The secret war: Vet pens second book on covert campaigns in Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Sunday, November 11, 2007 12:07 AM PST ∞

As the Vietnam War becomes a distant memory for many Americans, at least one local veteran is doing his part to tell people about another war they may have never even known.

J. Stryker Meyer, an Oceanside resident and North County Times columnist, is a former Green Beret who served two tours of duty with Special Forces, which fought covert operations in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam during the years of the Vietnam War.

Meyer, 61, who was told he could not talk about his experience for 20 years, has now written about his experiences in two books published by RealWarStories.com: "Across the Fence" (2003) and, most recently, "On the Ground" ($24.95).

Both are subtitled "The Secret War in Vietnam." The cover of his newest book also states: "They were wounded or killed in places where they never went."

"Vietnam was 40 years ago, and today, there's a lot of people who don't know where Vietnam is," Meyer said. "Today, a lot of people don't know about the Vietnam war, and especially the secret wars."

The book, which includes several photos Meyer accumulated from friends over the years, has many first-person accounts of several chilling encounters with enemy forces in Laos.

"I never took pictures," he said. "We couldn't keep diaries, and we signed a document saying for 20 years, we would talk to no one about these missions. And that meant no pictures, no diaries. I was pretty much lame-brained and followed the rules. Fortunately, some friends of mine didn't."

As he set out to write the book, Meyer found he didn't need a diary. Narrow escapes, fiery gun battles and other encounters with the enemy were not memories easily forgotten, he found.

In the introduction to his book, Meyer revealed how shackled he sometimes is to the war his country would not acknowledge for years.

Describing a tranquil scene of his daughter practicing piano at home while he gazed at some wind-swept trees in the distance, Meyer wrote how the image triggered a flashback to North Vietnam.

"We made for a stand of trees about 100 meters away, although the thick vegetation made it agonizingly slow," he wrote. "My throat felt parched and tight from moving so quickly. I knew every second that ticked past decreased the odds of us getting out."

The flashback continued, and Meyer described seeing trees swept by the wind of approaching helicopters as he reloaded and emptied his rifle. His daughter's voice snapped him out of the flashback.

"We don't always know when or why, but these memories come back to us, reminders of what we did and who we were in another time," he wrote.

Although his memories are vivid, Meyer turned to his friend and former Green Beret John Peters for help, as he thought Peters could tell his own story better. Peters not only wrote his own chapter, but edited, rewrote and contributed so much to the book that he was given a co-author credit. Meyer said the new book reads more like a novel than his last book because of Peters.

"He's one of these scary-bright people," Meyer said about serving with Peters. "He was fearless."

The book is not a historical perspective of why America crossed the Vietnam border for a secret war. Rather, it's the story of the men who fought the war, often with the help of the Bru, members of the Montagnard tribe, whom Meyer described as "just four months out of the jungle and loincloths." The Bru were 14 to 18 years old. and, while not skilled in modern warfare, were an asset to the Americans because of their fierce hatred of the North Vietnamese, who had driven them off their ancestral lands.

In one chapter, Meyer's description of the Laotian countryside is a startling juxtaposition of the brutality he saw in combat.

"Moving north along the ridgeline, we began gradually descending, often encountering one beautiful new vista after another," he wrote. "The mountain atmosphere sparked fond memories of skiing in the Rockies and hiking, without a gun, along the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains."

At noon that day, his team found an area overrun with thousands of wild orchids, which reminded him of ones he saw selling for $5 to $50 back home in a New Jersey flower shop. The men ran through the field like happy children, he wrote, picking the flowers and sticking them in their hair, teeth, behind their ears and in buttonholes.

About four hours later, Meyer and his small team came across North Vietnamese Army soldiers. Meyer radioed for air support and three other men on his team ambushed the approaching enemy. The Americans were trapped for a while, and Meyer described his air support as "the most beautiful napalm dive I'd ever seen."

Meyer writes matter-of-factly about gun battles and said he has no idea how many enemy he killed during his two tours, but even during the heat of battle his conscience at times was triggered.

Spotting a sniper with a rifle-propelled grenade (RPG) climbing into a tree, Meyer wrote that he put the man in his sights of his CAR-15, a Colt submarine gun. For the first time in his 16 months of missions, Meyer extended the stock of the collapsible gun to stabilize his aim for a far shot. While many of the men he had shot were not even visible through the thick forest, Meyer could clearly see this target.

"It was the one time in Vietnam where I actually had a soldier in my sun sights for several minutes," he said. "I could see him in a tree maybe 200 yards away. I could see him pick up the RPG. At one point, one of my guys moved and he saw him. He put his round in his RPG and I had this moment where I thought of my third-grade Sunday School teacher saying, 'Thou shalt not kill."

Meyer wrote that he silently hoped the sniper would back down, but as he watched him aim at one of his men, he fired his shot.

"In a troubling way, it seemed unfair, or unsportsmanlike," he wrote. "But war is not designed to be a sporting contest. If the situation were reversed, I had little doubt what he would opt to do."

Meyer and his fellow troops were often in such kill-or-be-killed situations. Three chapters of his book are dedicated to a firefight that cost the lives of 18 Green Berets, the biggest single-day loss in the history of Special Forces.

After two tours of duty and clashes with a commanding officer who he said almost got him killed, Meyer left the Army and Vietnam. He never returned to either, but said he would one day like to visit Vietnam.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.