As a result, many tunnel rats often avoided using hearing protection while underground. Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password. franklin roosevelt. When you used to stack bodies, but your 15 yo great grandson keeps calling you "Piper Perri" and you don't know why. Lieutenant Flaherty then personally directed and assisted the 90 Millimeter recoilless rifle team in an assault of the enemy bunker, braving up the intense hail of hostile fire. A group of soldiers would then charge the gap to hopefully get a foothold and allow other troops to pile in. He served as an A Detachment Commander and Liaison Officer. I didnt believe him at first, Yuzuk recalled. Lieutenant Flaherty immediately called a 90 Millimeter recoilless rifle team to his position after having spotted an enemy bunker position to his front, which was delivering automatic weapons fire on his platoon. After one tour in Vietnam, Capt. When he finally got past the 100-pound mark, he petitioned his Congressman to obtain a waiver for the Armys height restrictions. Tho claims the Viet Cong prepared both the necessary troops and assembled the supplies needed in these tunnels to conduct the Tet Offensive of 1968. Saddest to me is that Flaherty was a man who had done much and who could have offered so much more, but he got lost in ways well never understand. The exact figure, however, remains unknown as there were no extensive records kept on this exact type of engagement with the enemy. Images of firefights, bloodied U.S. soldiers and body bags were seen nightly on network television, along with scorecard-like tallies of the number of American and enemy soldiers killed in action. Marines who score 250 or higher on BOTH the PFT and CFT are given an additional 1 percent body fat. You can also learn about how these soldiers came about, who opted to become one, how they trained, and what equipment they used. In one interview, tunnel rat soldier CW Bowman recalled how his fellow colleagues bet money on the fact he would not live through his whole tour as the job was so dangerous. As a Green Beret, he served from 1969-71, before being honorably discharged. Alternate title, "Dating on tinder when you're 5'11" or shorter". Tunnel Rat soldier with his gas mask and gun. 4' 9" 97lb Vietnam War Vet Green Beret Captain Richard J. Flaherty was the smallest US soldier to ever serve in the military. They harnessed their newfound abilities to help them with survival because unlike their enemies, they lacked experience in these small dark tunnels. It was also the most expensive and deadliest year of the war. However, other than being underground, they were actually very different from the real Viet Cong tunnels. He returned to the U.S. that same year to attend the Army Special warfare School at Fort Bragg, where he earned his green beret. That did not deter Flaherty. Meanwhile, Flahertys burial spot, just behind Lisa Davis Annesss grave, remains unmarked as another Veterans Day approaches. The center offered classes designed to show the best techniques of searching, detecting, and destroying hiding places. With Harvey Arango, Ernie Bourcier, Jeff Burns, Carl Cain. You just backed out and told them up above the tunnel was cold.. Richard Flaherty (far right) seen with members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division. He actually had a pretty sad ending. Myanmar 159.52cm (5 feet 2.80 inches) The Temples of Bagan in Mandalay, Myanmar. Some volunteered to go to Vietnam. These story remain nothing more than bits and pieces of a life that seems to have become shrouded in anonymity. After completing basic training, he qualified for Officer Candidate School, from which he graduated as a second lieutenant, before receiving orders sending him to Vietnam. This attempt enjoyed more success than Crimp but was short-lived as the tunnels were in working order again within weeks. Flaherty began to open up and talk to Yuzuk about his life only a few weeks before his tragic and lonely death as a hit-and-run victim last May. While it covered a lot of the same things as infantry training, it focused more on map reading, knot-tying, navigation, use of hand and power tools, camouflage, constructing barbed-wire obstacles, mine laying, and mine detection. For his leadership and heroism, he was awarded the Silver Star. Despite this, Yuzuk honored his friend by producing a documentary called The Giant Killer,which tells the full story of Richard Flahertys service in Vietnam and his life after he returned to the US. March 28, 2022 Local Vietnam veterans showcase . Most helpful for tunnel rats, however, was the brief amount of training time spent detecting, removing, and laying booby traps. Frank Gutierrez, for example, served with the US Army in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970 as a rifleman, field wireman, and an ordinance specialist at Chu Chi and Long Binh. Two inches thick, each plank . He was a Platoon Leader and Recon Platoon Leader with companies B, C, D, & E. Flaherty participated in some fierce combat outside of Hue City during the Tet Offensive which earned him a Silver Star, 2 Bronze Stars and 2 Purple Hearts.[4]. If you include the near-nine years of fighting that took place during the First Indochina War, add that tally to the 20-year war in Vietnam, you understand why the conflict is sometimes referred to as the Ten Thousand Day War, that number more or less equating to 30 years. Here are 10 of the most dangerous: 1. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and went to Vietnam serving as a Platoon Leader and Recon Platoon Leader with companies B, C, and D, & E. He and his platoon were engaged in some of the heaviest fighting on the outskirts of Hue during the Tet Offensive. Special forces officer with a great deal of success. Photo credit: Funker360. Comprised of 12 Special Forces soldiers, an ODA can operate independently behind enemy lines for long periods of time without supervision. when a soldier had approximately two months remaining on his tour in Vietnam, he might take a long stick and notch it for each of his remaining days in-country. When it came time to weigh in, Flaherty barely tipped the scale of 100 pounds. Another particularly horrific tactic became known as the spike ball or the mace. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died in the war. To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. On February 12 the first of 591 U.S. military and civilian POWs were released in Hanoi and flown directly to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. At the end of him career he had such bad PTSD that he pretty much couldn't function in a normal way and spent for the most part the remainder of his life homeless. The first point to keep in mind is that there was a lot of "tail" in Vietnam. Flaherty returned to the U.S. later that year, and graduated from the Armys Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, becoming a member of the elite Green Berets. Sometimes these snakes were even poisonous and so became known as three-step snakes because a soldier was only granted three more steps before the venom killed him. Retired, David enjoys writing, walking on hikes, and spending time with his dog Simon. Flaherty was on his way. He showed his fearsome warrior spirit during the Vietnam War, and later entered the roster of the Army's elite task . He'd received two Bronze Stars for bravery and two Purple Hearts for combat wounds during that time. American soldiers were often prepared for traps that may be on the ground, but they had not prepared for those coming from above. Growing up, Flaherty was sensitive about his height (4'9"), therefore he tried to achieve the best physical fitness and learned martial arts. Four-foot, nine-inch tall veteran Richard J. Flaherty claimed to be the shortest man ever to serve in the United States military. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. He fought and distinquished himself in Vietnam. He was the shortest US serviceman in history. During his first tour in Vietnam, Flaherty is placed in command of the Airborne's Delta Platoon. So began a wild adventure involving guns, cash, and High Altitude Low Opening parachute jumps into the Florida Everglades swamps. A friend of his from high school told me he had fond memories of watching Richard breaking boards with his hands when he walked past the Flahertys garage. What are we doing that causes the disease of homelessness? He enlisted that same year, finishing basic training, qualifying for Officer Candidate School, and deploying to Vietnam as a second lieutenant. Short in size he might have been, but short in courage he wasnt. It changed Richard, he said, adding that he had found letters in his locker explaining why he needed help to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder. A retired Miami cop spends three years trying to unearth the truth about a homeless gentleman he'd befriended. Wakeman wrote numerous letters home detailing her love of rushing at the enemy amid gunfire . In 1980, recognizing the cruelty of such devices, the Geneva Convention banned them as weaponry. His height was no object, however, and he put . Upon graduation, he was assigned to the 3rd Special Forces Group and assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company in Thailand. Lots of tunnel rats used the standard-issue colt. Weve got a clip from the movie that details Richards ruthlessness in combat. Sign up to IrishCentral's newsletter to stay up-to-date with everything Irish! This restoration was pivotal as it enabled some of the key successes enjoyed by the Viet Cong. Putting people in that situation changes them. he said. Copyright 2023 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. During these ongoing operations, he gained a reputation for intelligence, and the CIA in the late 1970s recruited him to supply the Contras in Central America with weapons and cash. He was 69 . Bob Roberts, who was photographed when Jakob Nacken was captured, has been awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur, by the French . Click #isupportlocal for more information on supporting our local journalists. But many of the soldiers who went were drafted into the service, ineligible for a student deferment because they had never been to college. As a Vietnam veteran he is my brother. . It is our duty to remember him for his noble service to the nation. These soldiers made punji stakes out of heated and sharpened wood or bamboo. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, Press J to jump to the feed. Reads: 47 Comments: 1. . The American Soldier in VietnamMore than 2.5 million American men served in Vietnam during the war. Flaherty's Irish ancestry came from his grandfather Joseph Patrick Flaherty, born in Aran Islands and his grandmother Bridget Smythe, born in Feakle. During the war, more than 58,000 servicemen and women lost their lives. As mentioned previously, tunnel rat soldiers were a last-ditch attempt and not the usual go-to solution. Although the driver fled the scene, they were eventually caught. He located witnesses and found documentation in a storage unit that revealed that even while homeless, Flaherty was still conducting clandestine missions around the worldCambodia, Iraq, Jordan, Venezuelabut who was he working for? Start Reading. Stories reveal that one American soldier raised his head through a tunnel entrance only to have a piece of metal automatically speared through his neck. Initially, America used hunting dogs to locate the enemy. He left the Army in 1971 at the rank of captain due to a reduction in force. However, he was initially turned down because of his size. Jan 31, 2021 - MILTON The shortest soldier to serve in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a highly decorated officer who completed one tour of duty as a platoon leader with We owe them the dignity that they deserve. too light. Richard J. Flaherty may never be known. After Flahertys death, Yuzuk kept digging, researching, and confirming. A former TV Reporter. These homeless veterans deserve more from us. (Petty Officer 2nd Class . God only knows what that experience and so many other combat experiences did to Flahertys mind. I am going to cite some data here and I wish I could recall the sourcesI don't have them. Communications, public relations, and marketing professional, and content creator during free time. MILTON The shortest soldier to serve in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a highly decorated officer who completed one tour of duty as a platoon leader with an airborne battalion and another as a Green Beret captain, lies at rest in an as-yet unmarked grave in a Milton cemetery. After the military he got into some pretty dicey stuff like gun trafficking. Many knew him over the last decade and a half of his life as a nameless little homeless guy in Hallandale, but he was much more than that. In general, volunteers had to have common sense, be exceptionally brave, have an inquisitive mind, and have an even temperament. Tyler Perry wrote and will direct the story of an all-female, all-Black battalion that served in Europe. The two maintained a long friendship. In hindsight, listening to the Viet Cong talk about their experiences in these tunnels, it appears more training certainly would have benefitted the American cause. Flaherty was given a Silver Star for his actions in combat during the Tet Offensive, when his unit was ambushed with machine guns and grenades by Northern Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops in a hidden bunker. If they hesitated at all, it is highly likely they would be the ones to die in such close confines. Flaherty took Yuzuk to a storage locker he rented to pull out photos and documents that might be useful in the documentary, and they returned several times in the following weeks until May 9, 2015 the date Flaherty was struck and killed by a hit and run driver near his palm-shaded campsite. Similarly, one soldier recalls how an encounter with the biggest rat he had ever seen led him to continually fire his gun. We'd love to hear eyewitness Grenade traps were another form of booby trap placed along the base of tunnels. He went back to Southeast Asia with the 46th Special Forces Company as a Special Forces Operational Detachment A (SFODA) commander. Men most often explored these tunnels in pairs. Similarly, the bamboo whip was a very traumatic trap. I didnt know.. ODA was tasked with training the Royal Thai Army in counterinsurgency operations and prepare them for a deployment to Vietnam. 20002023 The Veterans Site and GreaterGood. His friend, David Yuzuk, used his own money and launched a crowdfunding campaign to produce a documentary about his friends life. The Veterans Site is dedicated to helping to provide awareness to the problem of homelessness among our veterans. Similarly, one American soldier highlighted how they liked to soften things up by throwing in one or more hand grenades before sending in tunnel rats. He came home from Vietnam after his second tour and moved to Hallandale, Florida, where he worked for a time with the U.S. Today, the mistreatment of American POWs and the suffering they endured remains a powerful legacy of the Vietnam War. Though Americans, Australians, and New Zealanders claim to know these hideouts existed, they overlooked their size and importance. Read. ~15 years. This is similar to the selection effect of underwriting requirement provision in the insurance industries. The following year, 1971, he was discharged from active duty and transferred to the Army Reserves, where he served until 1983. While tunnel rats often wanted to wear hearing protection to help lessen the consequences of this noise and avoid damage to their eardrums, they risked not being able to hear the enemy approaching. Read on to learn about the crazy booby traps soldiers faced, the creepy crawlies they encountered, and the damaging psychological consequences of such close combat. Clothing-wise, it was a good idea to wear tight waterproof items to stop clothing from snagging on obstructions, leather gloves, and, if possible as mentioned knee pads to assist with crawling around. Sometimes, they would smear the tip of the stakes with urine, feces, poison, or other contaminants to infect the wound when it penetrated the skin. I Spent Seven Years as a Vietnam POW. From this point, they were to seek out enemy soldiers or potential hiding spaces where they may have once been. Anness, who died in 2005, was the daughter of an Army captain, and traveled the world with her military family before settling in Miami, where she earned an MBA at the University of Miami and worked as a consultant. Thankfully, Richard Flahertys story lives on, as he shared it with David Yuzuk, a local police officer, before his death. Once in, he was able to qualify both for Special Forces training and for Officer Candidate School (OCS). This article was originally published 1/7/2021. Soldiers who are not fluent in another language will attend six to 18 months at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) prior to AIT. On March 26, 1964, the first U.S. service member imprisoned during the Vietnam War was captured near Qung Tr, South Vietnam when an L-19/O-1 Bird Dog observation plane flown by Captain Richard L. Whitesides and Captain Floyd James Thompson was brought down by small arms fire. Don't Threaten. By 1990, he was homeless and living on the streets of Aventura, Florida. Don't knowingly lie about anyone Flaherty was the shortest of these elite soldiers, standing at only four feet, nine inches tall. The documentary is supposed to come out sometime this year and I have included a trailer for it here. limit, but he could do nothing about the height part. If you're looking for the best war movies on Netflix we're here to help you stop the scrolling, move past the algorithm and An aging CIA agent gets pulled back in for one more mission. This early condition stunted his growth. His stint with the CIA came to an end when he was arrested for possessing silencers. This picture is taken probably by the end of the war when really young and old citizens were enlisted for soldiers. During that 13-month tour to Vietnam, Flaherty received the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars for valor, respectively, the third and second-highest award for bravery under fire, and was wounded three times. 4' 9" 97lb Vietnam War Vet Green Beret Captain Richard J. Flaherty was the smallest US soldier to ever serve in the military. Due to the blood type, his growth was stunted which resulted in him being diagnosed with dwarfism.[2]. In particularly horrendous circumstances, enemy soldiers would dig another pit directly beside it. Capt. No offense intended, but most armies have minimal-height, like here in my country you can't go to the army or police when being less than 1.55m as a man (don't know if this is still accurate, but it was in the past. The Viet Cong also made use of explosive booby traps and pressure detonated mines. Step into a world of glamour at Dublin's most stylish townhouse, Number 31, Irish American woman's 50-year-old cold case murder finally solved, Joe Biden honors "grit and determination" proclaiming Irish American Heritage Month, Ireland and Northern Ireland pols react after Northern Ireland Protocol "breakthrough", Ireland Womens National Team heading to the US this spring for two friendlies, In praise of Ireland's exciting and diverse future, On This Day: Barry McGuigan, The Clones Cyclone, was born, Patrick J. Kennedy to receive Sober St. Patrick's Day award, Irish Americans continue to maintain strong bond with Irish roots, survey finds. Photo credit: Pinterest. Photo credit: Rare Historical Photos websites. Some 385,000 American troops were sent to Vietnam in 1966, the year Richard Flaherty graduated from high school. If you look at all of the things the radio operators were tasked with, it becomes abundantly . 58,169 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.59 million who served. He was the smallest man on campus. One American man was trying anything to get in. He was expected to only grow to the height of 4 7 but Richard proved them wrong as he grew to 4 9.. They belong to us. Just sitting and waiting. everyone would watch to see which way the wind would take him. When an American soldier tripped the wire, the grenade would detonate inside the tunnel. In the war's moral outrages, crimes and betrayals, many saw the US empire for the first time. Once the Viet Cong caught on to what was happening, they began to use the same soap the Americans used. With a passion for historical learning and historical education, her writing interests include social history, and war history, especially researching obscure facts about the Second World War. Winds light and variable.. Cloudy with occasional rain after midnight. His ODA was tasked with training the Royal Thai Army in counterinsurgency operations and prepare them for a deployment to Vietnam. He met Flaherty as a homeless man in 2000. One of the other problems soldiers faced is the deafening sound of gunshots echoing through the tunnels. 11 talking about this. Because of this, they often targeted their legs instead. The idea, of course, was to scare the men so much that they did not continue to search the rest of the tunnel. Mai Chi Tho, brother of Le Duc Tho (a prominent Hanoi Politburo member) highlights how they used the tunnels to infiltrate Saigon. Richard Flaherty is laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Milton near Lisa Anness, a woman he described as the love of his life. Archives held in Texas revealed this happened to one unfortunate soldier. Vietnam-era Radiomen life expectancy was 5 seconds. In 1968 he was sent to Vietnam in the famous 101st Airborne Division, the "Screaming Eagles". person will not be tolerated. The action took place on April 20, 1968, when Flahertys platoon was ambushed and came under withering enemy fire. Miami Police officer David Yuzuk befriended Richard J. Flaherty when the former soldier was living on the streets as a homeless man. Tunnel rat soldiers often used flashlights to guide the way and thus warned the enemy of their presence. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions. He is believed to have worked as a military contractor throughout Africa and most notably in Rhodesia and Angola. Yuzuk said none of the relatives or companions of Flaherty or Anness he has spoken with was aware of a relationship between the two. One Viet Cong soldier highlighted their lack of discreteness. The Viet Cong were experts at creating very sophisticated tunnel systems that would sometimes be so large that they could be used as company-sized staging areas for hiding and for rest, even for hospital facilities. Capt. Soldier in Vietnam War was the Army's Badass Combatant . From above, David Yuzuk befriended Richard J. 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