Reflections of a Warrior is a Medal of Honor winner's true story—a Green Beret's six deadly years in the killing fields of Vietnam. PFC Franklin Miller arrived in Vietnam in March 1966, and saw his first combat in a Reconnaissance Platoon. So began an odyssey that would make him into one of the most feared and respected men in the Special Forces elite, who made their own rules in the chaos of war.In the exclusive world of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group, Miller ran missions deep into enemy territory to gather intelligence, snatch prisoners, and to kill. Leading small bands of battle-hardened Montagnard and Meo tribesmen, he was fierce and fearless—fighting army policy to stay in combat for six tours. On a top-secret mission in 1970, Miller and a handful of men, all critically injured, held off the NVA in an incredible Alamo-like stand—for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. When his time in Southeast Asia ended, he had also received the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, an Air Medal, and six Purple Hearts. This is his incredible story.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
Both plans are available with monthly, semester, or annual billing cycles.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go. Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Reflections of a Warrior by Elwood J.C. Kureth in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Military & Maritime History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
I arrived on a Saturday. I can’t recall the date, but I know it was a Saturday because I kept thinking, man, what a fucked-up way to start a weekend. I was twenty years old. I should’ve been out messing around with my buddies or chasing chicks. But no, I was there.
I would spend many weekends there.
Vietnam.
March, 1966.
It was a long trip from the land of freedom. I can’t sleep on planes, so I stayed awake the entire flight. I played cards and shot the breeze with those around me who weren’t trying to sleep. The whole time I kept thinking that soon an announcement would come over the speakers stating that this was just a test to see how I would respond to pressure. It still hadn’t hit me that I was on my way to a war zone. I wasn’t issued a weapon when I boarded the plane, so how could I be going to a place where I was expected to shoot people?
Our plane reached the coast of Vietnam early in the morning. I stared out the window at the dark earth thousands of feet below us. I couldn’t see anything, but I continued searching the ground, looking for a sign. A sign that it was there.
A sign of war.
Occasionally the field of black was interrupted by tiny orange flashes of light. I was told it was artillery fire. Those words had no effect on me as I watched from my lofty perch. I was too ignorant to grasp the significance of what I was seeing. I actually wanted to see more. Soon, however, I would witness artillery fire up close and personal. As all sane men do, I would come to fear it.
We landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, in Saigon, during nautical twilight, around five-thirty. My body certainly wasn’t ready for the blast of heat that rammed through the door as it was thrown open. Remember in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss’s truck stalled at the railroad track and that light engulfed his vehicle? Remember the sound? That wwwhhhooommmm? An incredible wave of heat filled with pulsating, rumbling, vibrating power. That was my first memory of Vietnam.
I stepped out of the plane. Helicopters were flying everywhere. Fast movers (jet planes) were taking off from the runways, moaning deeply under their heavy loads of bombs. People were running around doing this and that. It was like a giant ant farm. An explosion of activity.
I still wasn’t aware of my situation. Combat was so far removed from my mind that even this scene wasn’t having any effect on me. I didn’t have a weapon or any equipment. And it seemed like the picture in front of me was being projected on a screen. It just didn’t feel real.
An NCO (non-commissioned officer) loaded us onto a bus bound for Camp Alpha, where we would be assigned to our various units. I studied the bus closely as it rolled to a stop in front of us. A faint alarm went off inside my head.
This was no ordinary bus. Heavy-duty mesh screen covered every window. The wheel wells were completely encased in steel, all the way to the ground. Steel plates were welded over various areas of the body.
I felt a slight twinge in the pit of my stomach.
* * *
It was a short, uneventful trip to Camp Alpha. Once there I was issued two new uniforms. Then I waited as my group was quickly sliced up and passed out to numerous units.
“PFC Miller, step forward.”
I did so quickly. The activity in my stomach jumped a notch in intensity.
“You now belong to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Cavalry Division. Move over to that table.” The staff sergeant motioned toward a rickety picnic table against the far wall. I went to it and sat down. No one followed me. I was all that unit was getting that day.
A sergeant from my unit appeared almost instantly. He introduced himself, welcomed me aboard, and, not missing a beat, led me to our chopper. Our destination was a base camp known as An Khe, 150 miles north of Saigon.
Reality was setting in.
Even though the trip to An Khe was lacking in excitement (I should’ve been thankful), it did illustrate a difference between what you were taught in training and what went on in the real world. It was the first of many contradictions I would experience that first day.
In a training environment you are strapped into your seat and the chopper doors are closed anytime you fly, regardless of the flight duration. I realize these are safety measures, but they are drilled into your brain to the extent that you can’t imagine doing it any other way.
So there I was, strapped in my seat, looking across at my escort. He was sprawled out across two seats. He was definitely not strapped in, and he was lazily looking through the door openings, which were definitely not closed.
His casual attitude led me to believe he’d spent more than a few hours in a chopper. In fact, “casual” was the word of the day.
Casual? In a combat zone?
We arrived at An Khe around two o’clock in the afternoon. At the onset of our flight we passed over open terrain composed mainly of rice paddies and elephant grass fields. Approximately twenty-five to thirty miles from the camp the open terrain metamorphosed into jungle.
Very dense jungle.
So dense that it resembled a green shag carpet.
It looked very tranquil.
My aerial impression of the base camp was this: a brown sore on the green jungle. An Khe occupied roughly two square miles of terrain. At one point in time the camp’s terrain color mirrored that of its intensely green surroundings. But thousands of boots and hundreds of vehicles quickly killed the vegetation, leaving either brittle, brown grass or bare, baked earth.
A small, waist-deep stream cut through the center of the base camp. Wire obstacles fifty feet deep surrounded the camp’s perimeter. Just inside the wire was a ring of deeply entrenched security bunkers.
It was Tent City. Dusty tents of all shapes and sizes covered well over half of the camp. An Khe was composed of many units, with the 1st Cavalry Division headquarters as the primary tenant. Combat, combat support, and combat service support units were represented, contributing to the extensive maze of canvas.
Toward the back of the camp was a short, rolling runway dubbed “the Golf Course.” It was so short that the pilots of C-130 aircraft had to throw their engines into reverse immediately after touchdown or they would run through the bunkers and wire at the end of the strip. No time for a leisurely landing here.
We landed on a small chopper pad near our company area. So much dust kicked up when we landed that I thought I would suffocate. I gathered up my stuff and, closing my eyes and holding my breath, fought my way through the sandstorm. The sergeant and I walked about fifty meters to the company area, then straight into the orderly room.
We were greeted by the first sergeant. He was a lean, wiry guy from Kentucky who wore his hair in a crew cut. He welcomed me to the company and in the same breath informed me I was now a member of the Reconnaissance Platoon.
There was nothing going on at that moment, so the first sergeant called over the company clerk, who was instructed to take me to my quarters. I gave a specialist my medical records, and we departed the orderly room.
The very first thing I noticed about the company clerk was the large cast he wore on his left leg. It was beat-up and rather dirty, with a big bloodstain soaking through at midthigh. I was naturally curious about his injury, but since I was a new guy I didn’t feel it was my place to ask about it.
We arrived at my tent and went inside.
Hot damn!
Literally. Hot, musty air did a full frontal assault on my person when I stepped inside. The combination of blazing sun, Army canvas, and stagnant air had created a potent steam bath.
I wondered how in the world I was going to sleep in there. I was sure (I hoped) it got cooler at night.
As it turned out, I would never spend a night in that tent.
I was told to take an unoccupied cot. Since things were quiet, I was told to just take it easy and get settled in. Recon Platoon was in the field, and I would link up with them in a few days. I was to relax for now.
I found a cot and started to empty my duffel bag. Hot as it was in there, I was ready to sleep. It had been quite some time since I racked out, and I was starting to feel it.
I was almost finished unpacking when the clerk came back.
“Hey, Miller. The first sergeant wants you to go to the supply room and pick up your gear. In about thirty minutes a chopper is taking some supplies out to Recon Platoon, and he wants you to be on it.”
Oh, man! In ten minutes I went from taking it easy to gearing up for the field.
The company clerk took me to the supply tent and told the supply clerk my situation. I started drawing my equipment.
I couldn’t help but notice that the supply clerk was in the same boat as the company clerk. He, too, had an injury. His left shoulder and arm were encased in plaster.
The sight of these injuries set my mind in motion. I began to realize that maybe there was some activity going on that was harmful to my health. And that I was headed for it.
As I drew my field gear, I worked up the nerve to ask him what happened. Turned out he was shot in the shoulder. He also let me know that if you get wounded in the field and you’re not bad enough to evacuate to a hospital, you get a good job working in the rear, away from the shit. Just like him.
Great. Now I had something to look forward to.
He helped me correctly rig my equipment, showing me little tricks of the trade, indicating that he had spent some time in the field. After I was squared away, it was time to draw my weapon.
He went behind the counter and pulled an unsecured M-16 from the metal rack and handed it to me. The fact that it wasn’t locked up blew my mind. The weapons room at my last unit was like Fort Knox. You had to sign your life away before you were issued a weapon. In this unit the weapons were just … there, and I don’t even remember signing for the one he handed to me!
“Here, this one’s yours. I’ll just write down here that you got it.”
He next directed my attention to a footlocker behind me.
“There’s ammo in that footlocker. Take as much as you want, but I recommend at least five hundred rounds in magazines.”
Blow my mind again! Take as much as you want? No careful, meticulous counting of each and every round for accountability and safety, like in basic training?
I opened the locker lid. There were 5.56mm rounds everywhere. I took the recommended amount.
“In the other footlocker you’ll find hand grenades. Take as many as you like.”
This was too much. Inside the locker were what seemed to be hundreds of grenades. They weren’t neatly stacked or arrayed. They were just in there like someone had thrown them in with a shovel. In training they hand you a grenade with the reverence accorded a nuclear bomb. Here, it’s simply reach in and grab a handful.
I took six.
I was now ready to go. The supply clerk told me to wait out in the open area behind the supply tent. He said the chopper would be along shortly. He wished me good luck.
I went outside and waited with the supplies. Soon I heard the distinctive whop-whop-whop beat of my ride. I turned away as it landed (the damn dust again), and when the dust settled somewhat I helped the door gunner load the supplies. Inside the chopper another guy positioned and secured them for flight.
As we got the last of the supplies on board, the door gunner turned to me and shouted above the prop noise, “Are you the replacement for those guys that got greased last night?”
I felt my skin crawl. “Say what?”
“Are you the replacement for those guys that got greased last night?”
“Yeah … I guess so.”
“OK. Get on.”
I was a long way from home.
The flight to Recon Platoon’s patrol base seemed like the longest I’d experienced in any military aircraft. It was also the most tense.
Because, man, we were over Indian country.
We flew nap of the earth the entire distance, and all I saw were treetops. I imagined that any second a rocket or fire st...
