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5th Special Forces Group

Rucking Review, Doing It the Right Way is Very Important

In our Selection preparation, we always stress the importance of Rucking and the value that all of the services put on it in the Special Operations community. The services will all stress the 45-pound minimum in training and one of the frequent questions we get is why train with 45-pounds when in reality the amount will be much more.

The 45-pound weight is considered the minimum, it is a baseline that everything is based on. That isn’t the ceiling but the floor. As we’ll get to in just a moment. Carrying a ruck is the basic mode of transportation that every Special Operations Forces trooper will have to master. In Selection, it isn’t just a physical test and yes you will be tested physically there, but a mental one. You’re going to get tired, hungry, sore and worn down. The rucksack is the vehicle by the cadre to see who has the intestinal fortitude to keep putting one foot in front of the other and drive on with the mission.

It is even more important in the Special Forces Selection and Assessment Course (SFAS). That 45-pounds as we said above is the floor. That is the baseline of weight before a candidate has to add his food and water. And then the cadre of SFAS have no shortage of events for the candidate to increase that weight exponentially each day.

So, if you aspiring SOF candidates are following along with physical training program, on Sunday (we always do a Sunday ruck, to pay homage to the SF gods) we had a five-mile ruck on the agenda and I, for one was looking forward to it.

We’ve had a pretty sustained heat wave with high humidity up here in the Northeast for quite a while now. On Saturday afternoon, massive thunderstorms ripped thru the area but in their aftermath brought crisp, cool air with an almost autumn feel with it. The air was dry and temps in the low ‘60s, perfect rucking weather.

So as I was trudging along in the dark at about 0520, I decided to take another route and extend the distance (arthritic knees and all) for about another mile and a half into my neighboring town. While trudging along I made some mental notes to pass along about the basics of rucking and ensuring that we all are doing the little things right.

Boots and Socks: Are we all wearing two pairs of socks, turned inside out so the stitching isn’t rubbing and causing hot spots? The inner sock should be one of those nylon or polypro socks to wick away the moisture from your feet and put on some foot powder as well to help with the same.

Your boots have to fit snugly but not too tight, especially in the heel and have them laced up to where they are comfortable enough without being too tight and cutting off your circulation. Are your second pair of boots broken in well enough?

Packing Your Ruck: During training or train up for Selection, you don’t need to have a bunch of gear in your ruck, just the prescribed amount of weight, in my case a sandbag in the radio pouch. Again, going over the basics here, the reason you want the sandbag up higher between your shoulder blades is that you don’t have the weight down low pulling on your lower back.

If you do decide to opt for a gear-laden ruck, follow the same guidelines, the heavier items go on the top and as close to the frame as possible. You don’t want heavier crap far away from your body. Why? It is a simple case of leverage. The next time you are in the gym, walk back and forth around the gym a few times with a heavy dumbbell pressed against your chest. Easy right? Now do it with those dumbbells extended away from your body.

It is a lesson that once learned will stick with you. Once during training, a friend tripped over an exposed root in the dark and twisted his knee up pretty good. We were going to walk him out to a road and have him exfiltrated to the hospital just to be on the safe side. In the dark, we divvied up his essential gear to be shared amongst the rest of us lucky souls. The boss asked me to carry his radio and I, of course, said sure. As I was helping the injured guy to his feet, the boss stuffed the radio in my ruck. We loaded up and moved out.

It took all of about a quarter mile to realize, in his haste, he stuffed it on the outside. A big mistake of mine for not checking. It felt like it weighed about three times the actual weight. If you doubt it, try it once and put the heavy stuff on the outside and feel it for yourself.

Have your Camelback system handy to where you can drink on the fly and not have to stop or fumble for it. In training, it isn’t a big deal but once you’re in the Selection Course it will matter a great deal.

Just as a force of habit, I still pack a basic survival kit, (photo) with stuff I’d need in the case of an emergency, which while rucking along a road or trail in town seems ludicrous but it is just a good habit to get in, and good habits die hard. Why do I carry an extra water bottle when I have a Camelback? Some of us, myself included, are weird when it comes to people drinking out of my Camelback. If I come across someone that needs a drink, I will gladly share and even give them my spare water bottle. But unless of a dire emergency, I don’t care for anyone else drinking out of my kit.

Stride Out Without Running: In your training prior to Selection, we stress always to go as fast as you can without running. It puts way too much stress on your knees and lower back and you don’t want to hurt yourself before you even arrive.

And of course, it goes without saying that when you are in the course and conducting a gated event such as a long-range movement that is timed, do what you have to do to pass. If you need to make up time, lightly jogging down any hills or the flat terrain will help get ahead of the power curve or makeup time if you were slowed down for any reason.

During your train up is the time to find your ideal pace. You know what the standards are, (15-minute mile pace), and of course, you want to better that each and every time you go out there. Once you find your optimum pace that you can say do a 12-miler for that is well within the time limits, keep that pace and use it as your baseline.

You won’t know the details of the distances during Selection and probably won’t know how far you’ve gone on the gated events there. That’s why having your pace down pat is so important. It is why we stress the leg training that we do in our PT program. It builds the strength and power to push you thru these ruck marches much easier.

A quick word about posture, while you don’t want to be bent over staring at the tops of your boots, (that won’t go over well in the course and is dangerous while rucking along the roads here), you’ll find that the best way is to bend slightly at the waist and lean forward as you ruck. On steep uphill climbs, you may want to lean forward even more so. It is all a personal choice there.

So strap on your ruck, ensure the waist belt is secure and snug and get to it. This week as I mentioned I changed my route and rucked along the road in a neighboring town. I guess I looked like a sketchy MFer to the local gendarmes and they drove past me slowly a few times. Either that or they wanted my walking stick.

Ah well, it is all good. Ruck on and if you have any questions, shoot them my way and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Photos: US Army, author

Remembering Ola Lee Mize, Korean War MOH, Vietnam, Special Forces

Lee Mize as he was known to his friends was awarded the Medal of Honor for incredible valor in the Korean War as an enlisted man, later became an officer and served in Special Forces for three and a half tours in Vietnam before retiring in 1981.

Mize was born August 28, 1931 in Albertville, Alabama as the son of a sharecropper. He was forced to leave school after just the ninth grade to help his family put food on the table as was very common throughout the United States in that era.

Mize tried several times to enlist in the Army but was rejected for being too light at just 120 pounds. He finally got in when his mother signed an affidavit to affirm his age as a tornado had destroyed all of his town’s records while he was young.

But once in the Army, a bigger problem was looming.  Mize was virtually blind in one eye, which had been accidentally pierced with an ice pick when he was 5 years old.

The vision exam for the Army at that time involved holding a paddle over one eye and looking at the chart with the other. He passed the test by briskly switching paddles in a way that made it look as if he was switching eyes. He had practiced this bit of subterfuge with spoons beforehand.

Mize became an infantryman in the 82nd Airborne Division and was about to finish up his tour and go back to finish schooling and attend college when the Korean War broke out. He re-enlisted in the hopes of getting sent to Korea.

Medal of Honor Action at Outpost Harry: He would get his wish and be involved in some horrific combat there. Assigned to Company K, 15th Infantry Regiment, Third Infantry Division, was helping to defend a strategic hill near Surang-ni in mountainous South Korea. The hill, called Outpost Harry by the Americans, sat between American and Communist lines, each several hundred yards away. Coincidentally, the 15th Infantry Regiment was the same unit that Audie Murphy served in during World War II.

During the previous few nights prior to June 10, 1953, Mize had observed numerous trucks behind the enemy’s ridgeline bringing in men and equipment. He called for artillery strikes and air strikes but those were denied.

A sergeant manning a listening post that night reported something amiss. Upon investigating, Mize came up and took a look himself to the unit’s front. “Where did all of those shrubs come from he asked the sergeant? They hadn’t been there before. Mize noticed one move. He crouched up and unloaded a full carbine magazine into them as Chinese soldiers, infiltrating the lines were cut down very close to the LP.

When an American machine-gun nest had been overrun, he fought his way to the position, killing 10 North Korean and Chinese soldiers and dispersing the rest. He had been knocked down and wounded but not seriously three times by artillery and grenade blasts, and his men were astounded that he returned alive.

The legend that was told of Mize was that when he took back the machine gun nest, he dispatched the last of the Chinese soldiers with an entrenching tool when his weapon ran out of ammunition. There was a bronzed “E-Tool” that would hang over his desk later in his career. He did tell the local (Gadsden, AL) newspaper that he went “combat crazy” during the pitched part of the engagement.

“I thought I’d bought the farm,” Col. Mize told VFW Magazine in an interview. “I just knew I was going to die. I knew it. I accepted it. All I wanted to do was take as many of them with me as I could.”

He and the remaining Americans convinced the Chinese that there were many more Americans left on the hill but throwing grenades and shooting from one position and then leaping into other holes and firing from there.

At one point, as an enemy soldier stepped behind an American and prepared to fire, Sergeant Mize killed him. At dawn, he helped regroup for a counterattack that drove the enemy away. He was personally credited with killing 65 of the enemy. In fact, it could have easily been much more. Of the 56 men on Outpost Harry, only eight survived.

He was recommended for the Medal of Honor but initially asked that his name be withdrawn saying the honor should go to the troops that died defending it.

“That terrible night in 1953 in Korea at Outpost Harry was one I would never want to repeat,” he wrote in a foreword to “Uncommon Valor,” a book about Medal of Honor recipients.

“Too many good young men . . . gave their lives to take or hold that miserable piece of high ground.”

Eventually, in 1954 Mize did receive the Medal of Honor from President Eisenhower and recounted that he was so nervous it was obvious to everyone. He credited the President to calm him by joking about himself.

Mize remained in the Army and became an officer. In 1962 he attended the Special Forces Officers Course training and was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group. In late 1963, he was assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group, where he was deployed to Vietnam on his first tour as an A-Team Leader. In 1965, he was assigned to the Special Forces Training Group, where he was the Advanced Training Committee chief for SCUBA, HALO, and the SKYHOOK schools. Colonel Mize is credited for being the officer responsible for starting the present day Combat Divers Qualification Course in Key West, FL.

He returned to Vietnam in 1966-67 and again in 1969 as the Commander of the 3d Mobile Strike Force Command (Cambodian Troops). The Mike Forces as they were called were the quick reaction force for any of the Special Forces/CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group) A-Camps in their Corps area.

In 1975 Colonel Mize was reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he was initially the Special Forces School Chief for the Field Training Division and Resistance Division and later the Commander of the Special Forces School. At that time, the US Army JFK Institute for Military Assistance, (IMA). Later this was changed to the Special Warfare Center (SWC). Mize retired in 1981.

Colonel Mize’s awards include the Medal of Honor, Silver Star, Legion of Merit
(with Oak Leaf Cluster), Bronze Star (with four Oak Leaf Clusters), Ranger Tab, Master Parachutist Badge, SCUBA Badge, and the Combat Infantryman’s Badge (2nd award).

Colonel Mize passed away on March 12, 2014, from cancer at age 82.

Medal of Honor Citation:

Rank and organization: Master Sergeant (then Sgt.), U.S. Army, Company K, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division.

Place and date: Near Surang-ni, Korea, 10 to 11 June 1953.

Entered service at: Gadsden, Ala. Born: 28 August 1931, Marshall County, Ala.

G.O. No.: 70, 24 September 1954.

Citation:

M/Sgt. Mize, a member of Company K, distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and outstanding courage above and beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. Company K was committed to the defense of “Outpost Harry”, a strategically valuable position, when the enemy launched a heavy attack. Learning that a comrade on a friendly listening post had been wounded he moved through the intense barrage, accompanied by a medical aid man, and rescued the wounded soldier.

On returning to the main position he established an effective defense system and inflicted heavy casualties against attacks from determined enemy assault forces which had penetrated into trenches within the outpost area. During his fearless actions he was blown down by artillery and grenade blasts 3 times but each time he dauntlessly returned to his position, tenaciously fighting and successfully repelling hostile attacks.

When enemy onslaughts ceased he took his few men and moved from bunker to bunker, firing through apertures and throwing grenades at the foe, neutralizing their positions. When an enemy soldier stepped out behind a comrade, prepared to fire, M/Sgt. Mize killed him, saving the life of his fellow soldier.

After rejoining the platoon, moving from man to man, distributing ammunition, and shouting words of encouragement he observed a friendly machine gun position overrun. He immediately fought his way to the position, killing 10 of the enemy and dispersing the remainder. Fighting back to the command post, and finding several friendly wounded there, he took a position to protect them. Later, securing a radio, he directed friendly artillery fire upon the attacking enemy’s routes of approach. At dawn he helped regroup for a counterattack which successfully drove the enemy from the outpost.

M/Sgt. Mize’s valorous conduct and unflinching courage reflect lasting glory upon himself and uphold the noble traditions of the military service.

Photos: US Army

Pentagon Looking to Cut SOF in Africa to Focus on China, Russia

Special Operations Forces in Africa could be slashed heavily under sweeping Pentagon proposals to retask and reorganize SOF towards more pressing needs facing the rising threats of Russia and China.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had ordered a review of all Special Operations Forces missions as Mattis, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford are worried about SOF capabilities being spread too thin. That has been an ongoing issue for several years.

The review was also part of the ongoing assessment of Special Operations Forces after the ambush and death of four American servicemen in Niger last year.

Mattis and Dunford have given the Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and the Africa Command (AFRICOM) until mid-June on how they plan to meet the existing challenges as well as the new directives concerning China, Russia as well as Iran and North Korea, despite the planned summit meeting.

Mattis has ordered the new priorities and told the commands to focus on the transition period of growing threats from both China and the Russians, as part of the Pentagon’s new strategic defense plan.

“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models,” Mattis said earlier this year.

“Our military is still strong, yet our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare — air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace — and is continually eroding,” he added.

The Pentagon’s report on the Niger operation was sharply critical of “risk-taking culture” of Special Operations which is exactly what the nature of the operations are. Were mistakes made in Niger? Of course, but to place the blame only on the soldiers involved in the operation was short-sighted and self-serving.

Lately, in an effort to ease the burden on SOF troops operating in Syria, and Afghanistan, the U.S. has been increasingly utilizing conventional force soldiers and/or Marines to bolster the capability and security of the Special Operations troops. They’ve called this the “Uplift” program.

The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) currently has close to 7300 troops deployed in about 92 countries. That is significantly down from a decade ago when there were almost 13,000 troops deployed. Despite this the command is still dealing with an operational slate (OpTempo) that is unsustainable in the long run and the cracks are already showing themselves in the force. By adding additional requirements on them for the new strategy against China and Russia where some troops will see an added emphasis in countries such as the Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to counter the Russian threat will place a heavier burden on an already stretched razor thin force.

The Army tried to ease the burden on Special Forces troops by creating Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) to take over the conventional training requirements of host nation forces. The first 1000 troops which comprise the brigade are right now in Afghanistan. The Army plans to field six of these SFABs in the coming years.

They are taking NCOs and Officers from conventional units that will quickly be short enough leaders to fill their own ranks. It won’t be long until the “Big Army” raises questions about these SFABs bleeding their conventional units dry.

The SFAB is running into the same issues in Afghanistan the conventional military has always had when trying to train foreign soldiers. They’re re-inventing the wheel that Special Forces has mastered since the days of the OSS in World War II. They don’t have the experience of training foreign troops and their cross-cultural communications and rapport building skills are in the neophyte stage.

AFRICOM was asked how they would conduct their operations with a 25 percent reduction in SOF troops in 18 months and by a whopping 50 percent in the next three years. Advertising this fact wasn’t perhaps the best move on the Pentagon’s part.

Of the troops currently deployed, about 1200-1300 are currently doing operations in Africa. That number, already not enough to handle the workload there, will be slashed down to the 600 range by 2021.

There are other hot spots in the globe with shadow wars being fought in Yemen, Libya, Somalia as well as others that will require attention as well. Of course, unless there is an uptick in conventional deployments to Africa, one can probably expect the insurgents in the continent, the al-Qaeda offshoots, and the Islamic State to increase their efforts to gain traction with the population and carve out a bigger foothold.

Since the ambush in Niger, missions considered “risky” with host-nation troops have been curtailed. Those that are approved must first be approved by senior officers up the chain of command who are required to take a tougher, more cautious approach when weighing the risks involved. Yes, the dreaded “risk assessment” has made its way into SOF planning requirements.

American SOF in Africa are now sent only on missions with local forces that are determined to have a significant strategic effect, much like the operation that the Special Forces troops were on in Niger. However, now, armed drones or other armed aircraft must accompany such missions, which should have been made available to the troops back then, which would have possibly prevented the loss of life then.

The Green Berets who are responsible for conducting the missions told former SOFREP journalist Derek Gannon in the Fusion Cell blog that, “We are put there [in Africa] to ensure the success of our Host Nation counterparts. When we are not able to operate with the local forces we cannot teach and coach them for future contact with the enemy. Can a football coach effectively coach his players without watching them perform under pressure in a real game? Plus how are we supposed to accurately assess how the threat forces operate without seeing them in action? That’s like preparing for a game without ever seeing game film.”

And that is not the “culture of risk-taking”, but the beat goes on.

Photo: DOD

Robin Sage Begins June 9th, Time For the SF Students to Step Up

The Special Forces rite of passage is about to begin for the next class of SF candidates. The final training in Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) for prospective SF soldiers is the Unconventional Warfare (UW) exercise “Robin Sage”, which we went over in detail in an earlier post, that you can read here:

The prospective Green Berets put all their training together and infiltrate into the fictional country of Pineland via an airborne operation. The SF candidates must raise and train a guerrilla force that will fight the enemy government troops and attempt to restore the friendly Pineland government.

The exercise’s notional country of Pineland encompasses Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Cumberland, Davidson, Davie Guilford, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Scotland, Stanly, and Union counties. Throughout the exercise, Special Forces candidates and Robin Sage role-players not only conduct training missions such as controlled assaults and key-leader engagements but also live, eat and sleep in these civilian areas.

Robin Sage, derives its name from the town of Robbins, N.C., a central area of operations for the exercise, and former Army Colonel Jerry Sage, a World War II veteran and an Office of Strategic Services, or OSS officer who taught unconventional warfare tactics. Steve McQueen’s character Hilts in the film “The Great Escape” was based off Sage.

This current version of the UW exercise has been in use with only slight changes since 1974. To succeed, the prospective SF troops need to accomplish a few key tasks.

  • Build Popular Support with the Civilian Populace
  • Make Rapport with the target audience (Guerrilla Force)
  • Be an effective teacher and train the resistance force

Building Popular Support with the Civilian Populace: What makes Robin Sage so realistic? The civilian community in “Pineland” is nearly totally immersed in the operation.  Not only have the citizens of the operational area given their support for the exercise, they’ve become deeply involved.

Many of the role players have been involved with the course for several years and they pass along to their children the drive to carry on and to take over the role of underground or auxiliary in the exercise. And they have proven time and again just how important having popular support in the UW area of operations is to mission success.

These role players help to ferry supplies and equipment, move troops in covered trailers around the operational area as well as provide an early warning network for the guerrilla force. As it is with all people who live in the country, nothing happens out there without all of them knowing about it and they invariably warned the good guys.

And make no mistake, the Special Forces students are the “good guys” in this exercise. It strikes home how important having popular support is when either helping or countering a resistance movement. It is a lesson all SF troops need to learn. No one can make a move in the operational area without the civilians knowing about it. And if they are for you, they will prove invaluable. If the team loses popular support, they are likely done.

Make Rapport With the G-Force: Building rapport with the locals that the SF team will train with, by and through is, among the most important tasks they will encounter. The ability to build rapport both with their foreign partners and with their team members is essentially the difference between Special Forces and all of the others. Alone, an SF team is just 12 men, but working with their foreign partners, they become force multipliers.

SF candidates will quickly learn that learning to communicate and respect the ways of the target audience, obeying their social graces as it is imperative. That is just the first step. Learning to make rapport with the local forces isn’t easy to teach and it is even harder to learn. Some guys are naturals at it and should always be out front, especially during the early “feeling out” process.

The ability to build a solid base of trust is one of the key skills learned by Special Forces troops in complex, austere environments. It can’t be massed produced or pushed thru a shake and bake course. Having troops just show up on the doorstep in the middle of a third world country and have them fall at your feet isn’t realistic and doesn’t happen.

Rapport building begins with checking your ego at the door and operating instinctively. Many times there won’t be a right or wrong answer and frequently the SF candidates will be forced to make difficult and complex decisions. The hallmarks of a successful Special Forces soldier is a mature, versatile and flexible operator in any environment. Being able to adapt to cultures other than our own is the true mark of building trust and reliability that our by, with and through the local forces that will mark a successful operation.

The interaction with host nation troops, both soldiers and leaders require a need for tact and diplomacy. Hammering home the message to the lower rank and file of the guerrilla force is quite different than that to a Colonel or politician/tribal elder that you’ll encounter. A career diplomat once told me the art of diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in a way that they’ll enjoy the trip.

One of the best team sergeants I ever knew and a man I consider a tremendous mentor said, the best way to make rapport sometimes is to just shut up and listen. For the SF candidates, there is a time for talking and a time for listening. And when it is time to listen, they need to do so as if their collective lives depend on it. Because they do.

Be An Effective Teacher, Training the G-Force: As we’ve said here numerous times, teaching is an art in Special Forces. Unfortunately teaching and training a guerrilla force isn’t as sexy as taking down a target on a DA (Direct Action) mission and no one wants to see that…right? People want to see a video of guys “doing operator shit” with plenty of cool toys complete with heavy metal music overdubbed while the bad guys bite the dust.

While DA missions are linear and much easier to judge the success or failure of, the true art of a Special Forces A-team lies in their ability to teach an allied soldier or guerrilla fighter to do those same Direct Action missions. Setting up intelligence early warning networks or leading a dedicated guerrilla force to succeed in the Unconventional Warfare (UW) environment isn’t as tangible, nor as sexy. But it is the difference between winning and losing in the UW environment.

We all remember our time in Robin Sage as it was the final test before joining the Regiment, where the real learning begins in earnest. And my primary instructor at Robin Sage, Paul W. not only knew his subject matter extremely well, he knew the operational area as well as the locals and we as a team soaked up his lessons like a sponge. He would always answer questions framed around a question of his own and said frequently that “this is a thinking man’s game.” At the time, we didn’t completely get it but he was right.

And everything centered around the three primary tasks listed above. They were all interdependent on one another. Of course, there are several other things that the students will have to accomplish, but these three are keys to getting a successful operation conducted in Robin Sage and walking across the stage and becoming part of the best Regiment in the military.

Photo: US Army

Green Beret Robert Anspach is Still MIA in Vietnam

There are still men missing in action from the war in Vietnam and for the family of Green Beret MSG Robert Anspach, there is no closure, no grave to visit on Memorial Day, only questions as to when will their husband and father ever come home.

Army Sgt. Robert Anspach will forever be 33.

Fifty-one years after he was killed in action on a reconnaissance mission near the height of the Vietnam War, Anspach’s status remains classified as killed in action and body not recovered.

“They’ve never brought him home,” said Cindy Anspach Baucom, his youngest daughter. “People say you need to let this go. We say, ‘No,’ there’s no direction to push but to bring him home.

“It was hard. Everybody else had a dad,” she said. “It was very hard.”

Anspach, a Green Beret who served with Fort Bragg’s 4th Mobile Strike Force Command, 5th Special Forces Group, is honored on the Vietnam Memorial Wall. His name is etched into the polished black granite in Washington, D.C.

Baucom was 8 years old when she last saw her father alive, while peering through a chain-link gate of the Fayetteville airport. Glenda Anspach, his wife, had just turned 30.

Robert Allen Anspach had been home on reenlistment leave, and he was boarding a commercial flight for a return to Vietnam. As he was getting on, Glenda Anspach said, Sgt. Barry Sadler of “The Ballad of the Green Berets” fame was disembarking.

Robert Anspach’s five family members — Glenda and their young children, Greg, Sandy, Cindy and Michael — waved goodbye.

Anspach and his son a year before his death at Ft. Bragg.

Mrs. Anspach later learned that her husband had told a friend that he felt if he went back to Vietnam again, he would never come back.

Anspach is one of 1,598 Americans still missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War era, according to the National League of POW/MIA Families.

Mrs. Anspach and the family have never gotten closure from his death. The family is not satisfied with the amount of information the Army has provided them over the years.

Oddly, Anspach had been missing in action once before.

This was during the Korean conflict, about a year into his military career.

Glenda Anspach, whose mind remains sharp on dates and details, told how he and a buddy were caught behind enemy lines. It would take them six days before they could work their way back. She said the commanding officer was typing up a missing-in-action letter to send to Robert Anspach’s mother when they showed up in camp.

During one of his three tours of duty in Korea, he was wounded on Heartbreak Ridge. That was the disastrous 1951 battle for the United States and its United Nations allies, in terms of casualties.

On Sept. 11, 1967, Anspach — who had started on this first tour of duty in Vietnam the previous January — was aboard the lead boat in a six-airboat operation that departed camp at 8:30 a.m. The mission was to sweep north to within a mile of the Cambodian border, the POW Network said, then west to the Mekong River.

As the first four airboats left the stream and entered the Vietnamese portion of the river about 5 miles northwest of the camp, Viet Cong bunkers on both sides of the channel caught them in a lethal crossfire, the network account said.

“Concentrated machine gunfire riddled all six airboats in the first burst,” the POW Network states, “killing SFC Anspach immediately.”

But the family says the reports that they’ve read all differ greatly and after all of these years now, they just want Anspach’s body returned. Anspach’s widow never remarried and stayed in the Fayetteville area to remain close by the POW/MIA effort to recover missing Americans.

To read the entire article from Fayetteville Observer News, click here:

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

Special Operations Soldiers Honored in Ceremony at Ft. Bragg

Gary Rose was a Green Beret medic in Vietnam and was recently awarded the Medal of Honor from President Trump for actions he performed in a particularly hazardous and dangerous mission there in 1970.

Rose and eight other Special Forces, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations troops were honored by being named “distinguished members of the Regiment” or “honorary members of the Regiment” in a ceremony at Ft. Bragg, NC.

“They improved the lives of thousands,” he said. “What I did, it pales…  It’s just incredible… it’s just an incredible privilege.”

Others inducted as distinguished members of the regiment were retired Maj. Clyde J. Sincere Jr., retired Maj. Steven E. Cook and retired Sgt. Maj. Gilbert R. Turcotte. A fifth Special Forces soldier, retired Sgt. 1st Class Eric C. Moriarty, was inducted as an honorary member of the regiment.

Retired Lt. Col. James P. Kelliher was inducted as a distinguished member of the Psychological Operations Regiment. Air Force Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Lengyel was inducted as an honorary member of the regiment.

Two Civil Affairs veterans, Brig. Gen. Crawford E. Sams and Col. Charles R. Munske, were posthumously honored as distinguished members of their regiment.

Maj. Gen. Kurt L. Sonntag, commanding general of the Special Warfare Center and School, said each of the honorees shared a commitment to service that goes well beyond their time in uniform.

To be selected, a veteran must have made overwhelmingly significant contributions to the welfare of their respective regiments. The honors, he said, pay tribute to past special operators and those currently in the fight.

“This is a day to recognize and applaud the contributions and the members of our special operations regiments,” Sonntag said. “What they do every day is real and important. It might not get all the news that we used to do in the past — we are working in the shadows again — but it is equally important.”

Rose said he was honored by the recognition.

As part of a joint force of Americans, Vietnamese and Montagnards, Rose’s team was inserted deep within Vietnam enemy territory in 1970. When the group came under attack, the Special Forces medic repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire while treating the wounded, using his own body to protect the seriously injured.

Rose continued treating the wounded for four days before a helicopter evacuation. When Rose’s helicopter crashed, he again treated the injured until another rescue could be made.

These Special Operations veterans served in a variety of posts, missions and conflicts stretching from World War I up to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To read the entire article from the Fayetteville Observer, click here:

Photo courtesy US Army

War Story by Jim Morris Is the Definitive Special Forces Book on Vietnam

 

This book is dedicated to anybody
whoever died for something he
believed in, whether he was right
or not.
The difference between a fairy tale and a war story,
is that a fairy tale starts out with “Once upon a time,” and
a war story starts out with, “This is no shit.”

Before you turn a page in “War Story” and just read that small two-paragraph introduction you are hooked. Morris begins his book with a recurring dream when in a firefight in Vietnam, his left nut was shot off, which actually happened. But in his dream, which he had for years after coming home, he’d be killed in some ugly grotesque way, but one night he finally made it in his dream. He killed the enemy soldier and was finally at peace. As he says in the book, he was finally at peace and could go home now.

Morris’ book is a page-turning, can’t put it down look at one man’s experience in Vietnam while a Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group. It is arguably, (here there is no argument) the finest book on Special Forces in Vietnam.

Morris loved Vietnam, the people especially the Montagnard mountain tribesmen who he remained close to even after all of those years. The way he describes the scene upon arriving back in Vietnam is particularly captivating.

“I loved Vietnam more than any other place, for the beauty and strangeness of it. I always had a weird feeling in Vietnam, as though I was in the presence of exotic, occult happenings, as though I had arrived in a place where spirits prowled and sorcerers plucked at strings that controlled natural laws. I felt valid there, as though this were my place and my time and was where I counted. I was happy.

Morris grew up in Oklahoma and wanted to get into Special Forces, little did he know in 1963 when he got into SF that the war in Vietnam would be his calling. Morris served in Vietnam before the big American involvement began and was shocked when he returned to see so many Americans and military bases dominating the countryside.

He served in Special Forces when it was the kiss of death for the careers of the Captains and Majors who stayed for very long. But he found his calling and feared being promoted or else he’d lose his chance to command a Special Forces A-Team any longer.

He loved the ambushes and searching for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the close-quarters battles in the jungle. On Morris’ website, he had an excerpt from his book where he described an ambush with his close friend, Montagnard, Philippe Drouin aka “Cowboy” on one such operation.

“We were all firing. Tracers from the thirty caliber weapons were ricocheting so high I thought the Cong were sending up flares. I fired up one magazine and then another. I kept firing. We all did. I wanted nothing to live out there. I felt nothing, neither elation nor horror, just the cold astringent calm.

I fired up five magazines before I stopped. Then everybody stopped and I called out, “Cowboy, let’s check out the stiffs.”

We got up and moved onto the trail. The bodies were lying to the left, to the right, on the trail, cut down running. I fired a round in the ground beside each man to see if he would move. None did. Cowboy moved beside me, covering.

When we came to the last one I moved in on him and he raised up, his arms extended, eyes wide. I said, “Good, we got a pris…”

Cowboy stitched him up the middle with his AR-15. He didn’t even twitch.

I said, “We could have got some good information from that guy.”

“Sorry,” said Cowboy. “I get, you know, excited.”

Morris minces no words on how the war was mismanaged and opportunities to win it was lost on the people in charge of prosecuting it. “There is only one way to fight a guerrilla war and that is to out-guerrilla the guerilla. You have to steal his political issues and his social issues and his tactics; and if you do that he has nothing left to sell and the war is won. It was so easy. Why couldn’t the bastards see it?”

One of the highlights of the book was the chapter where he spoke with an SF legend in Ludwig Faistenhammer. He was an expert on guerrilla warfare and was featured in Robin Moore’s book, “The Green Berets”.

There weren’t many like Ludwig. He was the character Fritz Scharne in Robin Moore’s The Green Berets. It was the story of how he managed to ambush a VC battalion commanded by a Frenchman… It was such an improbable story that I asked him if it was true. He said it was. “I lay awake nights dreaming up ways to get that son of a bitch,” he said. Part of how he set him up was by feeding him false information while playing tennis with him at the Cercle Sportif in Saigon.’

Morris was a guest on SOFREP Radio’s podcast this week with Host Ian Scotto and Jack Murphy and you can listen to it in its entirety here:

This brought me way back. As a young man as I was preparing to go to Special Forces training, I heard about Morris’ book and must have read it about 4-5 times enthralled. He was a big influence on me in those early years.

He wrote for Soldier of Fortune magazine and whenever he had anything in it it was a must read article.His Vietnam war stories and subsequent work covering some of the hotspots around the globe were manna from heaven for an aspiring Special Forces soldier.

For those young men of today who are planning on taking the road to go to Special Forces training, ensure that you put “War Story” on your must reading list. Although the copies are harder to come by today, on Amazon.com you can download a Kindle version of the book to your favorite device or laptop. It is worth the time and effort.

On the podcast, Murphy told Morris that if you substituted the words Communist or Viet Cong with the word “Terrorist”, the book would read much like what Special Operations troops face today in the hot spots around the Globe.

But “War Story” doesn’t delve into politics or policies, it is one man’s story of his involvement in the war. For him, it was a deeply personal one and he wanted to be involved in it all the way thru. Morris is a master storyteller and this will be guaranteed to keep you enthralled.

Photo: Amazon.com

The Special Forces Branch is Created April 9, 1987

Today’s USSOCOM (United States Special Operations Command) operates in nearly 100 countries a day as Special Operations troops from all of the combined services do their part in defending U.S. interests abroad.

Special Operations troops are taking on the lion’s share of the fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan as they are an integral part of the United States strategy for defeating our enemies there. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, the command (SOCOM) is a relative newcomer to the U.S. military. The creation of the Special Forces branch for Army officers on April 9, 1987, was a big moment for SF and changed everything.

Special Forces was created in 1952 as former members of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) were assigned with paratroopers and Rangers from the Army to fill out the ranks of the 10th Special Forces Group headed by Colonel Aaron Bank.

OSS and SF were tasked with training, equipping and leading indigenous forces in the art of guerrilla warfare. The mission of the 10th according to Bank was to “to infiltrate by land, sea or air, deep into enemy-occupied territory and organize the resistance/guerrilla potential to conduct Special Forces operations, with emphasis on guerrilla warfare.”

Special Forces grew steadily and the new unit was heavily involved in Vietnam with Special Forces A-Teams spread all over the country and found themselves a tremendously loyal ally in the Montagnard people of the mountains in Southeast Asia. By the time the war was over, SF soldiers had earned (from SF Assn) 20 Medals of Honor, one Distinguished Service Medal, 90 Distinguished Service Crosses, 814 Silver Star Medals, 13,234 Bronze Star Medals, 235 Legions of Merit, 46 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 232 Soldier’s Medals, 4,891 Air Medals, 6,908 Army Commendation Medals and 2,658 Purple Hearts.

After the Vietnam war wound down, the military cut back on special operations forces and tried to build a large conventional force for a large European land battle with the Soviet Union. As a result, the Army lost numerous Special Forces groups, the 1st, 3rd, 6th and 8th Special Forces groups were deactivated. The 7th SFG narrowly escaped the ax as the Pentagon, never a fan of “specialized” or “elite” units tried to wipe the slate clean of them.

The Special Forces side of the house in the military was left with just three active duty groups. The 5th, 7th and the 10th. Ronald Reagan’s election and the debacle at Desert One in Iran would change all of that. During the attempted rescue of American hostages in Iran, an ad-hoc force of Delta Force commandos, Army Rangers and Air Force and Marine pilots failed because the pilots weren’t specifically trained for that type of mission.

The planning, training, and execution were set back because the services weren’t accustomed to working together and no unified command existed. The government finally learned that the U.S. military needed a dedicated Special Operations force that was capable of handling any issues that arose, complete with air assets dedicated to Special Operations missions.

The Pentagon and Congress learned what Special Operations troops had long known and later became one of the Command’s “truths” that they live by.

Competent Special Operations Forces cannot be created after emergencies occur.

The Army created a Career Management Branch for their enlisted soldiers (CMF 18) in 1984. Now Green Berets in Special Forces groups would no longer have to serve “command time” as senior NCOs in conventional assignments. The Special Forces tab, recognizing being a graduate of SF training was adopted in 1983.

But the officers who served in Special Forces were still in No-Man’s Land. Serving more than one tour in Special Forces for officers was considered career suicide. Staying in SF would result in achieving no more than a Colonel’s rank. And those were few and far between. Something had to be done.

One of the weak parts of a Special Forces A-Team was the XO or 2LT position. Too many of the LTs didn’t have enough of a conventional background or experience to be effective enough. Many of the LTs were former NCOs who had gone thru OCS but there weren’t enough.

So the Army created the Warrant Officer Program for Special Forces troops not long after the CMF 18 was created. The LT’s slot was cut from the A-Teams and the slots would be filled by senior Special Forces NCOs who went thru the Warrant Officer course, held at Ft. Rucker and Ft. Bragg.

Finally, on April 9, 1987, the Army created the Special Forces Branch for Commissioned Officers (18A). Once a Captain or 1LT promotable applied he could attend the Special Forces Qualification Course and upon successful completion would become part of the SF Branch.

The results were a much better, more capable and more experienced core of officers and enlisted men. Troops dedicated solely to Special Forces operations. No longer would officers stick around only long enough to “get their ticket punched” and be forced to move on to other assignments and career fields. During this time frame, both the 1st and the 3rd Special Forces Groups were reactivated and have served with distinction. The Special Forces Command has a group area oriented to every specific part of the world complete with language capability and culturally experienced troops that know their area of operations, the people, and many of the personalities involved.

The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria have put such a burden on the operational tempo (optempo) of the units that the Army authorized the 4th battalion for each of the Special Forces groups.

Today is a far cry from the lean years of the early-to-mid-1970s where Special Forces were on the brink of being eliminated by backward thinking officers. The troops today are overtasked as they’ve become a panacea by Washington to fix every problem that the country faces as they try to limit the amount of “boots on the ground” in the world’s hotspots.

But all of the SF troops come from the humble and austere beginnings of Aaron Bank and the original Special Forces troops formed on Smoke Bomb Hill in 1952.

Photo: US Army

Gary Beikirch, Green Beret, Medal of Honor, For Actions on April 1, 1970

Prior to the war in Afghanistan, the conflict in Vietnam was the longest in United States history. And on April 1, 1970, Green Beret medic Gary Beikirch showed incredible bravery during an attack on his Dak Seang A-Camp. He was exposing himself repeatedly to enemy fire to treat wounded comrades, despite his own serious wounds that he was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor by President Nixon.

Beikirch was born August 29, 1947, in Rochester, New York. After successfully completing two years of college, he withdrew from school to enlist in the Army with the goal of becoming a Special Forces trooper and going to Vietnam.

In August of 1967, he attended and successfully completed Basic and Advanced Infantry Training at Ft. Dix, NJ. That was followed by the Airborne Course at Ft. Benning, Ga. Beikirch then attended the Special Forces Qualification Course at Ft. Bragg, NC. He successfully completed the Special Forces Medical Sergeant Course and was shipped to Vietnam.

Beikirch deployed to Kontum Province, Vietnam, in July 1969. During his deployment, he was the medic for Detachment B-24, of the 5th Special Forces Group, assigned to the remote Montagnard village of Dak Seang in the central highlands of Vietnam. The camp was very remote, about 3 miles from the Laos border.

Beikirch, in an interview later said that due to his affinity to the Montagnard people, he “went native”, living with the mountain people and went days at a time without speaking any English. The SF A-Team with 12 men had about 500 Montagnard “strikers” who the Green Berets trained and the remainder of about 2300 personnel in the camp were civilians, mostly families of the men that were being trained and led by the Americans.

On April 1, 1970, three regiments of North Vietnamese troops numbering 10,000 began shelling Camp Dak Seang, intent on taking the camp. The North Vietnamese artillery pounded the camp and Beikirch was wounded when shrapnel from a 122 mm rocket bruised his spinal column, not allowing him to rise and run inside the compound.

The NVA artillery pounded the camp causing a number of casualties among the camp’s defenders. Unable to move on his own, Beikirch had his two Montagnard medical assistants carry him around the camp under heavy, intense fire to treat the wounded American and Vietnamese defenders.

Beikirch, with complete disregard for his own safety, moved out into the open while everyone else around him was ducking and hiding from the artillery. The “Bac-Si” or doc as the tribesman called him went down to the aid station where he assisted the other American medic until he collapsed.

Coming to, he urged the medic to help him up, where his Montagnard medics carried him from place to place in the compound. He then would help them get to the aid station. His one Montagnard aid man Dao covered him with his own body getting killed in the process. He was just 15 years old.

Montagnard medics who helped Beikirch

Sgt. Beikirch refused treatment and continued his search for other casualties until he collapsed again. He said the last thing he remembered was the sight of a helicopter coming in. “And then I remember these hands, picking me up and throwing me into the chopper,” he said. The medics onboard the helicopter immediately stuck IVs in Beikirch telling him he was going to be okay.

He was taken to Pleiku, then to Japan, and then finally to the Valley Forge Medical Center, where he remained for six months, recovering from his injuries. He exited the army and went back to college, majoring in pre-med after his experience but the country wasn’t a great place for Vietnam veterans, especially the college campuses.

Spat on and called a baby killer, Beikirch had enough. He took off for the White Mountains in New Hampshire. His hair grew long, halfway down his back. He’s was chilling out in a cave on Mount Washington when he came down into town for supplies, he was told to wait for a call that evening.

“Is this Gary Beikirch who served with the 5th Special Forces in Vietnam?” the person asked. When Beikirch said that it was, he was told that he was being awarded the Medal of Honor. “It was things I was trying to forget,” he said. “It all came back.”

For his gallantry during the battle of Dak Seang, Sgt. Beikirch was
awarded the Medal of Honor by President Nixon in 1973. He didn’t go out to celebrate that night. He stayed in his hotel room. Feelings of unworthiness and the horror of war flooded back to him. For many years, Beikirch didn’t take part in many of the other events that veterans and other Medal of Honor recipients take part in.

Now, he’s more at peace with it and states the Medal isn’t about him or anything that he did but represents men and women that value something so strongly that they are willing to die for it and be willing to defend our country for it.

It is he said, a valuing of something greater than self.

Beikirch’s other awards and decorations include the Medal of Honor; Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star Medal; Bronze Star Medal; Purple Heart Medal with one oak leaf cluster; Good Conduct Medal; National Defense Service Medal; Vietnam Service Medal; Vietnam Campaign Medal; Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with silver star; Combat Medic Badge; Parachutist Badge; and Vietnamese jump wings.

Medal of Honor Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Beikirch, medical aidman, Detachment B-24, Company B, distinguished himself during the defense of Camp Dak Seang.

The allied defenders suffered a number of casualties as a result of an intense, devastating attack launched by the enemy from well-concealed positions surrounding the camp. Sgt. Beikirch, with complete disregard for his personal safety, moved unhesitatingly through the withering enemy fire to his fallen comrades, applied first aid to their wounds and assisted them to the medical aid station.

When informed that a seriously injured American officer was lying in an exposed position, Sgt. Beikirch ran immediately through the hail of fire. Although he was wounded seriously by fragments from an exploding enemy mortar shell, Sgt. Beikirch carried the officer to a medical aid station. Ignoring his own serious injuries, Sgt. Beikirch left the relative safety of the medical bunker to search for and evacuate other men who had been injured. He was again wounded as he dragged a critically injured Vietnamese soldier to the medical bunker while simultaneously applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to sustain his life.

Sgt. Beikirch again refused treatment and continued his search for other casualties until he collapsed. Only then did he permit himself to be treated. Sgt. Beikirch’s complete devotion to the welfare of his comrades, at the risk of his life are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

Beikirch’s interview with the American Legion can be seen here:

Photos: US Army

Remembering Charles “Snake” Hosking Jr. MOH,  March 21,1967

Charles Ernest Hosking Jr. was a career soldier who fought as a U.S. paratrooper in World War II and then was one of the original Green Berets when the unit was created in 1952. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for Valor in the Republic of Vietnam for his actions on March 21, 1967.

Hosking leaped on the back of a Viet Cong prisoner who held a hand grenade. Holding the grenade between him and the prisoner, he gave up his life bearing the brunt of the blast but protected several of his commanders nearby who the VC was looking to take out with the grenade.

Beginnings and Itching to Serve: Hosking was born in May of 1924 in Ramsey, New Jersey. With World War II underway and before Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hosking ran away from home and hitchhiked to Canada. He enlisted in the Canadian’s famous “Black Watch” Regiment trying to get into the fight.

He eventually was tracked down by his U.S. congressman and others and being underage was shipped home. He then tried to join the Coast Guard with his grandfather’s permission but a heart murmur ended that venture as well. Undeterred, Hosking sought out his congressman, he received a waiver and was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1943.

But just serving wasn’t enough. Hosking volunteered for airborne duty and was assigned to Company B of the 509th Airborne Infantry Battalion. He joined them in Italy and served in the Rome-Arno, Southern France, and Ardennes-Alsace campaigns during the war in Europe. Of the 1500 men in the 509th, only 29 would serve the war and go without being killed or wounded. Hosking was wounded by machine-gun fire during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

He missed serving in Korea due to a training accident when a bazooka round exploded and he suffered two broken legs and severe shrapnel wounds that required many months to recover from.

When Colonel Aaron Bank created the new Special Forces unit at Ft. Bragg, Hosking volunteered and served as a demolition or Engineer as well as a Weapons Sergeant on his A-Team. He was assigned to both Smoke Bomb Hill on Ft. Bragg and to Bad Tolz in Germany.  He went to different training programs including language training and spoke Czech, German and Vietnamese.

Hosking served three different tours in Vietnam, in 1963, 1965-66 and his final tour in 1967.

On his final tour in Vietnam, Hosking was a sergeant first class in Company A of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces Regiment. He was assigned to the Mike Force. On an earlier tour, “Snake” Hosking developed such rapport with the civilian CIDG strikers, both Cambodian and Chinese Nung, that many came out of retirement to rejoin the unit with the word that “Snake” was back in-country. He was a legend with the men that Special Forces had trained and led.

On March 21, 1967, he was working as an advisor to a Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) battalion in Đôn Luân district, Phuoc Long Province, when his unit captured a Viet Cong sniper.

Hosking was preparing the VC prisoner to transport to the A-Team’s base camp, when the man grabbed a hand grenade from Hosking’s belt, armed it, and ran towards the 4-man company command group. That consisted of four men, two American and two South Vietnamese officers.

Hosking tackled the prisoner and held him to the ground, using the VC’s body and his own to shield others from the grenade blast. He knew what that entailed. But in an attempt to save the officers’ lives he gave his own. Both he and the Viet Cong prisoner were killed in the ensuing explosion. Hosking was posthumously promoted to master sergeant and awarded the Medal of Honor for this action in 1969. President Nixon awarded the Medal to Hosking’s son Wesley at the White House.

Medal of Honor Citation:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Master Sergeant Hosking (then Sergeant First Class), Detachment A-302, Company A, greatly distinguished himself while serving as company advisor in the III Corps Civilian Irregular Defense Group Reaction Battalion during combat operations in Don Luan District.

A Viet Cong suspect was apprehended and subsequently identified as a Viet Cong sniper. While MSG Hosking was preparing the enemy for movement back to the base camp, the prisoner suddenly grabbed a hand grenade from MSG Hosking’s belt, armed the grenade, and started running towards the company command group which consisted of 2 Americans and 2 Vietnamese who were standing a few feet away.

Instantly realizing that the enemy intended to kill the other men, MSG Hosking immediately leaped upon the Viet Cong’s back. With utter disregard for his personal safety, he grasped the Viet Cong in a “Bear Hug” forcing the grenade against the enemy soldier’s chest. He then wrestled the Viet Cong to the ground and covered the enemy’s body with his body until the grenade detonated. The blast instantly killed both MSG Hosking and the Viet Cong.

By absorbing the full force of the exploding grenade with his body and that of the enemy, he saved the other members of his command group from death or serious injury.

MSG Hosking’s risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in the highest tradition of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country

He was buried in New Jersey and the Police Benevolent Association dedicated a monument to him in 2000 in Veteran’s Park on East Main St. in Ramsey, NJ.

Hosking’s daughter Gail who was just 17 when he died, had a hard time coming to terms with the war that kept her father out of the family’s life for so long and his death. But nearly a quarter of a century later, she wrote a book, “Snake’s Daughter”, in which she finally came to realize what a hero her father was.

Master Sergeant Charles E. Hosking, Jr. Memorial Marker (photo: Don Morfe)

Photos: US Army/ Don Morfe