Dennis
J. Cummings
Co-founded a video production company in 1987 after a career
in law enforcement and has produced four documentaries on
the Navy SEALs. These include Navy SEALs: America’s Secret
Warriors and The Stoner Machine Gun: A Navy SEAL Remembers.
His first book The Men Behind the Trident: SEAL Team One
in Vietnam was published in 1997. He is a contributing editor
of Behind the Lines magazine and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
In October 2000 he helped create realwarstories.com.
Raymond
Harris
Raymond D. Harris entered the United States Army on September
22, 1967, enlisting for Airborne training. At the end of
Basic Training and AIT he decided to join Special Forces
and went on to complete the Special Forces Demolitions/Engineering
Course in 1968. On February 4, 1969, Ray arrived in Vietnam
and volunteered for MACV-SOG, Command and Control Central.
While at CCC he was assigned to Recon Team Iowa and eventually
became the team’s „one-zero“, or team leader. In February
1970, at the end of his tour with CCC, Ray extended his
time in Vietnam for another three months and trained Earth
Angel teams for MACV-SOG’s Operation 36 Alpha. His novel,
Break Contact, Continue Mission, gives readers a first-hand
look into the Top Secret world of MACV-SOG, the American
Special Forces unit that he served with, which ran long
range recon missions into Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam
war.
Thomas
P. Nicholson
Tom Nickolson
was born in Springfield, Missouri, and grew up in southwest
Missouri and northern Arkansas. He graduated from the University
of Missouri School of Mines in Rolla with a Bachelor’s Degree
in Nuclear Engineering. He enlisted in the U.S. Army and
attended OCS and Airborne training at Ft. Benning, Georgia.
After an initial assignment to the mountain brigade at Ft.
Carson, Colorado, he joined Special Forces and trained at
Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. Assigned to 5th Special Forces
Group in South Vietnam, he served as the executive officer
of A-224, Phu Tuc, in II Corps Tactical Zone. He served
a second tour in Vietnam assigned to CCN, MACV-SOG, first
as the S-1, and later as the commander of Company B (Hatchet
Force). After his discharge from active duty, he joined
the 12th Special Forces (Reserve) and served until his retirement
in 1996 as a full colonel with over 33 years service. He
worked as a professional engineer in his civilian status,
obtaining his MBA . He lives with his wife, Sandra, a public
school speech pathologist, in St. Charles, Illinois. He
has written several novels; Ride the Red Sun Down, Rebel
Doctor, War Stories, Ransom of Paris, Her Majesty’s Yankee,
Ride with Custer, Pinkerton’s Gold, Revenge of the Stolen
Dove, and his latest work, a biography, 15 months in SOG,
A Warrior’s Tour.
Jim
Morris
Jim Morris
served three tours with Special Forces in Vietnam, emerging
with four Bronze Stars and four Purple Hearts. His story
Operation Barroom was made into a Disney film, Operation
Dumbo Drop. After his discharge he became a war correspondent.
He is the author of three volumes of nonfiction and four
novels and has edited more than 250 books on military themes.
Jim is now a writer/producer in Los Angeles.
Ches
Schneider
Ches Schneider is the author of FROM CLASSROOMS TO CLAYMORES:
A Teacher at War in Vietnam (Random House/Ivy Press). The
book describes the life of the average soldier in Vietnam.
Ches served in two combat units, the First Infantry Division
and the First Air Cavalry during his tour of duty in Southeast
Asia. While no one is ready to laugh at what happened in Vietnam,
Ches does bring out some of the lighter moments shared by
the men and women who served 8000 miles away from home. Upon
his return to the United States he taught English and history
for thirty-four years. Ches used the letters he wrote to family
as the framework for his Vietnam writing. After completion
of FROM CLASSROOMS TO CLAYMORES, he turned his attention to
his mother’s unpublished manuscript. Drawing on her already
engaging writing style and his own memories of life outside
the POW camp (Ches is the „Chessie“ in the book), he polished
Lorraine’s work to publication status. He is pleased to give
others the opportunity to read about this little known aspect
of World War II. Ches is one of the originators of the Reading
Across Disciplines (RAD) program. The RAD reading and study
strategies process has helped hundreds of school districts
provide better reading instruction to their students. Ches
also provides leadership workshops for corporate leaders in
the business environment. As a presenter and a speaker, he
has talked with numerous groups about his experiences in Vietnam
as well as the history of German POWs in the United States.
Ches encourages comments and questions and can be contacted
at CHES1943@ aol.com.
Lorraine
Margaret Stolze-Schneider
February 10, 1921- September 8, 1973
Lorraine Margaret Stolze-Schneider was born in St. Louis,
Missouri just after WW I and died toward the end of America’s
involvement in Vietnam. She lived during a period of history
when mankind was on the continuous and ever apparent threshold
of one war or another. Her upbringing, family, religious values,
gentle humorous observations, and genuine love in her heart
were her remarkable strengths. Lorraine used her ability to
adapt to unfamiliar and unknown situations as the basis for
her non-fiction work Not Warriors, Just People. In this book
she depicts the perils and pleasures of living outside a camp
located in Tennessee where captured German prisoners-of-war
brought to the United States from Europe were held. This first
hand account describes how, like other families of the 1940’s,
her young family was affected by the disruption of their peaceful
world. This story is a time capsule that has been opened enabling
the reader to experience the variety of emotions and situations
that existed in that unique period of time. Lorraine was Chester
(Chet) Schneider’s wife and mother to Ches (Chessie), Ronald,
Larry and Donald. She was the typical homemaker of the 50’s
and 60’s. Eventually when her boys were able to help with
housework, she worked as a secretary in the Aeronautical Chart
and Information Center. Despite her Secret security clearance
she hinted that this was where some of the major mapping of
the moon was taking place. After helping to place men on the
moon and suffering two heart attacks she retired to live a
peaceful life. She died knowing that she had helped play a
very small part in winning both WW II and the Space Race.
She wasn’t a warrior, just a person.
David
A. Maurer David A. Maurer was born May 16, 1946, in St. Cloud,
Minn. He enlisted in the U.S. Army on July 17, 1963. After
a tour in Korea he went to Vietnam with the 1st Cavalry
Division, in August 1965. Maurer participated in several
battles including the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in November
1965, and Operation Masher/White Wing near Bong Son in 1966.
In 1967 Maurer went through U.S. Army parachute training
at Ft. Benning, Ga., and was then accepted into U.S. Army
Special Forces training at Ft. Bragg, N.C. He graduated
from S.F. school in the spring of 1968 and after a brief
period with the Sixth Special Forces Group was assigned
to the Fifth Special Forces Group in Vietnam. During the
next year and a half Maurer was assigned to MACV-SOG and
served as a reconnaissance team leader at Command and Control
North outside Da Nang. His job was to lead a team of Chinese
Nung and Vietnamese mercenaries on missions into Laos and
North Vietnam. Among the decorations earned were two Bronze
Stars, Army Commendation Medal with V, a Purple Heart, two
air medals and Combat Infantry Badge. Maurer left the Army
in 1973 and attended Monterey Peninsula College. After graduation
he attended Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle. After
graduating in 1977 he went to work as a hard-hat diver doing
mostly salvage work. In 1980 Maurer went to work as a carpenter
in Carmel, California. During this period he wrote the book
„The Dying Place,“ which was first published by Dell in
1986. Currently, Maurer is working on a non-fiction book.
M.
Wilson McReady By
the time Mariah Wilson McReady was 10 years old, everyone
called her Willie. She never answered to Mariah, not even
when her mother was yelling. In her family you had to make
your own definitions and stick to them. Until she was 15,
Willie thought her father was in the Navy. She remembered
asking him once what he did, and he answered he was sort
of like an admiral. Willie was young. She never thought
to inquire where his ship was, or why he didn’t wear a uniform.
After the Bay of Pigs, when the Agency fired a few and her
family came back to the States, it became clear to Willie
what he did. There was even a sign on the Parkway where
her father turned off to go to work that said „CIA.“ They
were a wandering family, and Willie got it in her blood.
After Europe, the Far East, and then Europe again, she topped
it all off with three colleges. Even after all that, she
walked out the academic door basically unemployable, and
just kept wandering. Somewhere along the line Willie got
married an unwise number of times, proving that practice
does not make perfect in all things. Willie’s first low
intensity conflict (other than her marriages) was Mozambique.
She was a small time „action journalist“ and walked 350
miles through the bush to visit with the guerilla forces.
She was really hungry, and the blisters were memorable.
She even went back a second time. Willie actually joined
the army in Bosnia. Of course, there were lots of armies
and lunatics running around blowing things up and stealing
cars. The International Brigade designated her their English
teacher. In Willie’s opinion, even the Brits could have
used English lessons. Most were AWOL from the Foreign Legion,
and their French was even worse. War, Willie thought, surely
was hell. After a while, Africa’s abundant small wars lured
Willie back. „Once bitten, twice shy“ doesn’t seem to have
stuck on her. Then for five years, Willie was crew on a
sailboat. Being Captain would undoubtedly have been better.
After one too many „heave me hearties,“ she moved to a mountaintop.
There she sits, chasing her thoughts around the shallows,
listening to the gypsy moths munch through the trees. Almost
heaven.
Kent
White Upon
graduating from high school in Pacific Grove, California,
Kent White attended college in Monterey, California for
a year. It was during college that he first became interested
in writing and took several creative writing classes. When
his father, a career U.S. Army officer, was assigned to
a new duty station in Tokyo, Japan, he accompanied his family
to Japan. He studied at Sophia University, an English language
school in Tokyo, once again enrolling in a writing class.
After a semester at Sophia University, he enlisted in the
U.S. Army in 1966. During Basic Training in California,
he volunteered for the Army’s Airborne School at Fort Benning,
Georgia. Upon completion of the three-week course, he volunteered
for the Special Forces school at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
becoming a specialist in domestic and foreign weapons. In
the spring of 1968, after six months with the 3rd Special
Forces Group, he was sent to the Republic of Vietnam. He
was assigned to the covert Studies and Observations Group,
a top secret reconnaissance unit that infiltrated small
teams of American Special Forces personnel and indigenous
mercenaries across the border into enemy denied territory
in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. He is the recipient
of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. After he was discharged
in 1969, he returned to college, again enrolling in creative
writing courses. Shortly afterward, he took film courses
at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California,
and went on to work for an independent film company. He
worked as an Associate Producer on the PBS special, Beyond
Barbed Wire, a feature length documentary film that tells
of the World War II experiences of American soldiers of
Japanese descent. His debut novel, Prairie Fire, first published
in 1983, was the first work of fiction to chronicle the
top secret SOG missions into Laos. Longshadows, his second
novel, continues the story of Special Forces reconnaissance
teams in Laos. He writes from his experiences and those
of his comrades in SOG. He is now self-employed as a General
Contractor in California, and is currently working on a
third novel, The Golden Triangle.
Dr.
LEONG Chee Woh Dr.
LEONG Chee Woh, JMN, JBS, KMN, AMN, AMP, ABS, PPB,
KPK, TTP, was born on 11th November 1929. He hailed from
Taiping, a small town in the state of Perak, located in
the northwest of the Malaya Peninsula. He was educated in
one of the English premier schools in his hometown during
the British colonial period and completed his Senior Cambridge
Examinations in 1949 although his studies were affected
for four and a half years during the Japanese occupation.
After a stint as a clerk with the Town Council as well as
the District Police Headquarters in Taiping and Selama,
Perak, he was selected for police officer training as a
probationary Asian police inspector. His first posting after
his training was to one of the most communist infested areas
in the country. He survived both the First (1948-1960) and
Second (1970-1991) Emergencies, as the communist insurgency
was called, and for the duration of a third of a century
was posted to various parts of the country where he actively
engaged the communists in the jungles as well as in the
urban areas with outstanding success.
It was with the Special Branch, the principal intelligence-collecting
agency of the country, that he proved himself as a brilliant
operational strategist, rising through the ranks to that
of Senior Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Royal
Malaysian Police Force and retiring as the Deputy Director
(Operations) of the Malaysian Special Branch on 10th November
1984. Mr. LEONG was one of the most highly decorated officers
in the Royal Malaysian Police with not less then nine decorations
including one for gallantry. In addition, he also received
fourteen Departmental Citations or Letters of Commendation
and Appreciation for his outstanding services to the Nation.
These included one from the late Malaysian Prime Minster,
The Commander of the 1st American Special Forces, The Commander
of the 28th Commonwealth Brigade and the Commander of the
4th Division of the Malaysian Army.
John Styrker Meyer
Born
1 January 1946, John Stryker Meyer entered the Army on 1
December 1966. He completed basic training at Ft. Dix, New
Jersey, advanced infantry training at Ft. Gordon, Georgia,
jump school at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and graduated from
the Special Forces Qualification Course in December 1967.
After a 12-week training session in Ft. Gordon, on radio
teletype, Meyer landed in South Vietnam in April 1968, and
arrived at FOB 1 in Phu Bai in May 1968, where he joined
Spike Team Idaho. When FOB 1 was closed in January 1969,
ST Idaho was helicoptered to FOB 4 in Da Nang, which became
designated Command and Control North, CCN. He remained on
ST Idaho through the end of his tour of duty in late April.
Returned to the U.S. and was assigned to E Company in the
10th Special Forces Group at Ft. Devens, Massachusetts until
October 1969, when he rejoined ST Idaho at CCN. That tour
of duty ended suddenly in April 1970 after the CCN commander
refused Meyer’s first request to pull his four-man
team from an A Shau Valley target. He returned to the States,
completed his college education at Trenton State College,
where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Signal,
for two years, worked at the Trenton Times for 10 years,
eight years at the San Diego Union and has been an editor
at the North County Times for 10 years in Oceanside, California,
where he also writes occasional columns. Meyer received
his 20-year membership pin from the Special Operations Association
in 2002. He and his wife Anna have five children and live
in Oceanside, Ca.
Richard �Nick� Brokhausen Born: March 20, 1948
Graduated: Glenwood, Minnesota, public school system Entered Active service: June 1966 Korea: line infantry, DMZ Special Forces: 6th Group, 5th Group, 10th Group
Detachment A BBde Vietnam: MACV-SOG; CCN, TF1AE, as 1-1 on RT Habu and 1-0 RT Crusader Awards: 2 Bronze Stars, Purple Heart, MSM, CIB, VN Cross of Gallantry Vocation: Actively pursuing a career as a human being, with all its faults, woes, and joy. Avocations: The study of small minds, complex sugar compounds such as alcohol, combat origami, humor in the assault, tactical use of the pen, and living as an alternative.