In two of our recent videos, we discussed the worst jobs of the Second World War, and
while many men and women suffered and perished undertaking the same terrible tasks across
different wars, some wars gave rise to new and unique jobs — some better, some far
worse. In this video, we're going to leap forward some ten years into the sticky jungles
of Southeast Asia and check out some of the terrible jobs military personnel were assigned
during the Vietnam War.
Long-range reconnaissance patrol or LRRP units are well-armed teams that conducted recon
deep behind enemy lines, and by 1967, each brigade or division of the United States Army
in the Vietnam War had an LRRP unit attached to it. While LRRPs were supported by local
scouts, they no less operated in dangerous territory with limited supplies, and their
survival skills were put ceaselessly to the test.
LRRP veteran Thomas Corpora described the environment in which he worked: "We were half
a dozen Americans trapped by North Vietnamese soldiers 2,500 meters from the Cambodian border.
[...] The jungle [...] was our jail. If we tried to crawl away, the deadfall on the jungle
floor would sound like popcorn gone mad. Our only hope was the monsoon ...Its driving rains
would drown the sounds... " Corpora also said his supplies for five days included just ten
dried rations and four canteens of water, and veteran LRRP Jerry Prater stated, "[...] One
thing I learned was just how important it was to always have full canteens of water
because you never knew when you might be cut off from *all* sources of water."
Henry Salas, an LRRP squad leader who served in Nam, said: "The things we had to do to
survive will never leave me [...]," and veteran and author Gary O'Neal spoke about his time
in an LRRP unit as well: "There was basically only one rule, do whatever you had to do to
survive. [...] No one [gave] us any bullshit about uniforms or military procedure. ...The
more time any of us spent in the field, the farther away we got from any type of normal
behaviour. To survive out there in the jungle, fighting an enemy who understood the environment,
we went native."
Besides standard recon, one of an LRRP units' most important jobs was calling in artillery
and air support — such as helicopter gunships — and laying waste to enemy positions. While
LRRPs boasted exceptional kill to death ratios, they still suffered high casualties, and many
LRRP units set out into enemy territory only to never be heard from again.
Tiger Force was a highly decorated and highly infamous LRRP unit. In the latter years of
the war, the unit was accused of some seriously heinous war crimes, including but not limited
to "the routine torture and execution of prisoners," "the routine practice of cutting off and collecting
the ears of victims," and "the practice of cutting off and collecting the scalps of victims,"
so maybe their victims are more deserving of a place in this video than Tiger Force
are.
LRRP units were basically spec ops units, and another spec ops unit of the Vietnam War
which was prone to a disproportionate amount of danger was MACV-SOG. SOG conducted covert
unconventional warfare — gathering intel, capturing enemy prisoners, undertaking rescue
operations, undertaking sabotage operations, and undertaking other clandestine operations
(including psychological warfare ops), among other things. Like LRRP units, SOG had incredibly
high kill to death ratios, boasting a ratio of 158 to one in 1970, but their casualties
were even worse than the LRRPs, with half of all SOGs perishing in 1968, and with every
single one of them sustaining at least one injury. Many SOG teams, just like LRRPs, went
out into enemy territory and never returned, and very few SOG personnel survived capture.
SOG Charles Francis Wilklow, for instance, was captured by the North Vietnamese when
his chopper was shot down. They set Wilklow free only to stalk him through the jungle
for several days, trying to use him as bait to lure out and kill his friends. But his
captors underestimated Wilklow's health, thinking he hadn't the strength to make a break for
it, which he did. It was only because of his irregular situation, and a little luck, that
Wilklow make it home alive.
In an interview, veteran John McGovern explained why he didn't back down from highly dangerous
SOG missions: "What kept us going [...]? Pride in ourselves and our job after all, we were
Special Forces and if I refused I would not be able to look anyone in the face again."
When asked the same question in his own interview, veteran Bill Kendall replied, "As far as what
may have drove each one of us to continue doing what we were doing, I don't feel there
is a logical reason for it ...You had to base your decisions on your own instincts and hope
and pray you would be right."
Maybe the only thing more dangerous than being behind enemy lines is being behind enemy lines
and underground. Such was the labour of tunnel rats in the Vietnam War. Essentially, North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers constructed labyrinthine tunnel networks before and during
the war, accessible to only those of small stature, and riddled with all manner of traps
and hazards, including anti-personnel mines, spike traps, venomous snakes and scorpions,
and poison gas. The role of the tunnel rats was to slide headfirst into said tunnels in
small teams and scout them out, providing intel to the surface via radio and disarming
surface mines and traps from below. The plan was to do this without being seen, so tunnel
rats descended into the dark bowels of the earth with little more than a pistol, a knife,
and a torch. If they were spotted, they were up against more numerous and heavily armed
opponents; gunfire in such confined spaces would both blind and deafen them, and hand-to-hand
combat often ensued. Sometimes, tunnel rats even set C4 charges, so they could later destroy
the tunnels and their contents. Tunnel rat casualty rates averaged 33%.
American tunnel rat Jack Flowers described what it was like under the ground: "We'd enter
the tunnel one at a time, separated by several feet, so a grenade wouldn't get us all. You'd
feel your way along for booby traps. It got so you could sense them. The same for VC.
You could smell another human being in the tunnel. You knew he was waiting for you in
the dark. [...] You had to control and direct the fear. You made each movement with infinite
care. Your senses never were more acute. In the tunnels, your adrenalin was pumping like
a river. I swear I could hear my heart beating."
Australian tunnel rat Jim Marett said the term "tunnel rat" was a catchall name for
the work carried out by sappers or combat engineers like himself. In Marett's words,
"[...] As dangerous as that work was, most of our casualties were aboveground, when we
engaged in the other part of our job: finding and disarming mines and booby traps."
Now, we covered stretcher-bearers in our second video on the worst jobs of World War II, though
helicopter casualty evacuation or "Dustoff" is stretcher-bearing on steroids. Helicopters
existed during the Second World War, but the technology was still developing, and they
weren't used so often. In the Vietnam War, however, choppers were commonplace, and it
was during this conflict that the United States conceived a dedicated helicopter ambulance
corps. If there were roads through the jungle at all, they were poor and subject to ambushes
and landmines. With Dustoff crews, roads weren't needed, and the wounded and sick could be
helicopter-lifted out of the fray in less than 35 minutes, with the medical personnel
on board tending to them while in motion. But the fray is a dangerous place, and Dustoff
choppers and their crews were quite often sitting ducks.
In their book *Dust Off: Army Aeromedical Evacuation in Vietnam,* authors Peter Dorland
and James Nanney wrote, "Theirs was one of the most dangerous types of aviation [...]. Slightly
more than a third of the aviators became casualties in their work, and the crew chiefs and medical
corpsmen who accompanied them suffered similarly." Dorland and Nanney also stated that the rate
of air ambulance loss to hostile fire was "3.3 times that of all other forms of helicopter
missions in the Vietnam War" and that aviators considering the job were forewarned that it
"was a good way to get killed."
Veteran Dustoff crew chief Randal Drew spoke of his Dustoff experiences: "Some of the crew
chiefs would stay in a hot LZ and join the fight ...I chose not to do that. It was risky
enough in an unarmed medevac. I served on different Hueys and was shot down 10 times..."
Drew also described one specific mission in the Mekong Delta: "The air was thick with
gunpowder; even from 3,000 feet up we could smell it. Phantom jets were screaming in beneath
us dropping napalm and green tracers were dancing around our chopper. We took 34 hits.
About a mile away we had to set her down. [...] I think that’s the scariest moment
I remember." Finally, Drew said, "I still can hear guys with their arms or legs blown
off asking me to kill them."
Now, it might have been a dangerous and terrifying job, but Dustoff crews evacuated more than
900,000 wounded and sick throughout the Vietnam War, and their value cannot be understated.
Now, we covered stretcher-bearers in our second video on the worst jobs of World War II, though
helicopter casualty evacuation or "Dustoff" is stretcher-bearing on steroids. Helicopters
existed during the Second World War, but the technology was still developing, and they
weren't used so often. In the Vietnam War, however, choppers were commonplace, and it
was during this conflict that the United States conceived a dedicated helicopter ambulance
corps. If there were roads through the jungle at all, they were poor and subject to ambushes
and landmines. With Dustoff crews, roads weren't needed, and the wounded and sick could be
helicopter-lifted out of the fray in less than 35 minutes, with the medical personnel
on board tending to them while in motion. But the fray is a dangerous place, and Dustoff
choppers and their crews were quite often sitting ducks.
In their book *Dust Off: Army Aeromedical Evacuation in Vietnam,* authors Peter Dorland
and James Nanney wrote, "Theirs was one of the most dangerous types of aviation [...]. Slightly
more than a third of the aviators became casualties in their work, and the crew chiefs and medical
corpsmen who accompanied them suffered similarly." Dorland and Nanney also stated that the rate
of air ambulance loss to hostile fire was "3.3 times that of all other forms of helicopter
missions in the Vietnam War" and that aviators considering the job were forewarned that it
"was a good way to get killed."
Veteran Dustoff crew chief Randal Drew spoke of his Dustoff experiences: "Some of the crew
chiefs would stay in a hot LZ and join the fight ...I chose not to do that. It was risky
enough in an unarmed medevac. I served on different Hueys and was shot down 10 times..."
Drew also described one specific mission in the Mekong Delta: "The air was thick with
gunpowder; even from 3,000 feet up we could smell it. Phantom jets were screaming in beneath
us dropping napalm and green tracers were dancing around our chopper. We took 34 hits.
About a mile away we had to set her down. [...] I think that’s the scariest moment
I remember." Finally, Drew said, "I still can hear guys with their arms or legs blown
off asking me to kill them."
Now, it might have been a dangerous and terrifying job, but Dustoff crews evacuated more than
900,000 wounded and sick throughout the Vietnam War, and their value cannot be understated.