Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
7:26 | Flying into Cam Ranh bay, rookie Lieutenant Walter Beardslee noticed flares hanging in the night sky. That got his attention. When he got to the 5th Special Forces group HQ in Nha Trang, he ran into a former instructor he knew from Fort Benning who just happened to need a junior officer.
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His mom wanted him to go to West Point but Walter Beardslee's congressman already had an appointment lined up. He set off for college, twice, and flamed out, twice. When he got back after a road trip with some buddies, his mom delivered an ultimatum.
It was in basic training that Walter Beardslee decided he would try for Officer Candidate School. After his next training stop at Fort Sill, he was accepted. OCS at Fort Benning was grueling but he earned his commission and was lucky enough to get what he preferred, Airborne and Special Forces.
The typical Special Forces team in Vietnam at the time consisted of two officers and ten enlisted men. Walter Beardslee was a new Lieutenant who was added to a team as the third officer, tasked with Civil Affairs. That meant he helped the local villagers with medical outreach and material needs.
As the Civil Affairs officer for his Special Forces team, Walter Beardslee was in charge of helping the villagers near his camp. He coordinated the delivery of food and building supplies sent out from Da Nang. In addition to that, like all members of the team, he went out on surveillance patrols to gather any intelligence they could discover.
The captured NVA soldier had on him a new sight for an RPG launcher. It had never been seen before. Perhaps because of that a company of the 1st Air Cav was airlifted to the Special Forces camp which was home to Walter Beardslee and the rest of his team. The extra manpower came in handy when a fire broke out in the ammo bunker.
The Montagnards in the area made up the local Civilian Irregular Defense Group unit. Walter Beardslee recalls how these people, who were marginalized by the ethnic Vietnamese, always had an uneasy relationship with them.
Tensions between the South Vietnamese soldiers and the Montagnards, who comprised the local irregular unit, came to a head when a personal dispute escalated to an all out battle between the two groups. Walter Beardslee and the rest of the Americans in camp wondered if they would get caught up in the fight.
Halfway through his tour, Special Forces officer Walter Beardslee was transferred to group headquarters where he was in charge of procuring food supplies and building materials to be distributed to civilians near the Special forces camps in the area. He was there when the Tet Offensive broke out.
When he got home from Vietnam, Walter Beardslee was talked into staying on for another year but they wouldn't tell him where he would be stationed. He took the gamble and it worked out well for him.
