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.

Click Here:  The book.