A Short History of Combat Tracking

The employment of Visual Tracking skills is nothing new and has been a critical skill in human survival and evolution. Primitive man developed the skill of tracking by associating a print laid by an animal to that of prey.  As humans evolved, visual tracking played a significant role in everyday survival, whether hunting for food, […]

The Beginning of the Stingray Patrols

In the early days of Marine involvement in Vietnam, it quickly became apparent that doctrines drawn from fighting the Japanese and the North Koreans were insufficient for fighting the Vietcong. The Japanese, North Koreans, and Chinese had used defined front lines, something the VC explicitly did not. Stopping small, mobile units of guerrillas with conventional […]

Remembering MSG Roy Benavidez

As much as the pain in his crippled body, the constant barrage of criticism at America’s involvement in Vietnam swelled the anger within his soul. On a daily basis he watched as the nightly news showed film of the American flag being burned, while he thought of those brave men he knew that were heading […]

Operation Kingpin

By the Spring of 1970 the United States found itself entering a 5th year of combat operations in South Vietnam. Richard Nixon’s pledge of turning the war over through Vietnamization – that is, making the South take over the bulk of the fighting – was underway. Yet hundreds of miles north, in cramped, filthy cells, […]