Training at the TTC
The Tactical Training Center compound developed and contructed by Lt. Col. Lewis L. Millet, the first TTC commander at Fort Devens, Mass., in the mid-1960s. (File Photo)
In the mid-1960s, the Army Security Agency, the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Commands predecessor, began to send a steady flow of Soldiers to the Republic of Vietnam. These deploying Soldiers, like those currently deploying to Iraq, faced a 360-degree battlefield, where the front lines were not clearly defined and support troops found themselves in combat situations. To prepare its Soldiers for this, the ASA Training Center and School at Fort Devens, Mass., established the Tactical Training Course in July 1965.
The TTCs establishment fell to Lt. Col. Lewis L. Millett, who received the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge during the Korean War. Millett wanted to produce the most realistic training experience possible. He found Vietnamese speaking Soldiers or Asian-American Soldiers to play the role of Viet Cong aggressors. Lacking funding to create what he envisioned, Millett and his training staff ingeniously used available resources, including lumber from razed barracks and wood from his own farm in Maine to build an authentic looking Vietnam village in the Fort Devens training area. Within two years, the TTC would boast two Vietnamese villages: one friendly and one hostile. The former had a Buddhist shrine, rice paddies and sapling fence, while the latter had a tunnel system and spider holes.
The 10-day training cycle was divided into two phases. During the first phase, Soldiers trained on the weapons and equipment of an ASA company that directly supported a combat division. During driver training, they practiced blackout driving as well as ambush drills. Weapons training on the rifle, machine gun, and grenade launcher were culminated with live-firing. More importantly, the Soldiers learned to perform patrolling, establish perimeters and other squad tactics. Throughout the phase, the TTC instructors stressed the six-paragraph code of conduct.
During the second phase of TTC the tactical scenarios became more intense for the students. They received Army-mandated training on the geography, history and politics of Vietnam, the Communist strategy and threat, and the U.S. mission there. This was done in the friendly Vietnamese village of Mot Dong. Between tactical squad exercises and rehearsals, the TTC instructors trained the Soldiers on emergency destruction of equipment and information as well as escape and evasion techniques. On the ninth day of the training, the students prepared for their final exercise.
In the scenario, Student Company was ordered to move from its defensive position to a more secure area. It began in a tactical convoy, but Viet Cong guerilla bands ambushed the convoy and destroyed its vehicles with land mines or grenades. Employing the newly trained ambush drills, the students repulsed the final assault, but were forced to continue on foot. Upon approaching the enemy village of Hai Dong, they received orders to sweep the village and its subterranean tunnel complex. The students fought their way into the village and then defended it against a counterattack. At this point, the TTC instructors told the students that they needed to organize into groups of two or three and exfiltrate to friendly lines. If successful, the student was debriefed by the intelligence officer and taken to the TTC administrative area.
Not all students were successful in making their way back to friendly lines, and some were captured by Viet Cong patrols. Those students underwent simulated, but surprisingly harsh, interrogation. The simulated capture and interrogation gave the Soldiers an opportunity to practice and apply the Code of Conduct. After 15 to 20 minutes of interrogation, the students were allowed to escape and rejoin their comrades.
The next morning, the students struck their bivouac and cleaned and turned in their weapons.
The TTC was an important addition to the training at the ASA Training Center and School. While most of an ASA Soldiers training concentrated on the technical skills of the collection and analysis of signals intelligence, the TTCs training gave basic Soldier skills needed to successfully perform their mission on the battlefield where the combat zone was ill-defined. As one deployed Soldier, reflecting on his TTC experience, wrote, I really hope that Ill never have to put such training to use. But, on the other hand, it is always reassuring that Ive had it in the first place.
March of 1966 I was captured and tied between two poles. They wrapped a number of turns of wire around each of my wrists and wired my ankles. The 2nd lt that was in charge of torture told the radio operator to crank the field generator till he was told to stop. I screamed like hell told them I would talk he stopped cranking the lt asked for infor on our mission i told him the name of my outfit was fyou he said he didn't believe it I told him that was it and we were there to get him and Mickey Mouse. He had the phone operator keep cranking until they turned my arms black and then they took me to that single post and tied my legs around it and busted my back up while they waterboarded me. Then after all the torture that night another one the following night. I don't know what your single night was but I do know that mine was two nights and I hated big SF NCO's involved.
ReplyDeleteI was never captured. I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachia's and hunted since I was old enough to hold a 12 gauge shotgun up straight and shoot it. That being said, I could hear inside the prison compound and especially scared the living bugeebies out of me listening to the guys on the "Apache Poles" scraming bloody murder when they got hit with an electric shock. One "Butter Bar" lieutenant literally spilled the beans on some super-secret classified info and was busted down to Sgt E-5 before going to Nam. Another guy, a Specialist E-5 squeeled like a greased pig, shouting, "I'll tell you anything you want to know!" I don't know what happened to him after that.
Deletei was personally selected by LTC Millett to be his orderly in 1965, for his interest in evaluating me. I served as his orderly, until he arranged that I be jumped by the Viet Cong Aggressors and interrogation began. Interrogation began with waterboarding, deprevation of light and sound, hot and cold, strung up with wrists tied together with bailing wire and tied to my belt with an iron piped slipped in crook of my elbows and hung up which felt like I was being cruxified, spread eagle face down with toes on pop bottles and hands on same over a coal bed, wired to a wooden chair with wire and hooked up to telephone generator, and finally placed on apache pole and an electrode put in my boot and plate power supply of 700 vdc turned on and other electrode raked across my privates. The pain was incredible, but it pissed me off really badly and I sat up nicking to VC aggressors who were sitting on my chest, stood up and pulled the 4x4 post along with concrete anchor one foot out of the ground. Apparently I passed after two days on continous interrogation, but I broke loose, cold cocked a Hawaiian soldier with M1 garand with his rifle, dove over three rolls of concertino wire and then cold cocked a machine gunner behind an M69 Mg, picked it up and rocked and rolled it into the VC interrogation camp effectively closing the VC frivolity that night. Later I became a Viet Cong Agressor who set up ambushes for Army Air Bourne Rangers vets, Navy Seals, Army Green Beret combat Vets and Marine Scout Snippers. It was my ability to think outside of the box, usage of terrain and get into the head of commanders to defeat them soundly.
ReplyDeleteLater, in my Duty Station in Germany with MI along Elbe River Border in Kassel West Germany, I was attached briefly with NATO exercise to infiltrate American Lines in Germany and was successful at it.
My background before Military was Boy Scout tracking of Native American Indian Scouts, learning to fight with a blade and a tomahawk, advanced scuba diving under ice in a high altitude late at about 10k feet as an explorer scout and growing up in a biggoted society of the united states after world war II and having to survive via Asian street fighting. My father was with 442 regimental combat team in Italy and all my life I still have to prove that I am an American Citizen. All of this is still not right that this biggoted society still holds against Asians Since World War II. It is about time the people give it a rest.
i was personally selected by LTC Millett to be his orderly in 1965, for his interest in evaluating me. I served as his orderly, until he arranged that I be jumped by the Viet Cong Aggressors and interrogation began. Interrogation began with waterboarding, deprevation of light and sound, hot and cold, strung up with wrists tied together with bailing wire and tied to my belt with an iron piped slipped in crook of my elbows and hung up which felt like I was being cruxified, spread eagle face down with toes on pop bottles and hands on same over a coal bed, wired to a wooden chair with wire and hooked up to telephone generator, and finally placed on apache pole and an electrode put in my boot and plate power supply of 700 vdc turned on and other electrode raked across my privates. The pain was incredible, but it pissed me off really badly and I sat up nicking to VC aggressors who were sitting on my chest, stood up and pulled the 4x4 post along with concrete anchor one foot out of the ground. Apparently I passed after two days on continous interrogation, but I broke loose, cold cocked a Hawaiian soldier with M1 garand with his rifle, dove over three rolls of concertino wire and then cold cocked a machine gunner behind an M69 Mg, picked it up and rocked and rolled it into the VC interrogation camp effectively closing the VC frivolity that night. Later I became a Viet Cong Agressor who set up ambushes for Army Air Bourne Rangers vets, Navy Seals, Army Green Beret combat Vets and Marine Scout Snippers. It was my ability to think outside of the box, usage of terrain and get into the head of commanders to defeat them soundly.
ReplyDeleteLater, in my Duty Station in Germany with MI along Elbe River Border in Kassel West Germany, I was attached briefly with NATO exercise to infiltrate American Lines in Germany and was successful at it.
My background before Military was Boy Scout tracking of Native American Indian Scouts, learning to fight with a blade and a tomahawk, advanced scuba diving under ice in a high altitude late at about 10k feet as an explorer scout and growing up in a biggoted society of the united states after world war II and having to survive via Asian street fighting. My father was with 442 regimental combat team in Italy and all my life I still have to prove that I am an American Citizen. All of this is still not right that this biggoted society still holds against Asians Since World War II. It is about time the people give it a rest.
i was personally selected by LTC Millett to be his orderly in 1965, for his interest in evaluating me. I served as his orderly, until he arranged that I be jumped by the Viet Cong Aggressors and interrogation began. Interrogation began with waterboarding, deprevation of light and sound, hot and cold, strung up with wrists tied together with bailing wire and tied to my belt with an iron piped slipped in crook of my elbows and hung up which felt like I was being cruxified, spread eagle face down with toes on pop bottles and hands on same over a coal bed, wired to a wooden chair with wire and hooked up to telephone generator, and finally placed on apache pole and an electrode put in my boot and plate power supply of 700 vdc turned on and other electrode raked across my privates. The pain was incredible, but it pissed me off really badly and I sat up nicking to VC aggressors who were sitting on my chest, stood up and pulled the 4x4 post along with concrete anchor one foot out of the ground. Apparently I passed after two days on continous interrogation, but I broke loose, cold cocked a Hawaiian soldier with M1 garand with his rifle, dove over three rolls of concertino wire and then cold cocked a machine gunner behind an M69 Mg, picked it up and rocked and rolled it into the VC interrogation camp effectively closing the VC frivolity that night. Later I became a Viet Cong Agressor who set up ambushes for Army Air Bourne Rangers vets, Navy Seals, Army Green Beret combat Vets and Marine Scout Snippers. It was my ability to think outside of the box, usage of terrain and get into the head of commanders to defeat them soundly.
ReplyDeleteLater, in my Duty Station in Germany with MI along Elbe River Border in Kassel West Germany, I was attached briefly with NATO exercise to infiltrate American Lines in Germany and was successful at it.
My background before Military was Boy Scout tracking of Native American Indian Scouts, learning to fight with a blade and a tomahawk, advanced scuba diving under ice in a high altitude late at about 10k feet as an explorer scout and growing up in a biggoted society of the united states after world war II and having to survive via Asian street fighting. My father was with 442 regimental combat team in Italy and all my life I still have to prove that I am an American Citizen. All of this is still not right that this biggoted society still holds against Asians Since World War II. It is about time the people give it a rest.