U.S. Army Special Forces Major Jim Morris: Proud of His Service in Vietnam

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Retired U.S. Army Special Forces Major Jim Morris had been awarded three of his four Purple Hearts in Vietnam before the Marines ever hit the beach at Da Nang in March 1965, signaling the beginning of full-scale American involvement in the war. In the course of his three tours in Indochina, between 1963 and 1968, he almost lost his right arm to a Viet Cong machine-gun burst while assisting a fellow trooper in a firefight and did lose his left testicle. In 1973 he went back to cover the war as a freelance journalist after the U.S. military had withdrawn from the region.

As the author of two factual accounts of his experiences, War Story and The Devil’s Secret Name, as well as Fighting Men, a collection of magazine pieces that became the pilot of a 1994 video series called The Fighting Men Series: The Green Berets, Morris’ life will forever be entwined not only with the Green Berets but also with Vietnam.

Morris, now 58 years old, believes that the Vietnam War was the event of his generation, and because it was such a major part of his own life, he feels called upon to be a conduit between the war and those who want to know about it. ‘We lived through a legendary time,’ said Morris. ‘Reliving it and telling about it is an interesting chore.’

Since Vietnam, Morris has covered wars in Cambodia, Thailand, El Salvador, Lebanon and Israel for Rolling Stone, Soldier of Fortune, Esquire and the Saturday Evening Post. He once felt a love for the ‘beauty and strangeness of Vietnam.’ But it is not a place he wants to return to.

‘Why should I go back just to get jacked around by petty officials?’ he asked. ‘In the South, the only place I have fond memories of, that you’re allowed to travel to, is Nha Trang. I live close to the beach in Southern California. Why should I travel thousands of miles just to go to the beach?’ One gets the impression that Morris would go back, though, if he were permitted to travel to the Central Highlands, where he pulled most of his duty. That is where he first ‘rock ‘n’ rolled,’ as he put it, with the Montagnards.

Although the Green Berets were trained at Fort Bragg, N.C., and were provided intensive lessons in Indochinese history, politics, economics and language studies (Vietnamese and French) on Okinawa, their truest training, according to Morris, occurred in the field and in bull sessions with other Special Forces personnel. ‘We were constantly rotating in and out of Vietnam in the early days on six-month TDYs (temporary duties),’ he remembered, ‘and, over beers at the club, all the guys who were going hung on every word of those who had come back.’

Unfortunately for Morris and American vets who have chosen to revisit Vietnam, the Montagnard villages of the Rhade, Jarai and others are officially off-limits because of an ongoing battle between the current regime and hill tribe rebels. During the war, Americans moved freely in and out of the long houses attending to the tribal peoples’ medical needs and occasionally drinking the ceremonial but notoriously potent rice wine known as ‘numpai.’

To this day the rebels identify themselves by the acronym FULRO, which stands for Le Front Unifie de Lutte des Races Opprimées, or The United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races. They are fighting against the threat of genocide from the Hanoi government, just as they have had to fight discrimination for at least two centuries. In recent decades that has meant Montagnards could not have passports because they were not allowed to leave Vietnam, and Montagnard teachers could not teach classes in their own language. ‘Today, they are being forced to speak Vietnamese, take Vietnamese names and intermarry,’ said Morris, a native Oklahoman. ‘What’s happening to them is exactly what happened to American Indians in this country. Interestingly, some of the gravest concern for the ‘Yards’ has been registered by American Indian Vietnam vets.’

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, People, Vietnam War

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