The next time you are browsing the aisles at Walmart, just think to yourself that the son of Sam Walton, the founder of the retail giant, was involved in special operations during the Vietnam War. Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group — or MACV-SOG — is a name so bland that it shielded the true nature of their top-secret work into deniable areas like Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. How did the 11th richest man in the world intertwine his legacy into one of the most notorious special operations units in U.S. military history?
John Thomas Walton was born in Newport, Arkansas, the second of three sons, and excelled at athletics. He was a standout football star on their public high school football team and was more of a student of life than academics. His father, Sam, opened Walton’s 5&10 in Bentonville, a small business in a small town known for its variety of hunting seasons. Walton had a modest upbringing and after only two years of college he dropped out to enlist in the U.S. Army. “When I was at Wooster [The College of Wooster in Ohio], there were a lot of people talking about the war in the dorm rooms, but I didn’t think they understood it,” Walton said.
Walton enlisted in the Army and became a Green Beret (Army Special Forces). “I figured if you’re going to do something, you should do it the best you can,” he said during an interview with Andy Serwer for Fortune magazine. Assigned to MACV-SOG after the Tet Offensive in 1968, Walton was stationed at FOB 1 in Phu Bai where members of Strike Team Louisiana conducted deep penetration reconnaissance missions. John Stryker Meyer, a teammate and friend of Walton’s, wrote, “In August of ’68, on one such mission, Walton’s six-man recon team was surrounded and overrun by enemy soldiers.” The firefight became so intense that the team leader, William “Pete” Boggs, called an airstrike (napalm) directly on their own position to break contact.
“That strike killed one team member, wounded the team leader and severed the right leg of the Green Beret radio operator Tom Cunningham Jr., of Durham, N.H. Another team member was wounded four times by AK-47 gunfire by an enemy soldier whom Walton killed,” Meyer wrote. As the team’s medic, Walton was responsible in setting up a triage point to tend to the casualties. He applied a tourniquet to Cunningham’s leg that had begun to hemorrhage. The tourniquet ultimately saved his life, but he later lost his leg. Facing hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers (NVA) and completely surrounded, Walton called in two extraction helicopters.
The first helicopter, piloted by South Vietnamese Captain Thinh Dinh, touched down and picked up members of the team, some of whom Walton personally carried. The enemy soldiers were now sprinting to prevent their escape. Bullets clanged off the chopper and whizzed by their bodies. A second helicopter was needed to get them all out, but realizing how dire the situation had turned, the first helicopter sat back down and picked up the entire team. Their weight was too much, and they barely managed to climb over the treetops. Walton’s determination to get his teammates out of harm’s way earned him the Silver Star, the nation’s third highest award for valor.
During a poker game on the night they returned to base, one of his teammates noticed that the skin on Walton’s wrist was burnt. It was evidence of just how accurate the NVA gunfire was. Walton, Meyer, and his teammates enjoyed poker, Scrabble, and other games that require thought. They spoke about their goals and the dreams they hoped to accomplish when they returned home. Walton’s was a life of adventure.
Meyer shares how Walton had inspirations to travel domestically on a motorcycle and to Mexico, Central, and South America by plane. He earned his pilot’s license and started his own business crop-dusting cotton fields in Texas and Arizona. Crop-dusting provided Walton a new challenge that helped his transition after Vietnam. His aerial theatrics featured ingenuity, too — Walton co-founded the company Satloc in 1999, which pioneered the use of GPS applications in agricultural crop-dusting. He also served as a company pilot for his family business.
It seemed Walton was always searching for his next greatest thrill. He briefly owned a sailing company called Marine Corsair in San Diego, and he regularly traveled to Durango, Colorado, for outdoor activities such as mountain biking, skiing, and skydiving. As Walmart’s success climbed, so too did Walton’s wealth. At one point, he was the 11th richest man in the world, with an estimated $18.2 billion net worth. However, despite the amount of money he made, he always stayed true to his modest roots. Meyer recalled a breakfast the pair had in Oceanside, California, and Walton arrived in a small Toyota hybrid.
Walton was also a strong proponent of education and school vouchers, helping establish the Children’s Scholarship Fund with the goal of sending low-income children to private schools. The Walton family as a whole has donated an estimated $700 million, largely due to John’s advocacy. The William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership recognized his contributions in 2001.
John T. Walton died on June 27, 2005, when his custom-built CGS Aviation Hawk Arrow plane crashed in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. He was 58 years old. An investigation determined that loose flight control components were the cause of the fatal accident. Walton left behind a wife, Christy, and son, Lukas.
Though Walton’s name will always be immediately recognized as the heir to the Walmart empire, his legacy is also inextricably tied to MACV-SOG. Two years before his untimely death, Walton chartered his private jet to pick up the family of Thinh Dinh, the South Vietnamese pilot with whom he served decades prior. They reunited in Las Vegas, never forgetting the lasting bonds forged in war.
I was also MACV-SOG. The reason none of us got the medals we deserved was the simple fact that our government adamantly denied what we were doing and where we were doing it. A few of us were decorated by the South Vietnamese government, but we have never been permitted to wear or claim those medals - and when the MACV-SOG mission was finally declassified that government no longer existed to contest it.
Walton worked out of CCC (Command and Control Central). I flew out of CCS (South) There was also a CCN. From those three locations, small recce teams were inserted deep into bad guy country where they gathered intel on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and performed other devious activities before being extracted after as long as a week. By the time I flew that mission, we were no longer using American assets on those teams. We used Vietnamese, Montagnard, Cambodian, and mercenary Chinese teams. Helicopter assets were Vietnamese H-34 King Bees for team insert/extract and US Special Ops UH-1N Green Hornets for cover. We FACs flew unmarked O-2s as command ships. We FACs were in control of all operations, using interpreters to communicate with the ground teams.
Most of our teams went "hot" at some point most often during extraction. Just finding the team in that terrain was the first hurdle, then attempting to recover them under enemy fire. We lost as many as one third of the teams, in fact. Many simply were never heard from again. And some of them we heard die.
If you want to watch some interesting stuff on MACV-SOG, go on youtube and check out the podcasts Jocko has up. I just finished reading the book by John Stryker Meyer. Those guys had some balls.
Worked a bit with CCN teams and first Marine Recon back then. I swear upon a Marvel comic book that I’ve never been in Laos or North Vietnam. They were as crazy as it gets.
I am..........disturbed.
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. -Twain
For an interesting but little known piece of history, I recommend "The Black Bats". Most of the CIA missions in SE Asia and over Communist China were flown by Nationalist Chinese pilots. Incredible bravery and airmanship. I had a small peripheral role on Taiwan in the late '50s. The last B-17 shot down was two weeks after I left to return to the States, coincidentally my wife's 18th birthday. The MiG pilot who shot it down over Guangdung province was a Korean war ace.
The book tells of one Chinese lady who lost her husband on a mission over mainland China. She then married another pilot, and he too was killed. Tremendous sacrifice.
Stupidity has its way, while its cousin, evil, runs rampant.
Added: as an example of just how bizarre deep covert operations can get, consider that my best interpreter/right seat guy was an NVA Captain. No chit.
Rocky, Do you know John Plaster? I have enjoyed a lot of his articles and writings. He did a great piece on the XM-177 in “The American Rifleman” magazine a few years ago.
I never met John, but his works are pretty much bible on MACV-SOG. You have to understand how rigidly compartmented covert ops have to be. You are never told anything except your own tiny little corner of things. I flew out of CCS, for example, but wasn't told that was a CCC or CCN until years later. (You might infer or assume such, but deception runs very deep even amongst the "in" crowd.) I flew missions that I couldn't discuss even with my fellow pilots at CCS, and I'm sure they did, too.
I never met John, but his works are pretty much bible on MACV-SOG. You have to understand how rigidly compartmented covert ops have to be. You are never told anything except your own tiny little corner of things. I flew out of CCS, for example, but wasn't told that was a CCC or CCN until years later. (You might infer or assume such, but deception runs very deep even amongst the "in" crowd.) I flew missions that I couldn't discuss even with my fellow pilots at CCS, and I'm sure they did, too.
Thanks. Been there done that too after 1500 hours in the B52 G/H. “NEED TO KNOW”
I’ve always enjoyed reading about the men and exploits of MACVSOG. I’ve also listened to a lot of the podcasts by Meyer, Plaster and others. They actually did some of the first HALO operations also. These men were as brave as any who have marched to battle and I never tire of their stories. I had the pleasure of meeting a man a couple of years back who had served under Col. Bob Howard after the war…..another legend with an oversized pair.
It's funny. When we were actually doing it, it didn't seem all that heroic or even dangerous. Even getting the real "Mission Impossible" briefing where they tell you you will not be rescued if shot down, you will be disavowed by the government, and you are expected to commit suicide rather than be captured. It was just flying.
Decades later, however, at reunions of other FACs and troops, when told what we did, the universal response was "You did WHAT?" Considering that FACing itself was considered to be a near suicide job, that sorta made me realize that it wasn't so mundane a job after all.
Yeah, and you fellas had a wicked sense of humor. 😁
Mentioned this in my “book” but WTH...got shot at one day along the east rim of the A Shau Valley...entire battalion opened up in me. Guess they missed their coffee, it was kinda early. About the time I cleared the hot zone a Bilk FACCER called and asked if we needed help. Snake lead was agreeable. Bilk told us he had a flight of 4 F4’s doing RTB from some place he couldn’t talk about, with a full load. Weather had socked in their target and they were low on fuel.
No way in hell was I going to mark the target but we passed along verbal description of the target site which was easy to see in the tall mountains. He said he would mark the target and told us to move well south of the target. His marking shot was good and about 10 seconds after confirming that the flight dropped in with a Thunderbirds style diamond formation. Never had seen that before, nor had I seen an F4 drop ALL of its bombs at the same time; certainly not 4 of them in close formation. Sooooo, about 48-50 thousand pounds of bombs hit the target at one time. Pretty much looked like a nuke detonation.
Lead asked if I wanted to check it out...”Oh yeah!” Did not receive a single round of fire, and it was impossible to count the number of NVA killed. You see, all their parts and pieces were mostly hanging on nearby tree limbs. One leg still had a boot on its little foot.
Death was our business, and on that day business was good.
I am..........disturbed.
Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass. -Twain
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