This is Jockel Podcast number 180 with Echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.

It was May 1968.

We were triple volunteers. We had volunteered and graduated from the Army's Parachute Jump School at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Made it through the qualification course at the Special Forces Training Group in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

And after attending the fifth Special Forces Group Airborne in Country Training Program, we had volunteered to serve in Mac V Sogs, Command and Control.

During Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, several of the Green Berets teaching various courses told us to avoid C&C because the duty was rough and the Special Forces casualties were high in the top secret unit.

Despite all those warnings, Rick Howard, John McIntyre, Rick Estes, Tony Harell, Mark Gentry, Bob Garcia, Bobby D Leathers, myself and a few others volunteered to serve in C&C.

I'd been in training or in between training cycles since entering the Army on 1 December 1966. In May 1968, we were finally shifting gears from being in a training mode to an operational mode.

None of the rumors prepared us for what followed.

You won't need those, the Sergeant Major said, put away all pens, pencils and notebooks. This is a top secret briefing. All of you have either obtained a top secret clearance or will do so in the near future or you wouldn't be here.

Welcome to the Command and Control Detachment of the fifth Special Forces Group Airborne, first Special Forces, United States Army Special Operations Augmentation, Study and Observations Group, or simply C&C.

Gentlemen, before you is a confidentiality agreement. You can't tell your girlfriend, your mother, no one.

We were prohibited from writing anything about the operation forbidden from keeping diaries, taking photos, making drawings or tape recordings, notes of any sort.

The Sergeant Major advised us that anyone who didn't want to sign the agreement could leave.

Gentlemen, the Sergeant Major turned toward a generic map on the wall. The North Vietnamese Army controls these neutral countries and pointed to Cambodia and Laos, located to the west of the Republic of South Vietnam and of course North Vietnam.

For several years, the North Vietnamese Army had moved soldiers, supplies, rockets, guns and propaganda south into the eastern provinces of neutral, Laos and Cambodia.

Through an ever-increasing network of trails and roads called the Ho Chi Minh Trail Complex.

Now listen up real close, the Sergeant Major said.

When you go across the fence, you will carry no identification of any manner, shape or form.

That meant no identification papers, no dog tags, no diaries, no photos, no love letters and certainly no green berets.

Everyone would wear sterile fatigues with no company insignia, no name tags, no unit designators, no jump wings or combat infantrymen badges.

Why? Without giving anyone a chance to respond, he said that because Laos and Cambodia were neutral, the United States government could publicly proclaim that the US represpected that neutrality.

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