“Looking For Interesting Things To Do”: A Special Forces Officer Seeking Adventure In Dangerous Places

James McLeroy was born in March 1939 in east Texas. His father joined the Army Air Corps as a Chaplain in 1940 and was assigned to California, serving in the South Pacific during World War II for three rough years before coming home with a lot of Post Traumatic Stress. After the war, the McLeroy family moved around with the Air Corps (later Air Force), landing at Ft. Worth, Texas, Wichita Falls, Texas, Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, Korea, Biloxi, Mississippi, Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, and Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio among other locations. His mother was a school teacher who preferred to teach 4th graders. He grew up with a younger brother. He enjoyed playing football, but suffered a massive concussion as a guard in high school. He was also involved in speech and interpretive reading as well as drama. After he graduated from high school, he entered the University of Texas, Austin, but adventures and continuing education elsewhere interrupted his course of study. He eventually graduated from UT Austin in 1965 as an English and German major, but in between he attended the University of Vienna and University of Maryland, where he studied Latin, Greek, and Turkish. He spent time at the University of Heidelberg learning German, and six months in Mexico studying Spanish. He found his experiences in Turkey, Vienna, and Munich “fascinating,” and after graduating from college, he taught high school for two years. In 1965, he enlisted in the Army. He was a very idealistic and passionately anti-communist young man, and he greatly admired his father’s service and patriotism. This was a time of optimism and glamorization of the Special Forces, and the challenge of becoming a Green Beret appealed to James. He went to Basic Training in October 1965, and found it “shamefully bad,” noting that the Army was not ready for the influx of draftees to supply the growing war in Vietnam. Additionally, all the good NCOs had been pulled for service in Southeast Asia. Advanced Infantry Training was better, and he became the “top shot” with the M-60 machine gun (later in OCS he was top shot with both the .45 pistol and M-14 rifle). He was selected for the college-op program, which offered a commission through Officer Candidate School for college graduates, and he completed that program in August 1966. His language abilities coupled, with his teaching experience, made him the perfect candidate for Special Forces, and he was offered that opportunity. He enjoyed Ranger School and Charlie Beckwith’s leadership, and Airborne School and three months of Special Forces instruction were excellent preparation for unconventional warfare. Next, the pre-mission training focused on Vietnam was essential. He practiced setting up a camp, conducted night jumps, and learned basic Vietnamese. Jungle warfare training in Panama was “very useful,” especially for folks who had never experienced real triple canopy jungle, but he later found that they still needed to rely heavily on their Montagnard guides to get through the thickest part of the jungle in Vietnam. Before arriving in Vietnam, he had reached out to 5th Group and there was an SF NCO waiting for him, which was a good thing because there had been so many recent casualties that line units were grabbing any available incoming Lieutenants. He was taken to Da Nang, where he was assigned to an A Team commanded by future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton. When he arrived at his team, A-104, he found that the enlisted Soldiers were very good. His next stop was Ha Thanh, which he felt was the worst camp. He recalls huge rats infiltrating the bunker his first night and crawling over the Soldiers in the dark. The next day, he hired a local carpenter to seal any rat-sized holes in his living area. He felt there was a lack of teamwork and cohesion on his team, but Hugh Shelton “kept my morale from failing.” He considered the CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group) to be a rabble, and he noted that the rules of engagement in effect prohibited the Special Forces Soldiers from going on combat reconnaissance patrols with them. He found the South Vietnamese Special Forces, the LLDB (Lực Lượng Đặc Biệt), to be corrupt and cowardly. In addition, all of the US Special Forces Soldiers had a bounty on their heads. James was becoming despondent because he “wanted to be with excellent troops.” In December 1967, James volunteered for SOG (Studies and Observation Group) hoping for an assignment to a recon team, but was instead assigned to operations at FOB 4, which was nice because it was on the beach in Da Nang, but he sought action. In 1968, he was sent to Kham Duc, a small outpost on QL 14 near the Laotian border. Kham Duc had originally been a hunting preserve for Emperor Bao Dai, but by ’68 the road was in poor condition and the camp was only accessible by air, and only when the weather cooperated. About 8 kilometers south of Kham Duc was Ngok Tavak, a former French colonial fort on a hill, which was serving as a small outpost for a Mike Force (Mobile Strike Force). Special Forces camps were established along the border to monitor North Vietnamese infiltration. Earlier in the war, small NVA units infiltrated disguised as Viet Cong, but after Tet, the infiltration of larger units increased. In February 1968, North Vietnamese units equipped with Soviet PT-76 amphibious tanks crossed the Laotian border and captured the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp, losing half of their tanks in the process. After the fall of Lang Vei, James felt that the outpost at Kham Duc was not “worth being taken.” The North Vietnamese telegraphed that an attack was imminent because they wanted to attract U.S. reinforcements to the area, seeking a major victory along the lines of Dien Bien Phu and knowing the impact such a victory would have immediately before the Paris peace talks were set to begin. With the battle looming, James and the defenders of Kham Duc waited. They were all elite SOG troops who were self-motivated and accustomed to close combat. James was on the radio constantly, updating FOB 4 and SOG headquarters in Saigon. When LTC Overby arrived at Kham Duc, he took over the radio so James could go to the trenches. When the battle began, the North Vietnamese tried to overwhelm the defenders with mass “human wave” infantry attacks, and the defenders at Kham Duc had nowhere to fall back to. James was “scared to death,” and the 350 fighter sorties were the only thing protecting the defenders. In desperation, James called for napalm 20 meters from his position. A personal relationship with the FAC (Forward Air Controller) on the other end convinced him that James’s situation was do or die. When the napalm was delivered, James remembers “a heat wave swept over us” and then “sucked the oxygen out.” First, he thought he would be incinerated and then he was worried about suffocating, but the napalm “stopped them.” Tragedy struck when a C-130 carrying 183 villagers to safety was shot down by the North Vietnamese. No reporters followed the attack at Kham Duc because the Paris peace talks overshadowed the fight at the remote outpost, but the North Vietnamese also failed to get the propaganda victory they sought. Next, James was stationed in Thailand and took part in Operation Strata. He recalls feeling bitter because he “thought we were winning.” After returning from southeast Asia, he transferred to a National Guard unit in Austin and attended grad school (and jump master school with his unit). He then took a position with the Institute of Latin American Studies and began traveling throughout Central and South America, noting that his favorite countries to visit were Chile and Argentina. After studying Portuguese in grad school, he began working for Bank of America in Brazil, Panama, Venezuela, and Miami. Next, he worked for an investment firm in Coral Gables, Florida. A stint with Reagan’s AID in Portugal, Indonesia, and Turkey followed before a lucky real estate investment brought him home to New Mexico and Arizona, and he eventually settled down in Scottsdale, Arizona. Reflecting on his service to the nation, he says it “means everything,” and he is proud of how much more professional the military is now. In 1998, thirty years after the battle, James returned to Kham Duc. He describes his visit to the battlefield and the spirits he felt there. He discusses the work of Joint Task Force Full Accounting, searching for those who were killed but not recovered. He also describes writing the book “Bait” with Greg Sanders, as well as the historiography of the Vietnam War, highlighting the efforts of Steve Sherman and other Veterans to present an alternative to conventional narratives of the war.