Hollaway recalls life of adventure
By: CAROLYN IAMON
When Mike Hollaway left Bainbridge on his 17th birthday to go to Fort Benning and enlist in the U.S. Army, he was seeking adventure.
Little did he realize he would find it-sometimes more than he wanted-as a member of the original Delta Force special forces unit formed in 1965, serving under Col. "Chargin'" Charlie Beckwith.
Years of preparation and training, beginning in 1949, were involved before Hollaway was ready to join the special ranks. Basic and airborne training were obtained at Fort Jackson, S.C., then back to Fort Benning for jump school. When he went to Fort Bragg, he became attached to the 82nd Airborne Division. He volunteered for the Green Beret special forces unit and became part of the 10th special forces unit, which went to Germany.
After Germany, it was back to Fort Bragg for ranger, sniper and counter-intelligence training, before being sent to Okinawa with the First Special Forces group.
Vietnam enters the picture
It was while he was in Okinawa that Vietnam was getting into the early stages of counter-insurgency, and he was one of several teams sent to Vietnam to work with the villagers, where the goal was to establish a village defense system.
Hollaway described Vietnam at that time as a rural country, with many very small scattered communities of farmers who worked in rice paddies and kept a few livestock. For the most part, the villagers wanted to be left alone.
American forces found the people under-nourished, with a lot of medical problems, according to Hollaway. The force had medics with them who began to treat the people and improve their health. The problem then was that the North Vietnamese troops would come in and ravage and assassinate the people who had been helped. Hollaway said the only people the North Vietnamese didn't mess with were the Montagnards (French for mountain people referred to by American forces as "mountain yards") who lived in the highlands and were hard to get to.
The special forces encountered a lot of political resistance, according to Hollaway, who said that in the provinces of South Vietnam the province chief was a political appointee given the honorable title of colonel.
"We had to buy our presence with the local chief," he explained.
Project Delta had been formed and the Col. Beckwith was in the process of selecting the incoming people for the unit. Hollaway was one of those chosen. He went in as the operations NCO with the additional mission of search and destroy, using counter-insurgency techniques. There were POW and MIA missions to rescue pilots who went down behind enemy lines, and Hollaway said they were basically very successful.
Hollaway's groups had a Vietnamese helicopter pilot they called "Cowboy" who flew them into their locations. They called him Cowboy because he wore a black suit, cowboy boots and hat and carried a pearl handled pistol. Cowboy had a motto, "If I insert you, I will extract you." And that he did, according to Hollaway, who recalls being rescued by Cowboy from some harrowing experiences.
Originally there were 120 members who trained and equipped additional strike forces. Hollaway said there were special forces groups all over Vietnam at 30 to 40 bases.
Being a Green Beret
Qualifications to become a Green Beret are rigorous. You had to be airborne qualified and received intensive training in survival, weapons, medical, demolition, operations and intelligence-under all climate conditions.
Today Hollaway thinks it is probably a joint services task force, as you would also need support of Air Force and Naval services.
In 1968 Hollaway was sent back to Vietnam with Project Sigma, a sister force to Delta, to train specialized personnel.
"We felt we were helping the villagers a lot, but it became so political by 1968, it was absolutely all about money. The South Vietnamese government was so corrupt you had to buy everything," Hollaway said.
John Wayne, who starred in the movie "The Green Berets," spent a few weeks with the special forces and the Montagnards to learn their ways. The "'Yards" presented Wayne with a gold bracelet they believed would guarantee safe passage to anyone who wore it. Hollaway has described the movie as a "pretty accurate depiction" of the situation. He added that Wayne continued to wear the bracelet, and it was visible in other movies.
Asked how he felt today about the things he did in the special forces, Hollaway replied, "It's what we were trained to do, but when I retired in 1976, I left it all behind me-or tried to."
He believes that of his team of eight original members, he is one of three survivors. Others were lost in the field and Hollaway has vivid and emotional memories of those fateful events.
He said Delta Force was so special because everyone was a professional soldier, all cross-trained in every area. He described great camaraderie among the troops.
Hollaway has a whole board of medals from his 26 years of service. Among them are two Silver Stars and the Vietnamese Medal of Honor.
The one good thing he thinks came out of the Vietnam War was that every branch of service had to rewrite all their manuals on guerilla warfare and counter-intelligence and address new techniques and weaponry.
When Hollaway left the Army he settled in San Antonio, Texas, and took over the John F. Kennedy High School ROTC cadets for two years-a job he really enjoyed. He said he also had to get re-acquainted with his own four children, as he had missed much of their growing years.
He pursued an occupation in construction in Texas before coming back to Bainbridge in 1991.
As interesting as Hollaway's memories are, his best stories are yet to be told. Understandably, there is a great deal of anonymity involved in the identity and activities of the Delta Force and other special forces of the United States military, and Hollaway has left it behind him and moved on.
©The Post-SearchlightĘ2007