Death may be the aim of your life—at least it seems that way as flashes of orange erupt across the jungle and your airplane descends into Cam Rahn Bay, South Vietnam.
Fresh-faced soldiers sitting next to you whisper about the artillery fire. Barely older than they are, you are unlike them in every way. You quit high school to enlist in the Army early, then went on to Airborne and Special Forces—a triple volunteer by the age of twenty-four.
Twilight fades to sunrise as your boots hit the tarmac. Jet fumes and white dust gust over the runway as men load flag-draped coffins into the cargo compartment of a Starlifter.
On the way to the reception center in Nha Trang, your driver weaves through a stream of bicycles and mopeds, passing street stalls stacked with clocks and coffee, toothpaste and cigarettes, strawberries and stereos. At in-processing, a seasoned soldier elbows your arm, telling you that after the sergeant rattles off the typical gigs, he will ask for volunteers for a unit called SOG. Don’t raise your hand for it, the soldier says, not unless you want to get yourself killed.
The sergeant first class glares at you and ambles to your desk. Sergeant Shriver, he says, do you realize you are volunteering to go anywhere and do anything? For six months, they own you. You nod. So be it, he says, handing you a non-disclosure. On the off chance you stay alive, the United States government bars you from telling anyone about what you do. Not a peep for twenty-five years. Violate this, he says, they will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.
With a pen stroke you become a member of the world’s most dangerous warfighting unit.
A black school bus riddled with bullet holes creaks to a stop outside. Metal nets cover its shattered windows, and the driver cocks his head for you to get in. As you climb the steps, whiffs of burnt earth and feces exude from three filthy warfighters sitting a few rows back. Dark green grease paint streaks their faces, making the whites of their eyes glow like pearls. One man wears Viet Cong-style black fatigues, the others a locally sewn tiger stripe. Nothing standard issue. Strapped to their bodies are knives, explosives, sidearms, and ammunition. Two men carry CAR-15s, a third cradles a sawed-off grenade launcher. No one wears a helmet. All have an olive green rag tied to their head. Of the thousands of soldiers you saw in basic training, jump school, West Germany and Fort Bragg, these are the first three that look like killers.
At a firebase in Kontum, a grizzled colonel briefs you and other recruits. You men volunteered for the Military Advisory Command Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group. MACV-SOG, he says. If you came here to study and observe Vietnam—leave now. The colonel draws back a black drape revealing a lithographic map of Southeast Asia. The US military operates in Vietnam, he says. Not SOG. SOG operates here, he says, pointing a swagger stick to Laos and Cambodia. These denied areas offer sanctuary to the North Vietnamese Army, the guys supplying insurgents down south. Few men ever see Ho Chi Minh’s Trail, but as a SOG man you will live and breathe it. You will raid. You will ambush. You will snatch prisoners. Tap wires. Wreck pipes. President Johnson reads your after-action reports as he sips his morning coffee. The colonel paces the room. In teams of six or eight men, you will gunfight against dozens, hundreds, even thousands. You will always be outnumbered. Our casualty rate is two hundred percent, which is higher than any unit. Do the math. You will die—or be wounded multiple times. Your operational area is the highlands. Forests so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. Enemies itching to mutilate you. From here on out you are a spy in the jungle. Everything you wear and carry will be untraceable. Geneva Conventions don’t apply. You’re dismissed, he says.
One dawn while stalking through palm fronds, a large force of Viet Cong surprise attacks your six-man team. As you and your men repulse their advance and pull back into a defensive perimeter, you break away to fetch intelligence material off a dead insurgent. You discover that the Viet Cong had already removed it and dash back to your men, passing within ten meters of the enemy. You try to radio friendly forces but a thicket of weeping figs blocks the signal. As enemies surround your team, you defend probe after probe, finally calling in air strikes and rescue birds. Given the dense terrain and crossfire, the helicopter hovers above the jungle and unfurls an extraction ladder forty meters down through the tree crowns. Your ticket to freedom dangles in the air as insurgents rush towards you, firing their Kalashnikovs. Ignoring the hail of bullets, you opt to be the last man on. You stave off the enemy until the fifth man climbs onto the ladder. As you clamber up the bottom rungs and clip your carabiner onto the steel, an AK slug strikes the grease gun slung over your shoulder, knocking you forward. Had it hit your back it would have shattered your spine, a reminder that your new vocation is a game of inches.
Escaping the forest alive, your men now contend with bitter cold as the chopper rises to three thousand feet, still towing your team by the ladder. Teeth chatter. Sweat drenched bodies begin to freeze. A man with a gunshot hand loses his grip and plummets to the jungle. As the helicopter chops through the rarified air, the sunset silhouettes you and the four remaining men—tiny marionettes of war, far above the earth. For your valor on that mission, the group command sergeant major nominates you for a Silver Star, the third-highest combat award. Days later, he changes his tune when he sees you wander in from the bush, crossbow in hand, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. He briefly bars you from earning your medal, but later laughs it off and recants.
On another mission deep in the highlands, the enemy spots your team resupplying. You trick them into approaching so you can capture a prisoner, but an enemy soldier with a different view recognizes your recon team for what it is. You order your men to throw grenades to avoid giving away your position, then you break contact with the now thirty-odd fighters. Boxed in on three sides, the Viet Cong backs your team up against an emerald lake. Trapped, you radio the Forward Air Controller to convey your situation, telling him you are up against a platoon that is yelling for another one hundred fighters to join them. When the gunships arrive, you coordinate their rocket and minigun fire just as the enemy forms an on-line assault. You inch the rockets closer and closer until they nearly explode on your own men. At last the enemy falls back.
In the spring of sixty eight, you near two years of operating in the war’s most lethal unit. Every patrol exacts a toll, and no man is wired to bear it for long—which is why your peers rotate out of SOG after six or twelve months, eighteen max. The savvy ones become Covey Riders and circle over the battlefield as wingmen in an observation plane. The less ambitious pick up shifts in the supply shack, arming recruits with guns and gear. You re-up for the jungle.
You become a kind of walking arsenal, absent of safeguards. Your loadout lacks the items conventional soldiers carry. Helmet. Dog tags. Flak jacket. Yet the oddest thing missing is serum albumin, a blood expander. SOG men tape a canister of it to the rear of their suspender yoke. If a guy gets shot, his teammate injects the serum in his vein, adding volume to his blood to keep him from bleeding out on the battlefield. You seem to have a sixth sense that you will never need it.
One day in Cambodia, your tiny team comes up against a much greater number of North Vietnamese fighters. Approaching bit by bit, they encircle your men, pouring AK-47 fire at you from all directions. The sulfur smell of gunpowder fills the jungle as the enemy tries to overrun you. A Forward Air Controller circling overhead radioes you that the situation looks quite dire. Air support will not arrive in time, he says, your team must survive on its own. No, no, you reply, I’ve got them right where I want them—surrounded from the inside. Your team then rakes the jungle with automatic fire and pummels the enemy with grenades. They falter, then withdraw.
Monsoon season, you ramble the rainy streets of neon Saigon, winding up in an off-limits neighborhood that smells of exhaust and fish sauce. Two military police spot your rangy frame and wave you over. Sarge, the senior MP says, you’re under arrest, come with us. You comply and climb into their jeep, acting so calm that they don’t even bother to handcuff you. On the drive, the MP realizes you are Special Forces. All right, he says, give me your gun. You hand him the revolver concealed in your shoulder holster. At the station, a desk clerk slips your personal effects into a manilla envelope and leads you to your jail cell. Come morning, a SOG officer signs your prisoner release form. Where are his things? he asks. The desk clerk hands him the manilla envelope. No, the SOG major insists, the rest of his stuff. Sir, I got it all right here, you say, lifting your jungle fatigue shirt, revealing two automatic pistols, four hand grenades, a knife, and a pair of brass knuckles. The desk clerk mutters as you scoop up your revolver and nod.
On your rare days off, when you are not running recon or engaged in endless training on the gun range, you amble around camp in a silk blue smoking jacket. Embroidered along its back hem is an acronym. Ogdaa, it says, in flowing gold cursive. One good deal after another.
In a muddy bamboo village you spot a monkey for sale, sizing her up as some kind of Macaque. She gives you a solemn gaze as you eye her pink face and yellow-brown fur. You buy her, take her back to base, and name her Suzie. You tie a slack cotton rope around her neck and latch it to a steel pole. Suzie lolls on a bunker wall of cloth sandbags, staring at a zone of blue on the horizon. One knee up, her curled fingers rest at her feet. Some days you sit beside her, silent.
Then comes Klaus, the German Shepard you buy on a visit to Taiwan, a trip you earn for snatching a prisoner. One day when Klaus is a pup, a mongrel mutt roughs him up. You find the culprit and drop him in a rusty steel drum, the kind used for burning trash. You aim your pistol and dump rounds in the can, but the mutt skitters so much you barely nick him. The more you miss, the madder you get. Your buddies laugh so hard they gasp for breath. Soon the barrel tips over and the dog dashes out. You stand there in awe, smoking pistol still in hand. Next time, one of the men quip, just drop in a grenade. You flash them a snaggletooth grin. A new joke blossoms across the camp: the best place to hide from Jerry Shriver is a fifty-five gallon drum.
One rainy night on a recon mission in the highlands, you sit up against a tree, unable to sleep. Back at base, some drunk Marines whip themselves into the mood for a prank. They find Klaus and drag him to the non-commissioned officers club. Holding his muzzle, they force feed him can after can of beer. He wobbles off and barfs, then shits on the floor. The lead prankster rubs Klaus’s nose in the dung then boots him out the door. The following night, you return from the mission and catch wind of the lark. You walk to the club. A scent of wet wood, smoke, sweat, and booze pours from the room. You mosey up to the bar and set your revolver down, hammer back. You peel off your smoking jacket, drop trou and shit on the floor. Standing up, you clasp your belt and scan the crowd of drunken warfighters. Silence falls on them all. Rub my nose in it, you say, daring them. The soldiers pretend not to hear you. The man who force-fed Klaus urges the company commander to intervene. He refuses. Not a single man comes forward.
As the war grinds on, you and Klaus grow inseparable. One time while on a local training mission, you request a resupply of water—and your dog. The helicopter pilot loads a string of canteens and does his best to keep the animal inside as he banks right and left with the doors wide open. As the bird touches down, Klaus leaps from the cabin and mauls you—or you maul him, the pilot is not sure which. The Montagnards unload the canteens, but you raise a finger, motioning for the chopper to wait. As you near the cockpit, the pilot cranes his neck to hear you over the engine drone. You grab his helmet, pull him toward you, and tongue his ear. The pilot stares at you in shock. You flash him a snaggletooth grin and stroll away, Klaus at your heels.
You lose count of the men you lose. Dozens die, some even by their own hand. At night in the club, you and the men stand, drink in hand, retelling tales of lost companions. After laughs and toasts, you all sing a song honoring the death of yet another brother. “Old Blue” is the name of the tune, a folk ballad about a faithful dog. “Hey Blue, you’re a good dog, you.”
As you descend into the abyss of war, you shed your civilized self. Free of that veneer, you meld your life with the Montagnards, your comrades born and bred in the highlands. For them their tour of duty never ends. You admire their fearlessness and uncanny tracking ability, how with so little tutoring they become some of SOG’s most consummate scouts. Having long donated your money to the villages that offer up their young tribesmen for battle, you now go further. You learn Rhade, their native tongue, eat rations of rice and squid, even sip their communal rice wine. Breaking from tradition, they let you move your cot to their indigenous-only hooch.
Slate blue veins of rain hang down from the underbelly of a distant cloud. You stand beside a smallboned Montagnard soldier, your arm draped over his shoulder. Your free hand grips a Sten gun with a side-mounted magazine. Clasped to your wrist is a chrome Seiko. Hanging from your neck, a compass. Fastened to your backpack strap, a dagger. The kicker is the sinister canister of white phosphorous latched to your belt. It’s crazy that you carry this shit. You direct air strikes with it because its fumes mushroom through the triple canopy better than the colored smoke, which helps helos spot your team’s location quicker. Yet if a slug or a sliver of shrapnel pierces that cylinder, a thousand fiery grape seeds burst forth at two thousand degrees, a white-hot inferno that melts flesh down to the bone, a fate that befalls more than one warrior.
War, your mistress, war, thief of your heart, robber of your soul. Although most soldiers yearn for home, few foresee that in the coming years they will shove their beloveds down flights of stairs or slam them up against wood-paneled walls. Some will knife their lovers or slug their gut while pregnant. Other men will surmise that their wives are undercover Viet Cong, or they’ll recreate Vietnam in their own backyard, burning bonfires to bygone battles. Yet a handful of warfighters grasp that they can never salvage their civilian selves. This is you. A wizard of war, a virtuoso of violence, a man with every noncombatant fiber of his being deep in atrophy. Men like you never want war to be no more and refuse to let peace mothball their calling.
Two years into SOG you cease bathing, forcing the brass to send you stateside for R&R. In the land of the free and the home of the brave, most guys visit family or hit the beaches and bars. Not you. You scour every hardware store in California—hunting for a gun, but not just any. What you crave is a 444 Marlin, the most powerful lever-action rifle of its day. Guys use Marlins to hunt grizzlies and polar bears. On a human, the rounds leave cavernous exit wounds, just the ticket to strike fear in your enemy. When you spot one you ship it straight back to Ban Me Thout.
Every chance you get to quit, you sign up for another stint. By the time you notch fifty-odd missions, you are nearing three years of service in SOG. That’s a thousand days in Southeast Asia, twenty-four thousand hours in a warzone. When your superior makes you take in-country R&R, you slip away to Plei Djerang to link up with another recon team. From there, you spend your two-week break fighting in the jungle—only to come back and do it all over again with your own men. Not even twenty-eight, you are as quiet as a man three times your age. You amble around camp with a strange gaze, wearing the same clothes for days. You sit at the club with a case of beer, crack open every can, then seclude yourself in a corner to down them all. When night falls, you collapse on your cot in the Montagnard barracks, cradling your loaded Marlin.
Hanoi Hannah knows about your bounty. In her daily broadcasts from North Vietnam, she delivers a cocktail of rock songs and propaganda straight to the radios of US servicemen. How are you, GI Joe? Do you miss your home? Our soldiers see you alone at night, thinking of your loved ones. Look at your watch, American serviceman. Your minutes tick-tick away and soon your time will end. You are weak, GI. Our soldiers are strong. And for you Sergeant Shriver, we have a special message. We know you go to Cambodia soon. This time, we will get you.
From the black sky high above a Cambodian rubber plantation, American B-52s rain thousand-pound bombs on a cluster of enemy bunkers known mostly by its acronym: COSVN. The ordinance craters the earth and geysers the soil around this elusive target that military brass from Washington to Saigon has long thought to be the North’s nerve center for directing the war.
Your team waits at Quan Loi, a launch site just east of the border. It is an old Michelin plantation the French nicknamed terra rouge. Now in a state of disrepair, red ochre dust swirls in the air and collects in every crevice, as if God’s own earth is hemorrhaging. A swimming pool sits empty, pink honeysuckle strangling a double-level diving tower. Your team plays Scrabble in a field tent. When the group disputes a word, you flip open a pocket dictionary, touching the grip of your pistol if anyone side-eyes you for breaking the rules. Your men laugh and let you win. When the game ends, you tell them you will get hurt tomorrow. You tell them other things too, like how you ran away from home as a kid, how you haven’t seen your folks in eight long years. You admit that you’ve longed to quit SOG but cannot bear to part ways with the Montagnards.
Come dawn, you fix a cravat over your skull and upturn your collar. You hug an old buddy, tell him that he’s a sweet ass motherfucker, then tongue his ear. You kiss Klaus goodbye and head to the helicopter. You are armed to the teeth as always, but this time you carry a third pistol, strap a scuba knife to your calf, and sling an extra Uzi over your shoulder. Your men approach the skid, stopping to let you inspect their gear before they board. As the last man on, you sit on the helicopter floor with your feet dangling out the door. You watch the blades whip up dust and whop-whop the air, a sound you live for. The Huey nudges into a hover, rotates right, and rises over the fence. Its destination is COSVN, the suicidal target you had always sought.
Midflight, one of the choppers malfunctions and returns to base. Three remaining teams carry on alone. When the helicopters arrive, the coordinates turn out to be totally wrong, forcing the birds to circle for forty minutes, alerting every bad guy around. When the helos finally touch down on the earthen moonscape, your team hops off and takes cover in a bomb crater. As the choppers pull away, a sudden barrage of withering gunfire pins you down. Spotting machine gun bunkers fifty meters away, you fire back at the muzzle flashes, ducking as AK rounds crack overhead. You radio the ground commander that you are going behind enemy lines. He demands that you not, that the fire is too hot. You glance at the Montagnards, then leap from the crater, disobeying his order. In a hail of gunfire you sprint towards the bunker. Six Montagnards charge with you into the heart of COSVN. All are instantly hit. You disappear into the jungle forever.
Back at the club in Ban Me Thout, your buddies huddle together. Klaus weaves between their legs as they pin your silk blue smoking jacket in a makeshift shadow box. The men drink and retell tales. Stories about your nonchalance during gunfights, how you would radio in for airstrikes as if you were lazing at a Sunday picnic, not a worry in the world. Stories about your Fort Bragg days, how you’d shoot beer bottles out of a buddy’s hand and fire at cockroaches that crawled the walls. They recall antics about Wildflecken, like the winter when you dashed down the barracks’ hallway and dove from the third-floor window, forcing your friends to claw you out of a six-foot snowbank. They talk about your time in Frankfurt too, how you struggled to learn Tae Soo Do and would wander off base to ply your trade at the local bars, and how the guards would eye your lone figure trudging up the dark snowy road, drenched in the blood of other men.
Late at night, still reeling from the shock of the day’s failed mission, the men begin to sing. They sing ‘Old Blue’ yet again, even though some of the guys swear you are still alive.
Tucked beneath your cot in the Montagnard hootch is a shoebox of military medals and tarnished coins. The change tallies up to less than a dollar, the sum of your earthly possessions.
