From Laos he volunteered for a special ops mission called The Evacuation of Vietnam. The main objectives were to locate certain people on a list, and get them out. The helicopter would drop them far away from their objective so that it would not alert the Viet Cong that they were there. Vietnam was beautiful, but uncomfortable. My father’s team wasn’t the typical army. They didn’t eat rations, they didn’t use bug repellent, and they didn’t even use soap. They ate what the Vietnamese ate, and they would wash in the rivers in order to get acclimated to the area. The key to their success was stealth and surprise, the Vietnamese couldn’t know they were there. So by eating the same food as

them ensured their feces and urine would look and smell the same as the Vietnamese’s, and not wearing bug repellent and using soap ensured they smelled the same as them, making it much harder for the Vietnamese to find them and not know where they are.

They would track for miles through dense foliage and jungle as quietly and quickly as possible to reach their rendevous point. When they got there, the people they were there to rescue didn’t want to leave. That didn’t matter however, they had a mission, and the mission was going to be carried out. On the way back out, they were responsible for the people who couldn’t move quite as quickly and efficiently through the jungle as the special forces was trained to do, so they had to sacrifice stealth for speed to get out of there as quickly as possible. Because of this, enemies heard them and fire fights broke out. “Combat was intense. We walked with our guns locked and loaded ready to fire. We didn’t even bother with the safety. When battle came, we were so scared the drip of sweat off your forehead hitting the ground sounded like a gunshot. All my senses were heightened, I don’t know how, but you could feel it when something was out there, and we were ready for it. If we were caught by surprise everyone would be firing, if we weren’t we would fire in waves. If there were four of us, two would be firing, then when they needed to reload we would start firing. You wished you would have a million bullets in a clip, because you knew as long as you were firing, they were ducking and you were safe. You wanted to be close to your team too, because if they saw you move out of the corner of their eye and they didn’t know you were there, they were gonna shoot you.” Everyone on my dad’s team made it out alive. Twice they went into Vietnam to rescue people, and twice everyone made it out alive. As a result from these quick “in and o

Some topics in this essay:
Cong Vietnam, Vietnam Vietnam, Twice Vietnam, Bush TIPS, North Vietnamese, Saucedo Jr, South Vietnam, Evacuation Vietnam, , dad remembers, didn’t matter, bug repellent, didn’t people,