Meadows was a glow-in-dark guy

By David Maurer

Published: June 1, 2008

Second of three parts

As he flew over the border into North Vietnam, Capt. Richard “Dick” Meadows’ face lit up.

Looking down at the verdant jungle through a side window of the single engine airplane we were riding in, he said something I’ll never forget.

“This is where we need to go if we ever expect to win this war,” Meadows said. “We need to take the war to them, on the ground.”

It was early 1969 and Meadows had recently become the commander of Recon Company of Command and Control North. We were part of the top-secret Studies and Observations Group that was conducting reconnaissance missions into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

Dangerous missions

The missions were extremely dangerous but necessary in order to keep tabs on the North Vietnamese Army, which was using these areas for sanctuaries, supply dumps and invasion routes into South Vietnam. On this particular day, I had asked Meadows to accompany me on a visual reconnaissance of a target area in North Vietnam where I was to take my recon team in a few days.

Meadows was a seasoned recon team leader, and I always tried to learn as much as I could from those old hands. Those of us who were relative newcomers to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces referred to men like Meadows as “glow-in-the-dark guys.”

Virginia native

Meadows, a native Virginian, was no stranger to “Nickel Steel” — code name for North Vietnam. In October 1966 he led a 13-man team in an attempt to rescue Deane Woods, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, whose aircraft went down in the heart of North Vietnam.

Meadows was within 500 yards of Woods when he learned that the NVA had captured the pilot.

Instead of calling for his own extraction, Meadows decided to monitor a major trail and capture a prisoner of his own. When an NVA officer and three soldiers came walking by, Meadows stepped out of the foliage and greeted them with a friendly “good morning.” When the four went for their guns, Meadows killed them all before they got off a shot.

Woods suffered through six years as a prisoner of the NVA. After the war,

Meadows looked him up and gave him the Russian-made Tokarev TT-33 pistol he had taken from the dead NVA officer.

Meadows was a master at snatching prisoners and holds the SOG record for doing so. He and his team managed to capture 13 NVA, an extraordinary number.

Prisoners taken out of Laos, Cambodia or North Vietnam were highly prized for the intelligence they could provide. During the period I ran recon at CCN, 1968 to 1970, there were huge incentives in place to get a prisoner.

A captured prisoner would earn the two or three Americans on the team $1,000 each, as well as a 30-day leave. The Vietnamese, Chinese Nungs or Montagnard mercenaries on the team would each get about $300 and the same amount of time off.

Obviously, we were all eager to get a prisoner, but it was extremely difficult. We were operating with six- to eight-man teams in areas that were literally crawling with NVA. Grabbing somebody was the easy part. The trick was getting him and the team out alive.

During my reconnaissance flight, Meadows helped me pick a landing zone and two alternates. As we were heading back toward South Vietnam, we heard on the radio that one of our recon teams on a mission in Laos had managed to grab a prisoner.

Meadows and I were both elated. He directed the pilot to land at our launch site outside Quang Tri, South Vietnam, where the team would be returning.

When we arrived the team was there, but without a prisoner. They had been pulled out “on strings,” meaning they had been lifted out at the end of 120-foot ropes attached to a Huey helicopter.

The team leader explained that during the flight back the prisoner started fighting and biting one of the mercenaries. Apparently he was biting pretty hard, because the guy getting bit cut the rope the prisoner was attached to, and that was it.

When Meadows learned what happened he never said a word, but the look in his eyes could have boiled water. Not much later I had “the look” directed at me.

My uncle Leon Sandkamp was also serving in Vietnam at the time. He was an Army sergeant major in charge of all the mess halls in I Corps. He was passing through Da Nang, which was near our camp, and had invited me to drop by for drinks.

I asked Meadows if I could borrow his Jeep for the trip into town. He tossed me a ring with a fistful of keys on it, one of which opened the padlock connecting the anti-theft chain that ran between the spokes in the steering wheel.

In those days we drank to get drunk, and Leon and I certainly accomplished that mission. When I returned to camp the next morning I had the disquieting task of telling Meadows I had lost his keys.

First he buckled my knees with that stare.

Then he informed me that the lost key ring not only had the keys to all his stuff, but all the filing cabinets in his office.

After imparting that bit of knowledge into my painfully throbbing head, he told me to get my team ready for a mission and report back to him in an hour. I somehow managed to do that without being killed by my team members.

Meadows then gave me our marching orders.

“You are going to take your team into Elephant Valley, and you are going to stay there until you find my keys,” Meadows said, enunciating each word distinctively.

Elephant Valley was about 30 miles away and was so full of enemy troops that no Marine recon team had been able to stay in there for more than two days. What I said next didn’t change a thing.

“Sir, I got pretty drunk last night,” I said. “But I don’t think I was in Elephant Valley.”

Two weeks later, still in Elephant Valley, I got a radio message that we were going to be extracted. I thought Meadows had finally forgiven me, but I was wrong again.

As soon as we got back I got briefed for a mission into Laos. The next day we were back in an even more dangerous jungle, much farther from home.

I don’t remember what happened on that mission or even how long it was. But Meadows was pleased enough with our performance not to send us back into Elephant Valley to resume the hunt for his keys.

During the ensuing years, I’d call Meadows every once in awhile to check in. Invariably, the first thing he would say was, “Have you found my #!@#%^ keys yet?”

Next: Heading north again.