The Silent Warrior Foundation recently held their Whiskey & War Stories event honoring Operation Eagle Claw, the 1980 raid into Iran to rescue American Hostages. Part of the project is to capture history and they’ve done a great job with these short interview videos.
In this initial video Delta Operator Nick Nickel (CSM, Ret.) discusses his observations of the collision at Desert One.
FORT BELVOIR, Va. — Two decades ago as the nation reeled from the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a unique team of search and rescue Soldiers put their training to work at the Pentagon when they were needed the most.
The effects of that Tuesday morning left a lasting legacy on the Army’s Military District of Washington Engineer Company. Years later, the unit was renamed the 911th Technical Rescue Engineer Company for its efforts that day.
As flames and black smoke billowed from the Pentagon, the team rushed to the disaster site without waiting on orders and spent 10 days engaged in search and rescue operations.
Soldiers from the 911th TREC come from a variety of backgrounds — combat engineers, firefighters, horizontal and vertical construction engineers and various support specialties — who receive training and certification as rescue technicians and mine rescuers.
The 911th TREC is the only technical rescue company in the Department of Defense and its Soldiers train for “the nation’s darkest day daily,” said Capt. Joseph Thomson, its commander.
That September morning
On Interstate 395, a congested spur route connecting Virginia to Washington, D.C., Dewey Snavely was on terminal leave and adjusting to civilian life. The sergeant took a job at Sunbelt Rentals, a construction equipment rental company in Springfield, Virginia.
That morning he had already made a delivery to a nearby construction site and was heading to the next place on their schedule.
While driving, he listened to the radio as the situation unfolded in New York City, where a plane had struck the north tower of the World Trade Center. At first, many speculated the ways it could have been an accident.
But Snavely said he began to think the worst. His gut feeling was all but confirmed shortly after when a second jetliner struck the south tower.
Snavely asked his coworker, Dan, if driving into Washington, D.C., was the best idea, he said. Since the incident seemed limited to New York, his coworker believed it would be OK, so the pair continued their schedule.
Their next stop was on Shirlington Road in Arlington, roughly 3 miles from the Pentagon. That’s where they heard a low-flying plane soar overhead, Snavely said. Although hearing takeoffs and landings near the Reagan National Airport was common, it was never this loud.
Unbeknownst to Snavely, he heard American Airlines Flight 77 as the hijacked jetliner headed toward the Pentagon.
“We looked up, then kind of looked at each other,” he said. “[I thought,] ‘what the hell is that [pilot] doing?’ I’ll never forget the sound of the engines throttling back when they’re decelerating.”
Less than a minute later, Snavely heard AA 77 explode into the Pentagon’s western wall, killing everyone on board and 125 in the building. Black smoke filled the sky.
Snavely knew his terminal leave was over, and even if it wasn’t, he had a job to do.
Weeks before, Snavely had turned in all his Army gear, but he knew once the Pentagon was under attack it was time to turn around, head to Fort Belvoir and do what he was trained for, he said.
‘A quick response’
Around this time at Fort Belvoir, the rescue unit’s Soldiers were well into another training day.
“We [already] did all of our in-house training, from rope rescue to confined space to collapse structure, to shoring anything in that nature,” said Fred Brown, then a senior noncommissioned officer, who now works as a Fairfax County Government project manager.
It was just before 9 a.m. and Brown was preparing for his next training class when the news coverage from New York caught his eye.
A group of his Soldiers was on their way to a funeral service less than an hour away at Quantico. Brown called back the Soldiers, but with the incident occurring in New York his leadership insisted they continue.
That changed at 9:37 a.m. when five men affiliated with al-Qaeda deliberately flew AA 77 into the Pentagon, matching the tactic in New York. The unit would be tested for the first time.
Brown quickly called the squad back from Quantico and “got everything together,” he said. “We were prepared to move within an hour.”
America under attack
An initial team flew by helicopter with a sling load of basic search and rescue equipment, but was asked to land because the last hijacked plane was still in the sky, Brown said.
So, the team pre-staged at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. At Fort Belvoir, roughly 30 minutes south, more Soldiers loaded equipment into Humvees intended to rescue lives, said Snavely, who met with Brown on the ground.
Brown and Snavely left Fort Belvoir by Humvee before the main body to access the George Washington Parkway and met with the advanced team at Fort McNair.
When the unit arrived at the Pentagon, “there was a bit of chaos,” Brown said, adding that the incident commander expected them. The bulk of their unit arrived shortly after and they were joined by local, state and federal responders.
“While waiting on the main body [of the unit] to show up, we took the first squad into the building to do an initial search and rescue,” Brown said. “This was after everybody that was going to come out, could come out.”
As the fires blazed, it was still unclear how bad things were inside the building. But according to Brown, that was when their training kicked in. The untested unit was ready for the challenge.
“I didn’t think of anything except making sure that my guys were suited up correctly,” he said. “We were supplied with air apparatuses, and we went in and did the search.”
As horrific as the scene was, it was personal for Brown on another level.
“My mother-in-law was in the building somewhere,” he said. But “I didn’t know exactly where she was in relationship to the plane or where the plane went in.”
Cellphone technology was relatively new, Brown said, and even today the Pentagon’s thick walls hinder most personal phones. As more information became available, the situation for Brown’s family became grimmer.
“Sgt. Brown and I looked at where the plane hit, and relatively knowing where she worked,” Snavely said. “Nobody [had] heard from her, but her car was still in the parking lot.
“The plane hit and went right through her office. She was in the Army’s Budget Analyst’s Office. I got ahold of my father-in-law and he told me what room she was in. I had to notify him that if he hadn’t heard from her, she probably wasn’t alive anymore.”
Later, it was confirmed that Brown’s mother-in-law was killed. He would eventually locate her, although only “90% sure it was her,” he said, after his team spotted her personal effects, like her purse and government identification card.
The darkest day
“It was a living hell,” Snavely said. “When we first went in, there had been water sprayed on the building for so long, there was so much water in between the corridors, walkways had filled up with water.”
The water had nowhere to drain. Debris was everywhere, including parts of the plane, building and victims.
“Whenever we found human remains, we informed the [Federal Bureau of Investigation] because, by now, it is a known terrorist attack,” Snavely said, adding the FBI required them to mark where they spotted causalities to help identify them.
Snavely vividly remembers finding three Army officers, all face down, in an inner corridor. All three were intact, but appeared to have died instantly. He checked their wallets to identify them, then notified the FBI, he said. It would be the largest investigation in the bureau’s history.
From “the best that I can remember, everybody that we found died in the impact,” Snavely said. Although news footage would replay images of personnel running out of the building, they were all out by the time the Soldiers entered the building.
The recovery site was not like the others the unit trained for, such as responding to a natural disaster.
The heavy loss of life weighed on the Soldiers, who “were feeling a lot of disappointment,” Brown said, especially given how hard they trained to save lives. The Soldiers faced the realization they probably would not find anybody alive.
This was stressful for a unit that trains to rescue, Brown said. As the body count rose, it became more and more challenging to stay motivated.
“[We’re] search and recovery, but we switched into recovery mode only,” Brown said. “We just dealt with it. Many of the young Soldiers were recovering unrecognizable bodies, often unable to decipher burnt insulation from the flesh.
“It was hard on them,” he added. “I made them understand I appreciate what they’re doing, the country appreciates what they’re doing and to let me know if there are any issues they’re having.”
Always on call
However difficult the following days would be, one silver lining that always stuck with Snavely and Brown was how well trained the unit was, they said.
“We had a mission to do, we had a job to do and we went forward and we executed that job,” he said. Even though “I was on terminal leave, I couldn’t imagine not being there.”
According to Brown, the unit’s challenging, realistic training is why nobody from their team was hurt during the dangerous response effort.
“Everyone functioned as they should have,” Brown said, and “a lot of them continued in the military.”
Heading into the Pentagon mission, “we were an untested unit,” he added. “This unit was never in this situation before. Nobody knew exactly what we would face.”
In all, nearly 3,000 people died that morning in New York, Arlington and Pennsylvania. Decades later, the unit still maintains a high level of training and stands ready to be called on again.
“Soldiers train on five technical rescue disciplines,” Thomson said. “Those include rope rescue, confined space rescue, structural collapse, mine or tunnel rescue, and trench rescue.”
Today’s search and rescue Soldiers maintain readiness by aligning their training needs around their technical rescue disciplines, the captain added.
“It’s an honor to serve as the commander of the 911th, especially on the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001,” Thomson said. “This organization has deep roots and traditions that we always look to honor and uphold.”
In 2006, the unit was redesignated as the 911th to commemorate their recovery efforts at the Pentagon.
Since the attack, “the unit has grown by leaps and bounds,” Brown said. “They’ve gained equipment that we only dreamed of. It’s amazing to see how far they’ve come.”
Those leaps and bounds are a direct reflection of how they performed, he said.
“The biggest thing that I’m proud of is how well our training paid off,” Brown said, regarding the Pentagon mission. “The Soldiers that went in there performed their duty, and they did it well.”
By Thomas Brading, Army News Service
On September 1, 1942, the first Seabee unit to serve in a combat area, the Sixth Naval Construction Battalion (SeaBees), arrives on Guadalcanal.
I will not tell the story as there is a movie (with John Wayne, one of the seven he dies in), and I am posting a link at the bottom of an excellent article about them. I am going to say that Navy Seabees are some of the hardest working people you will ever find. I would rather have 1 Seabee than ten other people. They have built almost all the camps I have lived in since the first gulf war in Saudi Araba in 91 thru Iraq in the 2000s, and they never stop working on them to making them better. They build, they fight; you can ask them for something, and they will find it, they may be borrowing it, or they will make it. Indeed, some of the unsung heroes of the military.
Happy Birthday!
www.seabeesmuseum.com/seabee-history
archive.org/details/FightingSeabees44
There were two theaters of operation during World War II; one was the European Theater of Operation (ETO), where the allies fought against mainly Italy and Nazi Germany, and, on the other side of the world, was the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) where the U.S. and her allies were fighting the Empire of Japan. The Battle of Okinawa was one of the bloodiest and most violent battles of the Second World War, and it was also one of the most significant. The battle started on 01 April 1945 and lasted until 22 June 1945. Okinawa was the last stop on the Allied island-hopping campaign before reaching their ultimate target on mainland Japan. The U.S. suffered over 50,000 casualties in the battle, which was one of the main reasons Truman resorted to dropping the two Atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific.
www.historynet.com/battle-of-okinawa-operation-iceberg
However, a smaller island had to be taken first and might have played just as significant a role in ending the war.
Okinawa is a chain of islands, and one of them, the island of Le Shima (now called Ie Jima), had a significant airfield on it that the U.S. needed as a staging point for the planned invasion of Japan. There was a five-day battle for this island from 16-21 April. It is the battle where a Japanese machine gunner killed famed WWII war reporter Ernie Pyle. However, there is another significant reason this island should be acknowledged: it hosted the first Japanese unconditional surrender delegation. Most people are familiar with the recorded Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri on 07 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay.
But there was an initial meeting on Le Shima that most people do not know about, where the Japanese delegation arrived on the island around noon on 19 August 1945 on two “Betty” bombers (Mitsubishi G4M-1). They flew in specially marked planes painted white with big green crosses painted on them. They were escorted by the U.S. Army 345th Bombardment Group, who flew out in two American B-25J Mitchell bombers (an updated version of the same planes used to bomb Japan on Doolittle’s raid). The U.S. also had several Lockheed P-38 Lightning from the 80th Fighter Squadron who shadowed them.
A delegation of 16 military and civilian officials disembarked from the two bombers and met under the wing of the American C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft in the shade. The island’s American commander briefed them on their upcoming flight to the Philippines to negotiate with General Douglas MacArthur’s staff and other allied military representatives.
For the trip to Manila, the Japanese delegation boarded a C-54; when they landed, they were given the terms for their formal surrender and the conditions for the Allied occupation of the Japanese homeland. The two Betty crews were detained on the island overnight before the surrender delegation returned the next day from Manila and flew back to Japan.
One last note about the surrender, yet significant, was to Lt. Commander E. P. Clayton, Commanding officer of Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) 21 (Now SEAL Team FOUR), to whom a first surrender was made. Cdr. Clayton and his men were the first troops to land on mainland Japan. In the photo below here, he is seen accepting the sword of a Japanese Major. The latter was the commander of the coastal artillery battery at Cape Futtsu near the entrance of Tokyo Bay, across from the Yokosuka Naval Base, in an informal surrender ceremony on 29 August 1945. It was considered the first official surrender on the Japanese main island. A few hours later, the Japanese soldiers at Cape Futtsu marched out onto their parade ground in immaculate uniforms, opened ranks, and laid their rifles on the ground to surrender to UDT 21. Tears were running down their faces.
When Clayton returned to his ship, he was ordered by MacArthur to return the sword. Old Doug didn’t want anyone else to accept the Japanese’s surrender but him, and, like always, he had to have it on camera. (Yes, it was also protocoled that Doug should receive the first surrender.) At that point, Clayton was forced to return the sword to the Japanese Major, and they were told to surrender to the U.S. Marines the next day when they came ashore.
You’re probably seeing the earlier videos depicting the features of the iconic black over-dyed M65 Field Jackets which were modified for use by Delta’s Operation Eagle Claw rescuers.
The jackets are finished and ready for the Silent Warrior Foundation’s Whiskey & War Stories event and auction which kicks off tomorrow in Scottsdale, Arizona. (Big thanks to Alpha Industries for the jackets and Cory at Bergspitze Customs for making this happen!)
SWF President Dave Hall and Lona Spisso surprised Jim Fuller who donated a custom build AK for the auction with one of the Eagle Claw jackets. Greg Wong who works for Haley Strategic got a surprise as well as he was presented a jacket for his hard work behind the scenes at Whiskey & War Stories events over the years.
You don’t have to be at the event yo get in on the auction for some amazing items, visit whiskeyandwarstories2021.afrogs.org.
silentwarriorfoundation.com/pages/6th-annual-whiskey-war-stories
Like many stereotypical curmudgeons, as I go about my work here on the Homestead, I spend more time than I probably should relitigating episodes of my life in my mind. Second guessing decisions made or deferred, imagining how my life’s branches and sequels might have taken a divergent course – and perhaps affected the lives of others differently. Cataloging the satisfactory and the regrettable. I suppose it is a natural – albeit inconclusive – mental exercise. Of course, it is self-evident that getting older has not made me any smarter. Over the years, I have not gained a single IQ point despite benefiting from considerable formal education, extensive advanced training, and broad life experiences. I have accumulated considerably more knowledge over time, but not any more brains. I trust that means that I am perfectly qualified to continue to offer unsolicited advice to others. I am going to keep acting like it does.
The best place to start a story is near the beginning. I served as an infantryman in West Germany from 1975 to 1978. In this article, I will start talking about that first formative year or so when I was assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry (Mechanized), of the 3rd Infantry Division (patch at top left in the picture), stationed at Kitzingen, Germany. Bravo Company of that Battalion had been Audie Murphy’s unit in WWII. The unit crest is shown in the top right corner of the picture above. The unit motto “Can Do” and the dragon date back to the early 1900s and the Regiment’s 26 years of service in China. The four acorns commemorate the major battles the Regiment fought in during the Civil War: Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Murfreesboro, and Atlanta.
Although I had been in the training pipeline for some time stateside, it is safe to say that I did not have any firsthand knowledge of the “real” Army before I got there. Still, even I quickly recognized that the Army in the mid-70s was in pretty sad shape. The Vietnam war had left deep bruises in the Officer and NCO Corps. A number who remained in uniform immediately after the war were of markedly poor quality. Morale was low for those relatively few selfless professionals that had stayed on to rebuild. The draft had ended in 1973. In fact, at Fort Polk, I had in-processed as the last draftees were out-processing. One of them tried to convince me that he was naturally a better quality soldier than I was because he made the Army “come after him.” It was an interesting perspective, but it was not just him. Indeed, VOLAR – or the “Volunteer Army” – was an experiment that most of the leadership expected to fail. In 1975, there was not one leader in the Army that had ever served in an entirely all-volunteer force. Side note: eventually, I observed that the airborne qualified NCOs in my rifle company – who had grown up in always volunteer Airborne units – generally dealt with soldiers more positively as junior teammates. “Leg” NCOs, having grown up principally with draftees, tended to foster a more “us vs them” adversarial relationship with their soldiers.
I got off a chartered commercial plane at Rhein-Main Air Base in September. It was an ordeal that lasted several days to get from there to an actual unit. First, soldiers processed through the theater replacement center on the airfield. Then on to the Division of assignment. There were four complete Army Divisions stationed in Germany at the time and “Forward Brigades” of two other divisions. Not to mention two Corps HQs and an Army HQ and all the ancillary organizations – some 300,000 U.S. soldiers in all distributed throughout the country. In my case, I passed through the 3rd ID Replacement Detachment at Wurzburg, Germany, and then to my battalion in Kitzingen. I got there just in time for REFORGER 1975. In fact, when I got there, part of the unit had already moved out to a staging area. Therefore, I was not immediately assigned to a platoon and barely had enough time to draw my gear (no CIFs in those days, we got our TA50 from our Company Supply Room) before I was heading to the field in the back of a Deuce and a half.
As it turned out, the REFORGER exercises served to bookend – and in some sense define – my tour in Germany. In 1975 it was my first experience. I also played in the 1976 and 1977 iterations. REFORGER 1978 was my last time in the field before I was reassigned to Fort Lewis. REFORGER is an acronym for Return of Forces to Germany (RE-FOR-GER). It involved thousands of soldiers deploying from home stations in the U.S. to fall in on pre-positioned equipment warehoused in Germany, and then participate in a large-scale force-on-force wargame involving German-based American units as well as NATO Allies including the West Germans. Getting the forces from CONUS and drawing equipment was actually the most important strategic element of the exercise. The follow-on wargame itself was mostly for show; both to visibly reassure allies and the German population of our commitment and to – hopefully – deter the Soviet Union from invading. The picture above is from REFORGER 1982, but it perfectly captures the dynamics of the exercise I want to highlight below.
A large-scale, free play training exercise like REFORGER requires a lot of overhead. My new unit was going to play in the wargame; while I, and several others, got detailed to support the exercise Umpires. Umpires were only there to move the wargame along by adjudicating engagements (no MILES lasers in those days). They did not evaluate or provide feedback to the units like Observer Controllers do today. Since I did not know much of anything, I had a simple task. An NCO would drop a couple of us off with some water, a case of C-Rations, and wooden signs saying “OBSTACLE.” Whenever a unit approached us, we would inform them, via pre-printed and laminated 3×5 Cards, as to the nature of the obstacle. For example, a minefield or tank ditch – and how long it would take to reduce the obstacle once engineer assets were on site. Of course, an Umpire would show up about this time to keep everyone honest and assess casualties on both sides if the obstacle was defended as most – but not all – were. Then, as the units maneuvered through that obstacle, we would be moved to another location and do it all over again.
This routine went on for most of two weeks. Sometimes we were in place for only a couple of hours; however, in one case, we saw no one for two days because the “war’ had moved in a different direction and that particular notional obstacle had been bypassed with no contact between forces. The engagements themselves were anticlimactic, to say the least. Both sides would fire a few blanks, count coup, and the “losing” side would move off. As I recall, the weather was not too bad, the days were warm enough to go without field jackets and we were able to make fires most nights to ward off the chill. Still, I was in a foreign country and many of the fake obstacles were adjacent to – and even inside – the small towns. We had the German civilians – especially children – to interact with. Thankfully, they knew more English than I did German. I was surprised by how friendly they were, and how they took the major inconvenience of the wargames in stride. During that time, the West Germans took the Cold War and a Soviet invasion very seriously. Indeed, they knew a lot more about the threat than I did at that point.
Later, I became fairly familiar with the practical implications of the strategic “Mutually Assured Destruction” policy adopted by both sides in the Cold War. Elements of that doctrine are still in effect today – albeit not maintained at quite the same level of urgency. Those of us stationed in Germany in the 1970s fully expected to be in a no mercy, no quarter, no prisoners, and – ultimately – no win fight with the Soviet Armies in the vicinity of the famous “Fulda Gap” if war came. We also expected that whatever feats of collective valor or personal heroism or any tactical success we might achieve on the battlefield would be meaningless and unknown to history. Tactical nukes – including short-range tube artillery, and Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADMs) – were expected to be employed within the first couple of days. It did not matter which side used them first because the other would respond in kind immediately. And none of that mattered, because shortly after that line had been crossed, we would very likely have witnessed the contrails of the ICBMs of both sides being launched. So, within days of the initiation of hostilities, those at home that we were supposed to be defending would be dead. Barring a highly unlikely battlefield miracle, that was indeed the plan. I never liked that plan.
In any case, I was oblivious to all of that in the Fall of 1975. I actually enjoyed my tour of the German countryside and my brief cultural immersion. I even picked up a few words of German. What I did not get, was any professional development. I had only the vaguest understanding of what was happening. I do not think anyone ever took any time to explain what the exercise was supposed to accomplish. I had no map or compass and no clear idea where I was at any point. The soldiers I was partnered with were just as clueless. I did not know if the 3rd Infantry Division, or my Battalion, were playing good guys or bad guys in the wargame. I had no idea what patches represented Germany-based units or who the rotational units were. At the time I just thought that was how the Army rolled. Granted, no one needed to waste their time explaining the history of the Cold War and the geopolitical implications of the REFORGER series to PFC Baldwin. I was clearly not ready for that. However, I could have potentially contributed a lot more if I had been told how my role – no matter how small – fit into the bigger picture.
I found out that I hated to be in the dark. Later, I learned that most soldiers hate that. The more I knew about whatever mission was at hand, the more I wanted to know. Additionally, I learned that the more soldiers know about the mission the better they tended to perform. If anything, I came to believe in what some call “over communications.” As I practiced it, that meant routinely giving people more information than they might need immediately at their grade. Of course, a leader still does not want to swamp that PFC with more “strategic” level data than he or she can reasonably process or use. However, I have rarely found that there is any good reason to withhold any tactically relevant information from my subordinates. If you believe knowledge is power – and I do – then the more every member of the unit knows the better the chances for mission success.
I am going to take a couple of paragraphs to talk about tactical gear in those days. The Army was much more frugal then. Even the newest gear I was issued in Germany dated from the mid-1960s. I was issued an M1951 Field Jacket manufactured in 1958. So faded that it was practically white. But it was still “serviceable” so they kept issuing it. A mess kit with utensils and canteen cup all from the 1950s; and a Shelter Half with buttons not snaps from 1948. Although I did not yet know it, the M1956 Load Carrying Equipment (LCE) I was issued was already being slowly replaced with ALICE gear. I had only seen M1956 gear in training and did not see any ALICE until I got to Fort Lewis in the late Fall of 1978. We had no rucksacks in Germany. The nylon and aluminum Lightweight or Tropical Rucksacks had been special issue in Vietnam but were not authorized in temperate zone assignments.
Units literally could not even request items not already on their property books. If it had not already been issued, it was not authorized. To get a replacement, a Supply Sergeant had to first turn in some unserviceable remnant of the item to be replaced. There was no such thing as unit purchases either. I have attached a couple of pictures for those unfamiliar with M1956 LCE. At the bottom are five stalwart young troopers probably at some training base in CONUS. I am not one of them, but that is how I looked during REFORGER. We had the two-sided “Mitchell” camouflaged helmet covers with a brown side and a green side. These guys have the green side out. I probably had the brown side out during the exercise but I cannot swear to it. Change over dates were put out at the highest level and soldiers all switched on cue – regardless of the status of the surrounding vegetation.
On the top right (above) is a picture of the LCE as it appears in the manuals of the day like FM 21-15, Care and Use of Individual Clothing and Equipment. It shows the harness set up as a six-point system with the ammo pouch attachment straps spread out from the front suspender straps. That is not how it was normally worn. With three 20-round M16 magazines in the ammo pouch and a grenade or two mounted on the sides of the pouches, there was quite a bit of weight that needed to be counterbalanced. Most everyone aligned the ammo pouches with the suspenders with both straps running more or less down the center of the uniform pockets as you see in the top left picture. With a couple of C-Rations, a change of socks, and a poncho in the buttpack on the back the load balanced out quite well.
However, there was not a lot of free real estate on the belt or harness once both ammo pouches, a buttpack, canteen, entrenching tool, flashlight, and first aid pouch are added. That is why in the M1956 system, the bayonet piggybacks off the E-Tool in the picture. Again, despite what the manuals said, I never saw anyone set up their gear this way. In the Mechanized Infantry, we used the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) as our foxholes. The E-Tool was stowed in the duffel bag on the side or top of the track and rarely used. We just wore the bayonet directly attached to the left side of the belt instead. By the way, it did not matter if you were right or left-handed. The unit SOP and uniformity dictated which side the canteen and bayonet were required to be carried. Most SOPs were based on the pictures in the manuals – canteen on the right, E-Tool and/or bayonet on the left.
Furthermore, if you wore the M1956 E-Tool as shown it would beat your thighs black and blue in short order – even just walking at a quick pace. There was only one time when I remember mounting the E-Tool on my LCE. We were required to wear all the LCE components for the EIB 12 Mile Roadmarch. We turned the E-Tool carrier upside down and tied the handle as tight as we could to the suspenders. It was not entirely satisfactory, but was better than doing it “by the book.” We had to work with what we had. Back in the day, there was no such thing as an after-market gear source so options were limited to adapting what was issued. I have mentioned before that the Airborne Units of WWII famously used their organic Rigger detachments to manufacture Airborne specific items that did not exist in the Army supply system. To the Army’s credit, the post-Korean War M1956 system was well thought out, fairly comfortable, and, therefore, generally popular with the troops. Indeed, it was more comfortable than the follow-on ALICE harness. M1956 gear served as a system throughout the Vietnam War and some individual items – like buttpacks – soldiered on for a couple more decades after that. However, the fact that “extra” M1956 parts were not readily available to soldiers served to limit opportunities to hack or supplement that generation of tactical gear in any way.
Jumping ahead, ALICE gear was treated differently by the Army. The most important change was that the Army decided, unlike previous “field gear” items, to make ALICE components available at Clothing Sales Stores (CSS) for individual soldier purchase. And ALICE items were cheap. $4.00 for the Y-suspenders/ shoulder straps as I recall. Now soldiers finally had the option to buy more than they were issued. That meant even privates could have one clean new set for parades and another for the field. It meant that troopers could experiment and make adjustments to their gear in ways we could not with M1956 – adding extra ammo pouches for example. Concurrently, non-issue ALICE compatible items began to appear on the market from companies like Eagle, Blackhawk, and Brigade Quartermasters. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that ALICE and that CSS decision by the Army gave birth to the extensive tactical gear industry we know today.
I know a lot more now about how things work than I did then. Our M1956 LCE was already obsolescent in 1975 but still worked pretty well. We had battle-tested major end items like the M60A1 tanks shown in the first picture, and M113A1 APCs and UH1 Huey and Cobra Helicopters. We had a good number of truly great NCOs and Officers with extensive combat experience. Unfortunately, we had quite a few more that were not up to the Herculean challenge of rebuilding the Army after Vietnam. We had serious “indiscipline” problems and drug and alcohol abuse were endemic. A week after we got back to Kitzingen from REFORGER, two soldiers in my company overdosed on Heroin and died in the barracks. As Dorothy said, I was not in Kansas anymore. Like it or not, it was my Army now too.
De Oppresso Liber!?
LTC Terry Baldwin, US Army (Ret) served on active duty from 1975-2011 in various Infantry and Special Forces assignments. SSD is blessed to have him as both reader and contributor.
The formal history of the Coast Guard dates to August 4, 1790, when the first Congress ordered the building of 10 vessels to enforce federal tariff and trade regulations and combat smuggling. The Coast Guard, also known as the Revenue Marine and the Revenue Cutter Service in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, rose in number and responsibility as the country grew. The Coast Guard is one of the federal government’s oldest agencies, and until Congress founded the Navy Department in 1798, it was the country’s only afloat armed force. Throughout their lengthy history, the Coast Guard has defended the country and has proudly served in all of the country’s battles. Even now, our national defense responsibilities are one of our most critical functions.
The service was given its current name in 1915 when Congress combined the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service to create a unified maritime service focused on saving lives at sea and enforcing the nation’s maritime laws. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the transfer of the Lighthouse Service to the Coast Guard in 1939, the Coast Guard began to maintain the country’s aids to marine navigation, including running the nation’s lighthouses.
During World War II, the Coast Guard’s participation in amphibious operations was possibly the most critical war-related task the organization undertook. Surprisingly, the Coast Guard operated about 350 naval ships, including 76 LSTs, 21 cargo and attack-freight ships, 75 frigates, and 31 types of transport. In addition, the Coast Guard had almost 800 cutters, nearly 300 Army ships, and thousands of amphibious assault vessels on standby.
A group of small landing craft sped toward the beaches of Guadalcanal on September 27, 1942. About 500 troops from Col Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller’s 1st Battalion, 7th Marines were huddled on the beach, fighting for their life.
The Marines had landed on the beach earlier that day by the same group of landing craft, and now they were being retrieved. Coast Guard Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro guided his LCVP between the departing Marines and the Japanese as the LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) and LCMs (Landing Craft, Mechanized) approached the shore. Munro permitted the landing craft to safely evacuate all the Marines, including the injured, by placing his craft between the men on the beach and the enemy.
Munro guided his vessel away from the beach as the last men boarded. When the skies were nearly clear, Japanese gunfire struck Munro, killing him instantly. Munro received the Medal of Honor after his death. Given the Coast Guard’s rescuing legacy and the pivotal role the service played during WWII, it’s fitting that the service’s lone Medal of Honor recipient was involved in not only a rescue but also an amphibious operation.
The Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation of the Commerce Department was permanently transferred to the Coast Guard in 1946, bringing merchant marine licensing and merchant vessel safety under their jurisdiction.
The Coast Guard also played a significant role in Vietnam, doing everything from installing aids to navigation to supporting the war on the rivers and in the sky. The installed and manned Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) stations, allowing mariners and aviators to fix their positions correctly. The initial goal of the LORAN system was to offer electronic aids to mariners and aviators in places where there were no surface aids, relatively unexplored waters, or skies that were regularly clouded.
The Navy’s campaign to minimize coastal infiltration was aided by Coast Guard cutters, forcing communists to rely on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to maintain their insurgency in the south. According to wartime records, Coast Guard cutters boarded a quarter-million junks and sampans and took part in 6,000 naval firing exercises. The LORAN station in Tan My, Vietnam (U.S. Coast Guard) port missions caused significant damage to the enemy.
The Coast Guard-Air Force Aviator Exchange Program brought together Coast Guard and Air Force pilots. The program included two Coast Guard C-130 pilots, while the rest of the aviators were HH-3 helicopter pilots. The first of several Coast Guard helicopter pilots were posted to the Air Force’s 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang in the spring of 1968. Four Silver Star Medals, 15 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 86 Air Medals were among the medals and awards given to Coast Guard aviators as a result.
The Coast Guard has been part of the Department of Homeland Security since 2003, serving as the nation’s front-line agency for enforcing maritime laws, preserving the marine environment and the country’s enormous coastline and ports, and saving lives. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Coast Guard underwent significant modifications as part of the War on Terror. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Coast Guard used boat stations and cutters to safeguard U.S. ports, waterways, and coastlines. After the attacks, the Coast Guard shifted resources to serve additional maritime security functions required in the post-9/11 environment.
President George W. Bush signed the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) in 2002 to secure the nation’s ports and waterways from terrorist threats. The MTSA established a Coast Guard maritime security unit as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s layered approach to protecting seaports and waterways. The Coast Guard formed Maritime Safety and Security Teams (MSSTs) in the same year to assist the Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security missions and provide non-compliant vessel boarding capabilities for service missions. Waterside security, marine law enforcement, and K-9 explosives detection units are among the 11 MSST teams that exist today.
Military force protection, U.N. General Assemblies, national political conventions, international economic summits, disaster relief efforts, and major sporting events such as the Super Bowl have been MSST duties. They play a significant role in the war on drugs and keeping our streets safe. In F.Y. 2019, the Coast Guard removed 207.9 metric tons of cocaine and more than 63,000 pounds of marijuana from getting into the U.S. and Canada.
Lastly and possibly most importantly, they responded to 19,790 Search and Rescue cases, saved 3,560 lives, and more than $77 million in property. Some of the 3,560 are fishermen in Alaska, and the Coastie’s put their lives on the line every day to keep them safe.
IRON MOUNTAIN, Mich. – (July 30, 2021) Kitfox Design Group is proud to launch their latest and most exciting product yet, The Vietnam Throw blanket. A concerted effort to recognize our military’s history, and a humble nod and a thank you to the servicemen and women who fought in Vietnam.
The Vietnam Throw is woven in a small family-owned mill located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The throw features a Colt XM177E1, Huey helicopters, and a selection of other items and foliage reminiscent of the Vietnam War. The throw blankets are made on European Jacquard looms with roughly eight miles of American made, 100% cotton yarn.
“I had a very rough draft of the pattern tucked away for a few years. My grandfather is a Vietnam Veteran, and because of him, the Vietnam War has always intrigued me, but especially so with his silence on the matter,” said Sara Westman, the owner and illustrator at Kitfox Design Group. “But I never could figure out what to do with the artwork. The idea finally came to me on a beach in Pensacola when I couldn’t stop thinking about how inconveniently small my beach towel was. I thought to myself that I’d rather be laying out on a blanket – and here we are. I am hoping that both military history fans and Vietnam Veterans enjoy this project as much as I have enjoyed learning about the Vietnam War and creating the art.”
Pre-orders open July 30th at 9am Central and will close at 11:59pm Central on August 9th. The orders will begin shipping roughly 4-6 weeks after pre-orders close.
The throw will retail at $125 + shipping, and will ship worldwide. All orders placed on July 30th will receive an early bird gift. In addition to the throw blanket, Kitfox will also be launching a small collection of other items within the Vietnam War theme.
“Items in the collection will include the enamel pins and stickers that our fans are used to seeing from us, but we are also pretty excited about some custom apparel and lifestyle items that we have been working on.”
The throw blanket and other items in The Vietnam Collection are available for purchase on the Kitfox website.
Kitfox Design Group is a marketing and illustration company located in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Kitfox Design Group specializes in marketing goods for the firearm, automotive, and aerospace industries. Pre-order The Vietnam Throw on their website at www.kitfoxdesigngroup.com
