Meet the Farm Kid Who Became the Youngest Green Beret on a Daring U.S. Military Mission

As a young Missouri farm kid, Terry Buckler knew he was about to be drafted for the war in Vietnam, so he went ahead and volunteered. Soon he found himself at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. 

“They put us all in a big room and brought in this special forces sergeant who was looking for volunteers for special forces,” Buckler says. “I didn't know a lot about it, but I knew if I was going to Vietnam, I want to go with the best, and they are the best. So, I stuck my paw up and volunteered for the Green Beret.”
Buckler says the training is tough and the number who make it through is small. 

“The old song that says, ‘One hundred men will test today, but only three win the Green Beret’ is pretty accurate,” Buckler says. “We jumped in into our training and there was about 60 or 70 of us. Only 40 graduated out of three classes.”

Terry Buckler’s story is this edition of the Farming the Countryside with Andrew McCrea:

While Buckler became a Green Beret, he was not initially sent to Vietnam. Operations in the country were winding down. When he finally did make the trip across the Pacific, his role was far different than almost any American who had previously fought in the country. 

“I was probably the deepest and the youngest behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War,” Buckler says.

In 1970, along with 56 other Green Berets, Buckler went 300 miles behind enemy lines into North Vietnam to rescue 60 to 70 Americans at the Son Tay prisoner of war camp. Odds of survival were 50-50.
Buckler volunteered for the mission, but even after selection, he knew very little about the task at hand.

“We didn't know what we were going to be doing,” he says. “We had trained for three months for this down at Eglin Air Force Base. We knew we were doing some type of rescue, but we didn't know where, when or who.”

While in the U.S., the soldiers had trained for this mission without knowing where it was located. The group was transported to Southeast Asia and dropped off for three days at a CIA compound. 

“We had over 170 rehearsals,” Buckler says. “The CIA and made a mockup of the compound, which was very accurate. We would go in and we weren't actually training and just study the terrain where we were at. So, when we hit the ground, we would already have our idea where we're at and where we're headed.”

The soldiers set off for Son Tay.

“Our orders were taking no prisoners,” Buckler says. “We had three choppers that took us in. They estimated we had to be in control of the guards within a minute. There were three guard towers, and we took the guard towers out on the way in.”

As part of a two-man team, Buckler had to get to the camp communication building as quickly as they could.

“Just as we had got to that building, I heard on my headset, ‘No items.’ Items is the code word for POWs, so they did another search, making sure that no man was left behind,” he says. 

Unfortunately, the POW camp’s 65 American captives had been moved to a different location four months prior.

“The good thing about the mission, was we proved that the United States could get into the back door of Hanoi — get in and get out and not lose any men,” Buckler says.

While the raid didn’t achieve its mission, it is still revered as a military success.

“Every raid since has been modeled after the Son Tay raid,” Buckler says. “The only major differences of the raids today versus the raid we did is the technology they have today is tremendous compared to what we had. We used World War two ski goggles to keep the sand out of our eyes when the chopper landed.”

The planning, the execution and the training that went into the raid all was superb, he says. 

“Today when they do a raid on anybody, they take some of the information that they learned in Son Tay and apply it to their mission,” he says. 

Buckler wrote a book about his experience: Who Will Go: Into the Son Tay POW Camp