VIETNAM 1967 — A PORTRAIT OF HERCULES

A capsule based on my memoir, Vietnam Uncensored, will be published this fall.

Hercules was a tall, dark, handsome Mexican American. He was the perfect type-cast for a Hollywood leading man. His muscles bulged beneath his fatigue shirt, and Hercules was the strongest of the Special Ops team I commanded. He toted an M-60, 50-caliber machine gun, the chain-link bands of ammo crisscrossing his chest as a modern adaptation of Poncho Villa. His distinguishing characteristic was his unflappable sense of humor.

Regardless of the dire circumstances, he was the one who broke the tension and drew me from the overwhelming anxiety. The best example is to tell of the time we took refuge in a Landing Zone before the 1968 Tet Offensive. In the two years of the 11-year Vietnam war, 60 percent of us perished in the years 1967 and 1968,

On this mission, General Brothers sent us to the LZ from where we were to extract an injured American officer hidden in the center of enemy territory. While all data pointed toward a North Vietnamese build-up and an imminent attack, Army Intelligence, the Pentagon, and the Johnson administration downplayed the information. They considered the reports of enemy troop increases as inaccurate. In the minds of the U.S. leaders, the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong did not possess the necessary soldiers and means to…