Jocko's podcasts have made many a long night on exercise far more bearable. The one on Chesty Puller's son caused me to go out and purchase "Fortunate Son."

best thing I ever saw on SOG was a book titled SOG by John Plaster. I have not met John, but have met several of the men he interviewed for the book. One in mind was very candid and spoke as a matter of fact. Or make your hair turn white. That guy was part of Team Illinois. Most of his trips over the fence were in Laos, but he did two insertions in Cambodia (so he said). Told him once that SOG teams rolled thru my base camp about once every ten days, but never came back our way. He knew who they were and where they did their recon.
About once a year they'd all get together for a really good drunk at my VFW. Actually a pretty nice bunch of guys once you met them (about twenty men). The one thing that got my attention about them was their challange coin! Mine is about two inches in diameter, and Steve's had to be three and a half inches!
gary

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best thing I ever saw on SOG was a book titled SOG by John Plaster. I have not met John, but have met several of the men he interviewed for the book. One in mind was very candid and spoke as a matter of fact. Or make your hair turn white. That guy was part of Team Illinois. Most of his trips over the fence were in Laos, but he did two insertions in Cambodia (so he said). Told him once that SOG teams rolled thru my base camp about once every ten days, but never came back our way. He knew who they were and where they did their recon.
About once a year they'd all get together for a really good drunk at my VFW. Actually a pretty nice bunch of guys once you met them (about twenty men). The one thing that got my attention about them was their challange coin! Mine is about two inches in diameter, and Steve's had to be three and a half inches!
gary

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yeah that one is on my hit list as well but i have 4 books about MACV-SOG on the "to read" pile.

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best thing I ever saw on SOG was a book titled SOG by John Plaster. I have not met John, but have met several of the men he interviewed for the book. One in mind was very candid and spoke as a matter of fact. Or make your hair turn white. That guy was part of Team Illinois. Most of his trips over the fence were in Laos, but he did two insertions in Cambodia (so he said). Told him once that SOG teams rolled thru my base camp about once every ten days, but never came back our way. He knew who they were and where they did their recon.
About once a year they'd all get together for a really good drunk at my VFW. Actually a pretty nice bunch of guys once you met them (about twenty men). The one thing that got my attention about them was their challange coin! Mine is about two inches in diameter, and Steve's had to be three and a half inches!
gary

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yeah that one is on my hit list as well but i have 4 books about MACV-SOG on the "to read" pile.

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make sure you read about the radio relay station on a mountain top in Laos. Will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Our base camp was part of an experiment dreamed up by C Team folks in DaNang. The closest arty umbrella was ten miles north, and don't think the NVA hadn't figured this one out. Being where we were dumped, we controlled an eight mile radius. The SF guys always had two teams out 24/7, and we shot 80% of the time for them. Where we were gave us control of 2/3rds of the Hiep Duc Ridge line, and we made it a point to shoot that place up daily.
The Hiep Duc tee'd into the Que Son Valley, and that was a place where young men grew up. I did OP's in there regularly, and you can put that place where the sun don't shine! Due south (just out of arty range by about two klicks) was Marry Anne. SF had teams in there constantly, and it was a horrible place. Marry Anne sat deep in a valley, so it would have been near impossible to hit the perimeter with 155's due to the angle of trajectory. M102's would have worked, but the higher up's left them home. Just near impossible to shoot high angle fire with the old 155's, and in Vietnam everything went by the arty umbrella. Yet no arty could reach A102 with the exception of the 175 guns on Ross (also a big no no)

Most folks don't know how MAC-V was built. There were units that stayed inside the country and of course SOG. Anybody in SF could cross the fence, and on occassion others did as well. I did a 29 day OP about fifty feet from the LAO border with a MAC-V Heavy Team in June of 68. That place just gave you the creeps looking at it, and the neighbors had no sense of humor. We lost the mountian top due to the lack of warm bodies. Those guys had a couple teams across the fence daily. You could write a book on their month long saga! Then there were the C-Team guys! This group is seriously interesting. That's where the term Mobile Strike Force comes from, and trust me they're evil! Marines used to have a bumper sticker touting about "if it has to be destroyed in 24 hours." Nobody was as nasty of a Mobile Strike Force. Think scorched earth policy! I heard Vinnie Poole say once that he could put together an 800 man strike force in two hours! I saw him do three hundred a couple times. By the way we lost Vinnie in late August or early September 68. I think it was the way he would have wanted it. By the way Vinnie's hero was Bennie Adkins. About as tough a man as have ever walked on this planet. He had a phrase he often used "What would Bennie do?"
gary

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best thing I ever saw on SOG was a book titled SOG by John Plaster. I have not met John, but have met several of the men he interviewed for the book. One in mind was very candid and spoke as a matter of fact. Or make your hair turn white. That guy was part of Team Illinois. Most of his trips over the fence were in Laos, but he did two insertions in Cambodia (so he said). Told him once that SOG teams rolled thru my base camp about once every ten days, but never came back our way. He knew who they were and where they did their recon.
About once a year they'd all get together for a really good drunk at my VFW. Actually a pretty nice bunch of guys once you met them (about twenty men). The one thing that got my attention about them was their challange coin! Mine is about two inches in diameter, and Steve's had to be three and a half inches!
gary

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yeah that one is on my hit list as well but i have 4 books about MACV-SOG on the "to read" pile.

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make sure you read about the radio relay station on a mountain top in Laos. Will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Our base camp was part of an experiment dreamed up by C Team folks in DaNang. The closest arty umbrella was ten miles north, and don't think the NVA hadn't figured this one out. Being where we were dumped, we controlled an eight mile radius. The SF guys always had two teams out 24/7, and we shot 80% of the time for them. Where we were gave us control of 2/3rds of the Hiep Duc Ridge line, and we made it a point to shoot that place up daily.
The Hiep Duc tee'd into the Que Son Valley, and that was a place where young men grew up. I did OP's in there regularly, and you can put that place where the sun don't shine! Due south (just out of arty range by about two klicks) was Marry Anne. SF had teams in there constantly, and it was a horrible place. Marry Anne sat deep in a valley, so it would have been near impossible to hit the perimeter with 155's due to the angle of trajectory. M102's would have worked, but the higher up's left them home. Just near impossible to shoot high angle fire with the old 155's, and in Vietnam everything went by the arty umbrella. Yet no arty could reach A102 with the exception of the 175 guns on Ross (also a big no no)

Most folks don't know how MAC-V was built. There were units that stayed inside the country and of course SOG. Anybody in SF could cross the fence, and on occassion others did as well. I did a 29 day OP about fifty feet from the LAO border with a MAC-V Heavy Team in June of 68. That place just gave you the creeps looking at it, and the neighbors had no sense of humor. We lost the mountian top due to the lack of warm bodies. Those guys had a couple teams across the fence daily. You could write a book on their month long saga! Then there were the C-Team guys! This group is seriously interesting. That's where the term Mobile Strike Force comes from, and trust me they're evil! Marines used to have a bumper sticker touting about "if it has to be destroyed in 24 hours." Nobody was as nasty of a Mobile Strike Force. Think scorched earth policy! I heard Vinnie Poole say once that he could put together an 800 man strike force in two hours! I saw him do three hundred a couple times. By the way we lost Vinnie in late August or early September 68. I think it was the way he would have wanted it. By the way Vinnie's hero was Bennie Adkins. About as tough a man as have ever walked on this planet. He had a phrase he often used "What would Bennie do?"
gary

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i take it you are referring to Lima site 85 that was over run in Laos, i'd love to hear more about your ops that you pulled, if you have the time.

Gary,

you really need to write down your experiences while you were in Vietnam as you were covering
significant important areas that very few people did.

I have found the details and accounts that you have shared to absolutely fascinating and I appreciate the effort that it must have taken to commit some of them to an open forum like this.

many thanks.

Gary,

you really need to write down your experiences while you were in Vietnam as you were covering
significant important areas that very few people did.

I have found the details and accounts that you have shared to absolutely fascinating and I appreciate the effort that it must have taken to commit some of them to an open forum like this.

many thanks.

Gary, i can understand a lot about the issues with prescription drugs as my wife has chronic back pain and was taking a whole cocktail of drugs: Gabapentin, Amitriptyline, Pregabalin, Naproxen, Sopadol (which i gave one tablet to a work colleague who was complaining of a sore back and it floored him and he was twice the size of my wife, a lesson there not to share your meds with anyone) and Co-codamol thirty five hundreds which goes by another name in the USA which i think is the one you mentioned.

She was so spaced out one day while we walked into asda/walmart that she thought we had done our grocery shopping and was walking straight back out again. that really freaked me out and we worked hard to get her off those damn pills.

as for carrying around baggage for to long, hear you on that one. i made the same mistake as well and i wasn't even in the military but i knew something was wrong with me and eventually i swallowed my stubborn male pride and went and got help. It certainly helped as i began to unload a lot of the stuff that happened to me when i was a kid. i was totally blown away when the therapist said i had PTSD, i'm like, no way. i can't have that, only guys who were in vietnam or some sort of war can have that, which was my response. needless to say that she set me straight on that one and told me because of all the past issues that i had re-wired my brain into full-time survival mode.
She said that in a crisis i was the one that she would want to be standing next to because as the brown stuff is hitting the fan i'm not running around panicking and crying we are all gonna die. she asked what happens when a crisis hits me and i told her, everything seems to slow down and i start to analyse everything for a solution to fix the problem.

but you are right that the good times are important things to remember and i look forward to hearing about the great rat race. i am also very happy that you have your faith and god to help you through the dark times as we all need someone to help us even if some times we are to stubborn to realise it, which was true in my case.

I don't know you well and you don't know me but our love of modelling has given us a connection and although i am across the pond, if you ever need to talk to someone hit me up mate, ok.