Dale Hanson

He was a major, and he looked exactly like Hollywood.

He had the shorts and all that stuff, and the knee-high socks and all that, and everything.

And he came out to see us, and he had the hat, and he had that really trim mustache.

And he was quite formal, as Asian, I mean, European people are.

But anyway, as it turned out, they were so highly infiltrated that this major didn't...

think he could get any mission started from his own own people of his own headquarters and so forth because someplace along the line there were uh people who were double agents and so forth so um anyway um

He gives us this message, this mission.

He said that Cosfin, the headquarters for the communists in South Vietnam, they were quite certain had their headquarters centered inside of a rubber plantation from the French.

And people were bought off.

The French didn't want anyone to know about the presence of the NVA in the Viet Cong because they didn't want the rubber plantations bombed.

And, of course, the Cosfin, the communist, certainly didn't want it known by anyone.

And so we were tasked with this mission.

And the other thing was...

south vietnam and some of the other people were being bought off so there's this triple thing here someone is paying the money to look the other way they have the headquarters in the rubber plantations the french know it and so forth so we were given a mission to find that headquarters and report only to that major

And so we were in that tent, and he was giving us all the parameters of the mission.

And of course, this intelligence gathering is not about getting a spy or anything like that.

So we start on this mission.

And we're making our way toward what we think is the rubber plantation.

And there's a lot of enemy around, although a lot of it is ex-farmland and things like, so hard to find places to hide and so forth.

But we start making our way toward what I think is the headquarters.