The HORRORS of LRRP Teams In Vietnam

Nine men. That’s all there were. Before Spike Team Alabama’s helicopter even touched the ground, their radio operator spotted something through the tree line that made his stomach drop. An NVA regimental flag. AK-47 fire erupted before they were off the skids. One helicopter was shot down seconds after insertion.

And then things got worse. For the next 12 hours, those nine Americans fought for their lives against what they later learned was an entire North Vietnamese Army division. 10,000 enemy soldiers against nine recon men. The story starts with a catastrophic failure. On May 15th, 1964, the US military launched Project Leaping Lena. The concept was simple.

Drop small teams of Vietnamese soldiers, trained by American Special Forces, into Laos to gather intelligence on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The results were devastating. 40 men parachuted into Laos across five separate teams. Only five came back alive. But here’s the thing. The concept itself actually worked.

The teams that survived brought back intelligence that traditional patrols never could have gathered. So, the military didn’t abandon the idea. They refined it. In October 1964, Leaping Lena was redesignated as Project Delta under the command of a man named Major Charles Beckwith. Beckwith had spent a year training with the British SAS, and he brought that experience to Vietnam.

Small teams. Deep penetration, complete self-reliance. Project Delta became the prototype for everything that followed. And what followed would become the most dangerous job in Vietnam. By December 1965, the first provisional LRRP platoon was formed within the 101st Airborne Division. Within months, every major division in Vietnam wanted one.

On July 8th, 1966, General William Westmoreland made it official. Every infantry division and separate brigade in Vietnam would have its own LRRP unit. But getting enough trained men to fill those units, that was going to require something new. The name Recondo was Westmoreland’s own invention. He combined reconnaissance, commando, and doughboy into a single word.

But what happened inside that school was [music] no gimmick. 3 weeks, 20 days, 310 hours of training crammed into what should have taken months. The instructors were what the army called triple volunteers. Men who had volunteered for the army, then volunteered for airborne, then volunteered again for Special Forces.

They weren’t teaching theory. They were teaching survival. Students learned how to adjust live artillery fire, how to direct tactical air strikes on actual targets, how to move through enemy territory without making a sound. Map reading alone had the highest failure rate of any block of instruction. But the final exam is what gave the school its nickname.

For 3 to 4 days, students went on an actual combat patrol into the mountains west of [music] Nha Trang. Real jungle, real enemy, real bullets. At least two students were killed during these training patrols. Many more were wounded. And that was just to graduate. Nearly four in 10 men who started the course never finished it.

But those who did receive something that meant more than any badge. A Recondo number recorded in their permanent personnel file. And the knowledge that they had earned a spot in one of the most exclusive and dangerous units in the entire US military. The question now was simple. Could they survive what came next? A standard LRRP team had five or six men.

That’s it. No reinforcements within miles. No quick reaction force on standby. Just six soldiers against whatever was out there. The point man walked [music] first. That was the most dangerous position in Vietnam. One wrong step, one missed tripwire. And the whole team was compromised. The radio operator carried an AN/PRC-25.

23 lb with the battery. Teams often carried two radios because everyone understood one truth. That radio was the only thing connecting them to survival. Getting into enemy territory required an elaborate deception. A typical insertion used five helicopters. The insertion ship and the chase ship would perform what they called a leapfrogging dance.

One helicopter drops into a clearing. Hovers for a few seconds. Makes it look like men are getting off. Then it pulls up and the other helicopter does the same thing at another location. They’d do this at least four or five times before the actual insertion. When the real drop finally happened, the helicopter hovered just a little longer.

and the team jumped from the skids, sometimes dropping 12 feet to the ground. Then they’d lie completely still, not moving, not breathing, just listening to the jungle for several minutes before even beginning to move. Every piece of equipment was taped to eliminate noise. Before each mission, every man would jump up and down while teammates listened for any rattle.

Dog tags were removed or taped together. The radio antenna was folded and tucked inside the jacket because NVA forces specifically targeted RTOs. SOG teams operating across the border into Laos took it even further. They’d eat local food and smoke Vietnamese cigarettes before patrols because enemy trackers could actually smell the difference between American and Vietnamese diets.

And if they were discovered, that’s when everything became about one thing, getting out alive. Reinel Martinez served 19 months with the 101st Airborne’s original LRRP detachment. In his book, Six Silent Men, he captured what every LRRP understood. During Operation Union Town 3 in early 1968, Company F conducted 117 patrols.

34% of those patrols required emergency extraction. That means roughly one in three teams was compromised badly enough to need immediate rescue. And some teams were never rescued at all. In March 1967, the 4th Infantry Division lost radio contact with a LRRP team in the Plei Doc area. They sent the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry to find them.

The rescue force was ambushed. Company A suffered 22 dead. The missing LRRP team was never found. A helicopter pilot’s account recorded a voice that became his recurring nightmare for 20 years afterward. Through the static, a voice calling out as his helicopter pulled away from an overrun landing zone. He never learned the team’s fate.

On October 21st, 1968, all six members of Sergeant Bill Cone’s team from the 1st Infantry Division were killed. Along with them, four helicopter crewmen attempting extraction. 10 men dead trying to save six. By 1969, the NVA had grown experienced at countering LRRP tactics. They deployed dedicated counter recon teams to hunt the small patrols.

SOG teams in Laos faced specially trained tracker units, landing zone watchers, and entire companies whose only job was to destroy the Green Berets. Craig Jorgenson survived 54 missions as point man in just 10 months with the 1st Cavalry Division. He later wrote about what that experience was like. On November 17th, 1969, his five-man team was overrun.

Two men killed immediately. A third incapacitated. And when Jorgenson radioed for help, headquarters told him no quick reaction force was available. He and his team leader fought back-to-back, refusing to abandon their dead until help finally arrived. The 1st Cavalry Division’s LRRP company, later designated Company H of the 75th Infantry, would become the most decorated and longest-serving Ranger unit in continuous combat in US military history.

Over 1,000 men served. More than half were wounded. But those who survived carried something else home with them. Something that wouldn’t show up for years. Some stories don’t have survivors to tell them. Staff Sergeant Laszlo Rabel was born Laszlo Rabel in Budapest, Hungary in 1937. When Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary to crush the 1956 revolution, he escaped.

He made his way to America and enlisted in the army. On November 13th, 1968, Rabel was leading Team Delta of the 74th Infantry Detachment on Hill 819 in Binh Dinh Province when he detected enemy movement approaching his team’s perimeter. An enemy grenade landed among his men. Rabel had a choice. Dive for cover and hope his men could scatter in time, or do what he did.

He absorbed the full blast. Every member of Team Delta survived. Laszlo Rabel was 31 years old. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Specialist 4 Robert Law became the first US Army Ranger to receive the Medal of Honor while assigned to a Ranger unit. On February 22nd, 1969, his team made contact with an enemy patrol in Thua Thien Province.

When a grenade landed in his team’s position, there was a stream directly behind him. He could have jumped into it and survived. Instead, he threw himself on the grenade. He was 24 years old. Staff Sergeant Robert Pruden was 20 years old when he led a six-man team on an ambush mission on November 29th, 1969. When a team member became trapped in the open by heavy fire, Pruden left his concealed position and charged the enemy to draw fire away from his man.

He was hit twice. He kept attacking. A third wound brought him down directly in in of the enemy positions. Even then, mortally wounded, he directed his men into defensive positions and called for evacuation before he died. Sergeant First Class Gary Littrell is one of the few Medal of Honor recipients from LRRP operations who survived to receive it.

From April 4th to April 8th, 1970, Littrell was the sole American advisor left alive with the 23rd Battalion, Second Ranger Group on Hill 763 near Doc Shang. An NVA mortar barrage had killed the Vietnamese commander and every other American advisor. For four straight days, Littrell held together a battalion of 473 South Vietnamese Rangers surrounded by an estimated 5,000 NVA soldiers.

He directed air strikes to within 50 m of friendly positions. He shouted encouragement in Vietnamese. He refused to give up. President Nixon presented his Medal of Honor on October 15th, 1973. On that date, every LRRP and LRP company in Vietnam was redesignated. They became lettered Ranger companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment, linking their lineage to Merrill’s Marauders of World War II.

The choice was deliberate. The Army was connecting the LRRP tradition of deep reconnaissance to Merrill’s long-range jungle operations in Burma, rather than the direct action Ranger tradition of Normandy. On August 15th, 1972, Company H of the 75th Infantry, the First Cavalry Division’s Rangers, was the last US Ranger unit deactivated in Vietnam.

Two days earlier, Sergeant Elvis Weldon Osborn Jr. and Corporal Jeffrey Allan Moore of that unit became the the US Army infantrymen killed in ground combat in Vietnam. But the lineage didn’t end there. When the Army activated the first Ranger Battalion on July 1st, 1974, the colors came from Company C of the 75th.

When the second Ranger Battalion stood up 3 months later, the colors came from Company H. The last Rangers in Vietnam became the first Rangers of the modern era. The men who served in those units, fewer than perhaps 5,000 Americans across all LRRP, LRP, and Ranger companies, produced an impact that far exceeded their numbers.

23,000 patrols, an estimated 10,000 enemy killed, a kill ratio that reached as high as 400 to 1. But numbers don’t capture what these men carried home. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that 30% [music] of theater veterans experienced lifetime PTSD. Vietnam veterans carry a suicide risk 23% higher than the general population.

The LRRP Ranger Association has stated that because of the nature of their missions, any LRRP veteran filing for disability should, and they stress the word should, be awarded 100% disability. More than 50 years later, the men who operated in those dark green shadows still carry the weight of what they saw and what they did.

Lieutenant General John H. Hayes, Jr. called them holders of the most uncomfortable and dangerous job in Vietnam. Every single one of them was a volunteer. They went into places where six [music] men had no business surviving. They gathered intelligence that shaped [music] the course of battles. They directed firepower that saved thousands of American lives.

And when things went wrong, they fought their way out or died trying. The LURPs weren’t looking for glory. They were doing a job that someone had to do in conditions that would break anyone. And they did it knowing that one wrong step meant they might never come home. If you want to learn more about the special operations units of the Vietnam War, click the video on screen now.