There was little hope that Private First Class Robert F Scherdin was still alive. He was last seen wounded and under heavy fire, and an accompanying Montagnard soldier had been unable to move him.
Scherdin was lost during a covert US Army MACV-SOG mission behind enemy lines in Cambodia on 29 December 1968. The role of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group) was to conduct hit-and-run raids from Vietnam into neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, hopefully disrupting enemy operations at the height of the Vietnam War. Within hours of the engagement, a mission was mounted to find Scherdin, but the situation deteriorated quickly.
Another jungle fight
Men of Hatchet Force, specially trained in secret search-and-destroy operations and the rescue of missing soldiers, boarded helicopters and sped toward the scene of the previous action. Second in command was decorated combat veteran Sergeant First Class Robert L Howard – he was sure that this fight with the North Vietnamese would be a stern test.
Minutes after the helicopters reached their designated landing zone, the rescue team came under intense fire from an enemy force of at least two companies. Howard was stunned when a grenade showered him with hot shrapnel and destroyed his M-16 assault rifle. His platoon leader had already gone down, seriously wounded.
Esta historia es de la edición Issue 109 de History of War.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición Issue 109 de History of War.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
NAUMACHIA TRUTH BEHIND ROME'S GLADIATOR SEA BATTLES
In their quest for evermore novel and bloody entertainment, the Romans staged enormous naval fights on artificial lakes
OPERATION MANNA
In late April 1945, millions of Dutch civilians were starving as Nazi retribution for the failed Operation Market Garden cut off supplies. eet as In response, Allied bombers launched a risky mission to air-drop food
GASSING HITLER
Just a month before the end of WWI, the future Fuhrer was blinded by a British shell and invalided away from the frontline. Over a century later, has the artillery brigade that launched the fateful attack finally been identified?
SALAMANCA
After years of largely defensive campaigning, Lieutenant General Arthur Wellesley went on the offensive against a French invasion of Andalusia
HUMBERT 'ROCKY'VERSACE
Early in the Vietnam War, a dedicated US Special Forces officer defied his merciless Viet Cong captors and inspired his fellow POWs to survive
LEYTE 1944 SINKING THE RISING SUN
One of the more difficult island campaigns in WWII's Pacific Theatre saw a brutal months-long fight that exhausted Japan’s military strength
MAD DAWN
How technology transformed strategic thinking and military doctrine from the Cold War to the current day
BRUSHES WITH ARMAGEDDON
Humanity came close to self-annihilation with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Broken Arrows’ and other nuclear near misses
THE DEADLY RACE
How the road to peace led to an arms contest between the USA and USSR, with prototypes, proliferation and the world’s biggest bomb
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
Einstein, Oppenheimer and the race to beat Hitler to the bomb. How a science project in the desert helped win a war
