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By Root 1689 0

Me Thout. Sometimes Gillespie, dressed in a green field uniform, was out inspecting security positions with his Montagnard battalion commander. At other times, he’d be seated with the council of elders, dressed in traditional Rhade tribal attire and sipping rice beer through a long bamboo straw. When he spoke with Major Brooks, they talked about supply problems, enemy movements, air support, and the ongoing Vietnamese-Montagnard tensions. At the council of tribal leaders, topics ranged from military training to veterinary needs. Often this involved ceremonies in which Gillespie and his mountain people consulted with and/or placated the endless number of spirits that control such things among the Rhade. In the photos associated with this story of the Special Forces at Buon Brieng, Captain Gillespie and his team sergeants looked haunted and tired. Whether they were on patrol, on security duty, training with their tribesmen, or catching an hour’s sleep in team hut, they were never more than an arm’s length from their rifle. Who were these men? I wondered as I reread the article in my room at Annapolis. And how can a twenty-seven-year-old Army captain from Lawton, Oklahoma, have so much responsibility in such a faraway place?

This is a classic example of the work of modern Special Forces. Captain Gillespie and his team were responsible for the care, feeding, and welfare of over two thousand souls and the combat deployment of a seven-hundred-man irregular force. They were forty minutes by air from any American base or any American support. Each day, they made decisions that ranged from life and death to pedestrian. They built schools, hired retainers, established security positions, constructed an airstrip, handled supplies, observed tribal customs, arbitrated local disputes, put down revolts, managed a medical clinic, reasoned with elders, and fought a war. Most combat units today deploy to a base and discharge their duties within a single, narrow focus—security, supply, combat patrol, air control, or some other specialty. Gillespie and his men did it all—what might be expected of a brigade staff with dozens of support personnel and camp followers. War is never inexpensive, but if there is war on the cheap, this was it. In Gillespie’s case, compare the cost of keeping a seven-hundred-man U.S. Army battalion or a battalion of marines in the field to the cost of a twelve-man Special Forces team and supplying their indigenous force, usually with obsolete weapons and dated surplus field equipment. And regarding this indigenous force, since it’s their homes and their country, they’re often more effective than a deployed American combat battalion. Furthermore, when they are fully trained and on the job, our troops can then go home—or never have to leave home. Special Forces have done this all over the world, just as they are today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Looking back at my own experience in Vietnam as a Navy SEAL, it was primarily a direct-action war. It was dangerous business and often quite terrifying out there at night on the canals or in the mangrove looking for Vietcong. But we SEALs usually had a safe haven to return to, a place where we could get a hot shower, a hot meal, and, if there were no mortar attacks, some undisturbed rest. When we were not in the field, a base security element watched over us. For the most part we were among other Americans or with American support close by. Life was simple—eat, sleep, and go out and look for bad guys. The Special Forces detachments out there living with the hill tribes enjoyed none of these amenities. And detachment commanders like Captain Gillespie had a lot more on their plate than simply leading combat operations. I stand in awe of them and what they were able to accomplish in that war.

A decade after Rogers’s Rangers fought the French and Indians, our nation waged a war of independence against England. A man named Francis Marion, known as the Swamp Fox for his daring raids against the British in South Carolina and Georgia, built on the special operations legacy of Robert