Six Silent Men

by Gary A. Linderer

Overview

"The Eyes and Ears of the Screaming Eagles . . ."

By 1969, the NVA had grown more experienced at countering the tactics of the long range patrols, and SIX SILENT MEN: Book Three describes some of the fiercest fighting Lurps saw during the war. Based on his own experience and extensive interviews with other combat vets of the 101st's Lurp companies, Gary Linderer writes this final, heroic chapter in the seven bloody years that Lurps served God and country in Vietnam. These tough young warriors--grossly outnumbered and deep in enemy territory--fought with the guts, tenacity, and courage that have made them legends in the 101st.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307559760
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/04/2009
Series:	101st LRP Rangers , #3
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	516,663
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Gary A. Linderer is the publisher of Behind the Lines, a magazine that specializes in U.S. military special operations. In Vietnam, he served with the Lurps of the 101st Airborne Division, earning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star with V device (for valor), the Army Commendation Medal with V device, and two Purple Hearts. His two earlier books were selected by the Military Book Club.

Read an Excerpt

On February 1, 1969, thirteen Long Range Patrol (LRP) and Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) companies and detachments serving throughout the Republic of South Vietnam were summarily deactivated by the Department of the Army. Simultaneously, the Department of the Army activated the first thirteen letter companies of the 75th Infantry Regiment (Ranger). There was no fanfare, no parades, no physical transfer of unit personnel, no change of command, no relocation, no turn-in or reissuance of weapons, gear, and equipment, and no additional training. It was little more than a paper transaction conducted under the auspices of military protocol that affected only unit designation, unit heritage, and the exchange of one unauthorized shoulder scroll for another.
 
The units affected were small groups of volunteers, most between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. But they were warriors who prosecuted their war deep behind enemy lines. They fought the NVA and VC on his own turf, bringing the war to the enemy. In their limited numbers they searched out and hunted the enemy in his sanctuaries. And when they found him, they brought the wrath of God and the U.S. military down on his head.
 
They had little formal training for what they did, most of them learning their stock-in-trade as they went. Those who learned quickly survived and passed their knowledge and experience on to others. Those who learned slowly were usually weeded out before they managed to get themselves and their teammates killed.
 
The Lurps saw this organizational metamorphosis from “LRP” to “Rangers” as just another confusing example of Pentagon politics at its finest. It didn’t affect them individually or as a unit. Their mission remained the same—to locate the enemy on his own playing field and make certain that he paid the full price of admission into the war he had created. And at this they excelled.
 
The VC and NVA soon learned that they, too, were fighting a war with no rear areas, no secure havens, no safe houses, no place where death and destruction could not seek them out and destroy them. They were being given a taste of their own brand of warfare by these small teams of Americans they soon came to call “the men with painted faces.” It was a name that struck fear into the hearts and souls of the best troops the enemy sent to the field.
 
Up and down the length of South Vietnam, four- to six-man American Long Range Patrols prowled the vast expanses of enemy-controlled territory, exposing troop concentrations, base camps, hospitals, and weapons and supply caches. And when the enemy forces went on the offensive or infiltrated new units into South Vietnam, it was the U.S. Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols that waited to welcome them with deadly ambushes, devastating air strikes, and thundering artillery barrages.
 
F Company, 58th Infantry (LRP), 101st Airborne Division was one of the Long Range Patrol companies forced to undergo this strange mutation. The company had arrived in South Vietnam in November 1967. Activated at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, just prior to the division’s deployment to Southeast Asia, the Long Range Reconnaissance company as a unit was inexperienced and untested in combat. But the swamps, jungles, mountains, and valleys of South Vietnam would soon become its proving ground.
 
In the fifteen months of its brief existence, the Long Range Patrol company would go through an extended metamorphosis of its own—sometimes satisfying, sometimes painful. Arriving in Vietnam without an organic unit history with the division, the Long Range Patrollers soon found themselves the “butt boys” of Division Headquarters. They were frequently utilized as a special assignment element and given every odd job in the division that other units could not or would not perform. They pulled perimeter security at the division rear. They rode shotgun for a Screaming Eagle general during his post-Tet ’68 quest through I Corps in search of a choice piece of real estate on which to construct a new home for the division. They conducted numerous short-notice infantry sweeps in search of enemy raiders, sappers, and saboteurs.
 
Sandwiched between those too frequent attempts by higher command to keep the “troublesome malcontents” busy, the Lurp company begged, borrowed, and stole whatever Long Range Patrol missions it could get its hands on. And by trick or treat, trial and error, F Company, 58th Infantry (LRP) managed to add to the legacy established by its predecessor, the legendary LRRP detachment of the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.
 
Then, on February 1, 1969, the story of the Long Range Patrollers of F Company, 58th Infantry (LRP) came to an ignoble end. With the sudden deactivation of all Long Range Patrol companies in Vietnam, and the simultaneous activation of “lettered” Ranger companies, F Company, 58th Infantry (LRP) ceased to exist. However, its members soon rose Phoenixlike from the ashes to man the rolls of L Company, 75th Infantry (Ranger), and so began the final chapter of their long and glorious odyssey in the Vietnam War. During seven bloody years of loyal and unselfish service as the “Eyes and Ears of the Screaming Eagles,” the Long Range Patrollers built a legacy that glorifies the division to this day.
 
This is the final chapter—this is their story.