I was at CCC during this time period,and knew Myers casually. I say "casually" because despite there being so few American SF people in Recon Company,we all stayed so busy running missions,training for missions,and recovering from missions that it was hard to keep track of what our friends on other teams were doing. Sometimes a friend would be KIA or WIA and medivaced to the US or Japan,and it might be two months of more before we heard about it.
Each team was a tiny little world of it's own,and demanded your whole focus.
CCN (Command and Control North) was located at DaNang,and operated mostly in Laos and sometimes North Vietnam for special missions.
CCC (Command and Control Centeral) was located at Kontum,and operated in both southern Laos and northern Cambodia. This is the camp where Myers and I were based.
CCS (Command and Control South) was located at Ban Me Thout (spelling) , and operated in Cambodia.
To say we had a high casualty rate was understimating the problem. Wounds were so common you pretty much had to be hospitalized or put on restricted duty from wounds to even be considered for a Purple Heart. I still have scars from wounds I never received,or even put in for a Purple Heart for because they quit bleeding on their own and I was able to keep operating though them. I GUESS if I had made an issue out of it I would have gotten Purple Hearts because a wound is a wound,but I would have been ashamed to wear them and been ashamed of myself for putting in for them.
Anyone else who ever ran Recon or Hatchet Force (direct action missions using platoons on assault missions) will tell you the same thing.
In MY opinion,not shared by most people who ran recon missions,the most dangerous operations were Hatchet Force operations. It wasn't unusual to have a whole platoon so shot up pretty much everybody had to be replaced,new "Yards" had to be hired and trained,and the platoon desiginated as being "combat ineffective" for months as they all retrained.
In fact,as I found out several months later,the platoon that was my last SOG assignment went in on a mission I was supposed to have gone in on but didn't due to being medievaced back to Bragg the day before they inserted,the whole damn platoon was killed or wounded so badly right on the LZ that another platoon had to be sent in to pull the bodies out and rescue the wounded. From what I was told,the second platoon was shot up pretty badly too,and if it hadn't been for the air cover provided by the USAF,USN,and the US Army in the form of helicopter gun ships and Cobra's,they would have been lost,too.
Come to find out a few months later,the NVA knew we were coming thanks to a traitor working in plans at SOG headquarters in Saigon.
You couldn't ask for a greater bunch of guys to go to war with,though. Some may have been a little "strange" to people who didn't know them,but there wasn't a slacker in the bunch.
The system was set up to make sure there were no slackers because ANYTIME you decided you didn't want to do this anymore,all you had to do was say "I quit!",and you ran no more missions. If you were a veteran with several hairy missions under your belt,they would try to find you a spot in supply,the med shed,planning,etc,etc,etc.
If that wasn't possible or you only ran one or two missions before quitting,and this did happen occasionally,you would just be sent back to the main SF Operating base at Nha Trang for re-assignment. There were NO black marks on your record for quitting. NONE.
On the other hand,there were some guys,like SSG (at that time) Franklin D.Miller,a good friend of mine,that ran SOG recon missions for more than 5 years,that had to be tricked and drugged to get him to leave. He was actually already on the jet flying back to the states when he came out of the fog and realized what had happened,and he was PISSED! I think him being pissed was mostly related to not being able to say goodbye to his teammates,but that is just a guess.
Miller was one of the SOG Medal of Honor awardees.
https://sofrep.com/specialoperations/franklin-d-miller-mac-v-sog-awarded-medal-honor-january-5-1970/
Miller died in 2000 from a blood transusion he got in VN in the 70's. Blood wasn't screened from diseases back then. He and I were at that time making plans to go to Russia the coming spring to party down with Russian babes and see the sights,and came down sick and went to the local VA hospital he had just retired from,and got the back news. IIRC,he lasted less than a month before he died.
