[Hipshot]

With apologies to the Reaper, let me introduce myself. My name is Mike Simpson, formerly of Texas but now living in Arizona. I work for a major defense contractor and have been working military projects since leaving the service in 1992.

I joined the Army in April, 1970, thinking I wanted to be an MP. They sent me to Ft. Ord, CA for basic training and there I was approached by a Special Forces recruiter. His pitch was that, regardless of what our enlistment contracts said, our group of trainees were tagged as infantry replacements and would go to Vietnam upon completion of AIT. The only way out was to volunteer for Special Forces! After taking a series of tests, four of us were asked to sign up for the training and two accepted – me being one of them. One thing he neglected to tell us was that part of the requirement to be in Special Forces was to be jump qualified; and me with a terrible fear of heights!

When we completed AIT, ten of our company left for Ft Benning, GA – the rest went to Oakland, then way West! Jump school was a blast. Ahhh – September in Georgia. Ya gotta love it! The morning runs, PT, 34 foot tower, 250 foot tower, then jump week. We had Texas Air Guard C-119 ‘Flying Boxcars’ to jump from. They didn’t need to push anyone out – you couldn’t wait to get out of those rattle traps!

The 26 days spent out at Mackall I will never forget. I went from 190 to 147 pounds in those 26 days. When I went home for my first leave, I walked right past my mother and she didn’t recognize me.

After Phase I came MOS training. I thought I wanted to be a radio operator, but found out that I was ham-fisted (at least that’s what SFC Merrilee called me). He lost his right hand and had been fitted with a curved pair of metal fingers he could squeeze together. Everyone called him ‘the hook’, but not to his face! He could work a speed key or a bug and really smoke the morse code.

I was transferred over to weapons training and really loved that. Got to shoot almost everything from a pistol up to a 105mm cannon. Qualified expert on most of them.

After the final phase of training, I was promoted to Sgt and assigned to A-423, Co D, 5th SFG(A). Spent a lot of time in cross training, post details untill I volunteered to go to Jungle School in Panama. Sgt Leo Root (Asst S-3 NCO) said that was not a good thing to do. Sur enough, he was right. After 3 weeks in Panama learning about ‘black palm’ and all sorts of snakes, Leo called me and told me to come sign my alert orders. When I asked him where I was going, he said “Where do you think, stupid! I told you not to go to Jungle School.”. I found myself going to Training Support HQ, Nha Trang, RVN.

I flew out of Ft Lewis, WA and arrived in Da Nang (which I learned was known as ‘Rocket City’). I managed to chase Bob Hope from Da Nang all the way to Bien Hoa – a day behind him! That year (1971) was his last trip to Nam. I went from Da Nang to Cam Rahn Bay to Nha Trang to Bien Hoa and finally ended up at the old home of the 3rd Mobile Strike Force (B-36 site at Long Hai in Phouc Tuy province), assigned to A-364 as 1st Company advisor for a Cambodian battalion undergoing training there. The team leader was Capt Anders (Skippy). The XO was 1st Lt Rex Hargadine. Got a great picture of him with his camouflaged walking cast after he took a chunk of shrapnal through the top of his boot out on a patrol and broke his ankle. The team sergeant was MSgt Hogaland (call sign ‘Heavy Drop’). He introduced me to Louis Lamour books and country music – really country! Others on the team were George Goessens, John Campbell, Bobby Caulder, a medic named Spears (called him ‘Bandaid’), Charlie Gage (wild man with a handle bar mustache) and George Young (aka ‘Yankee Dog’).

We had some replacements come in for the officers – one of them would go far beyond what I though someone in Special Forces could go. His name was Kenneth R. Bowra, a 1st Lt who came to us from CCN along with Steve Wilson, a medic who flew as ’chase medic’ for the teams. Who would have thought that Ken would earn 2 stars and be the JFK Center Commander?

I left Nam in November, 1972 and went to Co C, 3rd Bn, 10th SFG(A) at Ft Devens, MA. There I was assigned to ODA-333 who became known as ‘the good deal gang’, because we got all the ‘good’ deals…running the kiddie jump tower, lifeguards at the lake, and the enlargers of the what started out to be a 5 second drop zone (1 went into the trees 3 times). In the 3 years at Devens, I made SSgt, went to BNOC and ANOC a year apart, went through the Danish Combat Swimmer’s Course and Jumpmaster School.

From Ft Devens, I went on ROTC duty to Eastern Kentucky Univ as their SF advisor. As part of ROTC recruiting in 1977, I participated in a demo jump on campus with the KY Army Guard Parachute Team, managing to break my back in two places when, on the 2nd jump of the day, I managed to (1) pull low; (2) have a bag lock; (3) cutaway face down with a chest mounted reserve; (4) pull at about 400 ft and (5) make a three point landing (left heel, right heel and tail bone) on a four lane divided highway. I guess the jump the next day wasn’t too smart! The back injury took me off jump status and made me ineligible to remain in SF, so I turned down my promotion to E-7 and got out of the Army. They were going to send me to a leg unit in Germany anyway – ugh!

Anyway – that’s how I ended up in Special Forces – a time I will never forget working with the most dedicated, professional soldiers in the world! God love them all!