The Ether Zone: U.S. Army Special Forces Detachment B-52, Project Delta

by Morris Ray

  Virtually every time Sprouse left on a mission, someone would say, “Roy, if you don’t come back, can I have your Rolex wristwatch?”

  As though calculating, he’d grin shyly back. “Sure. That’s why I’m wearing it. So you’ll have to come get me.”

  During Sprouse’s tour with Project Delta, he became involved in one of the greatest controversies ever to befall the organization. He and Burl Cunningham were running recon for the Marines near Laos along the DMZ, in an area the Delta teams had dubbed as the “rock pile.” Cunningham and their three Vietnamese stood watch as Sprouse told the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) that they had just observed 125 NVA trucks crossing the international border, headed south. The Marines obviously didn’t believe him, asking question after question. In Recon, staying on the radio too long can be very detrimental to one’s existence. Frustrated, the team remained overnight; early the following morning, they heard rumbling engines again in the distance. Crawling forward for a better view, they sighted the trucks again, only a couple hundred meters away. Sprouse returned to the radio and called it in once more, while Cunningham continued to observe the trucks from a few feet away. Sprouse spoke into his boonie hat, whispering so faintly his words could barely be heard.

  “You know those trucks I reported going south yesterday?” he whispered. “Yeah, well they’re headed back north, right now,” he told the Marine officer on the other end.

  Once again, he was greeted with skepticism on the part of the staff officer, but perhaps just a bit less so. “The Commander said you are to ambush them immediately,” he told Sprouse.

  Sprouse thought he might be joking. “You mean with my entire sixman patrol?” His appeared sarcasm lost on the Marine.

  “That is affirmative.”

  Sprouse quickly did the math. He had a lightly armed, six-man recon patrol, stuck in the middle of territory completely controlled by the enemy, with no help within fifty miles. The weather had been so wretched they would be lucky to get a helicopter in to pick them up, let alone any gunship support. One hundred twenty-five enemy trucks equaled 125 drivers—all NVA soldiers; add 125 assistant drivers, and the sum would be 250 NVA soldiers—with guns.

  Cunningham crawled up, whispering, “What did they say?”

  Sprouse never blinked an eye. “They said to pull back to the LZ and wait for extraction.”

  After their extraction he explained to Cunningham what had really transpired. They were then told to report to the Marine Regimental Headquarters tent for a debriefing. They headed off with some trepidation; Cunningham suspected the Marines hadn’t believed them and that they’d catch hell from the staff. On the other hand, Sprouse never seemed ruffled or worried, so Cunningham figured he’d let him do the talking. After all, Roy was good at talking. They were correct about the staff being miffed and skeptical about the 125 trucks the recon team had reported and never bothered to ambush.

  After a long grilling by the Marine colonel, Sprouse retrieved his glasses from the briefing table, slipped them on and slowly looked up. “Honest, I’m not lying, Sir...I saw trucks!”

  He had painted tiny trucks across the lens of his eyeglasses. It completely broke the staff up. For several days Roy Sprouse could be seen wearing his decorated glasses, saying “I’m not nuts...really. They just all think I’m nuts, because I keep seeing these trucks all over the place.”

  Martha Raye, affectionately known to her Special Forces “boys” as “Maggie,” made many visits overseas to spend time with them. Besides being a qualified nurse, she was also a goodwill ambassador who always lifted spirits and raised morale. So much so, that she was given the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel and awarded the Green Beret. She and Roy Sprouse were close friends. Why not? Both were comedians.

  Roy Sprouse retired from the Army in 1979, soon became restless and linked up with a civilian operation in the Rhodesia conflict. Disillusioned about the lack of air support, he returned to North Carolina and established himself as a concrete mason with home remodeling. He was disabled by a stroke in 1989 and lost some short-term memory and eyesight. Roy passed away from cancer in 2005. On the inside, Roy Sprouse was a handsome man. God bless Roy Sprouse.

  Roy Sprouse and comedienne Martha “Maggie” Rae, ca. 1970. (Photo courtesy of the family of Roy Sprouse)

  * * * * * *

  Delta’s resources had been particularly stretched during late 1969 and early 1970, heavy enemy contact becoming almost a daily occurrence. Captain Mayo Hadden was the S3, 1LT Gus Fabian, the Assistant S-3 (Air). Fabian recalls placing daily air strikes on reported targets, and at times, flying as the “back-seater” in a FAC, 0-1 aircraft from the 220th Reconnaissance Airplane Company (RAC) out of Phu Bai. The 220th RAC were called “Cat-killers.” In addition to their regular FAC pilots, the 220th RAC provided direct support to Delta operations while at Mai Loc.

  According to Fabian, the Cat-killer pilots operated primarily north in I Corps, and were exceptional sources of information since they knew the area “like the back of their hand.” One Cat-killer pilot, whom Fabian holds in high esteem, was a young, experienced captain named Jones. Fabian recalled he was flying back seat for Jones who was due to rotate to the States after eighteen months in Vietnam. Their mission was to fly over the extreme north-westerly section of South Vietnam, north of the Khe Sanh plain, and into the Cam Lo Valley, to detect signs of any activity coming through the DMZ into South Vietnam.

  During a low pass, CPT Jones remarked that several trees and bushes seemed out of place—a smaller tree was growing under a larger one. That was very unusual and, besides, he hadn’t noticed it on a previous pass. After a failed attempt to adjust 175mm cannon fire from an USMC artillery battery located near the “rock pile” (it had been at maximum range and the dispersion pattern had been too great to be accurate), he decided to make a pass. Jones came in low, firing a WP rocket that landed near the target; he was surprised when the tree and several small bushes bolted for a ravine. Jones circled and followed the well-camouflaged NVA soldiers, then began receiving ground fire from a nearby area. Feeling his plane take hits, CPT Jones took evasive action.

  Upon landing at Mai Loc, an inspection of the aircraft revealed the brake lines had been ruptured by one of the rounds; they were very lucky to have escaped unharmed.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Welcome Home, Brother

  “The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your-daily victory or defeat.”

  - Robert Louis Stevenson

  CONVENTIONAL OFFICERS FOUND THE MOST PERPLEXING ways to misuse Special Ops units. After the Tet Offensive, someone at the top command echelons decided Delta’s recon teams should be engaged as an assault force to help clear out VC units that had taken control of the Saigon Racetrack; using it as a base to launch attacks into downtown Saigon. Major Chuck Allen had remarked more than once, “Delta is different; it’s organized and trained unlike any other Army unit. Sometimes decisions about deployment are made by those who can’t think past the end of their SOPs.”

  Delta ran into problems like this throughout the war, but the fiasco at the racetrack was one of the worst, resulting in the decimation of nearly thirty Recon personnel.

  Five seasoned recon teams were immediately wasted in urban house-to-house fighting, including four Americans. Later on, others would agree that using valuable recon units for street fighting was egregious, a criminal waste of valuable talent. This situation occurred just before Allen was due to rotate; he read the Operations Reports late at night, and it brought tears to his eyes. “They lost all these guys in the first two or three days,” he said. “It was a damned shame.”44

  * * * * *

  Operation Delta Dagger, 10 May 1970 through 30 June 1970, began with B-52 in support of the 101st Airborne Division, Quang Tri Province. It would be Pr
oject Delta’s last combat operation before deactivation. Delta’s Commander, MAJ Shane N. Soldato, had recently assumed command from the highly unpopular MACV appointed officer, LTC Robert Moore. Little documentation remains about MAJ Soldato, but Jim Tolbert once met him in Nha Trang at the 5th SFGA mess hall shortly after Moore had let him go. The 5th SFGA Deputy Commander, LTC Merrick, concluded Tolbert had enough close combat for one tour, and impressed with his musical abilities, asked him to pull together some entertainment for the outlying Special Forces camps. Tolbert jumped at the chance! The entertainment was so well received that it’d been twice reported in the Green Beret Magazine.

  Tolbert waited in the mess hall to interview a leg clerk as his new bass player when he noticed a young airborne major filling his cup at the coffee urn. It struck him that he hadn’t seen that much starch in a set of fatigues since the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, NC.45

  In an environment of crinkled tiger stripes and sterile fatigues, the young major really stood out. His stiff uniform was pinned with qualification badges; Pathfinder and Jungle Warfare patches, a Ranger tab and Airborne tab jump wings. The major sat with Tolbert, introducing himself as the new Project Delta Commander. Likeable and sharp, Soldato could have been a recruitment poster model. Tolbert sipped at his coffee, wondering just how this spit-and-polish young officer would fit in with the no-pretense B-52 crowd. His mannerisms left him with nostalgia for his time in the 82nd Airborne Division.

  “You’re from Delta?” he asked Jim, taking his seat at the table.

  “”Not any more,” Tolbert answered. “I’m with HHC now, but I did spend some time with Delta. I got there when Allen was the commander and left after we got that puke from MACV.” Jim Tolbert had never been one to mask his feelings.

  “I’m taking over from him,” Saldato said. “What can you tell me about the unit?”

  For the next hour he unloaded a “heap of baggage” about LTC Moore, relating how that “...non-Special Forces asshole, appointed by MACV buddies to get his ticket punched, had screwed Delta so badly that he’d decimated its most experienced personnel.”

  He informed the new major he was just about to meet the finest bunch of combat soldiers he’d ever have the pleasure of working with. Soldato listened intently, thanked him and left. Tolbert never again saw him; Soldato would never finish his first Vietnam tour. During the young major’s first month into his new assignment, his C&C ship came under heavy fire and went down in the rugged terrain of Quang Tri Province. Major Shane N. Soldato and the entire 281st AHC crew perished in the crash. Up to then, Soldato had stubbornly insisted that “Moose” Monroe, his Recon Operations NCO, go with him on every C&C flight he boarded. He wouldn’t take off unless Monroe went along. Strangely, he went alone that fateful day.

  Major George F. Aiken, “Gentle Ben,” assumed command upon Soldato’s death. It was his second tour as the Project’s commander, and he would be the last Delta commander to conduct combat operations in Vietnam. Within two months, B-52 Project Delta would be deactivated.

  * * * * * *

  In July 1970, Project Delta finally ceased operations and the Delta men seemed to just melt away. There were few goodbyes or exchanges of reassignment information. No tears, little emotion. The last evening of the Delta Club’s existence was a “members only” event, used for sorting and packing up the plaques and awards covering the walls, solemnly handed off to those designated for preserving them. Some old timers occupied their favorite bar stools or stood off to themselves, their eyes lingering sightlessly on the silent walls, reliving poignant memories that hung heavy in the stale air. Badolati, Bott, Terry, Stark, Pusser and all the others, they were with them again—fellow warriors who would remain forever young in the memories of their comrades. Glancing up from a drink, the remaining hangers-on discovered the group dwindling as a few more silently drifted off, their numbers down to three—then two. As if by some unspoken agreement, the last ones ambled out. Delta Club closed for the last time.

  Delta’s going away party on the Voigt patio. Project Delta CO, MAJ Ben “Gentle Ben” Aikens (right, holding knife), doing the honors. For three days, at least, Moose Monroe (left) only wore shower shoes and a towel with a snap fastener at the waist. Andre St. Laurent (center), in his blue “drinking” shirt, looks on. (Photo courtesy of Maurice Brakeman)

  Stalling, uncomfortable about simply walking away from a place that was ingrained into their very existence, they stretched their backs while remarking with disdain what a shit-hole it had been; then grimacing at the twilight sun, each took a final reluctant pull from their cigarettes to hide the conflicting emotions. Like holes in their psychies, their feelings were mixed and unsettled. Sadness for those absent, joy for being alive, guilt for being alive—a sense they were deserting the restless spirits of those no longer with them, those who might still linger inside the silent walls of Delta Club.

  Sometimes forgetting can be harder than remembering. Sometimes leaving can be harder than staying. Sometimes living, harder than dying. But the courage that sustained them through combat did not desert them in these final moments. With some hesitation they shouldered their battered parachute bags and reluctantly trekked toward the Delta compound front gate.

  Many had arrived as fuzzy-cheeked, bright-eyed young men. In leaving, although chronologically still young, their eyes looked as though they’d lived much longer. They had met the angry man, and had lived. These were the eyes of old men; they’d drained every ounce of heartbreak, knowledge and simple enjoyment from precious, sometimes precarious life. These young-old eyes had witnessed more harsh reality than others see in a lifetime—and far too much death.

  Almost to a man, they believe they survived Vietnam due to their camaraderie with others in Delta. This was a lonely, dangerous line of work, with few they could depend upon, except those who experienced it with them. The hardships, danger and gamut of emotions had only served to bring them closer.

  They learned about loyalty, honor, dedication, fear, hatred and love. Through the years, they’ve remained close. The attitudes and abilities of these brave men, in an atmosphere of unrelenting war, had set them apart. Not once did selfishness, fear or personal concern interfere with a decision to put their life on the line to assist a teammate in trouble. That unselfishness often cost limbs and the lives of good and valuable men. Those men had families and loved ones, friends and futures. They gave it all for their brothers, and would do so again.

  Final review for the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at their headquarters in Nha Trang, Vietnam. 1970. (Photo courtesy of Norman Doney)

  It was with a strong sense of pride and commitment that most joined this elite group—but it was for the brotherhood they remained. Superbly trained, there was never any doubt they were in good hands, no matter who was selected to go with them on a mission. That training began the day they arrived at Delta’s base in Nha Trang, and continued until their final day with the organization. Once trained, they trained others; undoubtedly the best-prepared soldiers in the world.

  Returning home to learn their unique sacrifices had gone unnoticed or appreciated—disdained or loathed by fellow countrymen and women—their strong bond toward each other has never wavered. Instead, it’s only grown stronger. Feeling unwelcome, unlike the returning veterans of the other wars America had fought, to this day they often greet each other with the familiar, “Welcome home, brother.” It’s the only welcome home they’ve ever received.

  Not enough can be said of the men who served in Detachment B-52 Project Delta. Not one considered himself a hero, yet all were. Together, they formed a unique team of heroic and unselfish individuals, dedicated to accomplishing what they believed in, and did it better than anyone else—before or since. Each a triple volunteer who could have left at any time, they were proud men who wanted to be part of this remarkable group, Project Delta. Highly motivated, their skills were honed as few others in the art of warfare have ever been. Not only individual experts when in the field,
but together, a superb functional team—the premier unit of its type in the United States Army—and possibly, the world. These men are brothers in the truest sense of the word. As such, they will never stand alone. Under threat of death, they stood together to the last man, and would do it again. No heroes. No rewards.

  * * * * * *

  Project Delta’s mission was declassified in 1996. In 2001, Delta veterans began to gather annually in Las Vegas, Nevada, as part of the Special Operations Association reunion (SOAR).

  “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportioned to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.”