We have been following Marland Burckhardt, a Russell High School graduate who served in the Army in Italy before returning to college, marrying his sweetheart, and graduating with an Army commission. Marland and Barb completed a year-long assignment in Germany before returning to the States where Marland completed the Army Counterintelligence Course, Airborne training, and the Special Forces Officer Course.

He was not surprised when he received deployment orders for Vietnam in January 1970.

“There was no doubt in my mind I was on my way to Vietnam even before I got to the Special Forces Officers Course. I was assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group.”

Marland described the sequence of his deployment and arrival in-country.

“We spent a few days’ leave in Russell and then flew to Oregon to see friends and family. Barbara and I drove to the San Francisco area. Then she went back to Oregon, picked up her baby, and went back to Minnesota. I deployed from an Air Force base close to San Francisco in a chartered, civilian airplane. We flew into Vietnam to Tan Son Nhut Air Base. I remember it was hot; humid – the air was sticky; and (Marland chuckled) there was a different smell in the area.”

The Army transported Marland to his in-country assignment.

“We went to the base at Bien Hoa on a bus with steel bars on the windows, I guess to protect us. We spent a couple of days with the replacement unit there. Then I was off to Nha Trang and 5th Special Forces Headquarters.”

He described his base at Nha Trang, on the coast of the South China Sea.

“We were adjacent to the air base in Nha Trang, a big military installation. The 5th Special Forces Group had the commander and headquarters group and all the staff functions. Plus we had an aviation unit, fixed wing and helicopters. Our compound had wooden, one and two-story billets (hootches). I had my own, bedroom-sized room. We had bunkers along the perimeter of the compound which we went to if there was an alert or in-coming”

Marland explained the mission of the 5th Special Forces Group.

“The primary mission was working with indigenous folks in the interior. We had camps with a 12-man Special Forces team commanded by a captain. They had a similar group of Vietnamese Special Forces and with that group was a couple hundred of what we called CIDG — Civilian Irregular Defense Group. This military group were your troops if you were a Special Forces camp commander, the folks you led on patrols in your area of operation. Generally, (the camps) were astride infiltration routes the VC and North Vietnamese used to enter Vietnam and were an early warning surveillance mission. The Special Forces also worked with indigenous people to help with their agriculture, health, and welfare.”

Marland explained his role in that larger mission.

“My mission was to monitor the information being gathered by the Special Forces camps in III Corps and IV Corps. (The southern half of South Vietnam.) Each of these Special Forces camps had their own Intelligence NCO who ran surveillance and counterintelligence nets. They reported to us. We took that information and worked to make it reasonable intelligence. Once we put that together, we briefed the commander every morning on what was going on based on what we could see from that intelligence.”

But all newcomers to 5th Special Forces Group had an initial task.

“One of the first things we did upon arrival was go to an island in the South China Sea off Nha Trang where the Group had a week-long training course. You practiced patrolling, setting up defensive positions, and walking through courses with pop-up targets. When you finished, you came back in the fence and started the Intelligence job.”

Marland’s boss had one more task for him.

“Before I got involved in doing Intelligence, the boss sent me out to III and IV Corps, saying ‘I want you to go to the camps within your responsibility and learn.’ So, I hitch-hiked around the southern half of South Vietnam, catching rides in helicopters, airplanes, and jeeps from camp to camp. I was checking with the Intelligence folks there and letting them know who I was. You familiarized yourself with the people and the terrain. They knew what I was doing and supported me. I spent two weeks doing that and returned to Nha Trang.”

He quickly got the hang of navigating around Vietnam, but also learned lessons about operating in a war zone.

“For the new guy it was an adventure into the unknown. Fortunately, we’d been in Vietnam for a long time by 1970 and it was a well-established network of camps. I didn’t have much apprehension about it (Marland chuckled) after I ventured out there and got going. I got mortared at Moc Hua one night. That was my first time under fire and my reaction was kind of stupid. I was in a hootch with the S-2 (Intelligence) officer. These hootches had sandbags outside about midriff high. As we started to get mortared, I jumped up and said, ‘What’s going on?” He said, ‘Get down!’ If you are down, unless the mortar comes on top of you, all the fragments are going to hit the sandbags outside. That’s what was going on.”

Marland returned to Nha Trang with his new-found insights and experiences and began working with his enlisted analysts to make sense of the information coming from the III and IV Corps Special Forces camps.

©2025 William D. Palmer.