Any time in life that you do something, you tend to forget the bad and remember the good. I remembered the good. I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember the bad. For a long time, I talked to a bunch of my peers in the Special Forces community that had made the trip back to …
Sapa Valley, Northern Vietnam The final stop in Rich’s journey through Vietnam. Sapa is a frontier township along the Chinese border, home to the northern highlanders and hundreds of miles of trails. It’s the perfect place to field test MACV-1 prototypes. Sapa is considered the trekking capitol of Vietnam and we all know trekking is …
The trips I’ve made back to Vietnam with Jason, Paul and Andy brought back many memories – some good and some not so good – but one gemstone has been our times at the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon. I was introduced to the Caravelle and its rooftop bar during my first tour in Vietnam. While …
Da Lat, Vietnam April, 2017 My “one night in Da Lat” was a pleasant reprieve from the war and normal combat operations that we had been conducting. I’d heard of the city, but never believed all of the stories I’d heard. Stories about the beautiful architecture, the green and lush gardens, cool weather, and about …
Dak Lak Montagnard Museum, Buon Ma Thuot April, 2017 When I attended Special Forces training at Fort Bragg, NC I learned that one of the primary tenants was something called Foreign Internal Defense (FID). What this was based on was learning how to work with people indigenous to the area we were operating in, helping …
As we made our way from Saigon to Buon Ma Thuot (or as I knew it, Ban Me Thuot) the low lying farm lands turned into gently rolling foothills covered with coffee fields being tended by local farmers living along the edges, just as the rubber plantations had been during my time before. Night …
