The Real Berets

For the past month, John Wayne's The Green Berets--Hollywood's first motion picture on the Viet Nam war--has been packing them in at theaters all across the U.S. This week the movie will open in Saigon, where, presumably, members of the Special Forces will get the chance to compare Wayne's absurd and blundering epic (TIME, June 21) with the way it really is.

The Green Berets have already been overly romanticized in song and book, including Robin Moore's novel, on which the movie is based. "That's a lot of crap," says Lieut. Colonel Robert W. Hassinger, deputy commander of the Special Forces in Viet Nam. "There's not much glamour in our outfit --just a lot of hard work." Well, not quite. There are only 2,600 Green Berets in Viet Nam, but they exercise control over a force of 50,000 Vietnamese irregulars in 80-odd bases, mostly tiny outposts along the Laotian and Cambodian borders. They run the most economic and perhaps the most unusual operation in the war, carried out on an annual budget of just over $100 million and a seemingly limitless supply of gall and resourcefulness.

Man for man, the Green Berets, named, of course, for their distinctive headgear (the color is traced to the forest-green caps worn by Rogers' Rangers in the French and Indian war), are probably the best-trained and most professional U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam.

Many, perhaps even a third, are there on their second tour; some noncoms have been in the country for six years and plan to stay until the war is over. Says Colonel Harold Aaron, commanding officer of all Green Berets in Viet Nam: "Special Forces provides a man with a microcosm he can control."

Loincloth & Bracelet. The Special Forces came to Viet Nam in 1961. Mov ing out into the jungled hinterland where Saigon exerted little or no control, they recruited irregular forces from minority groups--mostly Montagnard tribesmen--and established fortified base camps. From the beginning, the Americans, unlike the Vietnamese, got along well with the "Yards." It is not unusual to see a Special Forces man, decked out in loincloth and wearing the plain brass Montagnard bracelets that indicate blood brotherhood, attending a village party or a wedding as an honored guest. Though the Americans are a familiar sight in many villages by now (their periodic patrols usually include medics, who treat the villagers), the children always look in awe and delight at the foreign giants, occasionally sneaking up to touch with wonder a hairy leg or arm.

The Green Berets still do their fighting mostly on the fringe of the big battlefields: quick, sharp clashes in the jungle along infiltration routes used by the Communists. Occasionally, one of their isolated redoubts is overrun (A Shau two years ago, Lang Vei this year) by an all-out attack. More oftenone is hit by rapid mortar and small-arms harassment probes, which are usually repulsed by the garrison. The camps are generally supplied by air, which provides the only link with the outside world.

Booty Money. Despite occasional psychological strains from isolation in the bush, the Green Berets still handle some of the toughest chores of the war. Special Forces "C and C" teams venture on missions "over the mountain"--reconnaissance forays into Laos and Cambodia that are classified and not talked about. "Mike-forces," elite irregulars under Special Forces officers, are sometimes thrown into hazardous actions where regular Vietnamese and

U.S. units might not be readily committed. There is considerable incentive for "Mike force" troopers. A private gets more monthly pay than a regular Vietnamese master sergeant ($58 v. $48). There is also the promise of booty money for captured Communist weapons: an AK-47 assault rifle brings $25, a 120-mm. mortar $200, a tank $500.

Even in today's big war of divisions, the Green Berets have somehow man aged to remain individualists; occasionally they come up with a grandstand play that is hard to equal. Last spring, for example, two elephants were needed in a remote village to work on a new sawmill. The Berets tranquilized the animals, set them on a free-swinging platform and helicoptered them to an otherwise inaccessible location.

Despite such feats, the likelihood is that the Green Berets will hardly recognize themselves--or, for that matter, their surroundings or their enemy--in John Wayne's version. In the movie, the camp's single .50-cal. machine gun sits splendidly unprotected on a little hillock and the commanders direct the battle from a fragile watchtower that the Communists somehow manage to miss to the last; in reality, Green Beret camps are heavily bunkered, often reinforced with cement. In the movie, an evening's relaxation for Special Forces officers involves an outing to a Miami-style club, at which some of the guests are in evening clothes; in reality, substitute a few cans of beer in a bare, functional officers' mess. In the movie, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese walk into the camp's defenses like so many head of cattle; in reality, they usually hit the way good infantrymen are taught to attack, using every inch of terrain for cover.

On the Communist side, there is a starchy general, complete with well-lit villa, Citroen limousine and champagne and caviar to seduce the willowy government agent; even the Viet Cong would find that amusing. On the U.S. side, Wayne's self-conscious heroes penetrate into the Communist-base area by parachute and then traipse through forests that are obviously south of the Mason-Dixon line rather than the DMZ.

With people taking so many foolish chances in the movie, the Green Berets will probably not even want to use it as a recruiting come-on.

* A contraction of mobile strike.

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