75th Infantry Regiment- K75 Ranger

1. www.k75ranger.com

2. When we created the k75ranger.com & 4thdivlrrp.com websites in 2014, it was by “inheriting” the 2nd Brigade LRRP website that Mike Lapolla, Ron Coon and others originally put together. Their “sua sponte” effort to preserve history as the original LRRPs has led to the Rangers website, déjà vu! Once again they have “led the way”. Thank you to those for the work you did before us and the vision you gave us! We have added to this effort as we accomplish our mission of preserving our LRRP/Ranger history and honoring our fallen in perpetuity. In addition to collaborating with Mike on the new website, we also reached out to our other former unit commanders, Rueben Siverling and Kim Olmstead. We asked each of them to write a Welcome letter, which we now are sharing with you. We are fortunate to have captured this moment in time with the messages from some of our leaders below, given from their unique perspectives, to all of us who served as LRPPS and Rangers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. We lost Kim Olmstead in January 2019 therefore his letter is published posthumously, with gratitude to his family for helping us achieve that. We share a unique bond and are still gathering LRRP/Ranger history for our website. More of the former Brigade and Division LRRPs have begun contributing their histories. We look forward to sharing their messages and perspectives as the k75ranger.com & 4thdivlrrp.com websites grow and mature.

3. HUNTERS AND TRACKERS The long-range reconnaissance patrols (LRRPs) of the Vietnam War operated in a silent netherworld of dark green shadows where error could mean death and where the extraordinary was commonplace. Traveling in small groups —often only three or four men —far from friendly forces, they strove to look, smell, move and act as much as possible like the enemy they sought in the depths of the jungle. LRRPs were hunters and trackers, and their elusive prey was the NVA and VC. They were adept at the art of ambush, the quiet kill, unseen movement and survival. They wafted through the jungle like a solitary breeze, briefly felt, quickly gone. They were the eyes and ears of a roaring, earth-splitting, technological typhoon of destruction —the killing machine that was the U.S. military in the Republic of Vietnam.

4. ADOPTED TACTICS The war in Vietnam presented the American military with a task it was initially not prepared to carry out. Focused on the Cold War and conventional conflict with the Soviet Union, military strategy during the years preceding Vietnam had depended largely on high-tech weaponry, where the tactic was to throw enough money, equipment, troops and firepower at an enemy to overwhelm him. Faced with the prospect of protracted jungle warfare in Southeast Asia, America’s military leaders were forced to return to less conventional tactics —some of which had been pioneered long before the 20th century. The long-range patrol concept — sending small groups of men far into enemy territory to harass, interdict, wreak havoc and gather intelligence while remaining undiscovered — was not new. In American history, it can be traced back to the beginning of the French and Indian War in the mid-1750s, when then-Colonel George Washington wrote, “Indians are the only match for Indians.” New Hampshire woodsman Robert Rogers joined a scout company during the French and Indian War and was eventually promoted to major and commander of nine so-called “ranger” companies. Using marching orders that are still issued to U.S. Army Rangers today, the original Rogers’ Rangers were successful in their harassment of the French along the Hudson River because they adopted the Indian skills of stealthy approach, ambush and woodcraft during their raids.

5. AMERICA’S RANGER HERITAGE Those same unorthodox tactics were espoused by contemporary military men from other nations, as well. Colonel Henri Bouquet, a Swiss mercenary employed by the British, wrote that the war fought in the wilds of the New World required that “troops destined to engage Indians must be lightly clothed, armed and accoutered …” Although Bouquet was speaking of troops in company-size strength, the new tactics — considered heretical in an era of massed troop formations —were catching on. To fight natives on their own soil, do as they do — act like them. The American Revolution saw fast-moving, lightly equipped guerrilla forces led behind British lines by men such as Colonel Francis Marion (the famed “Swamp Fox”), Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens. As would happen again and again in future wars, those irregulars were laughed at and virtually ignored by the conventional military early in the conflict. But it would be the guerrilla raids of Patriot partisans between 1780 and 1781 that eventually countered the British strategy in the American South and led to the surrender at Yorktown.