Somewhere in the rainforests of Laos, in the early hours of a May morning in 1968, Sergeant John Allan was lying in a bomb crater between the bodies of his comrades. Hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers were closing in, throwing grenades and firing into the crater. In a last-ditch effort to escape, Sergeant Allan ordered an air strike on his own position. The explosions destroyed the attacking force and created a diversion, allowing him to slip out of the back of the crater into the jungle. Two hours later he was located and rescued.
Sergeant Allan was part of a secret unit of the US Army that had a casualty rate of over 100%. This unit’s soldiers fought with no dog tags or insignia, even removing name tags from their uniforms. All volunteers, these soldiers had to sign NDAs, hiding their stories for decades. As SOG member John Stryker Meyer wrote in his book Across the Fence, “If I died, no one would tell my mother the truth.” The unit operated under a deliberately boring name “Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group”, abbreviated to of MACV-SOG. As the North Vietnamese communists increased their infiltration into South Vietnam SOG was setup to harass, interdict and sabotage their invasion routes. SOG teams gathered intelligence, mined roads, took prisoners and waged psychological warfare. The teams achieved a kill rate of 158 to 1, the highest in American military history. With more backing, their daring tactics could have been decisive in the Vietnam war.
MACV-SOG operated in ‘spike teams’ of six or ‘hatchet teams’ of 30. The teams, unusually, were made up of mostly South Vietnamese soldiers. They fought outside the borders of Vietnam, in the forests of Laos and Cambodia, where US soldiers were officially not allowed to operate. But this was where the North Vietnamese had built the Ho Chi Minh trail, a network of camouflaged roads to move men and munitions into South Vietnam. The Americans knew that if they could block the trail, they could win the war.
MACV-SOG’s style warfare was very different from the typical US preference for mechanised, set-piece battles with huge amounts of ordnance. In Vietnam the wastage was extraordinary. When Moshe Dayan, chief-of-staff of the Israeli army, spent two weeks with an American rifle company, he witnessed a battle against around 200 Vietnamese. Dayan said the Americans fired more artillery – over 25,000 rounds – than he had used in entire campaigns. And there was little to show for all this firepower. The opposition just retreated back into the bush.
As Colonel David Hackworth, who served in South Vietnam, pointed out, “This approach was expensive too. Each artillery round might cost $100. If you fire 10,000 rounds, you’ve probably gone through a million dollars in one 15-minute fight, and you’ve killed seven enemy.”
“The guerrilla was not going to fight in that way.” Hackworth explained. “The guerrilla’s manner of fighting was to hit and run, so he could be alive to fight another day. He wasn’t into these huge, stand-up battles.” MACV-SOG took a leaf out of their book, using their own tactics against them. Spike teams mined the roads, left behind defective ammunition within enemy lines, tapped North Vietnamese phone lines and booby trapped the Ho Chi Minh trail.
MACV-SOG used the enemy’s tactics against him, breaking up into small units and fighting fire with fire. As the US commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland said, “Our special operations units represent the sharpest instrument in our military arsenal. Their ability to penetrate enemy-controlled territories provides intelligence and tactical advantages that conventional forces cannot achieve.”
Fighting like this was effective, but also incredibly dangerous. Virtually everybody was wounded more than once and almost half SOG operatives were killed. Many missions were overrun, and at least 11 SOG teams simply vanished. Their motto was “You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died”. When ‘across the fence’ in enemy territory, the teams were outnumbered 1000-1. To avoid the tracking dogs and specially-trained ‘sapper’ units, MACV-SOG fighters ate the same food and smoked the same cigarettes as the locals, to make sure they – and their excretions – smelt the same. They had to master the ability to move incredibly slowly in the undergrowth – sometimes just a few feet per hour, to avoid making that rustle which meant certain death. As well as the enemy they had to fight the heat, the insects, thickets of thorns and 12 feet high elephant-grass, sharp as razors.
MACV-SOG was also a great example of cooperation between Vietnamese and American soldiers. Most of the soldiers in SOG were Vietnamese and they fought with extreme gallantry. The rescue helicopters were also flown by incredibly brave Vietnamese pilots.
If more widely used, this type of warfare could have a great impact. When Colonel Hackworth tried guerrilla tactics in his sector, the communists were decisively defeated. “We didn’t fight in these huge formations,” Hackworth said, “We fought like the guerrillas. We broke up and fought in small units of five or seven people. We fought at night. We stole the night from the enemy. We ambushed. We didn’t march in large formations and expect to meet an opponent marching in a large formation. We fought him using his very tactics, his very skills. The proof of the pudding was, six months later, that battalion had lost only 25 American soldiers. It had killed over twenty-six hundred enemy soldiers, and there were no Vietcong in its area of operation.
MACV-SOG’s approach was to take the war to the North Vietnamese. This was in stark contrast to the typical American tactics in Vietnam, where almost 90% of all contacts were enemy-initiated. The tactics of MACV-SOG offered one of the only ways the Americans seized the initiative in the war.
But MACV-SOG and its tactics were kept secret. Worried about world and public opinion, the Americans were embarrassed about these missions and denied that any US troops were operating outside Vietnam. When news of SOG and other secret operations did emerge, the media were often extremely critical. “The Special Forces have become the point of the spear in a war that seems increasingly immoral and unwinnable,” wrote influential war correspondent, David Halberstam. “Their covert operations represent the darkest, most morally ambiguous aspect of American military intervention.” Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated that units like SOG, “operate in a moral twilight zone, conducting missions that blur the lines between legitimate warfare and state-sponsored terrorism. Their actions frequently violate international conventions of armed conflict.”
Political concern over such views meant that MACV-SOG and its approach never received the backing needed to turn the tide of the war. This was not through lack of effectiveness as SOG tied down thousands of enemy troops, disrupted their supplies and sowed fear and confusion all down the Ho Chi Minh trail. The US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger wrote that, “The cross-border operations were not merely tactical manoeuvres, but strategic necessities in disrupting the communist supply infrastructure. These missions represented our most effective method of interdicting enemy capabilities.” Colonel John Singlaub, a veteran of MACV-SOG, remembers that, “Our operations in Laos and Cambodia were not just missions, they were survival strategies. We were striking directly at the heart of the enemy’s logistical capabilities, saving American lives through precision and audacity.”
MACV-SOG blazed a trail for modern special forces – the first leader of Delta Force was a veteran of SOG – and it is clear more widespread, aggressive use of SOG and its tactics might have had a significant impact on the outcome of the war. But this never happened. The US stuck to its big army tactics and of the 2.4 million US troops who served in Vietnam, no more than 1,000 were ever fighting in SOG. Even much of the intelligence SOG gathered – such as the extent of North Vietnamese infiltration and the involvement of Russian advisers – had to be kept secret. If revealed, such information might have boosted public support for the war.
As Senator Barry Goldwater put it, “These brave men of our special forces are fighting the most critical battles of our generation – battles that will never be fully recognized but are essential to containing communist expansion in Southeast Asia.”