26 MINUTES AT SON TAY
On Nov. 20, 1970, at 6 p.m., U.S. Special Forces Sgt. Terry Buckler reported to an auditorium at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base. Hours earlier, he had been fed a sleeping pill and steak for lunch and told to get some sleep.
Army Col. Arthur “Bull” Simons, deputy commander of the operation Buckler had been training for, entered with Lt. Col. Elliot Sydnor Jr., the operation’s ground force commander. Simons pulled out a map of North Vietnam. Hanoi was circled, with the town of Son Tay nearby.
Simons tapped Son Tay and said: “That’s where we’re going tonight, guys. We are going to rescue as many as 70 POWs. Americans have a right to expect this from their fellow soldiers. We have a 50-50 chance of not making it back. If you do not want to go, now is the time to say so.”
As Buckler remembers, “That auditorium got dead silence for about five seconds and then you thought a cannon got shot. These guys jumped out of their seats, hugging and yelling, ‘Let’s go get ’em!’” Soldiers who had trained as alternates for months were disappointed that no one dropped out.
Everyone, from President Richard Nixon to individual raiders, recognized the moral imperative of the mission and the need to live up to the U.S. military’s ethos to “leave no man behind.” They also realized that when the rescued prisoners of war revealed the brutal treatment they had received in captivity it could help turn world opinion against the North Vietnamese and force them back to the stalled Paris peace talks.
In May 1970, intelligence analysts in a unit keeping tabs on POWs noticed photos of new construction at a compound in Son Tay, along with POW uniforms laid out to dry on the ground in a manner spelling a code for search and rescue. A dirt pile resembled a “K,” meaning “Come get us.”
The prison, 23 miles northwest of Hanoi, was relatively isolated by a river bend with only one bridge to the
