When Bargewell retired in 2006, he was the most decorated soldier on active duty.
Eldon Bargewell knew he would serve in the military from a very young age.
With Vietnam War heating up, he enlisted in the Army in 1967 and went straight to Special Forces selection. Once he received his Green Beret, he deployed to Southeast Asia. There, he further volunteered for the elite Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG).
SOG was a covert unit that conducted cross-border operations in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. It was composed of Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Recon Marines, and Air Commandos. As conventional units struggled against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, these operators fought America’s secret war.
During the Vietnam War, the US created a highly classified unit that still influences modern special operations Stavros Atlamazoglou US Air Force Bell UH-1P helicopters from the 20th Special Operations Squadron fly into Cambodia, around 1970. As the US waged a conventional war in South Vietnam, a group of special operators carried out a secret war inside and outside the country. The Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group, as their unit was known, was disbanded after the war, but it had a lasting influence on modern US special operations forces.
As the US s involvement in Vietnam steadily grew with more conventional troops, so did its secret war.