The Eyes of the Eagle by Gary Linderer

Author:Gary Linderer [Linderer, Gary A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-57466-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

September 1, 1968

Frank Souza returned to the company on the first of September. Everybody ragged him about his wound. Not many Vietnam vets had been knocked out of action by target arrows. He was put on a physical profile for another week but was expected to make a full recovery and return to his team.

Six of us were selected to train for a special team that the company was putting together. We were to be trained as a special operations unit within the LRPs, giving us the capability to perform some of the functions that all of our teams had been performing in the past but without the training and expertise to do so.

Crazy Adams was to conduct the training. (We all hoped that he wouldn’t be appointed the team leader!) He told us that when he finished with us, we would all be experts in hand-to-hand combat, killing with a K-bar knife, close-in infiltration, assassination techniques, night movement, advanced map and compass reading, and—oh, yeah—physical conditioning.

I wondered who in the hell had thought this one up, and why I had been selected for the team. The ranger/commando training signaled an expanded role for the LRPs. It probably also signaled the onset of casualties, which had been surprisingly light since I had joined the unit (only Whitmore, Sheperd, and Souza had suffered any injury).

Schwartz, Sours, Souza, Smith, Adams, and myself were to make up the team. When I asked Adams how I had been selected, he told me, “Don’t let it go to your head. They only wanted guys with six months or more to go and who were cherry enough to not think they already knew everything. You fit the bill!” Everybody but Adams thought that Custer’s Commandos would be an appropriate call sign for the team.

We had a company formation in the afternoon. About forty of us received the Vietnam Campaign Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, and, most important, our Combat Infantry Badges.

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