Medal Awarded for 101st Airborne Vietnam-Era Covert Op

Medal Awarded for Vietnam-Era Covert Op
September 22, 2011
Knight Ridder
by Howard Altman

It was September 1968, and Richard Crawford was on a secret mission in a country where U.S. troops weren't supposed to be.

Crawford, now a Lakeland resident, was inside one of several helicopters headed to Laos on a mission to rescue a reconnaissance team that had come under heavy fire. Over the course of several hours, the helicopters were shredded by fire. Two crashed and several soldiers were injured, but the reconnaissance team was saved.

From a written eyewitness account by Roger F. Lockshier, Specialist 5/E-5Black Angels Co., 101st. Airborne Division:

"We rolled in for the pick-up and immediately started receiving tremendous amounts of automatic weapons fire. I could hear and feel our helicopter getting hit with bullets as we laid down our machine-gun, 40mm, & rocket fire. Scott and I stepped out onto the skids and proceeded to lay down a non stop blanket of M-60 fire."

It was another harrowing day in the life of the secret Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, a highly classified U.S. special forces unit that conducted covert operations before and during the Vietnam War. It was created more than two decades before U.S. Special Operations Command.

For more than four decades after making their way out of that harrowing firefight, the men, led by a now 68-year-old Crawford, have been fighting another battle.
One for recognition. And honor.

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