National Geographic:January 1965 American Special Forces in VietNam
- Thread starter Ravage
- Start date
It seems, there is a another story behind the heroic events that this particular copy of NG describes. I hope its not already told in another thread.
In "War stories of the Green Berets", (a book by Hans Halberstand), one of the central figures of this uprising, Cpt. Gillespi tells this story.
The US SF commanders of 5 out of the 6 camps (Gillespies was the 6th) could not stop the revolt in their camps and were relieved as part of an Army effort to whitewash the hole incident.
IN fact Gillespie "blames" himself because when others said that it was impossible to stop the answer from above was "Gillespies camp did not revolt".
Major Edwin Brooks (on the cover of this magazine copy) tried to protect his A-Det Comanders and was relieved of his duties, despite the fact that he almost single handedly stopped the rebellion from spreading further or getting organised, in effect ending it.
According to the same account, this copy of NG when published a bit later, directly contradicted the "official" Army report, led to an investigation, and as a result the report was withdrawn and copies destroyed.
Anyway, this particular copy of National Geographic (the original one) was my first "contact" with what SF do when I was about 11-12 years old, since my brother in law kept a collection of issues going back to 1963!
I was then fascinated by this different kind of special soldiers that eat, live train and fight, with men of so different a culture.
30+ years passed and its amazing to see it here!
In "War stories of the Green Berets", (a book by Hans Halberstand), one of the central figures of this uprising, Cpt. Gillespi tells this story.
The US SF commanders of 5 out of the 6 camps (Gillespies was the 6th) could not stop the revolt in their camps and were relieved as part of an Army effort to whitewash the hole incident.
IN fact Gillespie "blames" himself because when others said that it was impossible to stop the answer from above was "Gillespies camp did not revolt".
Major Edwin Brooks (on the cover of this magazine copy) tried to protect his A-Det Comanders and was relieved of his duties, despite the fact that he almost single handedly stopped the rebellion from spreading further or getting organised, in effect ending it.
According to the same account, this copy of NG when published a bit later, directly contradicted the "official" Army report, led to an investigation, and as a result the report was withdrawn and copies destroyed.
Anyway, this particular copy of National Geographic (the original one) was my first "contact" with what SF do when I was about 11-12 years old, since my brother in law kept a collection of issues going back to 1963!
I was then fascinated by this different kind of special soldiers that eat, live train and fight, with men of so different a culture.
30+ years passed and its amazing to see it here!
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