by Robin Moore
Green Berets
The Amazing Story of the U.S. Army's Elite Special Forces Unit
Robin Moore
Major General Thomas R. Csrnko
Copyright © 1965, 1999, 2007 by Robin Moore
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to: Skyhorse Publishing, 555 Eighth Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moore, Robin, 1925–
The green berets / Robin Moore. -- [Rev. ed.].
p. cm.
9781602390171
ISBN-10: 1-60239-017-7 (paperback)
1. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Fiction. 2. United States. Army. Special Forces--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.0644G7 2007
813’.54—dc22
2007010577
Printed in Canada
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword by Major General Thomas R. Csrnko
Introduction to the 2007 Edition
Introduction to the 1999 Edition
Badge of Courage - 1965
1 - A Green Beret—All the Way
2 - The Immortal Sergeant Hanks
3 - Combat Pay
4 - The Cao-Dai Pagoda
5 - Two Birds With One Stone
6 - Coup De Grâce
7 - Home to Nanette
8 - Fourteen VC POWs
9 - The Immodest Mr. Pomfret
10 - Hit ’Em Where They Live
11 - The Consummate Green Beret General Henry Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Afterword The Lesson of the Wall
Foreword by Major General Thomas R. Csrnko
There are many accounts of the Special Forces, commonly known as the “Green Berets.” Historians, scholars, and other informed writers have provided excellent information about what composes the unique fabric of a Special Forces Soldier. However, the study of their doctrine and training reveals only the exterior of these Quiet Professionals, and a bystander watching the men in action still barely scratches the surface. He or she cannot truly understand the intestinal fortitude it takes to step off an aircraft into a pitch-black sky and fall to an unseen landing zone far below. The bystander will never really understand the personal courage and moral integrity it takes to choose the best of many undesirable choices when working with an indigenous guerilla leader in a distant country. Nor will this person properly be able to explain the dedication and commitment required to infiltrate a hostile environment in the dead of night while carrying a hundred-pound, swamp-drenched pack for countless hours in order to arrive in time to accomplish a tactical mission with strategic implications.
Robin Moore is not a bystander. He is the first and only civilian to have the unique understanding of the men of the Special Forces because he was granted the opportunity to complete a year of Special Forces training by a leader now known as the “Father of the Modern Green Berets,” Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough. In fact, Yarborough credited Robin Moore with “making the term Green Berets a household word both among fellow Americans and around the world.” This tribute is a result of Robin’s understanding of the nuances that make Special Forces Soldiers the U.S. military’s premier unconventional warfare experts.
The depiction of the life, dangers, and accomplishments of the Special Forces in The Green Berets displays how much has remained the same since it was originally written. As we continue the struggles of the twenty-first century, the same blend of character, personal courage, dedication, and honesty combined with technical military skills and superior physical conditioning is necessary for the soldiers who have earned the Green Beret and continue to liberate the oppressed throughout the world.
De Oppresso Liber,
MAJOR GENERAL THOMAS R. CSRNKO
United States Army
This foreword is the opinion of the author and does not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or United States Government.
Introduction to the 2007 Edition
For many years it has been heartening to hear men tell me that they read The Green Berets in high school (or even earlier) and decided that they wanted to become part of the U.S. Army Special Forces. My reaction is “then I have not lived in vain.”
No man has ever told me that he regretted joining up. Many say the Special Forces experience changed the course of their lives when, after serving as a Green Beret, they went into government agencies like the CIA, FBI, State, and Defense Departments, as well as law enforcement on a statewide or local level.
Others became successful businessmen, and some turned out to become writers of distinction.
I helped form the Special Forces Literary Guild to encourage men and women to write books and stories and poetry that would memorialize the military exploits of which they were part.
I have also known the equally discordant experience of having women come up to me to say their son read my book, joined Special Forces, and was killed in action. There is no good answer to this. But I do try to encourage such mothers to talk about their sons. This seems to relieve the sorrow with which they will live for the rest of their lives.
I was in Pakistan and Afghanistan for Christmas of 2001 with the Special Forces men and told them of this newest edition of The Green Berets. All were eager to have the new edition even though many of them had read the book.
The men of today’s Green Berets are computer experts and carry their Compaq laptops into combat. With this marvelous equipment they can direct battles, find targets for the bombers, and guide them in with pinpoint accuracy. The first generation of Special Forces (1956 to 1974) were just beginning to experiment with computers in 1972.
Men from Europe’s armies in WWII were enabled (under the Lodge Act of 1955) to join the U.S. Army Special Forces and become citizens after five years of service. Men like Larry Thornie, the great Finnish combat officer, were typical of the first generation of Green Berets.
Another was Sully de Fontaine. He was an innovative officer and A team commander in this first great generation of Special Forces officers recruited in Europe.
Lou Feistenhammer was an outstanding Special Forces officer who became the ipso facto mayor of Bad Toltz, Germany.
The home of the 10th Special Forces Group, Bad Toltz, is still legendary for its new Americans who became commanders and out-standing enlisted men and officers in the U.S. Army Special Forces.
This, then, is the story of the first generation of Green Berets, a colorful, hard-fighting group of commissioned and noncommissioned officers, and the multilingual twelve-man A teams they formed.
The second generation of Green Berets joined up in the seventies with such mentors as Colonel Chargin’ Charlie Beckwith and Colonel James (Nick) Rowe teaching them the lessons learned in Vietnam and subsequently in special operations around the world. They made an outstanding contribution in the battles of Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait. They were also instrumental in storming Panama during Operation Just Cause.
And now the third generation of Special Forces is fighting the Terrorist Wars, first against the Taliban in Afghanistan, then in Iraq and onward to wherever the battle might take them, carrying their Compaq laptops along with their conv
entional weapons.
So, read and be fascinated by the stories of the first generation of U.S. Army Special Forces in the pages of this new edition of The Green Berets.
ROBIN MOORE
Introduction to the 1999 Edition
Ten major publishing houses turned down The Green Berets in 1964. It wasn’t until Arthur Fields, a wheelchair-bound WWII combat veteran and an editor at Crown Publishers was given the manuscript to read that I found an ally in the publishing business. Arthur, who recognized that the war in Vietnam was about to break open, persuaded his bosses to give me an advance, and he guided this book to a successful conclusion despite Crown only chancing a print run of 2,500 copies in the first edition.
Although I had complete cooperation while researching this book, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated an old school of thought was revived in the Pentagon. JFK had felt that only professionals like Special Forces should “advise” in Vietnam. With his demise those opposed to elite units like Special Forces in the military found new encouragement at the Department of Defense and as the conflict expanded Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara became the custodian of the Vietnam War.
The book was finished 31 December, 1964 and was published in late April, 1965. I offered the Pentagon an opportunity to review the book but since it was fiction, with names and locations disguised, the offer was declined.
As early reviews of the book trickled out and it began to be read by denizens of the Pentagon, the Special Forces men I had visited were questioned about where my information had originated, and I was summoned one day in early May of’ 65 by Major General George Underwood, the Army public relations chief. Mr. Underwood brought out a copy of the book and pointed to eighteen red tags attached to various pages. “See these red flags?” he asked. “Each one marks a page with top secret need to know only material on it.”
“Certainly there is nothing in this book that the enemy isn’t well aware of,” I protested. “The only people that don’t know are the Americans who are paying for the war.”
And that was the crux of the matter. Mr. McNamara did not want the American people to realize what a disaster we were in. There was talk of indicting and trying me under the secrets act for disclosing top secret information. Fortunately for me the secret clearance I had been promised when Jack Kennedy was president had been pulled two weeks after his death by Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. The Defense establishment at the time did not want an elite sector of the army to come into existence. The conventional military worried that President Kennedy was encouraging a unit of elite troops to be formed and had personally given their commander, Major General (at the time) William P. Yarborough, official permission for his men to wear the green beret as part of their uniform. The fact that a civilian author was allowed to go to the lengths extended to me to “glorify” special forces was most distasteful to them.
One step taken by the Pentagon to reduce the effect of the book was to demand that the publisher put a yellow band around its cover which proclaimed it to be fiction and not factual. This resulted in The New York Times military editor, Hanson Baldwin, coming out with a story called Book on U.S. Forces in Vietnam Stirs Army Ire, which was syndicated all over the United States. The story went on to quote the yellow band which was headlined “Fiction Stranger Than Fact?” and The New York Times printed a large picture of the book’s cover.
As The Green Berets mounted the best-seller lists Arthur Sylvester, who had pulled my security clearance in the first place, pushed for taking me to trial on the secrets act. He somehow failed to realize that by pulling my clearance I was not bound by the security act. I later learned that Representative Gerald Ford, whose committee I had first reported to after my return from Vietnam had read into the Congressional Record those parts of the book that were to have been used against me, thereby declassifying them.
But the animosity of the Pentagon, led by Robert McNamara and Sylvester, lingered on. Every time I heard from anti-war advocates that I had glorified the war in Vietnam I suggested they actually read the book (most refused) or consult with the Defense Department to get their opinion on it. They would have seen that, far from glorifying the war, this book graphically emphasized what was wrong with it, and what was right with the men of the Special Forces.
When Special Forces medic Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler came to me with a tape he had made of his singing and twanging on a guitar “The Ballad of the Green Berets” I helped Barry rewrite the words and found a professional to work on the music. We persuaded RCA Victor to record the song and have Barry sing it on The Ed Sullivan Show. The Ballad became an instant number one hit on the charts and the Green Berets were indeed glorified, to a point where my old nemesis at DoD, Arthur Sylvester, forced RCA not to let me write the copy on the album cover or mention my name. I was, however, the co-author of the song and they couldn’t take my name off the label.
It was the idea of Lieutenant General Yarborough to try and get a first class comic strip about the Green Berets syndicated. I went to Jerry Capp (brother of A1 Capp, creator of “Li’l Abner”) for advice on this and Jerry put together an artist, Joe Kubert, and comic strip writer, Howard Liss, to create the strip with me, which he sold for syndication. It was a most successful feature until the anti-war activists, not realizing that The Green Berets was an anti-Vietnam war creation, complained bitterly to the newspapers running the strip. This was particularly true of the academic community around Boston. Newspapers began dropping the strip and finally after three years it was canceled by the syndicate.
Then came the John Wayne movie. At first it was David Wolper, the military documentary specialist, who wanted to make it. But the Pentagon told Wolper that he would get no more Defense Department cooperation on his profitable war docudramas so he broke a signed contract with me. When Wayne came along the Pentagon again tried to block the movie fearing that John Wayne would glorify the Green Berets beyond the Defense Department’s ability to phase the unit out of the military. As a result of the opposition by DoD to the John Wayne film, the Duke bought the movie rights from me for $35,000 and 5% of his undefined profits. He told me, and I realized it was true, that he didn’t know whether he’d be able to make the movie since he needed Defense Department assistance, helicopters, etc. to make the film properly. I accepted the deal and the Duke got on the telephone to the White House and as the story was relayed to me he said, “Lyndon, I’m going to make the picture, with you or without you. Are you going to help me or not?” Lyndon Johnson couldn’t say no to the Duke directly and The Green Berets became a highly successful film.
Forty-odd years after the publication of Berets and the Warner release of John Wayne’s movie, the worst fears of the 1960s and early 70s Pentagon have become reality. Special forces has become a branch of the U.S. Army like artillery, signal corps, engineers, and infantry, among others. And, as the reader will discover, the final chapter of this revised edition is a short biographical sketch of former Green Beret, General Henry Hugh Shelton, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest post in the U.S. military.
ROBIN MOORE
Badge of Courage
1965
The Green Berets is a book of truth. I planned and researched it originally to be an account presenting, through a series of actual incidents, an inside informed view of the almost unknown marvelous undercover work of our Special Forces in Vietnam and countries around the world. It was to be a factual book based on personal experience, first-hand knowledge and observation, naming persons and places. But it turned out that there were major obstacles and disadvantages in this straight reportorial method. And so, for the variety of reasons mentioned below, I decided I could present the truth better and more accurately in the form of fiction.
You will find in these pages many things that you will find hard to believe. Believe them. They happened this way. I changed details and names, but I did not change the basic truth. I could not tell the basic truth wit
hout changing the details and the names. Here’s why.
Many of the stories incorporate a number of events which if reported merely in isolation would fail to give the full meaning and background of the war in Vietnam. Saigon’s elite press corps, and such excellent feature writers as Jim Lucas of Scripps-Howard, Jack Langguth of The New York Times, and Dickey Chappell of The Reader’s Digest have reported the detailed incidents in the war. I felt that my job in this book was to give the broad overall picture of how Special Forces men operate, so each story basically is representative of a different facet of Special Forces action in wars like the one in Vietnam.
Also, as will be seen, Special Forces operations are, at times, highly unconventional. To report such occurrences factually, giving names, dates, and locations, could only embarrass U.S. planners in Vietnam and might even jeopardize the careers of invaluable officers. Time and again, I promised harried and heroic Special Forces men that their confidences were “off the record.” To show the kind of men they are, to present an honest, comprehensive, and informed picture of their activities, one must get to know them as no writer could who was bound to report exactly what he saw and heard.
Moreover, I was in the unique—and enviable—position of having official aid and assistance without being bound by official restrictions. Even though I always made it clear I was in Vietnam in an unofficial capacity, under these auspices much was shown and told to me. I did not want to pull punches; at the same time I felt it wasn’t right to abuse these special privileges and confidences by doing a straight reporting job.