"It's that ambush-like reception despite a B-52 strike that opens the disturbing possibility of treachery and, it turns out, it was more than a mere possibility. One year after the COSVN raid, the NSA twice intercepted enemy messages warning of imminent SOG operations which could only have come from a mole or moles in SOG headquarters. It would only be long after the war that it became clear Hanoi s Trinh Sat had penetrated SOG, inserting at least one high ranking South Vietnamese officer in SOG whose treachery killed untold Americans, including, most likely, the COSVN raiders.
I wonder what was being said by Mad Dog on the radio after his death or capture.
No one has ever said so I guess it is 'classified.'
One article stated the attack by the VC was an ambush and the enemy was very prepared.
They walked right into a trap."
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I stand humbled, every-time I post on the man.
If you read much fiction about Vietnam, or even watch movies about it, chances are you’ll frequently bump into a character who has become a stereotype of the subgenre. This stereotype was rarely, if ever, seen in film or fiction before Vietnam.
The character is
eccentric on his good days; psychotic the rest of the time. He is
almost oblivious to regulations, protocol, rank and military
traditions. He wouldn’t last a day in a professional military
force…if he wasn’t such an effective killing machine in the bush.
He is almost a
super-soldier when in the field. He’s got the hearing and smell of
a dog, the vision of an eagle and the lives of a cat. His instincts
are far beyond Sgt. Rock’s “combat antenna.” He’s fearless in
battle, probably because there’s nobody as scary as him on the
battlefield. He’s rarely seen in garrison, but when he is, he’s a
peacetime/rear echelon sergeant-major’s nightmare.
In short, he’s not so
much a soldier as a warrior. And he’s probably as insane as the
Vietnam War itself. At least he seems so to your average civilian.
Turns out this
stereotype had an archetype…or prototype, if you will.
This recurring
character is strikingly similar to (or perhaps a caricature of) the
real-life special operators on the SOG teams and various
reconnaissance projects in Vietnam. And the most legendary (and
archetypal) of those operators was Jerry “Mad Dog” Shriver.
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