Vietnam War 1954 - 1975

The Vietnam War impacted on American life for the best part of two decades, and public support quickly drained away as victory slipped from sight and the casualties mounted. This final episode tells the story of the last years of the war and the fall of Saigon from 1973 - 1976. It also features a detailed account of the little known operation Lam Son 719 and the betrayal of the indigenous Montagnard people.

The Phoenix Program was designed to "neutralize" --via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination--the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, known more familiarly as the Viet Cong. By 1972 its personnel had "neutralized" 81,740 suspected NLF operatives, informants, and supporters. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group (MACVSOG) was a highly classified, multi-service special operations unit whose personnel were engaged in all aspects of the war.

Dubbed "the men with the green faces" by the enemy, Navy SEAL Teams were the maritime counterpart to the Army Special Forces' Green Berets. Their mission in Vietnam was to conduct counter-guerrilla warfare and clandestine waterborne operations and disrupt the enemy's maritime lines of communication. A term that dates back to the American Civil War, the "Brown Water Navy" played a vital role in patrolling Vietnam's coastal regions and network of inland waterways.

Track 'em, find 'em, and kill 'em: this was, in essence, the goal of the unique Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRRPs): small and highly mobile reaction forces sent in to fight a guerrilla war in enemy territory and similar to those active during the American Revolution and the Civil War. Later dubbed the Rangers, these patrols consisted of specially trained personnel capable of performing reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition within the dispatching unit's area of interest, and there were only thirteen independently operating units in the whole country. With no central command and control structure, the LRRPs were responsible only to whatever command issued their orders, and there were simply no other units like them in Vietnam.

This opening episode looks at the vital role of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). Essentially American military advisers sent abroad to facilitate military aid and assist in training conventional armed forces, its personnel were typically viewed as technical staff attached to a country's US diplomatic mission. Active since the 1940s, the most famous MAAGs were nevertheless those operating in Southeast Asia before and during the Vietnam War. The Special Ops units fighting in the so-called "Secret War" in Laos included an air wing and local Mong tribesmen led by the Green Berets.