Why a company went into Laos
In September 1970 MACV-SOG was asked to draw North Vietnamese strength away from a Royal Lao operation further west. It sent a whole company of its Hatchet Force from Command and Control Central at Kontum: 16 American Special Forces soldiers and about 110 Montagnards. Marine CH-53 Sea Stallions of squadron HMH-463 flew them deep into Laos, near Chavane.
Marine AH-1G Cobras of squadron HML-367, call sign "Scarface", flew cover, with other Cobras and A-1 Skyraiders.
Four days
For four days the company kept moving and fighting. Staying in one place for long meant mortars. It overran a North Vietnamese base and found a logistics headquarters dug in under some twelve feet of earth, and carried away about two footlockers of maps and documents, among the most valuable intelligence SOG ever took.
Three Montagnards were killed and every one of the Americans was wounded. The company's medic, wounded himself, treated dozens of men over the four days; he received the Medal of Honor in 2017.
On 14 September the CH-53s brought the company out under Cobra cover. One came down hard just after lifting off, and everyone aboard was saved.
The 1998 story
In 1998 a television report claimed that nerve gas had been used in the operation. A Pentagon review found no support for it, and the network retracted the story. The game does not use it.
What you command
You command the company as it comes off its landing zone: Company HQ, a medic and three platoons of Americans and Montagnards, with Scarface Cobras on call. They can go back to rearm twice.
Keep moving, because their mortars find a company that stops. Find the headquarters to the north-east, clear it, and search it for documents: more men inside search faster, and nobody can search under fire. Keep the medic beside the wounded long enough to get them back on their feet. Then make for the pickup zone in the north-west. Two CH-53s come for you, sixteen men each, but not while the two heavy machine guns near it are still firing.
The debrief sets your result beside what really happened, with its sources.
