"Strap Hanger"
[Memoirs of
a Soldier] I originally named this story 'Memoirs of a Sneaky Pete.' Sneaky Pete was the original nickname of special forces soldiers back before they were authorized to wear the green beret. But every time I worked on this web site either adding something or correcting something, I kept seeing that title. Each time I did so, I also remembered the SF guys that I had served with and I recalled that most of those guys were far better soldiers than me and many were in special forces long before me. Each time that title seemed to get a little more pretentious and it just didn't satisfy me so I finally changed the title to "Memoirs of a Lifer". Lifer was a derogatory nickname for a career soldier back during the Vietnam War. Then I saw a book written by a special forces team sergeant, Bill Craig, with whom I had served, and it was titled "Lifer." Well, out of respect for Bill who was ten times the soldier that I ever was, I decided I should change the title again. Then it hit me, the perfect title for this story, "Strap Hanger." It is perfect. I served with so many men who were heroes and some even became legends, I sometimes felt like a strap hanger myself. A Strap Hanger is what we used to call a soldier that usually wasn't from your own unit, but who for some reason was with your unit anyway. One example of a strap hanger is when we made parachute jumps, men from other units who needed a jump for pay purposes would ask to jump with us. They were called strap hangers. Another example of a strap hanger is an officer or rear area enlisted person who went along on an operation with your unit. He was not in command of the operation or responsible for any decisions. He was just there to get time towards his Combat Infantryman's Badge or hoping to get put in for a medal. Since I am not a hero, but I served with thousands of heroes during my 21 years in the army, most of whom were in special forces, I think it is more appropriate.
All
of the information in this story is based on actual events, but some of
the tales that I relate may have been embellished a bit as they were
passed down from buddy to buddy over the years.
Unfortunately, much of the information contained in this story is
based on my faulty memory because I tossed all of my army records into
File Thirteen [the garbage] many years ago. Some of the information contained in this story is also based on the memories of eyewitnesses that I interviewed. Almost all of the specific data about the battle for Khesanh that I mention in this story was taken from The End of the Line, which is an excellent documentary by Robert L. Pisor and published in 1982 by Ballantine Books. If you are curious about what really took place during the Battle for Khesanh, you absolutely must read Mr Pisor’s excellent book and get the facts. The
information in this story, including the dialogue, is as accurate as I
could make it under the circumstances, but I do not claim it to be
100% accurate or verbatim, not even if I put the words inside
quotation marks. I
did not intend this to be a documentary filled with dates and
statistics.
From time to time, I
meet a buddy who has a better recollection of a certain event than me
or who actually participated in some event that I had only heard about and if his recollection
differs from what I remember hearing,
I will change the story, but only if I think it is appropriate.
This still may not be 100 percent accurate, but it’s the best I
could do and tell it the way it happened.
I
just wanted to tell my relatives who are younger than me a story about
army life for an enlisted man as it really was during this time frame
and in the units with which I served in a format they might actually
read. I hope it may save
them from making the same mistakes that I made or at least that was my
thoughts on it. I also
tried to make this story as easy to read and understand as possible.
With that in mind, I originally wrote this story in the language in which
it was lived which tended to be very direct, crude, and sometimes
vulgar, but later on I went back and cleaned it up a little. I
may have missed a few juicy words here and there, so those of you with
young children should read this before allowing them to do so.
I
did not intend to embarrass anyone, but some readers may find some of
the events mentioned in this story to be outlandish.
These incidents are not included just for entertainment.
They are primarily included to help the reader get an accurate
feeling for the individual soldiers and their environment.
If an incident seemed especially embarrassing, I did not use their true
name. If I overlooked any, I
certainly regret it. In order to help you understand Army life during this time frame at least in the unit in which I served, I am telling it as straight forward as I possibly can and wording it as simple as I possibly can while withholding nothing so you get both the good and the bad. In other words, this is not intended to be pro-army or even pro-special forces propaganda. Many veterans have read this and most of them seem to enjoy it or at least appreciate it, but some take exception to the parts that do not flatter the unit they served in, especially SF.
"Mickey
Mouse" and “chicken-s..t” were general GI slang terms that
meant "little nit-picking things" “rank happy,” and/or
"excessive, unwarranted discipline or restrictions"
Before the Vietnam War the GIs
used “chicken-s..t.” During
the Vietnam War, the GIs gradually switched to using "Mickey Mouse"
instead and to the best of my knowledge it has remained that way ever
since. After all, Vietnam
was a Disney Land where the Mickey Mouse killed.
I still use the former term. If you want to read all those super secret tales of 'daring do' that are still so classified I would have to kill you if I told you about them, I highly recommend you either turn on your computer and find your favorite search engine and search for 'heroes' or go to almost any chat site as they are almost all full of phonies who are mostly teenager or Nazi-feminist Wanna Bees, or just rent a Rambo movie. You won't find any of that in these pages.
The
super hero image of Rambo [and many others that have appeared
in movies] is really a composite of all the
different types of men that were assigned to a Special Forces
Operational Detachment A [SFOD A] at any given time and
it was a gross misrepresentation of any one individual. The SFOD A's nickname was the A Team. In reality, the typical special forces soldier was quite
different from the popular media image.
In reality, the minimum acceptable GT score from the battery of
army tests that every recruit must endure for special forces
volunteers was exactly the same as required to attend Officer
Candidate School, 110. Someone
told me recently that General Stiner once said [or wrote] that the
average IQ of special forces soldiers was higher than the average IQ
of the US Army general officer corps.
I wish I had known that back then, it would have helped to
explain a lot.
For
example, an A Team’s Weapons Sergeant may be an "animal"
from one of the airborne divisions' rifle companies who might order a meal in a local
restaurant and then chew up and swallow the chinaware and glassware after he consumes
the food. On the other
hand, you might consider that same team’s wily and meticulous
Intelligence Sergeant to be almost effeminate and the personality of the
other team members would usually rank somewhere in between those two
types.
SF was a haven for the soldiers that excelled in the boondocks
[woods], but who chafed at the strict discipline, boring
repetitious daily routine, harassment, and close supervision normally
found in garrison duty with conventional army units, especially line
units. A line unit is a unit whose
primary mission is direct combat with the enemy such as an infantry
rifle company. Some special forces soldiers underwent a great deal of formal training that was very demanding, but the only special forces-type of training many special forces soldiers ever received was strictly OJT [on the job training] with his Operational Detachment [team]. And some of those A Teams provided excellent training and many of the men that became special forces-qualified that way were excellent special forces soldiers. I am convinced that it was what was inside a man that made him a good special forces soldiers, not just the training. The typical special forces soldier knew the difference between work and play. When it was time to work, they worked hard; and when it was time to play, they played even harder — usually like a bunch of giant six-year old kids. In that sense, they were very much like a sports team. They were always teasing each other, but they always made "professionalism" and "competence" the norm even under the most trying of circumstances. If you ever read any of the Bar-20 series of books written by Clarence Mulford, you will see the same interaction between the cowhands on that ranch. The most famous of those ranch hands was Hopalong Cassidy. [By the way, the original Hoppy in the books was nothing like the Hollywierd Hoppy. Don't believe anything that comes out of Hollywierd.] The old-timer special forces soldiers never referred to themselves as "Green Berets," instead they usually referred to special forces simply as "Group" or "SF" and they referred to themselves as a "special forces soldier" or just plain "SF." Back then only 'outsiders' and the administrative and support personnel that were normally assigned to a special forces unit and the young first hitch special forces soldiers used the term "Green Berets". The only exception was usually when an SF soldier was trying to tell a civilian what unit he was in because they invariably did not understand what the term "Special Forces" meant. The soldier would usually have to add, "The green berets" and then the outsider would invariably say, "Ooooh yes."
Invariably,
a special forces soldier would encounter people who confused the role
of special forces with that of the Marines or the Rangers.
David Kirschbaum, a retired special forces soldier, came up
with the best explanation that I have heard for the question,
"What is the difference between Special Forces, the Marines, and
the Rangers?" Here is his explanation in David's own words:
"When
I wasn't sheltered in the bosom of SF, protected from all the outside
world by my comrades, I used to have to deal with other services and
even civilians <gasp!>. And
they'd ask me if I knew ’That Song’, and if I knew John Wayne, and
if the SEALs were really all that tough.
And then eventually, they'd come around to the big one.
They'd ask me what the difference was between SF, Rangers, and
Marines. And I had a
funny little anecdote down pat. Kept
it real simple for the civilians (and the Marines):
"You
tell the Marines to take that hill.
And they'll salute, and they'll head straight for the hill,
fighting their way through anything that's in their way, and right up
the hill, fighting and killing and dying the whole way.
And if there's a Marine left, he'll take the hill.
“And
then you tell the Rangers to take that hill.
And they'll salute, and then they'll go and plan for a couple
of days and write lots of orders and patrol plans, and they'll scheme
and plot. And then
they'll find the absolutely worst terrain they can find to go through,
preferably through swamps and up cliffs.
And then they'll wait for the absolutely worst weather
imaginable. And then
they'll go, hell bent for leather, and climb cliffs and go through
swamps, and won't feel they're doing it right unless they've lost half
their force to exhaustion. But if there's a Ranger left, he'll take the hill.
“And
then you tell Special Forces to take that hill.
And the first thing they'll do is stare at you and ask you why.
So you finally explain to them why.
And then they'll just go away.
And several things could happen.
They might take the hill.
Or they might take some other hill, but the evidence is so
blatantly obvious that the other hill was the right one to take all
along, that you can't even argue with them. Or they might pull some sort of deal and convince some other
outfit to take the hill.
“Or
you might find them all in the club, completely ignoring your orders.
And when you dare question them, you're soon convinced how
stupid an idea it was to take that hill at all and they all just saved
you from a court martial. And you owe them big time."
Remember,
David and I are describing the old Special Forces.
Throughout
the army, the best supply sergeant is usually the one who had the most
"horse trader" in his blood and the best mess sergeant is
the one that can take the same rations every other mess hall gets, but
offer his troops a choice of two different meats at every delicious
meal and never ran out of food before he ran out of troops.
Special forces usually tried to retain such people at all
costs, even if they weren’t airborne-qualified, much less special
forces-qualified. After
all, there is no need for cooks and other administrative and support
personnel to be "SF Qualified" anyway.
Sergeant Norman "Pork Chop" Racibor, who just may be
the best damn mess sergeant that ever served in the United States
Army, is the best example of this policy that comes to mind.
Pork Chop was with special forces when I joined SF and he was
still there when I left the SF teams for military intelligence duty.
Now,
special forces is a Branch of the US Army and their members wear the
"Crossed Arrows" branch insignia on their collar.
In the old days, we wore the "Unassigned" insignia on
our collars because SF was a "bastard" unit.
A bastard unit is one that does not have their own branch of
the army like the Infantry, the Armor, and the Artillery for example.
When we were a bastard unit, most of us thought we would be
better off if we had our own branch because we could get officers of
the same quality as the sergeants and keep them for their entire
career. Now that SF has
its own branch, all of the SFers who were in SF before the change that I have spoken to about
the change,
officers and enlisted, say it is worse off because now the
conventional army has full control of SF and they very quickly tried
to destroy it.
There
are no more "mascots" on SFODs [Special Forces
Operational Detachments] today.
Everyone that goes to an SFOD, including officers, must meet
the same minimum requirements, pass the same tests, go through the
same assessment and selection process, and go through the basic SF
training. Many of us old
timers who were fully SF-qualified back in the 50s, 60s, and early
70s, may not have qualified to wear the green beanie under the
rules of the new SF and many would not have wanted to because the new
SF is, in their opinion, too regimentized. However, the training now appears to be much better than what I received. For example, I trained for five SF missions into Southeast Asia [3 to Laos, 2 to Vietnam]. That mission training was sometimes rigorous, but 90% of it was not useful for the mission we actually performed.
Today’s
SF qualification training is more standardized, better thought out,
and it better meets the real world needs of both the mission and the
individual soldier. As of the
late 1980s only
about 500 candidates qualify for SF duty each year.
That’s out of six sessions each year of the SFAS and each
session usually starts out with 300 candidates.
That’s about 28% of those that meet the minimum requirements
to volunteer for SFAS in the first place.
If the candidate quits SFAS or jump school, he can never
reapply for SFAS. He can
fail and try again, but he can not quit and try again.
Today’s SF training is much tougher than it was back in the
old days. The old SF
relied more on the individual, but emphasized 'team integrity' much
more and relied on 'peer pressure' via 'peer review and evaluation' to
decide who would and would not be SF.
Would-be SF officers were subject to the same process, or at
least that is what I was told because that was even before my time.
We still had some of that when I served, but it was not by any
means the primary means of selection, except when recruiting men for a
mission.
[For complete and current details about Special Forces duty
search for, "U.S. Army
Special Forces: The Quiet Professionals" on the internet.]
The
original special forces soldier’s sense of humor and scrounging
abilities were legendary and never properly presented to the public
— neither were their reasons for joining special forces in the first
place. The motivation to
become a special forces soldier varies with each individual. This story will hopefully help fill in the blanks.
As you read this story, you may find some of the tales to be
absolutely unbelievable, but they are all based on actual events that
really happened. However,
the details in some of the events described in this work are
unavoidably more accurate than others. WANNA
BEES:
Propaganda
and theatrics by the national television news media and the
entertainment industry has given rise to a plague of Wanna Bee
Veterans [phony vets] in this country. Most Wanna Bee vets claim heroics in SF, SEALs, Rangers
and/or Long Range Recon Patrols [LRRP]. Many of them also throw
in being an escaped POW to boot. In a few
cases they claim all of the above. If
a man says, I am/was a 'Green Beret', you can almost bet your granny's
corset that everything that follows that will be a bunch of buffalo
chips because he is most likely a Wanna Bee! If he says, his
service was so secret, all of it was kept off his official US Army
personnel records and won't show up on any records search, he
is
a Wanna Bee! If he can't discuss it because he is being hunted
by hit men from the CIA, Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, etc, he
is
a Wanna Bee! If he claims to have been a POW, but his name
doesn't show up on any POW records because his mission was sooooo
secret, he
is
a Wanna Bee!
DEDICATION
AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
would like to express my appreciation and eternal gratitude to Carla
"Big Sister" Ponder, Lew "Loop Hole" Merryday and Grady
"Unka" Varnes for helping me to correct my many
typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors. It took three people to get the job done and I still managed
to screw it up. I also
wish to thank Unka Grady and Loop Hole Lew because they were the ones
that convinced me to write this story in the first place and that took
quite a bit of effort on their part because I knew
thousands of soldiers who were better soldiers than me and who
contributed much more than I did or ever will.
I
also wish to thank my partner-for-life, my best friend, and my wife,
Doris Eileen "Dorey" Ponder, and her mom, Nellie Moore
Ponder, for their patience while I was
working on this story. After
all, they never knew what I was doing, and still don't, but they
left me pretty much alone anyway and for a wife and mother-in-law that
is probably very unique.
I
dedicate this story to every enlisted man that has served in an
infantry rifle company or in a US Army Special Forces Operational
Detachment A [the A Team], but I especially dedicate it to
the men that served with special forces during the early years when
special forces soldiers were the "Sneaky Petes."
The men on the A Teams were the ones that built the reputation
of special forces and without them there would be no special forces as
we know it today. However,
I did not write this for any of the above men. I wrote this for the
kids in my family and extended family in hopes that it would help them
make better informed decisions about their future and the future of
our great country.
Our
time has passed and the Sneaky Petes, as we knew them, are gone
forever, but those Sneaky Petes and what they accomplished will never
be forgotten because those colorful imps made history.
Those men also made Special Forces a legend in their own time.
Special Forces has changed over the years, but hopefully it
will never die.
Donald
E. Valentine Enlistment & Basic Combat Training
Copyright 1997 -
Donald E. Valentine |