What MACV-SOG Said After Training With The British SAS For The First Time

March 1965, Heraford, England. A group of America’s most elite Green Berets, men who’d survived everything the Pentagon could throw at them, arrived at the SAS training grounds, expecting to compare notes with their British counterparts, maybe pick up a few tricks. Within 72 hours, these same operators were writing letters home saying they’d been training wrong for years, and that the SAS were the most dangerous men they’d ever met.

But what exactly did the SAS show them in those first three days that completely shattered everything MACVS thought they knew about unconventional warfare? A group of battleh hardened American green berets stood in the misty training grounds of the British SAS. These men thought they knew everything about fighting wars in jungles and mountains.

They were about to discover they knew far less than they thought. This is the story of what MACVS operators said after training with the British SAS for the first time. Those few weeks in the English countryside would change the course of America’s most secret war. The morning air was cold and wet. Fog rolled across the green hills.

The American soldiers wore their best uniforms. They had patches on their shoulders showing they were special forces. Each man had survived the hardest training the United States military could create. They had jumped out of planes. They had marched for days without sleep. They had passed tests that broke other men. Now they stood at attention, waiting to meet the British soldiers who would teach them new ways to fight.

But to understand why these men traveled thousands of miles to this quiet corner of England, we need to go back one year. January 1964, Saigon, South Vietnam. The heat pressed down like a heavy blanket. The air smelled of diesel fuel and cooking fires. American military officers sat in rooms with maps spread across tables. They had a big problem.

The enemy called the Vietkong controlled somewhere between 40 and 60% of the South Vietnamese countryside. American forces were killing six enemy soldiers for every one American who died. That sounds good. But the enemy kept getting stronger anyway. Over 23,000 American military advisers were in the country.

Yet they were losing ground every single day. The generals tried everything they knew. They sent large groups of soldiers to search for the enemy and destroy them. These operations had fancy names. They used helicopters and heavy weapons. Sometimes they killed many enemy fighters. But the Vietkong just moved deeper into the jungles.

They crossed borders into Laos and Cambodia where American soldiers could not follow. The conventional wisdom said that superior American firepower and technology would win. The conventional wisdom was wrong. Into this mess walked a man named Colonel Donald Blackburn. He was not like most colonels. Most officers his age had spent World War II in Europe or the Pacific with regular army units.

Blackburn had done something different. During World War II, he fought behind Japanese lines in the Philippines for nearly three years. He lived in the jungle. He led guerilla fighters. He learned how to survive when the enemy surrounded him on all sides. He knew what it felt like to be hunted. Now he worked for MAC Vo.

Those letters stood for Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group. That boring name hid the truth. M A C V S OG ran America’s most secret operations in Southeast Asia. Blackburn looked at the maps and the reports. He talked to the men coming back from missions. He saw the problem clearly.

American special forces were very good at direct action. They could attack targets. They could rescue prisoners. They could fight their way out of tough spots. But they lacked something important. They lacked the skill to run quiet operations deep behind enemy lines for weeks at a time. They needed to cross borders into Laos and Cambodia.

They needed to watch the enemy without being seen. Now, they needed to gather information and slip away like ghosts. Right now, they could not do that well enough. When Blackburn explained this problem to his superiors, many of them dismissed it. They did not want to hear bad news. One general said, “These were not just simple fighters hiding in the jungle.

This was a well-trained enemy with their own special operations soldiers. The Pentagon brass believed American soldiers were the best in the world. Why would they need to learn from anyone else? But Blackburn had a radical idea. He wanted to send operators to train with the British SAS. The SAS had been fighting in jungles since 1948.

They spent 12 years defeating communist insurgents in Malaya. They were fighting right now in Borneo. The British faced the same kind of enemy America faced in Vietnam. Small teams of SAS soldiers went deep into enemy territory. They lived there for weeks. They gathered information. They struck targets and disappeared. Most importantly, they won.

In Malaya, fewer than 1,000 SAS operators helped defeat 12,000 insurgents. They did it by being smarter, quieter, and more patient than the enemy. When Blackburn suggested this to other American officers, they laughed. “Why would we learn from the British?” they asked. “We are Americans. We wrote the book on unconventional warfare.

We do not need help from anyone.” Blackburn stayed calm. He had facts on his side. “The SAS has been doing exactly what we need to do for 15 years,” he said. “Small teams, deep penetration, living off the enemy’s back.” and they have won. We have not. The argument went back and forth for months. Then something changed.

The CIA got involved. The spy agency looked at the numbers from Malaya and Borneo. They saw that SAS methods worked. They agreed to back the exchange program. The decision was made. A small group of MACVS operators would go to England. They would train with the SAS. They would learn everything the British could teach them.

Then they would come back and use those lessons in Vietnam. Nobody knew if it would work. The American soldiers boarding the transport plane to England were not sure what to expect. They were proud men. They were already considered the best. Could a bunch of British soldiers really teach them anything new? The plane lifted off.

The men settled into their seats for the long flight. Below them, the jungles of Vietnam disappeared into the clouds. Ahead of them waited Heraford and the SAS. Ahead of them waited lessons that would save their lives and change special operations forever. The plane touched down at RAF Breeze Norton on a gray morning.

The American operators climbed out into cold wind that cut through their uniforms. They had never felt cold like this. Vietnam was hot and wet. England was cold and wet. Everything smelled different here. Clean air mixed with aviation fuel. No jungle rot. No smell of fish source or wood smoke. This was a different world.

Trucks carried them to Heraford. The camp looked ordinary from the outside. Simple buildings, training grounds, nothing fancy. One of the Americans was a man named Larry Thorne. He had been born in Finland and fought the Russians before joining the American army. Thorne had seen hard men before.

He thought he knew what to expect. “We expected some teaing gentleman soldiers,” he said later. “What we found were the hardest men we had ever met, and they made us look like amateurs. The difference hit them immediately. American special forces trained with heavy firepower. They planned for air support. They always had extraction plans ready.

Helicopters would come get them if things went bad. The SAS did things completely differently. They carried minimal equipment. They relied on themselves and nothing else. They moved silently. They could live in the jungle for weeks without any help from outside. The goal was not to fight. The goal was to never be detected at all.

The first week took the Americans to the Brecon Beacons in Wales. Mountains rose like giant walls. Wind howled across bare peaks. Rain fell sideways. The SAS instructors woke them before dawn. You will march 64 km across these mountains in under 20 hours, they said. You will carry 25 kg packs. The route crosses some of the worst terrain in Britain.

Many of you will fail. The Americans thought they were fit. They trained hard back home. They could run for miles. They could do hundreds of push-ups. But this march broke them down. The weight dug into their shoulders. Their feet turned into masses of blisters. The wind tried to push them off the ridges.

Some men fell behind. Some men quit. The SAS instructors showed no mercy. They also showed no anger. They simply watched. Selection is 90% in your head. One instructor said, “Your body will do what your mind tells it to do. If your mind is weak, your body will fail. The Americans who finished learned something important that day.

Physical strength mattered less than mental strength. The SAS did not care how many push-ups you could do. They cared whether you could keep going when everything hurt and your brain screamed at you to stop. We thought we were tough, one American wrote in his notebook that night. They ran us into the ground and barely broke a sweat doing it.

Week two brought them to the jungle lanes. These were not real jungles. They were thick forests set up to look like Southeast Asian terrain. Fourman patrols moved through these woods facing surprise attacks. The SAS called them immediate action drills. When the enemy ambushed you, you had exactly 3.8 seconds to react. That measurement was not a guess.

The SAS had timed it in real combat. If your team took longer than 4 seconds to respond, people died. The drills happened again and again. Pop-up targets appeared from behind trees. Instructors fired blank ammunition from hidden positions. The fourman teams had to move like one body. No shouting, no confusion, just instant smooth reaction.

The Americans were used to fighting with noise and firepower. The SAS taught them to fight with silence and precision. You yanks make too much noise. One training officer said in the jungle, noise equals death. Learn to move like shadows. Learn to kill quietly or learn to die loudly. Your choice. Week three focused on patrol skills.

Everything had a purpose. Everything had a specific way it must be done. The SAS showed them how to configure their belt kit. This was a belt worn around the waist with pouches attached. Everything a soldier needed to survive for 72 hours went on that belt. Water bottles, ammunition, first aid kit, food.

If you got separated from your pack, you could still survive. The Americans learned to set up patrol bases in under four minutes. Every man had a position. Every position covered a direction. 360° of security with no gaps. No one needed to give orders. Everyone knew their job. The SAS taught them SOPs. That stood for standard operating procedures.

Every action was choreographed like a dance. Hand signals replaced words. A closed fist meant stop. A finger pointing meant enemy in that direction. Two fingers pointing at your eyes meant I see something. The patrols moved through the forest without making a sound. Branches did not snap. Leaves did not rustle. Four men could pass within 10 ft of observers and never be detected.

Week four brought the hardest test, close target reconnaissance. The instructors set up a mock enemy camp in a valley. The fourman teams had to observe that camp for 48 hours without being detected. They had to gather intelligence, count the guards, note when they changed shifts, draw sketches of the layout, record every vehicle that came and went, write down everything.

An American named Bill Thompson led one of the teams. They crawled into position before dawn. They lay in the wet grass and watched. Hours passed. Their bodies achd. Insects crawled on their faces. They could not move to brush them away. Movement meant detection. Detection meant failure.

Thompson wrote everything in his notebook. Guard change at 0600 hours. Four men, a K47 rifles. Vehicle arrived 0830. Truck canvas cover. Six men dismounted. I the SAS taught them patience. Watch, wait, and record everything. The instructors said every detail matters. The pattern of life tells you when to strike. After 48 hours, Thompson’s team crawled away. They had not been seen.

Back at base, they presented their intelligence to the instructors. The SAS men nodded. This is good work, they said. This is how you stay alive. This is how you win. But not everyone believed it would work. Back at Fort Bragg in America, other officers heard about the training. They were not impressed. This British stuff is all well and good, they said.

But it will not work in Vietnam. The jungle there is different. The enemy is different. We need American solutions to American problems. The data said otherwise. In Malaya, e the SAS lost only 23 men while killing over 6,400 insurgents. In Borneo, they ran crossber operations into Indonesia for 3 years. Not one patrol was compromised.

Zero. A man named Brigadier Mike Calvert stepped forward to support the program. He had fought with the SAS in World War II and Malaya. These Americans are quick learners, he said. They have the physical capability. We just needed to teach them the craft. Give them a chance to prove it. May 1965. The trained operators returned to Vietnam.

The heat hit them like a wall after the cold of England. But they were different men now. They carried different equipment. They thought differently. They moved differently. The first mission came quickly. Four men belt kit only. 10-day insertion into Laos to watch the Hochi Min trail. The team crossed the border at night. They found a position overlooking a trail junction. Then they waited.

For 8 days they lay hidden. They watched North Vietnamese soldiers move supplies. They counted trucks. They marked cash locations on their maps. On day nine, helicopters extracted them. They had not fired a single shot. The intelligence they brought back led to a B-52 bombing strike.

The bombs destroyed an estimated 200 tons of enemy supplies. “Everything the SAS taught us worked,” the team leader said. The silence, the patience, the discipline. It kept us alive. It let us do our job. The British were right all along. The numbers told a story that nobody could ignore. Before the SAS training in 1964, MACVS crossber operations lasted an average of 3 to 5 days.

Four out of every 10 missions ended with the team being discovered by the enemy. That meant running for their lives. That meant calling for emergency extraction. That meant sometimes not everyone made it home. After the SAS training in 1966, everything changed. Operations now lasted 14 days or longer. The rate of teams being discovered dropped to eight out of every 100 missions.

That was five times better. But the most shocking number was the kill ratio. In 1964, American forces across Vietnam killed six enemy soldiers for every American who died. By 1968, MAQV SOG teams trained in British methods were killing 153 enemy soldiers for every American lost. Those numbers were almost impossible to believe, but they were real.

One mission proved just how well the new methods worked. When Operation Salem House sent teams into Cambodia in 1967, one SAS trained team stayed hidden in enemy territory for 21 days straight. They mapped the movements of an entire North Vietnamese regiment. Thousands of enemy soldiers passed near their position.

The four Americans were never detected, not once. They came home without a scratch. The intelligence they gathered led to operation Junction City, one of the largest American operations of the war. The success could not be hidden. By 1966, Macy VOG began reorganizing everything. All reconnaissance teams switched to the SAS fourman model.

The old larger teams were broken up. Between 1965 and 1970, 180 American operators rotated through Heraford for training. That was almost every man in the unit. The belt kit configuration became standard. Every operator had to be able to survive for 3 days with just what was on his belt. The immediate action drills were completely rewritten to match SAS contact procedures.

The American way of doing things was thrown out. The British way became the new standard. By 1968, MV SOG was running over 400 crossber operations every year. The intelligence these teams gathered accounted for 60% of all B-52 bombing targets in Laos and Cambodia. A classified report from General West Mand landed on desks in Washington.

SOG operations trained in British methods are achieving results far beyond their numbers. It said these small teams of four men were changing the entire war in areas where conventional forces could not go. But the North Vietnamese were not stupid. They saw what was happening. American teams were operating deep in their territory and disappearing like smoke.

The NVA formed special units to hunt the hunters. They called them K20 battalions. These were trackers and soldiers trained specifically to find and kill SG teams. The war became a deadly game of hideand seek. The hunter became the hunted. The NVA trackers were good. They could follow signs that most men would never see. A broken twig, disturbed leaves, boot prints in mud.

They moved quietly through the jungle, looking for the American teams. Sometimes they found them. When they did, brutal firefights erupted in the green darkness. But the SOG teams had more lessons from Herafford to draw on. The SAS had taught them about deception, how to lay false trails, how to make the enemy think you went one direction when you really went another, SOG teams started using what they called jitter patrols.

They would move to a patrol base location. Then at the last moment, they would double back and set up somewhere else. Enemy trackers following their trail would walk right past them. The Americans would lie hidden and watch their hunters search in the wrong place. Sometimes SOG teams would even ambush the NVA trackers.

The statistics showed the results. NVA counters units suffered a 75% casualty rate. Three out of every four men in those hunter units were killed or wounded. The students had learned their lessons well. Other American units tried different approaches. Project Delta used conventional special forces methods. Their teams were larger.

They relied more on firepower. They had more support, but their missions did not last as long. Their casualty rates were higher. The SEAL teams operating in the Mikong Delta were excellent fighters. In the river deltas and rice patties, they were deadly. But when they tried long range reconnaissance in the jungle, they struggled.

They were trained for a different kind of war. Marine Force recon units were also very good. They could fight their way out of anything, but they lacked the patience for sitting still and watching for days at a time. The SAS methods worked better because they focused on not being detected at all. Intelligence gathering mattered more than body count.

Staying alive mattered more than killing the enemy. October 1967, somewhere in Laos, a team called RT Python moved through the jungle like ghosts. Four men, belt kits only. They had been in country for 12 days. The monsoon rain hammered down through the triple canopy of leaves above them. Water ran in rivers down their faces.

Their uniforms were soaked through. Everything smelled of rot and wet earth. They found a good position on high ground overlooking a trail. They set up their patrol base using the exact drills learned at Herafford. Every man knew his position. Every man faced outward. 360 degrees of security. Then they heard it. Voices. Many voices. Through gaps in the vegetation.

They saw North Vietnamese soldiers. Hundreds of them. An entire battalion moving down the trail below. The Americans froze. They did not move a muscle. Enemy soldiers passed within 30 m. so close the Americans could hear them talking, could hear their equipment rattling, could smell their cigarettes. For 16 hours, RT Python lay completely still.

The rain kept falling. Their muscles screamed. Insects crawled across their skin. They could not brush them away. They could not shift position. Movement meant death. The NVA kept coming, wave after wave of soldiers. The trail was a highway for men and supplies moving south. RT Python counted everything, wrote it all down in notebooks that were soaked and muddy.

After 16 hours, the last enemy soldier disappeared down the trail. Still, the Americans did not move. They waited. The SAS had taught them to wait. Never assume the enemy is gone. Always wait longer than you think you need to. They stayed in that position for another 22 hours, 38 hours total, without moving, without talking, communicating only with hand signals in the darkness.

The team leader would write in his diary later that night. Today, we proved Heraford right, he wrote. We were invisible. We were ghosts. 400 enemy soldiers walked past us and never knew we were there. The training exchange created unexpected results that nobody had predicted. By 1967, SAS liaison officers were embedded directly with MACVSOG.

British soldiers fought alongside Americans in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The influence flowed both ways. The SAS adopted some American innovations, too. They started using C-15 carbines because they were lighter than British SLRs for jungle work. They borrowed American radio technology which was better than what Britain had.

They learned American helicopter insertion techniques. By 1970, over 60 joint SSOG operations had been conducted, British and American soldiers working as one team. The ultimate proof came years later. When the SAS went to Oman in the 1970s to fight another guerilla war, they brought lessons learned from Vietnam.

Ideas that had come from SG. The techniques that started in Herafford went to Vietnam came back changed and improved. The best warriors in the world were learning from each other, making each other better. The bond formed in training became a bond forged in combat. It would last for generations, but nothing lasts forever.

Wars end, units disband, men go home. The question was whether the lessons would survive. The answer came in 1973. The United States pulled out of Vietnam. MV SOG was disbanded. The unit that had run America’s most secret war simply stopped existing. The men went home. The bases closed. The files were locked away and classified.

For years, nobody outside a small circle knew what these men had done. But the techniques they learned did not die. They spread like seeds carried on the wind. The veterans scattered across the American military. They took their knowledge with them. In 1977, a man named Charles Beckwith founded a new unit called Delta Force. Beckwith had spent time with the SAS years earlier.

He knew their methods worked. He designed Delta Force to be exactly like 22 SAS. The selection course copied Heraford. The fourman patrol structure came straight from the British manual. The emphasis on intelligence over firepower. The focus on staying hidden. All of it was SAS filtered through the experience of Vietnam. In 1980, the Navy created Seal Team Six.

They needed a unit that could do hostage rescue and counterterrorism. They looked at what worked. They incorporated SAS close quarters battle methods. They adopted SAS selection processes. Across all the special forces groups, the patrol tactics became official doctrine. What had been revolutionary in 1965 was now just how things were done.

The techniques proved their worth again and again. When American forces went to Afghanistan in 2001, they used small team reconnaissance tactics, fourman teams moving through mountains, watching the enemy from hidden positions, staying for days or weeks without being detected. It was pure SAS and SG. The lineage was clear.

In Iraq, from 2003 to 2011, special operations forces ran kill or capture missions. small teams operating deep in enemy territory, moving at night, just striking targets and disappearing. Over 70% of current US Army special forces doctrine can be traced directly back to those SAS influenced SOG procedures from Vietnam. What had been new and strange became normal and expected.

The fourman patrol structure is now standard across all NATO special forces. British soldiers use it. American soldiers use it. Australian and New Zealand forces use it. The belt kit philosophy that seemed so odd to those first Americans in 1965 is now taught to every special operation soldier in the free world. The SAS selection methods have been copied by Delta Force, by deevgrru, by every elite unit that wants the best soldiers.

A modern Delta Force operator was interviewed years later. Everything we do has s a sdna, he said. From selection to operations, and they learned some of it from Vietnam with our guys. It is a circle. The knowledge flows back and forth. Each generation makes it better. Each war teaches new lessons, but the core ideas remain. Stay hidden. Be patient.

Intelligence matters more than bullets. Your mind is your greatest weapon. Colonel Donald Blackburn retired from the army in 1978. He was credited with transforming US special operations, but most people never knew his name. The work he did was classified. The missions he planned was secret. He died in 1989 without public recognition.

Only a small group of men who had served under him knew what he had accomplished. They knew he had been right when everyone else said he was wrong. They knew he had saved lives by being humble enough to learn from others. As Brigadier Mike Calvert continued to advise special forces units until he retired. He had fought in World War II.

He had fought in Malaya. He had trained soldiers for decades, but the wars had taken their toll. He suffered from what we now call PTSD. The nightmares never stopped. The memories never faded. He died in 1998. Another warrior who gave everything and asked for nothing in return. Larry Thorne, the Finnish soldier who became an American Green Beret, never made it home from Vietnam.

In 1965, shortly after returning from Heraford, his helicopter crashed in Laos. His body was not found. For decades, his family did not know where he was. In 1999, a recovery team finally found the crash site. They brought him home. He was buried with full military honors 34 years after he died. Bill Thompson survived the war.

He came home and started training programs based on what he had learned. He taught a new generation of soldiers the SAS methods. He made sure the knowledge passed on. The lessons bought with blood would not be forgotten. For years, nobody knew about MACVS. The files stayed classified. The men could not talk about what they had done.

Finally, in the 1990s, the story began to come out. Documents were declassified. Books were written. In 2001, the unit received a presidential unit citation. It was recognition, but it came late. Many of the men who had served were already gone. The story of MACVS and the SAS teaches us important lessons.

True progress requires humility. You have to be able to admit you do not know everything. The Americans in 1965 were confident. They were proud. But they were smart enough to recognize when someone else knew more. They were strong enough to become students again. That takes real courage. It is easier to pretend you know everything than to admit you need help.

The British showed equal wisdom. They could have refused to teach their secrets. They could have kept their methods to themselves. Instead, they opened their doors. They shared what they knew. Professional warriors recognize each other across flags and accents. One SAS instructor said it best. They came as students.

He said they left as brothers. The bond formed in training became something deeper. It became mutual respect. It became friendship that lasted for life. The lesson applies beyond the military. Innovation comes from combining different approaches. No one person has all the answers. No one country has the only solution.

The best ideas come when people are willing to learn from each other. When they set aside pride and focus on what works. Today we see the same patterns. Ukrainian forces are training with Western special forces. Exchange programs continue between five eyes nations. The SASsog legacy lives on. Small team tactics are proving relevant against modern adversaries.

The world changes, but some truths remain constant. Asymmetric warfare requires thinking differently. That lesson was true in 1965. It is true today. The bond between the SAS and American special forces goes beyond tactics and techniques. It is about shared values, about mutual respect, about professionals recognizing excellence in others.

Modern SAS and Delta Force operators train together regularly. They deploy together. They trust each other with their lives. That trust started in those misty training grounds at Heraford 60 years ago. People often ask what MACVS said after training with the SAS. One veteran answered that question in an interview in 2010. He was old by then.

His hair was white, his hands shook slightly, but his eyes were still sharp. He remembered everything. I will tell you exactly what we said, he began. We thought we were special forces. The SAS showed us what that really meant. They taught us that the greatest weapon is not the gun. It is the disciplined mind that never fires it unless absolutely necessary.

That lesson saved my life 100 times over. We learned that patience defeats aggression, that silence defeats noise, that thinking defeats reacting. The British gave us something more valuable than tactics. They gave us a philosophy. Be the best. Never stop learning. Respect your enemy enough to study him. Respect your brothers enough to keep them alive.

Those four weeks in England were the most important training I ever received. And I carried those lessons for the rest of my life. The bond forged in those Heraford training grounds did not end with Vietnam. It created a brotherhood that continues today. A legacy written not in bullets fired, but in missions completed without a single shot.

That is what MV SOG learned from the SS. That is what makes both units legendary. The greatest warriors are often the quietest. The most successful missions are the ones where nothing seems to happen. Where the enemy never knows you were there. Where you gather what you need and slip away like ghosts in the jungle.

That is the art of special operations. That is what the British taught the Americans. And that is why decades later, their methods still define excellence in unconventional warfare.