Name: James F. Meyer

Rank: then 1LT/CPT

Retired Rank: LTC/USA ret

PMOS: 1204 SMOS: 48G 

MACV Tm 17

If you worked w/SF: I arrived in Ha Thanh as the SF camp, A-104, was shifting from the SF to the Border Rangers in June 1970. My role was to be team leader of a new 5 man Mobile Advisory Team, MAT I-58, with headquarters in Quang Ngai. I had another LT and three good E-7s. We were to work with the district headquarters, at that time a Viet Major, and organize the RF/PF forces who'd maintain local security and work with the border rangers. The district also was to have a Phoenix coordinator, SSG 'Hoot' Gibson, who worked for me too. The Ha Thanh population was almost entirely Hre' tribesmen Montagnards. I'd been to language school for Vietnamese, but was forced to quickly learn survival skills in the Hre' dialect. These little people were excellent soldiers. It was a good year despite a rather active area to work. While we had mostly NVA and main force VC in company plus strength to contend with, these enemy units were more often moving thru us toward the more populated lowland areas. We had little problem with booby traps or local force VC. My one memory of the SF bunch as they were leaving is that LTC Maggie Ray dropped in to the camp for an afternoon visit in July and how warm and friendly she was. As a criticism I also recall that the outbaound SF team, upon leaving, largely either destroyed their stock of maps, claymores/ammo, and POL (using it to burn the wire around the camp was their rationale)or back-hauled it to Chu Lai and the B Team rather than leaving any of it for us MACV-types to use. I was told straight out by an SF guy as he left that they didn't want any of this good stuff to fall into the hands of Charles as it was a sure bet that we-the MAT team-would be over-run within the next couple weeks. Well, we weren't. Yea, it still sorta chaffes me. But, oh, could the Yards fight!!

Email: memjfm1@hotmail.com

Presently Living in: washington DC area