MACV-SOG was a joint service high command conventional warfare task force engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast Asia. The 5th Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG (although it was not a Special Forces group) through Special Operations Augmentation (SOA), which provided their "cover" while under secret orders to MACV-SOG.

The teams performed deep penetration missions of strategic reconnaissance and interdiction which were called, depending on the time frame, "Shining Brass" or "Prairie Fire" missions.On the morning of April 24, 1969, Shriver's hatchet platoon was air assaulted into Cambodia by four helicopters. Upon departing the helicopter,the team had begun moving toward its initial target point when it came under heavy volumes of enemy fire from several machine gun bunkers and entrenched enemy positions estimated to be at least a company-sized element.Shriver was last seen by the company commander, Capt. Paul D. Cahill, as Shriver was moving against the machine gun bunkers and entering a tree line on the southwest edge of the LZ with a trusted Montagnard striker. Capt.Cahill and Sgt. Ernest C. Jamison, the platoon medical aidman, took cover in a bomb crater. Cahill continued radio contact with Shriver for four hours until his transmission was broken and Shriver was not heard from again. It was known that Shriver had been wounded 3 or 4 times. An enemy soldier was later seen picking up a weapon which appeared to be the same type carried by Shriver.Jamison left the crater to retrieve one of the wounded Montagnards who had fallen in the charge. The medic reached the soldier, but was almost torn apart by concentrated machine gun fire. At that moment Cahill was wounded in the right eye, which resulted in his total blindness for the next 30 minutes.

The platoon radioman, Y-Sum Nie, desperately radioed for immediate extraction.Maj. Benjamin T. Kapp, Jr. was in the command helicopter and could see the platoon pinned down across the broken ground and rims of bomb craters. North Vietnamese machine guns were firing into the bodies in front of their positions and covering the open ground with grazing fire.

The assistant platoon leader, 1Lt. Gregory M. Harrigan, reported within minutes that half the platoon was killed or wounded. Harrigan himself was killed 45 minuteslater.Helicopter gunships and A1E aircraft bombed and rocketed the NVA defenses.

The heavy ground fire peppered the aircraft in return, wounding one door gunner during low-level strafing. Several attempts to lift out survivors had to be aborted. Ten airstrikes and 1,500 rockets had been placed in the area in attempts to make a safe extraction possible. 1Lt. Walter L. Marcantel,the third in command, called for napalm only ten yards from his frontline,and both he and his nine remaining commandos were burned by splashingnapalm.After seven hours of contact, three helicopters dashed in and pulled out 15 wounded troops. As the aircraft lifted off, several crewmen saw movement in a bomb crater.

A fourth helicopter set down, and Lt. Daniel Hall twice raced over to the bomb crater. On the first trip he recovered the badly wounded radio operator, and on the second trip he dragged Harrigan's body back to the helicopter. The aircraft was being buffeted by shellfire and took off immediately afterwards. No further MACV-SOG insertions were made into the NVA stronghold. Jamison was declared dead and Shriver Missing in Action. On June 12, 1970, a search and recovery element from a graves registration unit recovered human remains that were later identified as Sgt. Jamison, but no trace was found of Shriver.

For every insertion like Shriver's that were detected and stopped, dozens of other commando teams safely slipped past NVA lines to strike a wide range of targets and collect vital information. The number of MACV-SOG missions conducted with Special Forces reconnaissance teams into Laos and Cambodia was 452 in 1969. It was the most sustained American campaign of raiding,sabotage and intelligence-gathering waged on foreign soil in U.S. military history. MACV-SOG's teams earned a global reputation as one of the most combat effective deep-penetration forces ever raised.The missions Shriver and others were assigned were exceedingly dangerous and of strategic importance. The men who were put into such situations knew the chances of their recovery if captured was slim to none. They quite naturally assumed that their freedom would come by the end of the war.

For 591 Americans, freedom did come at the end of the war. For another 2500,however, freedom has never come. Since the war ended, nearly 10,000 reports relating to missing Americans in Southeast Asia have been received by the U.S., convincing many authorities that hundreds remain alive in captivity. Jerry Shriver's friends claim they heard on "Hanoi Hannah" that "Mad Dog" Shriver had been captured. They wonder if he is among the hundreds said to be alive today. If so, what must he think of us?

[smith2.94 07/31/94] Mark Smith 07/06/94NOTE: this report IS NOT repruduced in its entirety.

>MISSING SF

1. Burt Small......Garwood was asked if Burt Small was his brother.....

2.Willie Stark.....how Stark was found at the crash site, when he was missing on the ground....DIA list him missing on a helicopter....

3.Russell Bott....indigenous reports on Bott are numerous and come from the same area as Stark.

4.Jerry Schriver ....Shriver remained on the radio for four hours after legend has it he was supposed to have died.....

5.Donald Carr .....Much was made of a picture provided to LTC RET Jack Bailey of the USAF. This photo was only a very small part of an overwhelming case for Carr's survival to this day....follow up conversations with Carr's Lao daughter.... show Carr very much alive. He has a wife and one child. He is also missing fingers from an accident with a rice mill...

6. Walter Moon....persistent intelligence on Walter Moon surfaces from time to time......although Bo Gritz was accused of fabricating intelligence on Moon, in all fairness, his intelligence was consistent with all other information. Though other prisoners related Moon's death, none actually witnessed it........reported alive as late as 1990....

Brothers to the very END

The Special Forces Creed

I am an American Special Forces soldier. A professional! I will do all that my nation requires of me.

I am a volunteer, knowing well the hazards of my profession.

I serve with the memory of those who have gone before me: Roger's Rangers, Francis Marion, Mosby's Rangers, the first Special Service Forces and Ranger Battalions of World War II, The Airborne Ranger Companies of Korea. I pledge to uphold the honor and integrity of all I am - in all I do.

I am a professional soldier. I will teach and fight wherever my nation requires. I will strive always, to excel in every art and artifice of war.

I know that I will be called upon to perform tasks in isolation, far from familiar faces and voices, with the help and guidance of my God.

I will keep my mind and body clean, alert and strong, for this is my debt to those who depend upon me.

I will not fail those with whom I serve. I will not bring shame upon myself or the forces.

A Time to Heal

They went off to fight a war when they were no more than boys... Leaving behind the last days of their youth, with all it's innocence and joy.

Off to a strange, faraway land by the thousands they would go... Never really knowing for sure who was their friend...who was their foe.

They crawled through muddy jungles; they died, alone, on rainy nights. In then end they'd begin to question who was wrong and who was right.

Soon, we all began to protest "bring this damn war to an end!" It was time to bring our boys home... Let our nation begin to mend.

There were never any parades... They came home alone...one at a time to strangers pointing their fingers as if they'd commited a crime.

They had all fought for their country... They just did as they were told. Their belief in democracy and freedom made them soldiers, brave and bold.

It's time to ask for their forgiveness though, for some it may come too late. We were a frightenend, ungrateful nation struggling through a very uncertain state.

We should shed our tears together... As a nation we should cry... For allowing so much time to pass before we could look them in the eye

CeCe(Upson)Corvera

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