Long Range Patrol

LRP (Long Range Patrol) – The “Men With Painted Faces”

LRPs, the forerunners of what we know as Rangers today, were an elite small-unit reconnaissance force. The men were trained at 101st Recondo School at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and/or MACV Recondo in Vietnam. It took a special kind of man to be a LRP.

Six men, or sometimes a “heavy” team of 12, would be inserted into a hostile AO (Area of Operation) to gather intelligence or prisoners, observe and report enemy movements, provide valuable information on terrain, or as hunter/killer teams. As a hunter/killer team, LRPs would conduct ambushes to inflict maximum casualties possible as well as the destruction of vital supplies and equipment. Employment of these teams in areas where the enemy felt secure was especially damaging to morale.

In August 1968, USARV held a conference on Long Range Patrols for commanders of LRP units and the line units the LRPs supported¹. Colonel Harold Aaron, Commander of the 5th Special Forces Group said: “Our expanding technology has given us the employment of satellites for reconnaissance, specially designed aircraft, sophisticated infrared techniques and much more. While these are important, the man on the ground, well trained and alert, still remains an important element in our reconnaissance structure. Only he can go places where the infrared or the aerial camera cannot go.”

Lieutenant General William Peers (3-star General) described his expectations of a LRP:

In my judgment, not every soldier, not every combat soldier, is qualified for LRP duties…LRP duties are very, very arduous and you never know when you are going to have to cover 10 to 15 kilometers on the ground in very short order.

The psychological qualifications to be a member of a LRP are extremely difficult. You need somebody out there who has nerves of steel, who can stay in there along the side of a trail…can sit there and watch that trail with a large enemy formation going by and not have the slightest inclination to stand up and fire a rifle or even move.

I think the most important thing on a Long Range Patrol is the actual integrity of the team itself. Much of this depends upon the leaders you have, the working leaders who know the capabilities of every single man on that team. The leader knows their strengths and their weaknesses. Every man on that team has to rely upon every other man of that team.”

First Sergeant Darol Walker sums up the brotherhood of LRPs: “I don’t believe, due to the type of mission we had and the small size of our patrols, that you would find a tighter organization anywhere in the Army. They were so dependent on each other to accomplish the mission and for survival that a very strong brotherhood developed.”

Finally, in the words of a LRP team member²:

Combat was its own finishing school. But we learned! Slowly but surely, we became jungle-hardened LRPs.

We developed the ability to perform under adverse conditions and in situations that would’ve destroyed lesser men. In time, our “greenness” had faded, just as the color had bleached from our uniforms. The dense, mountainous jungles and the constant sun/heat, sun/rain, sun/sweat, sun/dust cycle that was Vietnam had leached the parade-ground perfection out of each of us.

Humping the steep mountains of the Annamese Cordilla with hundred-pound rucksacks on our backs had increased our endurance. We learned to stalk the thick vegetation flanking the enemy’s high-speed trails with the stealth of a panther. We learned how to wait along those trails and to strike with the speed and deadliness of the cobra. We made an alliance with the jungle. It soon became our friend, providing us with shelter and cover as we sought our enemies. We conquered our fear of the darkness, and learned how to use it to conceal us from the searching eyes of the NVA. We had studied the enemy at his own game. After a while, we had become its master.

For years, our six-man teams had infiltrated silently into the enemy’s staging areas to gather intelligence and to find him and kill him where he thought he was secure. The NVA knew that this death and destruction was not the result of mere chance. Someone was out there watching them! The enemy had come to fear and hate, yet respect, the “men with painted faces.”

Read the Vietnam LRP series: Brother Against Brother

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¹A USARV conference on Long Range Patrolling was held at the MACV Recondo School, Nha Trang, 9-10 August, 1968. The purpose of the conference was to exchange ideas and lessons learned in order to improve the tactics, techniques, and utilization of Long Range Patrols throughout the command.

²Linderer, Gary, Eyes Behind the Lines, Prologue pg 2.

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