Wednesday Sept 23rd, 1970 …exactly 50 years ago this week
Capt Dan Turner and I were a two-man team. As the RTO (Radiotelephone Operator) for Redwine Security Group, my job was (in Capt Dan’s words): “I want you an arm’s length from me.”
The primary job of our two-man team was to make our way to the Communications Building as fast as we could to neutralize the people inside the building before… they could radio for reinforcements.
We had two buildings to clear (Buildings 11 and 12 on the Diagram in Chapter 16 in the book Who Will Go) before we could get to the Communications Building (7A in the diagram in the book).
Read Sgt Terry Buckler’s full story in Who Will Go.
Tuesday Sept 22nd, 1970 …exactly 50 years ago this week
Story by Capt Tom Jaeger, Blueboy
When we volunteered for the Son Tay mission, we were only told it was dangerous. We trained hard for three months without being told what the actual mission was.
However, one morning in the second week of training at Aux Field #3 (mid-September), Capt Dick Meadows, my roommate, asked me to assist him and LtCol Sydnor at the Mockup training site. While at the training site I overhead Dick accidentally say “prisoners” three separate times talking with LtCol Sydnor. That afternoon Dick asked me to not mention his “prisoner” slip-up to anyone. I told him I would not.
From that morning on, I tried to think about what mission would involve rescuing prisoners. American POWs in North Vietnam obviously came to mind, but I thought it was impossible to put a 56-man raiding force on the ground deep into the heart of North Vietnam and expect that we could get out with the POWs. I thought the more likely mission would be to rescue American POWs thought to be held in caves in the Laotian tri-border area, something my FOB-2 recon team had attempted several times but were shot out each time. I guessed wrong.
Read the rest of this and two more of Tom Jaeger’s memorable moments in Who Will Go.
Our training began with us walking through our positions over and over again in daylight. During the first month, there were several changes to how we performed our mission. Each person had specific tasks to perform. Not only did we have to know our own role, but we had to know the role of the man to our left and right and where they would be when the firing started.
Capt Dan Turner and I were a two-man team. As the RTO for Redwine Security Group my job was (as Capt Dan put it): “I want you an arm’s length from me or I will be the one who’ll shoot you!” And if you knew Capt Dan, he would have, so you can bet I stayed damn close to him.
Capt Glenn Rouse (Greenleaf), Major Keith Grimes, Sgt 1st Class Leroy Carlson (Greenleaf). Notice the Deuce-and-a-Half truck that brought the Green Berets to the Mockup each day this week.
Read Sgt Terry Buckler’s full story in Who Will Go.
What the Bull told me yesterday came true. Things did change.
The first cut was made on Friday, September 18th. They selected 51 men (see the Log below), and an additional 10 men were identified as backup that could be used in any of the different elements. I was selected to be a part of the Redwine Security Group. I would be the RTO for Captain Dan Turner. No more guard duty for me! The three Groups were each placed in their own areas in the barracks building to help build the team concept.
Life Lesson 4: Have Patience and Aggressiveness and Contentment. Guarding the TOC, we were not allowed to know the “Why.” As I saw my opportunity slipping away, I was aggressive, hungry to be in the middle of the action. That’s OK—it’s not a fault to be aggressive. It’s a virtue—if you can choose in your heart and in your mind to be at peace and to be thankful, trusting God with the outcome.
Read Sgt Terry Buckler’s full story in Who Will Go.
As one of the six guys assigned to guard the Tactical Operations Center (TOC), I started to see that I might miss out on some key training. If I wanted to have a chance of getting selected for one of the Assault Force teams, I had to train when I was not pulling guard duty. Security was so tight that we didn’t know who we would be rescuing or in which part of the world it would be. There was a lot of speculation that it might be an attempt to free prisoners in Cuba based on the three-hour flying time of the mission.
I had been training and pulling guard duty for weeks when I got my chance to speak up. I was checking Colonel Bull Simons for access to the TOC building. While we were waiting for an escort to take the Bull in, he asked how things were going for me. I knew that he was only going to pick some of us for the actual mission, so I said, “Sir I didn’t volunteer to come here and pull guard duty. If I wanted to pull guard duty, I could have stayed at Fort Bragg.” Now the Bull always had a two-inch cigar that he chewed on. He looked me right in the eyes and said, “Young man, hang in there. Things are going to change pretty soon.”
After he went in the building, I thought to myself, “What in the hell did I just do? First I chewed out two Sergeant Majors back at Ft Bragg, trying to get on this mission. Now I just told a Colonel—and not just any Colonel, but Bull Simons—that I was tired of pulling guard duty. I just bitched to the Bull about pulling guard duty!?”
I thought, “Well I’ll probably end up pulling guard duty the rest of my time in the Army.”
Read Sgt Terry Buckler’s full story in Who Will Go.
