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Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University.

Vietnam Archive Oral History Project

Interview with Neil Couch Conducted by Ron Frankum

June 17, 2000 Transcribed by Tammi Mikel

Ronald Frankum: This is Ron Frankum, I’m with Neil Couch, member of the

Combat Tracker…Combat Tracker team in New Orleans. It’s June 17

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th, year 2000. Why

don’t we begin, Neil, with a brief background of your experiences before you entered the

Army and we’ll go from there.

Neil Couch: Okay, I went in the service in 19 and 51. I was a 16 year old. I

always wanted to be a soldier so I went in and from there I went to Europe on the U.S.

Constabulary and then they wanted back, I volunteered for Korea, I ended up

volunteering to go to Korea. I ended up in Korea as a 9-R platoon. I went from Korea

back to the United States, got out of the service, went back into the service in ’58 and I

love the service, and then I stuck with regular [?] units up until I went to airborne and

then I went to 173rd airborne and I went to Vietnam my first tour. I was in the LRRPs

over there. I liked the small unit tactics and then in 19 and 67 actually I went back to

Vietnam and went in the 25th Division and that’s when they started the tracker program. I

was not interested in it at that time. I didn’t know what it was, and I kind of ducked out

of it for a while and guys kept on us so I finally ended up applying for the school and

then from there I went through USERV and processed through USERV and went into

Malaysia or JWS and that was my first introduction to the trackers was by Lieutenant

Kiwi, a New Zealand SAS and his team. I think they come out of Borneo or somewhere

and it was really interesting because after I got into it and it was hard. It was some of the

hardest training I’ve ever been through. I’ve been through airborne school, commando

school, LRRP schools, 7th Army LRRPs and all and I believe this was one of the toughest

schools that I had ever encountered.

RF: What was the year that you went to the jungle warfare school? 1

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NC: Jungle warfare in Malaysia?

RF: In Malaysia.

NC: In Malaysia, it was 1967. I was the third group to go through the school. I

ended up coming out of Malaysia after I got through school, I was coming up in Team 7

and Team 8, we had 6, 7, and 8 came back in country and I was in Team 7 which I was

attached to the 1st Cav Division. Team 8 was another that was attached to the 1st Cav and

I became…I went back to Malaysia, went through the instructor course for Combat

Tracker instructor and after I got through the course I came back into country and went to

back into Cav and took over as team leader. My actual assigned job when I first came in

country was a Weasel tracker but when I came back in from the instructor course I went

in as a team leader, and I took over Team 7. Sgt. Nicholson, a friend of mine which was

with me in the school and was with me in the 25th Division, we were all together. There

was about six of us left out of our…we stayed together and about five of us went out of

the 25th and stayed together in the tracker program in the 1st Cav. So, Nick was in charge

of Team 8, and after DROSing back to States after we pulled our tour of duty in Vietnam

as a tracker Team 7 and 8, me and Sgt. Nicholson went to Fort Knox, Kentucky as

temporary assignment to train troops until we started this school in Georgia. We had to

hold off…they was processing the school to get it started, they was bringing three

sergeants from SAS and British and major which was a captain in Malaysia with us, it

was Major Woods and we knew him as Captain Woods in Malaysia but he got promoted

to major and we met them at Fort Gordon, Georgia and me and Nick was the two

Americans that started this school along with the British at Fort Gordon, Georgia and we

went out and recruited our students and we had to recruit them and then we brought them

back and trained them which we tried to put them through the same identical training that

we went through in Malaysia which was extremely hard training.

RF: Talk about your training in Malaysia. How did the training start out? What

was a typical day of your…it was a six-week training program, is that correct?

NC: Yes.

RF: How did they train you?

NC: Well, they started out, we had our basic first week was in the compound of

Johor Bahru jungle warfare center and it was physical fitness and classroom work. They

introduced us to different classroom work like different signs, what we’d be looking for,

how we would judge ages, and how we would track and just what tracking was all about

and how you actually do it and we had that, and the physical portion, the physical fitness

portion of this training was extremely hard. I mean, it was extremely…you had to really

push yourself and I’d say physically it was one of the hardest parts and we lost a lot of

people. Once you got through your first week then you started into the jungle actually

applying all of this training that they would give you in this first week plus extra training

like reaction drills, ambushes, real, you know, like the…and they kept it as close as they

could to the real, actual thing that we would be coming up against in the real war, real

fight, and then you’ve got the mental portion of this. It was no rest. Visual tracking is a

mental strain on a normal person or anybody really. It’s not like being a regular point

man in an infantry squad or recon patrol. Visual tracking, you cannot afford to make one

mistake. You overlook one thing and you could cost the team its life. So, you don't miss

anything. You have to be able to read different signs, you have to be able to look for

booby traps, look for the enemy, and the way this is, they teach you anything out there

that’s not natural, this is what you look for. So, you can’t afford to miss anything. Your

mind works constantly all the time. When you’re back in the left flank guard, team

leader, or rear security, you’re kind of relaxed. You’re only protecting that portion of the

team. But, your cover man and your visual tracker, and the cover man protects the visual.

This is what his job is, to protect this guy. But, the visual training is extremely mental.

Its not as physical because you're moving slow at a slow pace, but you cannot afford to

miss anything and the team leader really has to keep a sharp eye on this guy. When he

sees this guy as kind of expiring too much because you have to go by the, here he is

soaking wet, you might have to switch this guy. You may even as team leader become a

Division. It depends on how many people. So, it is a hard job to actually visual track and

it’s not normal for people to do. Everybody cannot be a visual tracker. I mean, its not

because that you’re not mentally capable or anything; some people cannot take the

mental aspect of it and some people can be a good visual tracker for 2 or 300 yards and

they get so involved in this that they begin to see things that don’t exist. So, you have to

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pull this guy out and this is why a visual tracker is a special person; not because of me. It

takes a special person to be a visual tracker and these guys that trained us, the New

Zealand SAS, I’ll always say they’re the greatest men in the world because they proved

this before they come to us that you have to be good to survive, and they never cut us any

slack. They made us what they were, and the guys that didn’t make the training was not

bad soldiers. That was nothing to do. It was because the job that you was going to be

called upon to do you could not afford to make one mistake. So, this is why it was so

hard on a tracker team or visual tracker because you had the strain upon you at all times.

Your capabilities of being a good tracker depend on the lives of the four men that you

have behind you and this is why it was such a strain on you to be part of the tracker team.

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RF: All members of the tracker team had visual tracking training, is that correct?

NC: Only four of them. You had four trained visual trackers, but all these guys

are crossed trained in every job. Because I was [?] guy in the team, sometimes I might be

the visual tracker. But once I became the visual tracker and the guy I replaced or I

appointed as team leader, he run the team. Because I was the staff sergeant or sergeant

first class or whatever, once I was the visual tracker the guy that was acting as team

leader called the shots. He was the team leader. He might be a PFC, he might be a spec

four, he might be a buck sergeant, ever what it was, it didn’t matter. He was the team

leader and you was trained as a cover man, a visual tracker, a radio operator, and as rear

security. You had one guy there was a dog handler. This guy, no one was a dog handler.

This guy was trained for that dog. That dog was his. The other four men had no concept

of that dog. They…when that dog was in front, then you became the rear security, the

visual would, and the dog became the lead man and the dog handler and then he had his

own cover man. Usual every visual and every dog handler had a certain guy in that team

that he wanted as his cover man. I have a…its not because I didn’t trust the other four

guys, it was because this guy and me and him worked as one. For an example, Steve

Craddock was my cover man when I was a visual. Anytime I was a visual, regarded, I

wanted Steve Craddock as my cover man. I’d put my life in this guy’s hands. I trusted

this guy when I was there, and today I’ll say he’s one of the best I ever had. Now,

another visual tracker would say, “No, I want this guy.” The dog handler had his own

guy he wanted. It could be me or anyone else. He said, “This is my cover man. I want

this guy with me,” because when he was up there, then he was more relaxed because he

knew this guy was protected and this was why the team works so close together. It

wasn’t…you didn't bring a guy in from somewhere else and say, “Well, we’re short a

man today. We’ll bring someone else.” You didn’t do that. This team worked together.

This team, everything they done was together. You live with these guys, you eat with

these guys, you party with these guys. These are your family. This is your family and

everything you done was with these guys. I knew exactly what each man would do under

fire, what reaction this guy would do. I didn’t have to worry about what Steve Craddock

was going to do, what Dotson was going to do, what Nigermeyer was going to do or what

my dog handler Matson was going to do. I knew already. It was the team leader has got

the most relaxing job on the team because he has four men there. He knows everything

that they’re going to do, and that’s why being a team leader of a visual tracker team, its

not an easy task because of your responsibility but it is the more relaxing portion of the

team than any job there because your putting this visual tracker or this dog handler out

there in front. You cannot afford to make a mistake. So, everybody has a responsibility.

No one can allow any slip up, nothing to pass them. If you was, say, the visual tracker

and the cover man covered a certain portion of the front or the dog handler and his cover

man covered a certain portion of the front, the next man behind the cover man, he

covered so much of the right flank. The RTO, he had a boundary to cover on the left

flank. Then the guy acting as rear security, which most likely is a visual tracker but a

dog's up front, he had the whole rear. So, you couldn’t slip. There’s no slip up. There

was no room for mistakes, and another thing about tracker teams; they were noise

disciplined. There was no noise. You did not make any noise that you could hear

beyond the farthest member of your team. You could not make any noise that could be

heard farther than that by walking through the jungle, by touching vegetation. The least

amount of sign that you left is what you left. That mean it make it harder for them to find

you, and this was the kind of training you had to go through. You learn how to walk, you

learn how to see, you learn how to arm and hand signals. A lot of stuff was done by no

command whatsoever. Once you come under fire, everybody knew what to do.

Everybody reacted, knew exactly what reaction to take and to get yourself out and you

were drilled and drilled and drilled. It was like going to jump school. Jump school you

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have to know how to exit an aircraft and keep your chute from tangling up, or if

something happens to your chute how to react and open reserve, because if you don’t

your life depends on this thing. Your life depends on the action that you take, and the

tracker team reaction drill…if you’ve got a cold, you don't go out. You don’t go out with

that team. You might go out one man short. I would never go out with a team under

four, but say you was on a team and you had a cough, they wouldn’t allow you to go out;

not because they don’t want you coughing out there, they don’t want you giving it and

you don't want to go out there [?]. I know if something happened how you would feel,

you would feel, “Oh man, its my…”; no. If you had a cold you wouldn’t help them

much. So, you don’t take a man out that can’t function. When you also go out you don’t

take all this luxury and shaving stuff and toothpaste. When I went out I never smoked a

cigarette. I smoked, I smoked a lot, but out there I didn’t smoke any because if I can…if

they can smell, I can smell theirs, they can smell mine, so this is just what you have to do

and you train yourself to do this. I think if you talk to the visual trackers, my wife tells

me I have the best self discipline training in the world because I made myself quit

smoking, I made myself do this. It doesn't bother me. I say, “I’m not going to do that no

more. I’m not going to eat that because it bothers my stomach.” I might love it, but I

don’t want it because it bothers me. That’s a visual tracker training because it is self-

discipline, its self-control, and this is what, basically, a tracker is. He is so well in control

of himself that by the training that he went to that he can control himself to do anything

he wants to. These guys are so close to one another, like in this reunion we have here. I

trained a lot of these guys. I don’t remember their faces and everything, but there’s not a

one out there that I wouldn’t pick four guys and say, “Hey, I want to spend a month with

you because we’ve got a mission,” and I would go with them because we have all had the

basic discipline. All I’d have to do was learn their reaction, that’s all. I’m the man that’s

doing the training, they’re just doing what they were trained to do. I’m learning their

concepts, but I would trust, after a month’s training, I would take them with me, say,

“Yes, let’s go,” because I know what they went through and most likely I trained a lot of

them to do that and I have that much confidence in these guys because tracking, a tracker

team, its one team during the war that was never mentioned much. I don’t know, it was

secret to a point, but you never heard much from them and the reason for it it was great in

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one aspect because if the American public didn’t hear about the trackers like the special

forces or rangers, then that meant the enemy didn’t know that much about us and which

they didn’t. We did find leaflets and things in Vietnam where they would like to…they

got a reward out for you, which wasn’t very much of, but it was a lot to them. But, we

knew they knew who we were but they didn’t know what concept or tactics to get us and

we stayed ahead of them and that’s just why I think that trackers are one of the best

trained trackers that ever…that we’ve had in the military concept of, many years, and this

is why we had the least amount of casualties of any unit in Vietnam. I know we had a lot,

and some of it was just overconfidence, but trackers was well trained.

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RF: In the training process, when was the tracker team matched up with the dog

and dog handler?

NC: At the last portion of the training, I think it was three weeks. Then, they

matched the dog up with you. Then, you went on a training. Then the dog became part.

Now for the first six weeks of the training, the visual done all the tracking, and the dog,

while we were going through our training the dog was down here with the dog trainers

training this dog. They learned that dog just like we learned the visual. They knew

exactly when that dog alerted on the enemy, how far away the enemy was, what direction

the enemy was, where the booby traps was, every type of alert, that handler had to know

and they called it reading your dog. There’s no need you having a dog out there to track

if you can’t read the dog because the visual could do that. A visual is one great…he is

trained just like the dog. He is slower than the dog, he is slower. The dog is faster, the

dog is, especially on a hard terrain track, but the dog handler has to be able to control that

dog, read that dog, and everything, and when that dog alerts, you’ve got to catch it. This

is why he says, “I want this man my cover man,” because when that dog alerts or he

misses an alert which we hope never happens, he wants this man to protect him and keep

him from getting killed himself, but this should never happen because a dog handler has

to go through this mental, physically straining to be able to take this dog and say, “The

enemy’s there, 400 yards over there.” He has to do that. If he don’t, you’ve got five men

gone and this is why men that…after he gets through this training and the instructor says,

“Yes, this man is ready to be on this team,” then this dog will come to this tracker team.

Then, they will go out for three weeks and the visual will go through and do so much

tracking, they pull the visual back, and the visual will come and the dog handler will

come up to the visual and say, “Here is the enemy’s sign. The enemy is going this way.

He’s doing this, he’s doing…” He gives the dog handler all the information that he has

gained from this to the dog handler. He’s already passed it on to the team leader. Now

he will pass this information to the dog handler. The dog handler now knows what he’s

following and knows where the signs to track is. So then the VT will either become a

dog handler or a cover man. If he’s that guy’s cover man, he will become the cover man.

But if he ain’t, then the guy that’s the cover man for the dog handler will come up and

take his position as the cover man. If right now he’s carrying a radio then, we’ll go to

the tracker you take the radio. Then the visual tracker might become radio operator. But,

that guy will get the cover man that he desires; not the team leader points man. Ever who

you’re comfortable with, that’s who you want and now the dog is on the track and away

you go. Now you’re going at a little faster speed, now. That means that these guys back

here has got to be more alert. But you, when you’re out, a tracker team has to stay 100%

alert at all times. There’s no room for, like I say, for a mistake. So, the training on this is

really important and this is why you cannot have a weakness nowhere. When you recruit

these guys, which I used to recruit them, I’d go out to all the posts I could and I would

sometimes go through several thousand men, and the way I done it if I had walked up to

these guys and said, “Do you want to….” and I would brief them on what kind of training

they was going to do, what it was going to be like. I give them every kind of information

that I possibly could without breaking any kind of security. Then I would individually

talk to each guy that was interested. If my guy came up to me and he looked at his buddy

and he says, “Are you going to go?” I put a check by him or something because I wanted

a guy that could make up his own mind because like I say, once you come into a tracker

team, you might be the rear security, radio operator, what have you and I’m the sergeant

and I might be the visual tracker and you might be my new team leader. You’ve got to be

able to make the decision yourself. Don’t come up and say to me as a visual and say,

“Sarge, what do you want me to do?” You can’t do that. There’s not time for that;

[snap] that quick in a second do that.

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NC: Not a written exam, you have a practical exercise exam. You had to

accomplish, you go out, and you had to accomplish a mission. You had to like go

out…they had different times you would go out say and recon an area like an enemy base

camp. You had to be able to tell how many people was there or your mission might go

out and check this bridge, what kind of bridge it is, what would it hold, or ever what test

they put on you, but you can bet it was well honored all the way because they knew

exactly. They were the ones that’s doing it; so does the enemy, and they made it so

difficult for you to do this. Then once you done this, and you was only timed, you went

out and done this, you come back after you got all the information that you needed

without getting caught and then you went back and then you sent up a balloon, that was

our thing, you sent up a balloon to let them know that you accomplished your mission,

and these boys that’s waiting for you is like I say, the SAS team and they are great, and

when you get by them, you are graduated and like I said, you go out, they send you out in

the helicopter and they drop you off at a certain coordinates. You’ve got a map and a

compass. Well they give you a coordinates so many thousand meters away, a distance,

and they say, “We have an enemy base camp. See what’s there, how many’s there, what

they’re doing, what kind of weapons they got, and what’s happening.” Or, they might

say, “We have a bridge we have to check and see if we can get well armed or well

protected or what.” You might have to go down there and check what kind of enemy and

how much protection, machine gun or what have you; every bit of information that you

can get in a certain…you’ve only got a certain length of time to do this. Once that time

starts knocking off, then we had to send up a balloon signaling you were ready and that

means you been there and back in the safe zone and then you get picked up.

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RF: So you graduated from the school and then which team number were you?

NC: I was Team 7, and Team 7 and Team 8 went to the 1st Cav. I think Team 6

went to the 9th.

RF: Describe…you talked about recon as one of the main missions.

NC: Well recon, when you go out on a recon mission, a recon mission is like to

recon. You recon and you gain information. A tracker…

RF: Intelligence?

NC: Huh?

RF: Intelligence? 1

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NC: Yeah, intelligence. It’s like when I was…I&R, that was intelligence and

reconnaissance. A tracker team could give you more information. I could track…a

tracker team could tell you, a visual tracker will tell you how many men he’s following,

what kind of load they’re carrying, what kind of weapons they’re carrying, what kind of

morale they’ve got, are they strike troops or local VC or what have you, are they well

trained, how the morale is, do they have any females with them, do they have…what

they’re doing, how fast they’re going, what direction they’re going, and a visual tracker

can follow you. He can find out more about you than you really know about yourself and

he’s feeding this all back to this team leader and his team leader is, through his radio

communication, is feeding this back to his tactical operations headquarters and when

you’re on that…he says, “I’m following, right now, I’m following 15 men. They’re

NVA. They have heavy weapons, several small weapons. They’re carrying a lot of

ammo. They’re tired. They’re careless.” Or, he might tell you, “It’s a strike force. They

are good. They're not making no mistakes.” Ever what he tells you is he can give you

this and now I know you hear about the old western things and you see these guys going

down and covering up their tracks and all that. When you throw deceptions against a

tracker team, you are supporting him more than you’re hurting him. You are leaving him

more…when you do this, you speed his concept up. The more deceptions you throw at

him, a good tracker is the less…you’re feeding him more information about yourself.

You’re telling him one thing, you’re telling him he knows you’re back there. You’ve

given him more signs to follow. You’re slowing your pace down, he speeds his up, so

you lose. You hit the water on this guy, “Oh, I get in the water, they can’t find me.” A

visual tracker will find you in the water. Now a lot of people say dogs can’t track in

water; don’t ever believe that. When I used to teach tracking, I taught exactly…because I

had dogs, I was a trainer. I showed them exactly how the scent in the water. The scent,

when you go into a stream, your scent will, as the current of the water moves, your scent

will move to each side of the bank. Okay, the bank that you’re the closest to will be more

scent than the other side so you know exactly So the dog comes down there to the water,

he gets him a good drink, cools himself off, jumps up and takes right after you. Now

here you’re waiting in water. You’ve slowed your pace down about half or more. The

dog speeds up. You cut his time off just like that. He’s going to get you. So, anything

on a tracker you do, you support him. Okay, another thing you will learn in school,

especially in combat, after about the first two times you get shot at you have six senses. A

visual tracker or a tracker team, even if the dog don’t work, the members of that team

will tell you when they get a certain distance from the unit and never see this guy, and it’s

a thing that you learn. You’ve already heard this. Its part of your senses like smell, hear,

see, feel. You ever been out somewhere and you knew somebody was looking at you but

you get this? So, when you’re out there tracking, a tracker team will tell you, “Hey boy,

hold it up. Them guys sitting right out there. They’re here or they’re there.” They know

this by their senses and they’re always right. They know this. So, and a tracker is not

like a normal person. I take you out here, and a person stares. A tracker don’t stare. His

eyes move, he’s relaxed, they move, he’s relaxed. If I look at that bag long enough, I can

make that bag move in my mind. A tracker don’t do that. A tracker don’t look at that

wall, they look beyond that wall. This is what they train you in school to be in the bush,

they call it the bush. You look through the bush, not at the bush. It’s hard to explain that

to you until you get out there and do it, but a tracker doesn’t look at nothing, he looks

through something. That’s why a tracker will spot you so far away that its unbelievable

and a normal person will never see you. You put all the camouflaged fatigues you want

on, but to him that is not natural. There’s no way that you’re going to go out there and

blend in with the terrain against a tracker. Sure you’ve got green camouflage on in the

jungle or tan camouflage on in the desert, but to him mother nature didn’t put that one

shade of green in there. Its something to him, and there’s holes that a tracker looks and

can see holes, what we call holes. You’ve got a hole and he’ll look and he’ll spot you in

a hole. He looks through there at you way beyond the bush; you can lay back there all

you want to. He will spot you, he will see you in there, and this is why this guy is so

mentally going because he is doing this to you and he is good and this is before you come

on a tracker team, you have to be able to do this and this is why, when we went out to

Vietnam, people said that we was weird-o’s or something. That was because of the old

Dirty Dozen. In order to become a tracker you had to have a clean civil record; no black

marks on it, and had to be a volunteer and be able to get top secret clearance and when

we came back in country we knew we were good. There was no doubt in our mind. We

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passed a course that the average man couldn’t do and we was there to save lives and the

tracker team, I must say, saved more lives in Vietnam than any concept they ever

invented in the war because all the information that we fed back to our headquarters, to

our fighting units, they could then plan their operations around the information that we

sent them and it was more accurate because we could tell them exactly what they were up

against. I’d say, “You’re up against a regiment here in this area, a hard core regiment,”

or I’d say, “You’re up against an NVA, local NVA,” so they could plan their plan and the

trackers could give back this information.

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RF: Did you find when you and your team first arrived back in Vietnam that the

1st Cav really didn’t understand what a tracker team was?

NC: And throughout the whole tour I was over there as a tracker team leader,

detachment counter two tours and even my last tour over there in ‘69-’70 I still had

problems with commanders understanding what our concept really was because you’re

telling a guy something that he thinks is a miracle. I mean, I know a lot of people believe

in miracles and a lot of people don’t, but you’re telling this commander that you can do

this and he’s looking at you saying, “I don’t even want to hear that.” It was hard to get

them to understand that you was a tracker. You could give him all this information that

he needed. You could do things for him. Now he loved, he would love for you to be his

lead scout, but we were not lead scouts. That was not our job. Our job was to reestablish

contact with the enemy by any means we see fit. Our job was recon. We could go out

before an FTX and we could give all the information back when we would send it back to

the Division with one of their main operations. They could then set up their operations,

which would go off and come out on max with it. But, it was so hard to get the

commanders to understand our concept. It wasn’t like they’d send out recon patrol, you

know recon patrol, which is nice. They’d go out and say, “Well, there’s no enemy in this

area. Yeah, we’ve seen several.” But, we could go out and get any and all the

information that they wanted, but to get them to believe this, “Who do these guys think

they are? These guys think they’re Superman or something?” I’ve had them even tell

me, “You think you’re Superman, you think you can just go out…” and I say, “Yes, we

can do that.” We could do that, but it was a constant battle with the team leaders to

actually brief and get to the commanders, especially the lower level, to believe that you

could do the things that you could do.

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RF: Did you find or did you experience a lot of friction when you were given

missions that didn’t fit into the concept of the tracker team?

NC: Yeah, they would try…I would tell them what I was capable of doing. They

would tell me about would I go out with this battalion and I’d say, “No, I don’t work for

a battalion. I work for a Division,” when I was assigned to the Cav, I would work for the

Division. Ever what G3 and G3 knew what my concept was because we was controlled

actually by J3 in USERV headquarters. Every month we had to send back a

representative to J3 and give a report on how our operations was going. Now if they was

trying to misuse us, you was to report this to J3 and J3 then would contact the Division or

brigade in which you were assigned to and tell them, “You cannot use these teams for

this,” because they had a lot of money wrapped up in us and you’re talking about special

trained guys. You misuse them, you may as well not have them. There’s a lot of times

through there I don’t agree with some of the things that some of the tracker teams done. I

think they was misused or they misused themselves. I wouldn’t allow that for me. I

stayed with the concept of the tracker because I was one of the instructors. I didn't teach

that, I didn’t approve of that, I didn’t lower my standards for nobody. These guys was

mine. Their lives was in my hands and I’m not going to jeopardize them in any way just

to satisfy somebody that wanted something to happen. If my job was to go out there in

an operation and do that, that’s what I done. I was not a lead scout, I was not guard duty

for no bunker guard, I didn’t…my men, when I came in from an operation, I let them rest

because I was on call at all times. Because you came in and got cleaned up, that didn’t

mean you got the next week off. You could turn around and you're right back on it and

that’s what I used to tell them. My men is not pulling no guard duty. “My men is not

doing this. They are trackers. They work as a tracker team and that’s the way its going

to be,” and even if I have to take a chewing out, I’d take it. That was all right with me. I

could handle that. But you still not going to have no guard duty, because I have linked

up, for an example, I have linked up with units out there, companies out there. Sure,

there’s five more men for security tonight. I said, “No you don’t. If I wanted to pull

security I would have been out there somewhere. I’m here to get my rest and then I leave

out of here in the morning,” because you know, they’d say, “Well they got with company

so-and-so, we send you your resupply, and move out in the morning.” So I would join

them and they would say, “Well Sarge, you take your men and pull this sector,” and I

said, “No sir, my men’s going to rest tonight.”

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RF: Well are there missions when you were a Combat Tracker team leader, are

there missions that still stick out in your mind as being…

NC: Well while I was at…I helped train people in country, I trained new trackers.

I would go and I would knock my team down to four men, which another one of my men

would act as team leader. I would go down to USERV because Fort Guard was having

real hard problems of training enough replacements to replace the rotation of all these

teams in Vietnam because like I say, it was hard to get that many men, regardless of how

many you interview or train, to get that many men. So I done a lot of training in Vietnam

training guys over there to fulfill the replacements, plus I trained a lot of Vietnamese like

MACV had rough puff, that was regional force and special force.

RF: Popular force.

NC: Popular force. I trained a lot of these guys, especially in I Corps because

every Wednesday if I wasn’t out I had so many hours I trained rough puffs I called them.

Sergeant Thomas was here today, you know, the guy with the cane. He was one of the

guys that I used to work with up there and the reason Thomas was great to work with, he

has been a dog trainer for years. He’s one of the greatest dog trainers in the military, so I

used to train with them and I’d get them out every Wednesday and I’d take these guys,

and what it was, I didn’t make trackers out of them. I was doing, training them to a

concept where they could see if the enemy was in their areas or in the area or what have

you by the signs that I was showing and then they could go out and check their areas and

any information that they could get, that was how to gain information about the enemy

which works out real good. Other than that I stayed with my team and we always had

to…we’d take our dogs out, we’d train our dogs on booby traps. We wanted to keep this

dog up to par at all times. A lot of times you never run into a booby trap. Some areas,

especially when you were around the NVA, you didn’t have the booby trap problem that

you did with the VC. The VC was booby trap crazy, you know. So when you was down

in areas that you had the local VCs or something, then you had to keep that dog up to par

on all booby traps, which you want to keep this dog, so you had to keep this dog trained

on that. Because you train him and he was a great booby trap dog, well, he would lose

interest in it if you didn’t get him out there. We would take booby trap terrains for him.

Then, our visuals would get some training. A lot of times in things like that we had to

keep our training up to par. We was restricted on this but we done enough to keep it up

where we could do it. But like I said, I did not like no one coming out trying to use me

for a lead scout or a lead unit. I did not want the infantry that close to me at anytime

because that was lowering my standard, my training, I was misusing my trackers because

I was trained to move without being seen, without being detected, and why should I go

out there and move like that when behind me 300 yards of an infantry platoon or infantry

company, and I know they didn’t mean it and all that, but hollering, “Hey Joe, give me a

cigarette!” “Hey, man, this has to take a break.” Well here’s five men moving through

here not speaking 300 yards behind them and you could hear them, so why shouldn’t

these guys just go up there and light them up a few cigarettes and go on in? I said, “No,

these guys…if I need you, I’ll call you.”

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RF: Now do you remember the mission, the first mission you had when you

realized that your training that you had really showed that the Combat Tracker team was

something special?

NC: Yes.

RF: Talk about that for a minute.

NC: When I came back in the country, see, my team was back, was operational,

when I was being an instructor. When I came back, my first mission out with the team, I

went out as a team leader. We went out which was not a very bad mission. It wasn’t

something…any of them could be bad, but we went out and you’re nervous, let me tell

you. My team had already been out a couple of times, prior to me, but it was new to me

for real but my experience, me being already in Vietnam, it didn’t scare me that bad but I

was nervous. Don’t ever think I wasn’t nervous because I didn’t want to make no

mistakes with this team and we went out and at that time my dog handler was Dotson.

RF: That’s…

NC: Dotson, and I had a dog named Shadow. It was mostly visual, the concept of

that mission was, and we went and we tracked…it was in An Lo Valley and we tracked

this team right up an unknown river and I always laugh about this which he was a super

friend of mine, Missouri Wayne got killed and it was open, you know, the river was a

pretty good sized river, but we found a training base camp for the NVA. But, before we

went and got there Missouri wanted some water and there’s the river, he lays right down

and drinks out of that river which wasn't no big deal, but the thing he was comic about we

had those old purification tablets, you know how you put them in your canteen and shake

them up? Not Missouri, he takes him one and jumps up and down but we went on up

there and I was so tickled that we did find something. We found a training camp for

NVA. I mean, it had bleachers set up, it had…I mean, the whole camp, just like ours and

when I got back you could make it out, but I knew right then, and the way we found that

we tracked these guys…they wasn’t in the classroom when we was there, but we tracked

these guys right into that classroom. Then we had to secure it and then we went and

checked it out and then after we found that we reported it back and we tracked them on

into their base camp and it was a small base camp, I’d say the unit that we found, which

not the main unit, was about maybe a company sized unit which most likely was guards

for the larger units. You know how you’ll go out and you’ll find a smaller unit and

before you get to the larger unit you have to go through this small unit, and we found

them and we’d pull back and they’d send in an air strike. But, our mission was

accomplished and I was pleased, and then I knew that the training that I had would work

because we moved so close to these guys and we got so much information about these

people that I knew that this was the only way to go and each mission gets better and

better and better and then you get more experience, you calm down a little more. The

next mission was easier, as you go along. But, I think I was more nervous than any guy

on the team because they had been out and they had made contact with the enemy

several…but it really [trails off].

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RF: Are there other missions like that that sort of…

NC: Oh yeah, a lot of missions like that. We went out and one of the best

missions I think I was with with the Cav was a hospital complex. We had made contact

with these guys and wounded them and we were following them and we called in and we

located a hospital that they had been looking for. They knew there was a hospital

complex in this area and I was in the uplift area, LZ Uplift they called it. It was north of

An Khe or cal Division headquarters but south of Two Bits where we were and this

hospital, they knew they had a hospital somewhere large because man they could get

these wounded out of the area and no one could find it. So, the rangers at that time was

LRRPs. They didn’t have a ranger company, they had LRRP teams and the LRRPs had

been everywhere trying to find this place; no one could find this place. We tracked these

guys into this complex. This complex had three wards in it. Each ward would hold

anywhere from 30 to 40 people, I mean under the ground, but when you flew over it in an

aircraft you couldn’t even see that and that’s why no one could spot it and we called in

and they said, “We’re going to put an infantry battalion and come in the other way, you

stay there.” So, we stayed at the mouth of the thing and then they brought in

another…they was bringing in a [?] to support us from the 1

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st of the 9th. The 1st of the 9th

was broke up of a Delta troop, recon troop, jeeps, and then you had three helicopter

troops with an infantry platoon in each one, we called them [?] platoons, blues, and they

sent one of them in to help us but on their way in we was already out there guarding this

place making sure we kept tabs on everybody. Before they got there…I guess they heard

the other people coming from the other side of the mountain, ‘cause this thing was near

the mountain. They broke to run and here I am at the mouth of this hole and this nurse,

NVA nurse, run into me; knocked me flat on my back, which we captured her and about

14 more people, wounded and what have you. Boy she cussed me all to pieces and I

wanted to hit her so bad. After I was already knocked down she knocked me flat on my

butt and then jumped up and cussed me in Vietnamese and when we got there this was

the hospital that they had been looking for so long and like I say, each one of these wards

would hold about 30 or 40 people and then the main ward, it had a stream running

through it, fresh water stream, and they had made a bed, a slab, oh about half as big as

this bed. This was like an operating table made out of rock, and this was their operating

table and we had a guy on that and we got him right off of that bed. His leg was all

messed up. So, that was one of the greatest missions in the Cav, I think. One of my other

teams, Team 8, they found a…at the time they didn’t know it. They had an ambush out

between Pleiku and An Khe which is just outside of An Khe and they had hit an ambush

and they called in gunships and things on them and when they followed this blood trail

they found a grave of the guy that used to be in I Corps. He was a commander

of…regimental commander, of an NVA regiment, a hard-core regiment in Vietnam. He

had been known by that regiment to wipe out an ARVN battalion, just annihilate it. But,

they knew he was in I Corps and somewhere they had knew that he had quieted down and

they couldn’t figure where he had went. But, during that ambush he had got hit and

Clemens and who else was it, not Matson, they was in Team 8, they found this and he

had a walking stick and a picture that Ho Chi Minh had presented him this big walking

stick and he went by a nickname of that walking stick and now they know where this

regiment is and I’d say by doing that, that that was one of the greatest missions

everybody ever got in Vietnam because this regiment was so well trained, it was a strike

force. I mean, they would walk into an AO, an ARVN AO and an area and they may just

annihilate it. I mean, when you annihilate a battalion, you’re talking about a lot of men.

I mean, they just destroy it. I mean, its gone, and that’s what he was doing, but when

they lost track of him in I Corps up around Quang Tri and back up in Duc Tho, up in that

area, that now they know where this regiment is. By killing this guy, I’m sure…I knew it

hurt them, but a regiment that well trained, its still a hard thing as in a strike force and

now they know, and I think when they done, this was a super mission for anybody. I

would have liked to been on it, but if I had known they was out. I had just came in and

then would get called out. They get called out, when I come in, if they didn’t come in I

get the next mission. That’s the only way we could keep one another working one another

to death. So, they went out and we was tickled to death. It wasn’t…I didn’t get jealous.

That team done a super, super job and these kind of missions that would have never

happened if it hadn’t been for the tracker team, like the hospital. The LRRPs looked and

looked and looked and looked and looked and never could find it. The air people flew

and flew and flew and never could find it. A tracker team found it. This I Corps man, no

one could locate him. “Where did he go?” He disappears on us. They even had thought

he had gone back into Laos or back to north. They didn’t know where his outfit was

because all at once the ARVNs weren’t getting wiped out. But, he had moved into our

hills and now we’ve got him again; we’ve got him. So, this is why tracker team was so

important in Vietnam that commanders had a hard time believing that this thing could do

this. I’d see the 1

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st Cav commander, Tulson, I think that was his name, he was one of the

greatest commanders to believe in tracker teams. I briefed him one time on an operation.

I was going to take my team out and he…every commander got up and yelled their spill,

you know, the artillery or AO people, these helicopter people and all that, they tell what

function they’ll be doing in this operation, what they can do to support this operation and

then everybody gets up and does it. Then, here comes my time. They said, “You get

up.” You’re, at that time, an E7 versus lieutenant colonels and colonels you know. You

kind of feel like you’re out of place. But, with Tulson, you didn’t have to feel that way.

So, I got up and was telling them about what I would do to support this operation which I

will be going out before it ever initiated the information I would be feeding back and our

other team most likely will depend on how the operation goes, and they had an assistant

S3 that was a major, and I ain’t got nothing against West Virginia or nothing like that but

he was a coon hunter or something and he was telling me…he’d interrupt you and say,

“We do this and this, and when I was a coon hunter, man, I could do this,” and I said,

“We’re not hunting coons, sir. This is a different story I have.” Tulson got on him. He

said, “This man is the expert. You listen to him,” and that makes you feel good and

knowing the information that you’re going to give back is going to make a yeah or nay

about that operation and that’s the way the tracker team operated. The information that

you give, it will make it a success or not. If you go out there and don’t do your job, just

slack around, that means when this Division goes out there, there’s a lot of men because

you go out there and tell them, “No, I haven’t seen nobody. There ain’t much movement

out in this area,” because you haven’t done your job, then they lay that information out

like that, “Oh, the tracker team’s out there and they ain’t run across nothing.” Then you

run out there and here a like I said, a strike regiment that way and they might be so that

means a lot when you go out there and say, “Boy, there are three regiments in this area.

There are three battalions in this area. There’s this in this area. They’ve got this kind of

weapon. They’ve done this. They’re getting ready for you. They’re…” then they know

exactly what kind of weapons and artillery and air strikes and what have you to put in

here to do it and it makes you feel good knowing that you can do this and you have the

ability to do it and say, “Yeah, I helped do that. I saved this many American lives.” I

have been asked, and I don't know why people ask you this, “Have you ever killed

anybody in Vietnam?” I mean, I always thought it was a dumb question to ask a guy, a

veteran of Vietnam this question because he’s a soldier. Now, whether he didn’t kill

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anybody or not, that’s immaterial. Its not the people that you killed, it’s the people that

you saved. That’s the way I look at it. If a man comes up to me and tells me I killed 500

people, I don’t believe him for one thing because I never did know anybody counting

them. I never did know, and logistics has proven that in a situation, only 10% of the

people only fought with their weapon in a combat situation and only 10% of that 10%

ever fired them at a person. So if you get trying to figure it, if a man tells you, “Oh man,

I killed this,” well take it for what its worth. I don’t do that, and I want to ask the

question how many people I killed. Who knows how many people you killed? Who

knows if you even kill any? Did you run out there and take his pulse? But to save the

American lives, that was the trackers function; save American lives, and I think we

accomplished that mission to the max, thousands of people that we saved because of the

information that we give back to our commanders and by the special training by the New

Zealands and the British that give us that ability and that knowledge and then we pass it

on to our other guys. That’s why when I became an instructor, I never did let my

standards down. I continued to teach the same way that I was taught and when I look at

something in the trackers today, its got me a little sore spot in me if I see something that

was not supposed to be there. I have read, in which people have their own thing about

the trackers, but I guess I am one of the guys that is a tracker at heart because I believed

in it, I loved it, I stayed with it, and I'm still doing it and the training that I got from the

trackers and I passed and I could pass it on out here to the civilians to save people out

here and nothing makes you feel any better for a mother to come up and say, “My son is

lost,” I mean, I hate to see anybody lost, or, “My baby’s lost, can you find it?” and when

you go out and find this kid, I mean you feel like a king and I got this from being in the

Combat Tracker team, by being able to do this in Vietnam and I can do it out here and I

still today do that. I train dogs for that, tracking, and I still train the dogs the same way

we did in Vietnam. The people out here, the little training dog’s a little different than

military but I said, “Boys, it worked in the military, it will work out here.” So, this is I

think the greatest thing that has ever come back to this country is the tracker teams and

I’ve talked to some of my buddies here about why don’t we form us a tracker team all

over the United States? We’ve got people from every state. We don’t have to be one

group; we’ve got internet today. The computer’s a great thing. We can work through the

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computers and do this and some of them are talking real serious and I think by doing this

we can keep our concept going and if we ever have to go back into war again we don’t

have to go outside the United States to train our troops again. We’ve got them here. Its

nothing like Sgt. Leonard is back in the instructor field of the military. There’s a super

tracker, super tracker. All he has to do is say, “Hey Couch, I need some help,” instructor

buddy, I’d be more than glad. So, this is where the Combat Tracker team is so great that

we can never let our knowledge go down again unwasted and this is like I like to come

here and talk to these guys, I still like to do it. I told them, like a mystery even you talked

to I think earlier. He was one of our instructors. I said, “You ain’t trained no one until

you have to train a civilian.” They’re crazy! I said, “You ever train an expert?” That’s

what you’re training, a guy that thinks he’s an expert, but there’s ways of getting around

that and you’ve got…that’s another thing that you’ve learned in being a tracker; you learn

how to get across an obstacle. I let him talk his way right into it. Oh man, I [?] and when

you take him out there, let him get lost a few times and say, “Now you want to come

back and learn to be a tracker?”

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RF: Learn the right way?

NC: Learn the right way.

RF: Well let’s go back to in Vietnam, you were an instructor? You did some

instructing in Vietnam while you were a…

NC: I was a detachment commander and team leader.

RF: And then when you left Vietnam you went to Fort Gordon…

NC: Fort Gordon.

RF: And you instructed the tracker teams that would…

NC: Yes, and sent them to Vietnam. When I first came back from Vietnam as a

tracker, and when we started tracker team at Gordon, like I say they sent me and Nick to

Fort Gordon as a hold over. We were just temporarily assigned there until we got the

guys from England here from the British to start the school. Then we went on to Fort

Gordon. We started this school as a tracker but we was not putting out enough trackers

to…that’s when the people would start to rotate out of trackers, so we couldn’t put out

enough replacements to fill in these teams and they was cutting these teams short. So, we

done as much as we could. Then, when I went back to Vietnam, Fort Gordon still was

not putting out enough trackers. So, USERV called me down to USERV headquarters

and I set up a tracker program there in Vietnam to help replace these trackers. I know

you talked to some of these guys, they say, “I was trained in Vietnam.” This was the

guys I trained in Vietnam around USERV headquarters, [Cu Chi] area, Saigon area, all

that, I mean, now this was some hairy training believe it or not. These boys almost OJT

out. We was doing training but we was still being shot at and I used to tell them, “We’re

going out. Don’t let your guard down because there’s a lot of VC out there and they’re

most likely going to take a shot at you. Lets hope we don’t get hit.” So I trained guys

there; not as many as they were putting out at Gordon, but enough to help fill in the

replacements, to keep these teams up to pop.

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RF: What was the time frame on this, when you went to Gordon on temporary

assignment and then back to Vietnam? What year?

NC: About a year, I stayed down there about a year.

RF: In Gordon?

NC: In Gordon. I went back to Vietnam, I pulled another tour in Vietnam, and

then back to Gordon as an instructor and back down because it was the same job I had

when I left to go and I went right back in training guys for Vietnam again, doing the same

thing; recruiting, training, whatnot. The only thing it was when I got back I was having

some of the instructors, not the whole crew I used to have, which was didn’t bother me

because they were good instructors. Things went just like they did before. They were

doing their job and right back into the same thing. The only thing I did not like about the

instructors, then we was having problems getting the, I’d say the headquarters, you know,

like the commander’s and the officer’s corps. We had no Combat Tracker officers.

Captain Bomber was there but when Captain Bomber left, then you…but he was an

instructor. But when you got up to who controlled the school, who done this, and this

was hard. This was the battle because they wanted numbers and which we wanted to put

out numbers, but we wanted to put out qualified people and you can put out 50 people,

but if only 20 of them’s qualified trackers, these 30 people are wasted. I mean, you ain’t

going to send…if you sent me a guy not qualified, I don’t want him here and I told him

that, “Don’t do that,” and I said, “Because one of these days, one of these team leaders,

team commanders or something is going to contact the department of the Army and say,

‘You keep the trash out of here. I don’t want it.’” And somebody did and they thought it

was me but I had nothing to do with it. I just happened to, because I was a team leader, I

knew what I wanted in my team. I didn't want no slouch coming over there. If I wanted

infantry I’d have gone out there and grabbed me a guy. So, I said, “When we put a guy

through this course, I want that guy to be qualified. If something happens to the guy, I

don’t want it to be nothing that I caused,” because if you was not like a regular person

going to Vietnam. You go to Vietnam as a regular infantry soldier, then you went to in

country training and you was introduced to this and you was introduced to that, you was

introduced to this; a tracker wasn’t. A tracker went into Vietnam right out of basic

training or AIT no matter where you got him from. When he entered Vietnam he went

straight to a team and that team straight out into the field. I mean, there was no…this is

the way the VC does, this is the way…no, you found out the hard way. Now you was

told in training but you didn’t get to say…you didn't get to adapt to the weather, you

didn’t get to adapt to this, you didn’t get to say this is [?]. You were into a team, and out

in the field. Now you didn't become a real member of that team until you proved

yourself. I mean, when I’m saying prove yourself, because you was out there with me,

that doesn't mean you was part of my team. I’ll tell you when you was part of my team;

when you approved that you was a tracker. Everybody’s going to be scared, that’s

normal. Could you control yourself when you were scared? Would you react as a

member of the tracker team? All of this; there was things that you had to be able to do.

If you freeze up on a gun, I don’t need you out there. That gun that you freeze up on

might save my life. I’ve got three more men there, and this is what we look for, which

we don’t have that many problems with that. Very once in a while we’d have a guy who

we’d have once and we’d just can him. We didn’t say the guy wasn’t no good. That was

not true. That was not our thing. We didn’t say this guy ain’t no good, this guy is no

good for this job. This guy could do anything else he wanted to do. He might be an

expert clerk, he might be a good infantryman; not in this job because, like I say, we have

no room for mistakes and this is the way we had to go with it. This is the only way we

survived, and this is why, when I was an instructor, I looked at that. You could talk to

some of the guys I put through school and they could tell you; I cut no slack whatsoever.

I had no friends there in training, I didn’t know you during training, I didn’t want to

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know you during training. I liked you, I did like you, but you would never know it until

you got through training. For an example, I had a kid. He rebelled on me. He was here

last year, I haven’t seen him this year, and I was so glad to see him last year because I

often wondered what happened to him. He was going to show me. I smoked that kid so

hard that I done everything I could do to break him down. I said, “If he leave here, you

can either go on his own or you can go home as a tracker. I’ll do everything that I can

possibly put on him,” and you know that kid, he beat…I didn’t think he beat me, but he

won because I made him win and I felt good when I graduated him. I shook his hand and

said, “Son, I’m not mad, never was mad, at you. I never was. But, you weren’t going to

get over on me,” I said, “Because I want to see you come home,” and I run into him here

one day last year and I says, I’d be the guy and he says, “Let me tell you, you’re the

greatest guy that I ever met in my life because you saved my life,” and that makes you

feel good when a guy comes up and says, “You saved my life because you wouldn’t

give,” because I couldn’t afford to. I couldn’t afford to let that guy go over there like

that. If you go, you go with the infantry and if you go over on one of my groups…and a

kid, another kid, he’s here today, he was scared to death of me; actually scared. I could

walk in the area and he couldn’t do nothing right. But, I got him up and told him, “I’m

not here to hurt you. I’m not going to physically hurt you if I can help it, but I don’t want

nobody else to do that to you, either. Now, when I come, I want you to ignore me being

here. You do the best you can. If I see you need help, I’ll help you. I’m going to talk

rough to you, I’m going to talk bad to you if you make a mistake, I just don’t want you to

make that mistake after you leave here. Make them here, don’t make them there,” and

the boy made it and when…this is the way you have to train trackers. Trackers had to be

trained different than anyone else you ever put up because you’re talking five men

against 1000. They have to be able to operate no matter how many’s there, they have to

be able to operate against that many men. You ain’t going to whip 5,000, 1,000, 100 and

all that crap, but you can outdo them. You can bring more on them than they could bring

on you and this is why they are special, special, super special guys.

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RF: Your second tour when you went back, were you assigned to the 1st Cav as

well?

NC: I was assigned to the 1st Cav, I had orders to go directly to the 1st Cav, take

over the 62

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nd infantry tracker platoon. A friend of mine, Sgt. Adams, already was there

and that meant when I went in there he would have to come out because you didn’t

need…and they had to have a team to go to the 82nd airborne detachment which would be

two teams and they was going to pull him out because my orders was signed by D.A.

which I had priority and I couldn’t see that. It was not worthwhile for me to go in, this

guy’s already got his platoon laid out the way he wants it and halfway through his tour

why should, you know, I couldn’t see just breaking it up because I was sad and I told

him, “Leave Adams there, just change my assignment. I’ll go to the 82nd. I’ll take the

group to the 82nd.” So when I went to the 82nd, they sent me…9th Division was breaking

up and they sent me five men from the 9th Division, a team from the 9th Division. That’s

all I had in the 82nd there for a long time until I got to Quang Tri and then after I got to

Quang Tri I got another team. They sent them from Fort Gordon, a bunch of

replacements. But one thing, the 9th Division had some good guys and we had a little run

in, me being their new team leader. So, we got that ironed out and they worked great.

We worked super out there. I think I had one of the best dogs and best dog handlers that

you could find anymore and he’s here today. I had a dog named Jet. Jet dug a special

guy. If Jet scared you, you’re not going to handle Jet. Jet was super on booby traps and a

great tracker and he was a strong dog. We completed a lot of good missions in the 82nd;

we found a sapper place that they’d been looking for for years, a sapper base camp. You

had a lot of sappers around the Saigon areas, Bien Hoa areas. We found the base camp

for them; the trackers had done that.

RF: What year was that?

NC: That was in ’69 and like I say, they knew they was there, they been hit well,

they bothered them, but we went out and found them and we stopped that, you know, we

put a stop to that. I worked…sometimes when 1st infantry Division would be overloaded

I guess you’d call it, again, you go back to the replacements not enough to fill up their

team, sometimes I would take my team into their AO and support one of their brigades to

take some of the…you know, you just can’t keep a guy out there from now on, so we

would take a little load off them plus when we weren’t too busy, then when we would

come we’d come back to our area. I worked a lot of times with the ranger teams and it

worked super great. That’s the only time I ever had another unit that close to me would

be the rangers, which the rangers were sharp guys, they moved the same you do, they

have [?], they’re well trained in that and we worked super together. I worked with them a

lot. A lot of people didn’t like the…I worked with SAG teams. A lot of people thought I

was crazy for that. I mean, its not crazy, it was my job I felt and I didn’t…one thing I did

a lot different and some teams were the same way with me, I did not want the infantry

that close to me because like I say, there’s a noise problem, discipline problem, and if I

need the infantry company to come with me I would have…I’ll call them when I need

them. I figured they can get there. We got helicopters fly you in and out any time you

want. So, I liked to work with the rangers, I liked to work with SAG, I liked to work with

any good strike force, but trackers; I liked to go out there and work as a tracker team, not

having to work with somebody just because I can track. If you’re going to come along

this way, you don't need me. Go get you a recon point guy out there, not me. Trackers

are too well trained to waste to take a case of somebody getting hurt because like I say,

we don’t have the replacements. We couldn’t put out replacements. Why take a chance

on losing some of your men when you don’t have to? Use them as a tracker team. If you

use your team as a tracker team and use your skills that you been trained to do, you will

never have any problems and you will accomplish your mission. I don't know of any

tracker team that ever went out that worked as a tracker team that didn’t accomplish

everything he went out to do, and I think the teams, I’m not going to doubt any team, if I

was going to say anybody would be at fault would be their team leader or ever whose in

charge that would misuse one or take them and do that to them. I wouldn’t do it. I

wouldn’t finger anybody and I don’t know anybody that would do that. I know there’s

some of them did use infantry with them. That’s when we started…when you do that,

you lower your standards and then you’re fixing to get casualties.

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RF: You move away from your training?

NC: That’s right. Your training…you’re not using your training. You're not

using your skill. You may as well just go to an infantry unit and be a good infantryman

because that way you’ve got more backup. A tracker, I always felt we were better trained

than anybody there so why do I need people out with me? I didn’t need them. If I need

them, I could call them. They’d support me. I tell them, “If I need you, I’ll call you.

RF: You went to your second tour in Vietnam; did you stay in the military or did

you…

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NC: Yes. When I came back from the second tour I went back to Fort Gordon,

then I trained trackers until the war was about over, ’73. Then, they deactivated the

trackers team concept. So, I went to Fort Benning, Georgia to…we was at Fort Gordon, I

went to Fort Benning to check…I knew we was going, they told us we was going to be

transferred to there so I went down there and checked with the school there and we went

along with these tracker dogs and things they sent us all to Fort Gordon where your scout

dog training was and everything and assigned us to that. I then became…I still taught

tracking to ranger teams in the 75th rangers and to the rangers school and that’s where the

ranger school still teaches that concept of so much tracking. We didn’t make tracker

teams out of them. There was not enough time because like I said, they don’t have that

much time. They’d have to expand their training cycle. But, we did teach tracking

classes, give them the fundamentals of basic what tracker’s concept was about and then

they decided to give me…they even gave me a dog, assigned a dog for me. At first I

didn’t, “You guys are crazy, I don’t want your dog,” but they did and I got to liking that

dog. But, I had to mess with it all the time, and she was a super tracking dog, oh great.

They called her a lab and they had papers, but that dog always looked like a shepherd to

me because her ears stuck up and she didn’t like the water, but she was such a super

tracker, I mean that dog…I used to put demonstrations on for foreign officers and

everything with this dog. I let guys go anywhere they wanted to and this dog , she was

gone. And I got liking it and then I got training with their other dogs and that’s how I got

with the training dog concept and believe this or not, but when I was in Vietnam and all

that, I liked dogs, don’t get me wrong, I loved them over there, but I hated to be called a

dog team worse than anything in the world because I was a visual. I had four visuals,

don’t call me a dog team. We got four men, one dog; five men and one dog. Don’t call

me no dog team, we are a Combat Tracker team, not a dog team. That is part of our

team, not our team, and used to if you were talking to some of the old trackers like

Landers, myself, they will tell you right today, “No I didn’t belong to no dog team over

there,” and we got along with the dog people but the commanders would call us the dog

team. We had scout dog teams. That was a dog team; that was a dog and a man. Now,

you're talking about a dog and five men. We were not dog teams. But, I learned to like

dogs and I learned to train with dogs and then when I got out of the service I still kept it

up. In 1972 they happened to have a manual, that was before the concept was over; they

wanted an FM of Combat Tracker teams and they wanted someone to write it and some

people to write it but it had to be proofread and okayed and approved by one of the

Malaysian trained people which at that time I was the only one at Gordon and I sat down

with the material that I had and everything and I started writing on this and that’s where

the FM 7-42 came about. I sat down with the visual tracker portion, the Combat Tracker

team portion, wrote that along with Sgt. Hood and maybe some more dog people. They

put a lot of the dog concept in there, and that’s where the 7-42 comes from. We put it

together. I never will forget there’s a lot of friction between a couple of officers and

myself. They were not trained trackers or anything. They wanted to put out the tracker

manual and they wrote me some stuff and I looked at it and I read it and I said, “No, this

is small infantry tactics. You have all kinds of these; rangers has got them, recon’s got

them, squad’s got them, small infantry tactics,” I says, “This concept here is Combat

Tracker team, its complete different training,” and I says, “And I won’t buy that.” And

they wanted me and I said, “No, I won’t buy it.” And they says, “Well you want to…”

and I said, “I’m working on it.” So then when I went to Benning I still had the rough

copy working on it, you know, and they assigned a guy to me which was an English

professor, English major, and but he…I would write the information and he would

correct me on the English portion of it. That’s how we got it, and then we sent it to DA

and they approved it.

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RF: What year was that that they finally approved it?

NC: That was in ’73.

RF: ’73?

NC: Okay. But I got the material, like I say, and he was good at English in which

I wasn’t. I never did like English to begin with but he sat down and sometimes it was

hard. We didn’t never disagree on anything, but I would tell you, he said, “Now when I

make a mistake or something, you read it, I’ll change it,” and a lot of times he would

write something down and I would say, “No, that’s not the way its going to be. It don’t

work that way. That’s not a tracker. This is what the training…I want it right by the

training, right to the letter,” and he’d do it. So, it didn’t take us that long but we worked

nights at it and days with it. Both of us, I was an instructor and so was he and we would

sit and work on it when we had a lot of time and sit down and like I say, we never got

excited. He was the expert on English and I was the expert tracker he said and, “We will

put this together,” and I said, “That’s all I…” and when we put it together he told them,

“That’s…the man says its good,” and they sent it department of Army and everything and

they approved it and they called it 7-42.

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RF: I only have one more general question that I want to ask you that we

typically ask and it’s along the lines of when you came back from Vietnam, now you had

probably a different situation because you were still in the military and you were in a

military environment, but what was your general reaction to the way the country was at

that time; we’re talking 1970, really.

NC: Yeah. I guess I would give you a different concept than a lot of guys coming

back from Vietnam from tracker team because I went in the service at 16. My whole life

as a kid was a soldier. I always wanted to be one, and when I went through the Korean

War I came home and I never was…when I got out of the service in 1954 I was not

satisfied with civilian life. I was not…I didn’t want no part of civilian life. My, still, my

life was a soldier and I went back in service. So, when I went back to Vietnam a lot

of…I don’t agree with all these demonstrations. I’m totally against that because this is

my country. I love this country, and I thought everybody else should feel the same way

because we’ve had a lot of guys in World War II and Korea and all the way through

history that have spilt a lot of blood for this country, and I don't care…I’m a firm

believer. I might not voted for Truman or Johnson during that time, I mean, politics is

not my thing to get mixed up with, but he was my commander in chief, he was my boss.

He was the boss of this country, and if he says we should fight the communist party in

Vietnam than as far as I’m concerned that’s where we’ll fight it. I’d rather fight it in

Vietnam than fight it in San Francisco and that was my feeling. I’d rather fight over their

soil than my soil, and like people, you know, people…I thought was weird during that

because we had the hippies which if you’re looking at hippies, there weren’t very many

hippies, but they stuck out so bad that you thought everybody was a hippie but they

wasn’t but a very few, and people when you came back on leave or they see you…people

would ask you a question I thought was really dumb of myself. They’d say, “What do

you think of the Vietnam war?” Now what kind of question can you ask a guy coming

out of Vietnam? What do you think? Well, it was a bad thing. I mean, its self

explanatory. War is bad. People get killed in war and I got so tired of being asked that

question and if you answer it wrong or if you try to say, “Man, the war in Vietnam…”

you got about a 30 or 40 minute explanation. You got to sit and talk to this guy about

this war. You don’t want to talk to him, you’re on leave, and I found out me an answer

and it worked and they left me along. When a guy would ask me that I would say, “Son,

it’s the only one going right now and I have to settle with it.” Well they thought I guess I

was a nut, but they wouldn’t bother me no more. I got them off my back. I don’t like the

way the war really ended. I wanted a freedom, I wanted a winner out of them, but like I

say I’m not the commander. I’ve done my part, I’ve done what I was supposed to do.

So, if the government wants to give it that way, that’s the only thing. I done all I can do.

But, I’ve had people ask me, “What do you think about the Oriental people over in

Vietnam or the Vietnamese or Viet Cong or anything?” I have no disrespect to none of

them. I have nothing against them people, never did. I didn’t during the war and I don’t

have it today. I look at it this way; they was some of the hardest fighters in the world. I

respect them to the utmost. Any man…I don’t believe in their concept, I don’t believe in

communism, but any man, another soldier that plays that strong and fights that hard

you’ve got to respect him, you’ve got to respect him. I mean, I don’t have nothing

against them guys. They were soldiers just like me. They was doing just was I was

doing. I believe in democracy and they believe in communism, and I didn’t go out there

and say, “I’m going to kill all of you guys.” Nah, I didn’t do that. That was not my

belief. My job was a professional soldier just like theirs. If some people wants to hate

them, again, that’s on them and that’s not me. I would walk up and talk to a north

Vietnamese just as good as I’d walk up and talk to a…because I was taught in the

military regardless of what nation you respect the rank and the leadership whether it was

American, Vietnamese, or what have you and if you ain’t a professional, if you can’t do

that as a soldier then you’re not professional and its just like anything else you look at.

My dad always told me if a job is worth doing, its worth doing right and like I say, I have

nothing against them guys. I would go back tomorrow and fight them again if I was

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called upon to do it. But, I’d come back out of there with the same feeling I have now. I

have nothing against them. I have not had no flashbacks. You know, you do have things

that you practice and practice that you might do but flashbacks don’t bother me. I have

nothing. I went through the Korean war. I spent 18 months in Korea and it didn’t bother

me. I left that war in Korea; that’s over, that’s over with, and I left that war in Vietnam.

I had some good buddies get killed; that’s war. I look at it as war. I can’t live through

that. I hated to see them die, you know. Like I said, Missouri was the best friend I had,

but if I could have brought Missouri back I would have done anything I could have done

to bring him back but this was a part of the war and part of our job. Somebody has to go

and I hate to see it be him, but there’s nothing…I don’t control that. I tried to do

anything that I can’t control, I try to not let it bother me too much because if I can control

it, I’ll stop it, [?] do it then somebody’s got to take care of it. I’ve got a life and I’ve got

me to worry about.

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RF: Well is there anything that we didn’t touch upon that you would like to talk

about?

NC: Well everything I think, like I said, I think we should keep this concept

open, I think we should pass it on down to our grandkids, or great grandkids. I think by

doing something like this that we should have done this thousands of years ago because

we used to have some of the best trackers in this country in the world, back in the

beginning of the British and American war, the old Indian wars, they used trackers. We

used trackers all the way up to World War II and then we didn’t need them, but the

British always used them and I think if we’d have had them in World War II, Korean

war, we’d have been a lot better off because during the beginning, like I said, I was in

Vietnam at the beginning of the war. We didn’t have trackers. It was a hard house to

clean over there because you’re dealing with civilians, enemy. This guys’ working in the

rice paddy today and fighting you at night and we had no way of controlling that. They

were hit and runs, guerilla tactics; we had no way of controlling that. But, when they got

with General Westmoreland and told them their concept and how…then he went with it

and General Westmoreland was a great commander to go along with this, introduce this,

and stop this and once we got the trackers going, there’s a restriction on it, real bad

restriction. They couldn’t move freely no more. They had to change their tactics and

they never could do it.

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RF: Could you say then that the history of the tracker team is a lesson not learned

yet in Vietnam?

NC: I don't know. Well, by my experience in the military, I think we learned

during that war, during that war, we learned trackers were a great weapon. But its like

through…if you go back through the histories of the American concept after World War

II, we had the greatest soldiers in the world but it seems like there was no war going on

and we done away with this. We let it down, we let it…then we went into the Korean

War. We wasn’t ready for the Korean War. We was understrengthed, we didn’t have the

capability of keeping up with this type of a hard core enemy and all that. Then, about

half through the war we finally become alive and we retrained our guys and we got them

strong again and we whooped the Koreans. After the Korean war, what did we do? We

done the same thing in Korea, I mean, in Vietnam; we let our guard down again and then

we come back again and had to go through this concept again and we got the trackers, the

best weapon we had in Vietnam. Now we deactivate this. Instead of keeping this group

trained and on standby like the British does and all that. We don’t have them no more.

What are we going to do, call in and get the British to do this? Look at the men that you

lose before you get these people trained. You don’t do this over…its not an overnight

deal, so now we have to go back in and retrain this group, lose all these men, and say,

“Man, we learned a lesson here.” No we didn’t. We’re never going to learn if we’re not

learning it now. We’ve got the [?], we’ve got the sorriest military that’s ever been in this

country as far as I’m concerned. When a man can walk up to you and show you a card

and say, “Hey, don’t chew me out. That gives me stress,” or, “I don't feel like training

today.” Now what kind of soldier is this? I fought the north Koreans and that’s who

we’re out arguing with right now, you know, we’re not good friends with them. Them

are some hard core guys. So, we don’t have the trackers, we don’t have them trained yet.

What’s going to happen to these kids if somebody don't put something else and say, “You

need this,” and maybe somebody will look at this, what you're doing and say, “Hey!”

Think about it, maybe somebody…and I hope they do. I don’t have to go back. I mean,

I’m done, I’m finished. But, I just hate to see something happen you know. It’s a bad

thing to think of what’s…you’re at the right age to be…you say, “No man, I’m…” but

the way they look right now, they don’t care what your job is. They will have to call you

and its something to think about, something to think about, and maybe by you doing this,

maybe somebody along the line will pick up one of these pamphlets or look at this and

say, “Well, we better get something going here because this worked, that worked. Let’s

get it going again.” Who knows? And you’re from a good state to do it because that’s

who I hope our next president is from.

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RF: Why?

NC: I know the one we got in there now won’t do it because he’s a, as far as I’m

concerned, a draft dodger. But, I liked his dad because I respect his dad because not only

was he president, the guy was a great man in World War II, you know, [pilot ?].

RF: You’re not speaking of our current president, obviously, you’re speaking of

the candidate, the Governor of Texas?

NC: The Governor of Texas, right. No, no, that guy that’s in there now, he’s…I

have nothing for him. I have really don’t have no respect for that guy. I do think the

world of…Jr’s got some ideas I’m not particularly crazy about, but I’m not supposed to

like everything they do. But, I don’t like nothing Clinton does. I don't like a guy that

would flat lie to you, I mean, he’d flat lie to you. He don’t think nothing about lying to

you. If Mr. Bush that used to be our president, and if he’d have done what President

Clinton done with Monica Lewinsky, they’d have crucified him. So, I think we better

think about who we put in there and get this thing…but I hope you get some good people

here and I hope they tell you they feel the way I do. I think most of them do.

RF: Well, I thank you. I think this probably concludes the…

NC: I hope I answered what you wanted and I hope I give you the…

RF: I thank you.