US Air Force/Capt. Billie D Tedford In May 1967, US special operators and Vietnamese troops went behind enemy lines to take out North Vietnam's top general. The mission led by the secretive MACV-SOG quickly went wrong, and US forces spent days fighting just to keep them alive. Fifty-four years ago, a group of American and indigenous commandos fought for their very lives in a small, far away valley in one of the boldest special-operations missions of the Vietnam War. Codenamed Oscar-8, the target was the forward headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army's 559th Transportation Group and its commander, Gen. Vo Bam, located alongside the Ho Chi Minh trail complex, which ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam and passed through Laos and Cambodia.