Vietnam

 What a wonderful decade. The highs were higher, the lows lower, and the betweens frequent. I was in my twenties. Time crept, allowing for so much more living than any other period before or since. The songs of the time were more felt than heard and served as an encouraging backdrop to even the worst of situations. I was a soldier, eager and proud. One who lamented not having fought in the big one, World War II. Not a draftee, not a drugee. Not of that generation. No, I idealized those more experienced Green Beret soldiers who had been to war. 

Following two years or so of rigorous training that included Airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, and Rigger School I was assigned to the Special Warfare Centers High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) Committee. Six months later I was reassigned to a Special Forces A team and found myself on my way to Vietnam for the first of many deployments. 

Our missions were covertly combat-related while many other deployed teams were openly advisor-related. The advisors remained under the typical Army command structure, others, like us, as far as we could tell, were completely under the control of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). We were not performing "legally". We weren't there. The CIA during the early 60s operated out of what was officially named the Studies and Observation Group (SOG). The United States had not yet committed combat troops in support of the South Vietnamese. Our missions were of three types, recovery (mostly of downed pilots), reconnaissance, and assassination. Sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction with South Vietnamese Special Forces or Montagnard tribesmen. We could be inserted into North Vietnam, Lao, Cambodia, Thailand, and, of course, South Vietnam. Plausible Deniability was