Detachment B-52 • 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) • 1st Special Forces
The An Lao Valley operation appears in the After Action Reports as a thirteen-day reconnaissance in support of Operation MASHER. The men who walked it remember six funerals.
Project Delta was tasked to reconnoiter the northern end of the An Lao Valley to identify NVA regimental positions, anti-aircraft emplacements, and infiltration routes ahead of the 1st Cavalry's main effort.
Three reconnaissance teams were inserted. Multiple teams made enemy contact within hours of insertion. Two teams were extracted under fire; one team was scattered in contact with a superior force in heavily vegetated terrain. The detachment commander, MAJ Charlie Beckwith, was wounded by .50-caliber fire from the floor of the C&C aircraft and was evacuated.
The operation was terminated after thirteen days. Six U.S. Special Forces personnel were killed in action; two of those bodies were not recovered. Casualties were sustained almost entirely on a single day, 29 January 1966.
The previous commander of Project Delta, MAJ Art Strange, met the incoming commander in July 1965 and gave him direct advice about the An Lao Valley.
Stay out of the An Lao Valley. They have sophisticated warning systems and tracking dogs. — MAJ Art Strange to MAJ Charlie Beckwith, July 1965
Six months later, Project Delta was in the An Lao Valley.
Standard Project Delta procedure was a mixed recon team — U.S. Special Forces alongside Vietnamese counterparts (LLDB or CIDG). For Op 2-66, Beckwith decided to insert all-American teams. Ground intelligence was unconfirmed, the weather was bad, anti-aircraft guns limited helicopter support, and the enemy controlled the valley. The last time friendly forces had been in the An Lao was 1958.
Team Three was inserted on 28 January 1966: SFC Marcus Huston (team leader), SSG Billy McKeithe, MSG Wiley Gray, SSG Ron Terry, SSG Cecil Hodgson, and SSG Frank Badolati.
First contact came at 9:30 AM. Badolati was hit in the upper left arm; the bullet nearly severed it. Hodgson applied a tourniquet under fire. The team broke contact and moved roughly 600 yards before the second engagement at 12:30. They split into two groups to evade.
Gray, Hodgson, and Terry went one direction. Huston, McKeithe, and Badolati used a streambed after dark to hide their trail. Despite constant medical attention, Badolati's condition deteriorated. He died in the early morning hours of 29 January 1966.
Daisy Badolati of the tiny Azalea, Oregon community goes on to say, “It has been a very difficult issue for me to deal with over the years, so much so that I made the greatest effort to accept my loss and, when the pain was just too great, I would try to forget ever having had a father.” — The daughter of SSG Frank Badolati, recounted by Ray Davidson
Huston and McKeithe were forced to leave Badolati's body hidden in the boulders and scrub, hoping to recover it later with a Search and Rescue team. The two survivors were extracted by helicopter.
Read Ray Davidson's full account: The Story of Frank Badolati.
Direct quotations from copyrighted books appear in short form only, with attribution, under fair use for historical commentary. The unit's own veteran writing on the An Lao operation appears on the original Project Delta Net pages preserved on this site.
