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

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Morris believes that the Green Berets could not have done what they did, however, without the courage of the Montagnards who were at their side. ‘We planned to wage a war together and we did,’ he said. ‘It took us two months just to stop them from dragging their feet through the jungle, shuffling the leaves to frighten the VC. After a while, though, the last thing that the Montagnards needed was some junior Jesus teaching them how to run raids in the jungle.’ They did, however, desperately need supplies and backing, said Morris.

One particularly courageous Montagnard he remembers well was the famous Phillipe Drouin, nicknamed ‘Cowboy’ by those who fought by his side. ‘Phillipe once charged right by an ambush I was leading,’ recalled Morris. ‘Charging with rounds whizzing past you? That’s courageous!’ Drouin, however, developed illusions of grandeur that ultimately caused his death. He often hired himself out to as many as six different U.S. intelligence operations in South and Central Vietnam, often playing them off against one another. According to Morris, Drouin eventually was ambushed by rival rebels in the FULRO movement.

‘My number one rule in Vietnam was to only trust someone who had saved my life within the preceding two weeks,’ said Morris. ‘Once, when Phillipe picked me up in a jeep, and it was just me and him driving through the jungle, I was ready just in case.’

Looking back on his years with the hill tribes, Morris remembers that humor was often present along with the intrigue. One of his favorite ‘Yards’ was a Jarai tribesman who worked for the Green Beret supply sergeant as an armorer. He had been nicknamed ‘Ush,’ their word for ‘ouch.’ ‘The reason that they called him that was because his face was a mass of scar tissue, which he got from trying to smoke while cleaning weapons parts in a No. 10 can of gasoline,’ Morris said with a laugh. ‘The stuff would just blow up in his face and he would go at it again.’

Another Montagnard, whom the Green Berets called ‘Old Half Head,’ had gotten into a fight with a leopard. ‘You may win a fight with a leopard, but you’re not going to walk away from it [unscathed],’ Morris said.

The Special Forces were often showered with acts of kindness by the peace-loving hill tribes people, who frequently gave them engraved, polished brass friendship bracelets. From the size of the one Morris wears, it is obvious that he was held in high esteem by his Montagnard counterparts. When he returned as a correspondent in 1973, he was elevated to the rank of brigadier general in the Montagnard forces.

From Morris’ experience fighting in Vietnam and reporting on other wars as a journalist, he is convinced that there is a common thread that runs through many contemporary uprisings and leads back to the former Soviet Union.

‘Almost all insurgencies since World War II have been backed by a Soviet Union that wanted to gradually communize the world,’ he said. On a personal note, he remembered, ‘Every time I ever got wounded it was with Russian or Czech ammo.’

Even with the apparent downfall of America’s former adversary, Morris believes that we should not kid ourselves. The collapse of the Soviet Union came about, he said, because the United States won a Cold War comprised of a series of Soviet-supported ‘Third World wars,’ as he calls them.

‘When the Berlin Wall caved in, I was happy,’ Morris said. ‘The world I’d grown up in was gone. I’d been training to fight communism since the age of 11 in military school. After the wall fell, I asked myself, ‘What do I do now?’ It felt like being out of a job.’

Actually, Morris is not out of a job at all. In late July 1995, the Walt Disney Company released a cinematic take on one of his 1982 Soldier of Fortune pieces titled ‘Operation Barroom.’

The true story deals with a request made of Special Forces by Saigon USAID personnel to move four elephants by helicopter from Ban Me Thuot to a sawmill in Tra Bong and to Kham Duc to assist a group of Montagnards who had cut the lumber down in areas that were too rough and hilly for machinery to haul it out. The mission was indeed accomplished. Disney made a children’s movie out of it called Operation Dumbo Drop.

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

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