BROOKINGS – Consider this touch of irony.
With the turnover of the combat role in Vietnam to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in the early 1970s, many returning combat-tested United States Army officers and warrant officers became casualties of a sort-of administrative friendly-fire: a Reduction In Force (RIF) that killed the careers of many officers who had planned to stay in the Regular Army for 20 years or more.
Brookings native Loren Hanson got caught in the RIF; but he moved on to a full-time career in the South Dakota Army National Guard.
Following graduation from Brookings High School in 1961, he was going to join the Army; but a very minor ailment resulted in his failing the physical exam.
“But at that time, they were still fussy,” he said. “So I joined the Guard here in Brookings. There were several of us joined the Guard.
“I stayed in the Guard and worked at Spies Super Value all the while I was in high school. In 1966 I went into the Regular Army.”
He stayed in the Army until he was “RIFed” in November 1974, 2 1/2 years after he returned from Vietnam. Hanson, however, was more fortunate than many of his fellow regulars who got RIFed.
“I had friends on our team – I was on Advisory Team 89 – at the province level that got RIFed in-country, in Vietnam,” he said. “That’s got to be a kick in the butt.
“You’re over here serving your country in the war zone and your country says, ’We don’t need you anymore.’”
Some RIFed officers were offered the opportunity to revert to enlisted rank and continue on active duty. Hanson considered that, but he admitted he was frustrated.
“I’d given them 12 years already and now they don’t need me,” he said. But he didn’t want “to throw away 12 years.” So when he was offered a full-time assignment in the South Dakota Army National Guard, he took it. He stayed until 1989, when he retired “as a master sergeant/captain.”
Identify and neutralize
Hanson had about 10 years of combined service, Guard and Regular Army, when he arrived in Vietnam on June 1, 1971, assigned to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), Advisory Team 89.
Prior to his assignment to Vietnam, he was serving with an Army Intelligence unit in Dallas. He completed 16 weeks training at the JFK Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He returned to Dallas to get married before he deployed.
“We had all of our plans arranged before I got orders to Vietnam,” Hanson recalled with a smile. “And my wife (Fran) was not changing any of those marriage plans. We got married on the 22nd of May and the 1st of June I was in-country.”
He was assigned to Advisory Team 89 of the “Phoenix Program” – rendered “Phung-Hoang” in Vietnamese. The program was turned over by the CIA to the Army and Vietnamese. The team reported directly to MACV.
At one time Phoenix was classified. But it was addressed in episode 7 of the recently-aired Ken Burns’ documentary on Vietnam.
“The main mission of the Phoenix Program, and they talked about it on TV, was to identify and neutralize the Viet Cong infrastructure,” Hanson explained. “There was the North Vietnamese and there was the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong was in place. The North Vietnamese, of course, came from the north.”
In the rural areas of South Vietnam, local government in each village was led by a village chief. At the same time there was in place what Hanson called a “shadow government,” peopled by Viet Cong leaders ready to take over if – when – South Vietnam fell to the military forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam “regulars.” That happened in 1974 and 1975.
“Our job was to identify those (in the shadow government) and neutralize them, whether it was prison, other means,” Hanson said.
“I worked strictly with the Vietnamese. There were two of us (Americans) on my team.
“We lived in a little village. The team was larger, more of us; but due to the cutbacks, there was just two of us left: myself and one non-commissioned officer (NCO).”
While Captain Hanson had been schooled in Vietnamese during his 16 weeks at Fort Bragg, his language skills weren’t sufficient for the job at hand.
“But to get over where they actually spoke Vietnamese, the stuff we learned at Fort Bragg was not the same,” he said. “But I had a fantastic interpreter. He spoke and wrote Vietnamese, English, French and two dialects of Chinese. He was of Chinese decent.”
Living in the village, which had four hamlets, was primitive. “We had no electricity; so we ran two 10k generators, one every other night. That was the only power we had.”
Either Hanson or his NCO, who was on his second or third in-country tour of duty, plus the interpreter with a radio “would go out on operations” during the day and at night, “a lot of nights.” One would stay back to man the radio in the village.
“It was kind of interesting,” Hanson said, smiling. “Nobody ever came out to bother us, because nobody wanted to come out and spend the night. I can’t understand that. We were OK.”
Hanson kept up that routine for almost a year. But then when his NCO finished his tour and rotated back to the United States, Hanson was pulled back to a province headquarters. He had about a month to go. Then he too returned to the States.
Home again in Brookings
Still a captain, Hanson was assigned to Fort Sheridan, Illinois. “I was supposed to be assigned to the 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fort Sheridan. I ended up at post headquarters as executive officer of the headquarters company.”
Being assigned outside his specialty – intelligence – to an administrative job proved to be a key factor to Hanson’s being RIFed in November 1974. He remained in the Army Reserve as a captain, but in a non-pay job, to avoid “a break in service.”
Meanwhile, he went to work for Sears in Dallas. Sears transferred him to Brookings. In time Sears cut back, so Hanson went to full-time duty with the Guard and stayed until retiring with 28 years of service on Dec. 1, 1989.
Following retirement, Hanson owned and operated Brookings Marine for five years. He sold the business and then worked for Sioux Valley Hospital for 10 years.
He is now a member of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Disabled American Veterans. Additionally he and Fran are active in Rolling Thunder, a motorcyclist organization whose mission is “POW/MIA awareness. Don’t let the issue fall by the wayside.” The Brookings chapter has about 40 members.
Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.
