacuation helicopter in War Zone C, May 14, 1966. The zone, encompassing the city of Tay Ninh and the surrounding area north of Saigon, was the site of the Viet Cong's headquarters in South Vietnam.
The Phoenix Program was a brutal counterinsurgency program run by William Colby, later head of the C.I.A., aimed at weeding out Viet Cong and their sympathizers. According to some sources, more than 25,000 suspected Viet Cong were killed, many of them assassinated, as part of the operation. The Phoenix Program program designed, coordinated, and executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, special forces operatives from the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam's (South Vietnam) security apparatus during the Vietnam War. The program was in operation between 1965 and 1972, and similar efforts existed both before and after that period. By 1972, Phoenix operatives had "neutralized" 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants, and supporters, of whom 26,369 were killed.
The Program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill and capture suspected VC. They would also capture VC and civilians who were thought to have information on VC activities. Many of these people were then taken to the interrogation centers where some were tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions.
In a paper for the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson of the U.S. Marine Corps wrote: "The Phoenix program is arguably the most misunderstood and controversial program undertaken by the governments of the United States and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was, quite simply, a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Lao Dong Party (hereafter referred to as the Viet Cong infrastructure or VCI) in South Vietnam. Phoenix was misunderstood because it was classified, and the information obtained by the press and others were often anecdotal, unsubstantiated, or false. The program was controversial because the antiwar movement and critical scholars in the United States and elsewhere portrayed it as an unlawful and immoral assassination program targeting civilians. [Source: Colonel Andrew R. Finlayson, USMC (Ret.), A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations, The Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and Its Role in the Phoenix Program, 1969-70, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence ^^]
Phoenix was one of several pacifications and rural security programs that CIA ran in South Vietnam during the 1960s. The premise of pacification was that if peasants were persuaded that the government of South Vietnam and the United States were sincerely interested in protecting them from the Viet Cong and trained them to defend themselves, then large areas of the South Vietnamese countryside could be secured or won back from the enemy without direct engagement by the US military. Many of the program's activities were carried out by single operational units as part of the larger, country-wide action element of the Phoenix program--the Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs).
On August 23, 1968, Special Forces suffered the single, largest number of Green Berets killed in the unit’s history. Seventeen Green Berets fell during a well-planned VC/NVA Sapper attack at FOB 4, in south Da Nang, in the early morning hours of August 23rd. The attack was timed at the beginning of a new moon cycle, meaning there was no moon shining, the darkness helped conceal the clandestine infiltration of the top-secret Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (SOG) base that sat on the north side of Marble Mountain. The attack coincided with the transfer of SOG Command and Control staff from the Da Nang Air Base, into the FOB 4 headquarters. On August 22, the compound’s base population swelled with dozens of Green Berets appearing before a promotion board — no exact number is known. Additionally, the monthly SOG staff meeting of all six FOB commanders and S-2/S-3 personnel at those bases was held August 22, 1968 — some of them remained overnight. The following recounts the horror and heroism that unfolded that morning from excerpts in On The Ground – The Secret War in Vietnam, co-authored by SOG Recon men John S. Meyer and John E. Peters – a survivor of that attack, and interviews from Meyer’s next book.
The old axiom, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” may not hold true, but among those who often face death, either their own or someone else’s, spirituality isn’t uncommon. In this shot, Colonel Jerry Boykin leads the original Delta squad in prayer, prior to beginning operations in Iran. Photo: George E. Hand IV Collection #iran #1stSFODD #ACE #CAG
Mad Dog led dozens of covert missions into Laos & Cambodia until his luck ran out. By Maj. John L. Plaster, USAR (Ret.)
There undoubtedly was not a single recon man in SOG more accomplished or renowned than Mad Dog Shriver. Mad Dog! In the late 1960s, no Special Forces trooper at Ft. Bragg even breathed those top-secret letters, "S-O-G," but everyone had heard of the legendary Studies and Observations Group Green Beret recon team leader, Sergeant First Class Jerry Shriver, dubbed a "mad dog" by Radio Hanoi.
It was Jerry Shriver who'd spoken the most famous rejoinder in SOG history, radioing his superiors not to worry that NVA forces had encircled his tiny team. "No, no," he explained, "I've got 'em right where I want 'em — surrounded from the inside." Fully decked out, Mad Dog was a walking arsenal with an imposing array of a sawed-off shotgun or suppressed submachine gun, pistols, knives, and grenades.
"He looked like Rambo," First Sergeant Billy Greenwood thought. Blond, tall and thin, Shriver’s face bore chiseled features around piercing blue eyes. "There was no soul in the eyes, no emotion," thought SOG Captain Bill O’Rourke. "They were just eyes." By early 1969, Shriver was well into his third continuous year in SOG, leading top secret intelligence gathering teams deep into the enemy’s clandestine Cambodian sanctuaries where he’d teased death scores of times.
Unknown to him, however, forces beyond his control at the highest levels of government in Hanoi and Washington were steering his fate. The Strategic Picture Every few weeks of early 1969, the docks at Cambodia's seaport of Sihanoukville bustled with East European ships offloading to long lines of Hak Ly Trucking Company lorries. Though ostensibly owned by a Chinese businessman, the Hak Ly Company's true operator was North Vietnam's Trinh Sat intelligence service.
The trucks’ clandestine cargo of rockets, small-arms ammunition and mortar rounds rolled overnight to the heavily jungled frontier of Kampong Cham Province just three miles from the border with South Vietnam, a place the Americans had nicknamed the Fishhook, where vast stockpiles sustained three full enemy divisions, plus communist units across the border inside South Vietnam — some 200,000 foes.
Cambodian Prince Sihanouk was well aware of these neutrality violations; indeed, his fifth wife, Monique, her mother and half-brother were secretly peddling land rights and political protection to the NVA; other middlemen were selling rice to the NVA by the thousands of tons. Hoping to woo Sihanouk away from the communists, the Johnson Administration had watched passively while thousands of GIs were killed by communist forces operating from Cambodia, and not only did nothing about it, but said nothing, even denied it was happening. And now, each week of February and March 1969, more Americans were dying than lost in the Persian Gulf War, killed by NVA forces that struck quickly then fled back to "neutral” Cambodia.
Combined with other data, SOG's Cambodian intelligence appeared on a top-secret map which National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger studied aboard Air Force One at Brussels airport the morning of 24 February 1969. Sitting with Kissinger was Colonel Alexander Haig, his military assistant, while representing the president was White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. During the new administration's transition, President Nixon had asked Kissinger to determine how to deal with the Cambodian buildup and counter Hanoi's "fight and talk" strategy.
While President Nixon addressed NATO's North Atlantic Council, those aboard Air Force One worked out details for a clandestine U.S. response: The secret bombing of Cambodia's most remote sanctuaries, which would go unacknowledged unless Prince Sihanouk protested. When Air Force One departed Brussels, Kissinger briefed President Nixon, who approved the plan but postponed implementing it. Over the coming three weeks, Nixon twice warned Hanoi, "we will not tolerate attacks which result in heavier casualties to our men at a time that we are honestly trying to seek peace at the conference table in Paris." The day after Nixon's second warning, the NVA bombarded Saigon with 122mm rockets obviously smuggled through Cambodia.
Three days later, Nixon turned loose the B-52s on the Fishhook, the first secret Cambodian raid, which set off 73 secondary explosions. A Special SOG Mission Not one peep emanated from Phnom Penh or Hanoi and there was a fitting irony: For four years the North Vietnamese had denied their presence in Cambodia, and now, with U.S. bombs falling upon them, they could say nothing.
Nixon suspended further B-52 strikes in hopes Hanoi's negotiators might begin productive discussions in Paris, but the talks droned on pointlessly. To demonstrate that America, too, could "talk and fight," President Nixon approved a second secret B-52 strike, this time against a target proposed by General Creighton Abrams with Ambassador Bunker's endorsement: COSVN, the Central Office for South Vietnam, the almost mythical Viet Cong headquarters which claimed to run the whole war.
An NVA deserter had pinpointed the COSVN complex 14 miles southeast of Memot, Cambodia, in the Fishhook, just a mile beyond the South Vietnamese border. The COSVN raid was laid on for 24 April. Apprised of the upcoming B-52 strike, Brigadier General Philip Davidson, the MACV J2, thought that instead of just bombing COSVN, a top-secret SOG raiding force should hit the enemy headquarters as soon as the bombs stopped falling.
He phoned Colonel Steve Cavanaugh, Chief SOG, who agreed and ordered the Ban Me Thuot-based Command and Control South, CCS, to prepare a Green Beret-led company of Montagnard mercenaries for the special mission. At CCS, the historic COSVN raid fell upon its most accomplished man, that living recon legend, Mad Dog Shriver, and Captain Bill O'Rourke.
Though O'Rourke would command the company-size raiding force, Shriver equally would influence the operation, continuing an eight-month collaboration they’d begun when they ran recon together. Mad Dog — the Man and the Myth
There was no one at CCS quite like Mad Dog Shriver. Medal of Honor recipient Jim Fleming, who flew USAF Hueys for SOG, found Shriver, "the quintessential warrior-loner, anti-social, possessed by what he was doing, the best team, always training, constantly training." Shriver rarely spoke and walked around camp for days wearing the same clothes. In his sleep he cradled a loaded rifle, and in the club he'd buy a case of beer, open every can, then go alone to a corner and drink them all. Though he'd been awarded a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars, and the Soldiers Medal, the 28-year-old Green Beret didn’t care about decorations.
But he did care about the Montagnard hill tribesmen, and spent all his money on them, even collected food, clothes, whatever people would give, to distribute in Yard villages. He was the only American at CCS who lived in the Montagnard barracks. "He was almost revered by the Montagnards," O'Rourke says.
Shriver's closest companion was a German shepherd he'd brought back from Taiwan which he named Klaus. One night Klaus got sick on beer some recon men fed him and crapped on the NCO club floor; they rubbed his nose in it and threw him out.
Shriver arrived, drank a beer, removed his blue velvet smoking jacket and derby hat, put a .38 revolver on a table, then dropped his pants and defecated on the floor. "If you want to rub my nose in this," he dared, "come on over." Everyone pretended not to hear him; one man who'd fed Klaus beer urged the Recon Company commander to intervene. The captain laughed in his face. "He had this way of looking at you with his eyes half-open," recon man Frank Burkhart remembers. "If he looked at me like that, I'd just about freeze."
Shriver always had been different. In the early 1960s, when Rich Ryan served with him in the 7th Army's Long Range Patrol Company in Germany, Shriver’s buddies called him "Digger" since they thought he looked like an undertaker. As a joke, his LRRP comrades concocted their own religion, "The Mahoganies," which worshipped a mahogany statue. "So we would carry Shriver around on an empty bunk with a sheet over him and candles on the corners," recalled Ryan, "and chant, 'Maaa-haa-ga-ney, Maaa-haa-ga-ney.' Scared the hell out of new guys." Fleming says Shriver "convinced me that for the rest of my life I would not go into a bar and cross someone I didn't know." But no recon man was better in the woods. "He was like having a dog you could talk to," O'Rourke explained. "He could hear and sense things; he was more alive in the woods than any other human being I've ever met."
During a company operation on the Cambodian border Shriver and an old Yard compatriot were sitting against a tree, O'Rourke recalled. "Suddenly he sat bolt upright, they looked at each other, shook their heads and leaned back against the tree. I'm watching this and wondering, what the hell's going on? And all of a sudden these birds flew by, then a nano-second later, way off in the distance, 'Boom-boom!' -- shotguns. They'd heard that, ascertained what it was and relaxed before I even knew the birds were flying." Shriver once went up to SOG’s Command and Control North for a mission into the DMZ where Captain Jim Storter encountered him just before insert. "He had pistols stuck everywhere on him, I mean, he had five or six .38 caliber revolvers." Storter asked him, "Sergeant Shriver, would you like a CAR-15 or M-16 or something?
You know the DMZ is not a real mellow area to go into." But Mad Dog replied, "No, them long guns'll get you in trouble and besides, if I need more than these I got troubles anyhow." Rather than stand down after an operation, Shriver would go out with another team. "He lived for the game; that's all he lived for," Dale Libby, a fellow CCS man said.
Shriver once promised everyone he was going on R&R but instead sneaked up to Plei Djerang Special Forces camp to go to the field with Rich Ryan's A-Team. During a short leave stateside in 1968, fellow Green Beret Larry White hung out with Shriver, whose only real interest was finding a lever action .444 Marlin rifle.
Purchasing one of the powerful Marlins, Shriver shipped it back to SOG so he could carry it into Cambodia, "to bust bunkers," probably the only lever gun used in the war. And the Real Jerry Shriver Unless you were one of Mad Dog's close friends, the image was perfect prowess -- but the truth was, Shriver confided to fellow SOG Green Beret Sammy Hernadez, he feared death and didn't think he'd live much longer.
He'd beat bad odds too many times, and could feel a terrible payback looming. "He wanted to quit," Medal of Honor winner Fred Zabitosky could see. "He really wanted to quit, Jerry did. I said, 'Why don't you just tell them I want off, I don't want to run any more?' He said he would but he never did; just kept running." The 5th Special Forces Group executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Norton, had been watching SOG recon casualties skyrocket and grew concerned about men like Mad Dog whose lives had become a continuous flirtation with death. Norton went to the 5th Group commander and urged, "Don't approve the goddamn extensions these guys are asking for. You approve it again, your chances of killing that guy are very, very good." But the group commander explained SOG needed experienced men for its high priority missions. "Bullshit," Norton snapped, "you're signing that guy's death warrant."
Eventually 5th Group turned down a few extensions but only a very few; the most experienced recon men never had extensions denied. Never. "Mad Dog was wanting to get out of recon and didn't know how," said recon team leader Sonny Franks, though the half-measure came when Shriver left recon to join his teammate O’Rourke’s raider company. And now the COSVN raid would make a fitting final operation; Shriver could face his fear head-on, charge right into COSVN’s mysterious mouth and afterward at last call it quits. Into COSVN’s Mouth The morning of 24 April 1969, while high-flying B-52s winged their way from distant Guam, the SOG raider company lined up beside the airfield at Quan Loi, South Vietnam, only 20 miles southeast of COSVN's secret lair.
But just five Hueys were flyable that morning, enough to lift only two platoons; the big bombers could not be delayed, which meant Lieutenant Bob Killebrew's 3rd Platoon would have to stand by at Quan Loi while the 1st Platoon under First Lieutenant Walter Marcantel, and 2nd Platoon under First Lieutenant Greg Harrigan, raided COSVN. Capt. O'Rourke and Mad Dog didn't like it, but they could do nothing.* Nor could they do anything about their minimal fire support.
Although whole waves of B52s were about to dump thousands of bombs into COSVN, the highly classified Cambodian Rules of Engagement forbad tactical air strikes; it was better to lose an American-led SOG team, the State Department rules suggested, then leave documentable evidence that U.S. F4 Phantoms had bombed this "neutral" territory. It was a curious logic so concerned about telltale napalm streaks or cluster bomb fins, but unconcerned about B-52 bomb craters from horizon to horizon. Chief SOG Cavanaugh found the contradiction "ridiculous," but he could not change the rules.
The B-52 contrails were not yet visible when the raiding force Hueys began cranking and the raiders boarded; Capt. O'Rourke would be aboard the first bird and Shriver on the last so they'd be at each end of the landing Hueys. As they lifted off for the ten-minute flight, the B-52s were making final alignments for the run-in. Minutes later the lead chopper had to turn back because of mechanical problems; O'Rourke could only wish the others Godspeed.
Command passed to an operations officer in the second bird who'd come along for the raid, Captain Paul Cahill. Momentarily the raiders could see dirt geysers bounding skyward amid collapsing trees. Then as the dust settled a violin-shaped clearing took form and the Hueys descended in-trail, hovered for men to leap off, then climbed away. Then fire exploded from all directions, horrible fire that skimmed the ground and mowed down anyone who didn’t dive into a bomb crater or roll behind a fallen tree trunk.
From the back of the LZ, Mad Dog radioed that a machinegun bunker to his left-front had his *(Greg Harrigan and I had been boyhood friends in northeast Minneapolis.) men pinned and asked if anyone could fire at it to relieve the pressure. Holed up in a bomb crater beneath murderous fire, Capt. Cahill, 1st Lt. Marcantel and a medic, Sergeant Ernest Jamison, radioed that they were pinned, too. Then Jamison dashed out to retrieve a wounded man; heavy fire cut him down, killing him on the spot. No one else could engage the machinegun that trapped Shriver's men -- it was up to Mad Dog. Skittish Yards looked to Shriver and his half-grin restored a sense of confidence. Then they were on their feet, charging -- Shriver was his old self, running to the sound of guns, a True Believer Yard on either side, all of them dashing through the flying bullets, into the treeline, into the very guts of Mad Dog's great nemesis, COSVN. And Mad Dog Shriver was never seen again.
The Fight Continues At the other end of the LZ, Jamison's body lay just a few yards from the crater where Capt. Cahill heard bullets cracking and RPGs rocking the ground. When Cahill lifted his head, an AK round hit him in the mouth, deflected up and destroyed an eye. Badly wounded, he collapsed. In a nearby crater, young Lt. Greg Harrigan directed helicopter gunships whose rockets and mini-guns were the only thing holding off the aggressive NVA.
Already, Harrigan reported, more than half his platoon were killed or wounded. For 45 minutes the Green Beret lieutenant kept the enemy at bay, then Harrigan, too, was hit. He died minutes later. Bill O'Rourke tried to land on another helicopter but his bird couldn't penetrate the NVA veil of lead. Lieutenant Colonel Earl Trabue, their CCS Commander, arrived and flew overhead with O’Rourke but they could do little. Hours dragged by. Wounded men laid untreated, exposed in the sun.
Several times the Hueys attempted to retrieve them and each time heavy fire drove them off. One door gunner was badly wounded. Finally a passing Australian twin-jet Canberra bomber from No. 2 Squadron at Phan Rang heard their predicament on the emergency radio frequency, ignored the fact it was Cambodia, and dropped a bombload which, O’Rourke reports, "broke the stranglehold those guys were in, and it allowed us to go in." Only 1st Lt. Marcantel was still directing air, and finally he had to bring ordnance so close it wounded himself and his surviving nine Montagnards.
One medic ran to Harrigan's hole and attempted to lift his body out but couldn't. "They were pretty well drained physically and emotionally," O'Rourke said. Finally, three Hueys raced in and picked up 15 wounded men. Lieutenant Dan Hall carried out a radio operator, then managed to drag Lt. Harrigan's body to an aircraft. Thus ended the COSVN raid. A Time for Reflection Afterward Chief SOG Cavanaugh talked to survivors and learned, "The fire was so heavy and so intense that even the guys trying to [evade] and move out of the area were being cut down." It seemed almost an ambush. "That really shook them up at MACV, to realize anybody survived that [B-52] strike," Col. Cavanaugh said.
The heavy losses especially affected Brig. Gen. Davidson, the MACV J-2, who blamed himself for the catastrophe. "General," Chief SOG Cavanaugh assured him, "if I'd have felt we were going to lose people like that, I wouldn't have put them in there." It’s that ambush-like reception despite a B-52 strike that opens the disturbing possibility of treachery and, it turns out, it was more than a mere possibility.
One year after the COSVN raid, the NSA twice intercepted enemy messages warning of imminent SOG operations which could only have come from a mole or moles in SOG headquarters. It would only be long after the war that it became clear Hanoi’s Trinh Sat had penetrated SOG, inserting at least one high ranking South Vietnamese officer in SOG whose treachery killed untold Americans, including, most likely, the COSVN raiders. Of those raiders, Lt. Walter Marcantel survived his wounds only to die six months later in a parachuting accident at Ft. Devens, Mass., while Capt. Paul Cahill was medically retired.
Eventually, Green Beret medic Ernest Jamison's body was recovered. But those lost in the COSVN raid have not been forgotten. Under a beautiful spring sky on Memorial Day, 1993, with American flags waving and an Army Reserve Huey strewing flower petals as it passed low-level, members of Special Forces Association Chapter XX assembled at Lt. Greg Harrigan’s grave in Minneapolis, Minn.
Before the young lieutenant’s family, a Special Forces honor guard placed a green beret at his grave, at last conferring some recognition to the fallen SOG man, a gesture the COSVN raid’s high classification had made impossible a quarter-century earlier.
Until now, neither Harrigan’s family nor the families of the other lost men knew the full story of the top secret COSVN raid. But the story remains incomplete. As in the case of SOG’s other MIAs, Hanoi continues to deny any knowledge of Jerry Shriver. Capt. O'Rourke concluded Mad Dog died that day. "I felt very privileged to have been his friend," O’Rourke says, "and when he died I grieved as much as for my younger brother when he was killed. Twenty-some-odd years later, it still sticks in my craw that I wasn't there. I wish I had been there."
There remains a popular myth among SOG veterans, that any day now Mad Dog Shriver will emerge from the Cambodian jungle as if only ten minutes have gone by, look right and left and holler, "Hey! Where’d everybody go?" Indeed, to those who knew him and fought beside him, Mad Dog will live forever. (This article is derived from Maj. Plaster’s book, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam, published by Simon & Schuster.)
On this day in U.S. Army SF history.......23 August 1968: Worst Day in Special Forces history. A large force hit a MAC-V SOG FOB and mission launch site on Marble Mountain in Da Nang. The attacking NVA numbered at least 100 and were armed with AKs, grenades, satchel charges, and RPG-2 launchers (or B-40s as they were called in Vietnam).
Most of the attacking NVA died in the three-hour attack, but they killed over two dozen Americans and over 40 Montagnards who manned the Recon Teams or the Hatchet Force alongside Americans.
The best accounting of the attack to date is in the book On The Ground: The Secret War in Vietnam by John S. “Tilt” Meyer, himself a SOG veteran. The fact of August 23rd is that SF was small in 1968. Some of the killed were first-term troops; others had been around a very long time, like Secor and Norris. But almost every man in SF personally knew someone who’d bought it beneath Marble Mountain.
The USSF casualties included:
1. Talmadge H. Alpin, Jr, SSG E-6, FOB4
2. William H. Bric, III, PFC E-3
3. Tadeusz M Kepczyk, SFC E-7
4. Donald R Kerns, SFC E-7
5. James T Kickliter, SGT E-5
6. Charles R. Norris, MSG E-8
7. Richard E. Pegram, Jr SGM, E-9
8. Paul D Potter, 1LT, from FOB2 (Kham Duc) at CCN for a conference
9. Rolf E. Rickmeyers, SFC E-7
10. Anthony J Santana, SP/4
11. Gilbert_A Secor, MSG E8
12. Robert J. Uyesaka, SGT E-5
13. Howard S Varni, SSG E-6
14. Harold R. Voorheis, SFC, E-7
15. Albert M. Walter, SFC E-7
16. Donald W. Welch, SFC E-7
Credit: WeaponsMan Blog http://weaponsman.com/?p=10130
Robert Lewis Howard (July 11, 1939 – December 23, 2009) was a highly decorated United States Army Special Forces officer and Medal of Honor recipient of the Vietnam War.
He was wounded 14 times over 54 months of combat, was awarded the Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, and four Bronze Stars.
He was nominated for the Medal of Honor three separate times over a 13-month period but received lesser medals for the first two nominations, which were for actions performed in Cambodia where the U.S. was fighting covertly. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on December 30, 1968, his third nomination.
He retired from the US Army after 36 years of service as a full colonel, and the most highly decorated service member on active duty.
He died as a result of pancreatic cancer and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on February 22, 2010.
Before his death, he was the most decorated living Medal of Honor recipient.
A January 1944 picture showing Private N.L.Shauer (right) of the Devil's Brigade, officially known as the United States-Canadian 1st Special Service Force, bringing in a German prisoner near Venafro, Italy.
The 1st Special Service Force (also called The Devil's Brigade, The Black Devils, The Black Devils' Brigade, and Freddie's Freighters),[1][2] was an elite American-Canadian commando unit in World War II, under command of the United States Fifth Army. The unit was organized in 1942 and trained at Fort William Henry Harrison near Helena, Montana in the United States. The Force served in the Aleutian Islands and fought in Italy, and southern France before being disbanded in December 1944.
The modern American and Canadian special operations forces trace their heritage to this unit. In 2013, the United States Congress passed a bill to award the 1st Special Service Force the Congressional Gold Medal.
The Raid at Cabanatuan also known as The Great Raid was a rescue of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians from a Japanese camp near Cabanatuan City, in the Philippines. On January 30, 1945, during World War II, United States Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas liberated more than 500 from the POW camp.
After the surrender of tens of thousands of American troops during the Battle of Bataan, many were sent to the Cabanatuan prison camp following the Bataan Death March. The Japanese transferred most of the prisoners to other areas, leaving just over 500 American and other Allied POWs and civilians in the prison. Facing brutal conditions including disease, torture, and malnourishment, the prisoners feared they would all be executed by their captors before the arrival of General Douglas MacArthur and his American forces returning to Luzon. In late January 1945, a plan was developed by Sixth Army leaders and Filipino guerrillas to send a small force to rescue the prisoners. A group of over a hundred Rangers and Scouts and a couple of hundred guerrillas traveled 30 miles (48 km) behind Japanese lines to reach the camp.
In a nighttime raid, under the cover of darkness and a distraction by a P-61 Black Widow, the group surprised the Japanese forces in and around the camp. Hundreds of Japanese troops were killed in the 30-minute coordinated attack; the Americans suffered minimal casualties. The Rangers, Scouts, and guerrillas escorted the POWs back to American lines. The rescue allowed the prisoners to tell of the death march and prison camp atrocities, which sparked a new rush of resolve for the war against Japan. The rescuers were awarded commendations by MacArthur and were also recognized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A memorial now sits on the site of the former camp, and the events of the raid have been depicted in several films.
William Hart Pitsenbarger (July 8, 1944 – April 11, 1966) was a United States Air Force Pararescueman who gave his life aiding and defending a unit of soldiers pinned down by an enemy assault in Vietnam. He was initially posthumously awarded the Air Force Cross, which was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor. He was the first enlisted recipient of the Air Force Cross medal, receiving the award in 1966.
Flying on almost 300 rescue missions in Vietnam, Bill Pitsenbarger risked his life almost daily during the war rescuing downed soldiers and fliers. On April 11, 1966, the 21-year-old, known as "Pits" to his friends, was killed while defending some of his wounded comrades. For his bravery and sacrifice, he was posthumously awarded the nation's highest military decorations, the Medal of Honor and the Air Force Cross, becoming the first enlisted airman to receive the medals posthumously.
Pitsenbarger was born in 1944 and grew up in Piqua, Ohio, a small town near Dayton. When Bill was a junior in high school, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army as a Green Beret, but his parents refused to give their permission. After he graduated from high school, he decided to join the Air Force, and on New Year's Eve 1962, he was on a train bound for basic training in San Antonio.
During his basic training in early 1963, Bill volunteered for Pararescue. He completed the very difficult qualifying requirements and was one of the first group of airmen to qualify for Pararescue right out of basic training. After completing the very trying and difficult pararescue training, Bill was assigned to the Rescue Squadron assigned to Hamilton AFB, California. He was later sent on TDY (Temporary Duty) to Vietnam. Upon completing his first TDY assignment, he volunteered to return and received orders in 1965 to report to Detachment 6, 38th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon. His unit was composed of five aircrews that flew three Kaman HH-43F Huskie helicopters. His commander, Maj. Maurice Kessler called him "One of a special breed. Alert and always ready to go on any mission."
On April 11, 1966, the Joint Rescue Center dispatched two Huskies from Detachment 6 to extract a half-dozen or more Army casualties pinned down in a battle near Cam My, a few miles east of Saigon. Upon reaching the site of the ambush, he was lowered through the trees to the ground where he attended to the wounded before having them lifted to the helicopter by a cable. After six wounded men had been flown to an aid station, the two Air Force helicopters returned for their second load.
As one of the helicopters lowered its litter basket to Pitsenbarger, who had remained on the ground with the 20 infantrymen still alive, it was hit by a burst of enemy small-arms fire. When its engine began to lose power, the pilot realized he had to get the helicopter away from the area as soon as possible. Instead of climbing into the litter basket so he could leave with the helicopter, Pitsenbarger elected to remain with the Army troops under enemy attack and he gave a "wave-off" to the helicopter which flew away to safety. With heavy mortar and small-arms fire, the helicopters couldn't return to rescue the rescuer.
For the next hour and a half, Pitsenbarger attended to wounded soldiers, hacking splints out of snarled vines and building improvised stretchers out of saplings. When the others began running low on ammunition, he gathered ammunition from the dead and distributed them to those still alive. Then, he joined the others with a rifle to hold off the Viet Cong. Pitsenbarger was killed by Viet Cong snipers later that night. When his body was recovered the next day, one hand still held a rifle and the other clutched a medical kit.
Although Pitsenbarger did not escape alive, nine other men did, partially thanks to his courage and their devotion to duty. He is buried in Miami Memorial Park Cemetery Covington, Ohio. His grave can be found in plot 43-D, grave #2.
