Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by John Stryker Meyer
When I read Soldier of Fortune Magazine recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on a MACV-SOG legend. He was Green Beret medic and later CIA operative George Washington Bacon III, who met an untimely death in Angola at the hands of Cuban commies in February 1976 while working independently with a guerrilla force, no longer employed at the agency.
I met Bacon at one of the six top secret MACV-SOG compounds in S. Vietnam at FOB 1 in Phu Bai, during the summer of 1968. He soon impressed fellow Green Berets with how quickly he first picked up the dialect of the Bru Montagnard tribesmen who served in SOG.
READ MORE about George Washington Bacon III
Within a week, he was able to speak with the Bru. And, after a few weeks, he was speaking Vietnamese with our Vietnamese counterparts at FOB 1. At that time, none of us realized that Bacon had taken Vietnamese lessons from Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of the late president of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, while going through Special Forces training at Ft. Bragg, N.C. His thirst for knowledge was unending.
George W. Bacon III is all smiles, sitting inside the Green Beret Lounge at FOB 1 Phu Bai, with Steve Bayliss, a member of SOG recon team Virginia.
He was amazing, as people like me depended heavily on my S. Vietnamese interpreter to carry my conversation to fellow Vietnamese team members. Bacon could converse with them, giving him an extra level of trust.
During the monsoon season at FOB 1, there were intense Scrabble games, where he would pull esoteric words to fit the board without using the dictionary that we mere mortals depended on. None of us knew that Bacon had graduated as the Distinguished Honor Graduate of his Special Forces Training class 68-5 and that he had a photographic memory, according to SF Medic and Bacon friend Joe Parnar, co-author of the book SOG Medic.
NVA Sapper Attack
On Aug. 23,1968, Bacon was wounded during an NVA sapper attack at FOB 4 in Da Nang, where he and many SOG Green Berets had appeared before a promotion board on Aug. 22.
During the early morning hours of Aug. 23, as the attack raged, Bacon was patching up SOG men as a medic, before he was seriously wounded in the right shoulder/chest area. Bacon survived an attack that took the lives of 16 Green Berets – the highest single loss of Special Forces soldiers in its history.
When he returned to FOB 1, Bacon spent time helping medics in the dispensary while he healed from his wounds. Then he returned to his recon team until he was transferred to FOB 2 in Kontum in late 1968, as the brass began to close FOB 1.
Bacon stands in front of the Green Beret Lounge at FOB 1 Phu Bai in the summer of 1968, with fellow SOG recon Green Beret Chuck Willoughby. Bacon points to bandages from wounds he received in the morning of sapper attack at SOG FOB 4 base in Da Nang on Aug. 23, 1968.
A Well-Kept Secret
Another relatively well-kept fact about Bacon was that his manhood was “well endowed,” according to a fellow SOG recon friend. One day after a hot morning on base, Bacon went into the shower where one of the house maids was cleaning, and when he stepped under a shower the maid was “shocked” when she viewed his manhood, and said he was too well endowed for sexual intercourse or oral sex, just hand action.
After his tour of duty with SOG, Bacon returned to college for a year before applying for a job with the CIA, where he became employed in 1970 as a case officer. After finishing his CIA training, Bacon “served in Laos as a personal adviser to General Vang Pao, the leader of the Hmong tribesmen fighting the NVA on the Plain of Jars, in northern Laos.
“George was awarded the Intelligence Star, the second highest award for valor presented by the CIA,” according to SOG Medic, co-authored by Joe Parnar and Robert Dumont.
John Stryker Meyer is known to friends and colleagues as “Tilt.” A former Green Beret, he served two tours of duty in MACV-SOG with RT Idaho. He is the author of a number of books, including Across the Fence – The Secret War in Vietnam; plus On The Ground; and SOG Chronicles Vol. 1. He is host of the popular podcast SOGCast: Untold Stories of MACV-SOG. Episodes are posted on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. You also can find him here, on his website.
