The TERRIFYING First Days Every Vietnam SEAL Faced

It is two in the morning and you are chest deep in black water. Six of you, maybe seven. No artillery on call, no friendly rifles behind you, only miles of enemy ground between your squad and the boat. You are a Navy SEAL, one of the most highly trained men in this war. And in a place the Vietnamese call the assassins' forest, none of that guarantees you go home. What the first days in Vietnam actually looked like for a new SEAL: a swamp that took a body apart from the feet up, six-man squads hunting prisoners in the dark, the first SEAL killed before the combat detachment even arrived, Billy Machen springing an ambush on purpose so his squad could live, and then the myths. The hundred-to-one kill ratio, the "most feared unit in the war," and the twenty thousand men who claim to have been one of the five hundred. Every claim sourced. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE BOOK MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: THE SOG FILES: THE WAR MACV-SOG WAS NOT ALLOWED TO TELL YOU ABOUT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A number of these SEALs were attached to MACV-SOG, the joint special operations unit that ran the covert war across the border into Laos and Cambodia. That is the war we put in the book, sourced exactly the way this video is. The SOG Files is the documented history of America's secret war across the fence: the missions that were denied, the deniable weapons, the gear, the six-man team that vanished after a two-word radio call, and the famous SOG "facts" that turn out to be myths. Every number carries its source, so you can go check us. 👉 GET THE BOOK ($11.99): https://www.truevietnamdocs.com 🎁 FREE: The One-Zero's Loadout Card. The 14 objects a SOG team leader carried across the fence, on one printable page, sources included: https://www.truevietnamdocs.com/MACV-SOG-Loadout-Card.pdf Buying it for a father or grandfather who was over there? That is the most common reason people do. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 Two in the Morning, Chest Deep 0:40 The Teams Arrive 2:15 The Assassins' Forest 4:15 How They Fought 5:44 The Fear 6:13 Elite Does Not Mean Safe: Fay and Machen 8:45 The First Operations 10:17 A SEAL Who Was There 11:18 Myth 1: The Kill Ratio 12:17 Myth 2: Men With Green Faces 12:56 Myth 3: Five Hundred Men 13:35 The Cost 14:27 Ready and Safe Were Never the Same Word INTERVIEW CLIP Roger Hayden, U.S. Navy SEAL, Vietnam, via Jocko Podcast #37: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCLWC4pp-0M FULL SOURCE LIST Primary and official • NHHC, SEALs in Vietnam exhibit: https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/hrnm/explore/VietnamExhibitPage/IntelligenceSpecialOperations/SEALsv4.html • National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum, Men With Green Faces: https://www.navysealmuseum.org/naval-special-warfare/men-green-faces • Presidential Unit Citation, SEAL Team ONE: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/presidential-unit-citation-awarded-seal-team-one-usn • DVIDS, on Billy Machen: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/478984/gold-star-family-first-seal-killed-vietnam-visits-nswg-1 • USNI Proceedings, Rung Sat Special Zone (1968): https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1968/april/rung-sat-special-zone-vietnams-mekong-delta • Congressional Medal of Honor Society (Kerrey, Norris, Thornton): https://www.cmohs.org/ Secondary • Defense Media Network, SEAL Teams 1962-1983: https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/u-s-navy-seal-teams-from-establishment-through-operation-urgent-fury-1962-1983/ • HistoryNet, Vanguards in the Rung Sat: https://historynet.com/vanguards-in-the-rung-sat/ Memoir • Darryl Young, The Element of Surprise: Navy SEALs in Vietnam (1990) • Gary Stubblefield, Inside the US Navy SEALs (1995) On the numbers: 46 SEALs killed (UDT-SEAL Museum) vs 48 (NHHC), out of roughly 500 who served. Around 600 confirmed plus 300 probable VC killed (museum) vs 4,000 killed or captured (NHHC), a different measure. Independent work of history, not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense or any veterans' organization. #VietnamWar #NavySEALs #RungSat #MACVSOG #MilitaryHistory #VietnamVeterans #Documentary