European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - February 11, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse 20-plus years As Agreen Beret by Don Tate staff writer there Are some who went through it Alt who Are still Frozen up about it. Won t talk. It just lays there cold As lumps of undigested death and congealed fury inside them year after year others Anthaw and let it flow. Like sgt. Maj Ernest a. Jensen at 44 a River of information and special insights about War and special forces with a minimum of rambo hype and jazz. He s the first to Tell you that when he enlisted in 1966, he was t so Well informed and Wise. His Center Wasny to so together. Label him Young eager kind of smart kind of ignorant. Quot i volunteered for everything airborne school special forces. Vietnam when i joined up All i wanted to do was go out and shoot people i thought that Sall it instead he became a special forces medic and spent most of his two Tours in Vietnam saving lives not snuffing them of course the other Side rarely asked what you did for a living before they iced you so you had to be a master of both arts Able to flip the switch from Savior to destroyer instantly. The boy who wanted to shoot people grew into the Man who s worn the Green Beret through it All. And never stopped believing its a great career Opportunity troops says the sergeant major we re looking for a certain mentality he stresses Quot there Are some outfits who do All the grunting and sexing of the Muscles and bending of the horseshoes and Buttin Heads and breaking Beer bottles with their Teeth and spitting out Glass because they re too Tough to use an opener they do All that but we Don t need that we want them to use their Heads for something Mote useful like thinking a handle he situation that a the key handling it deep behind enemy lines As often As not guerrilla stuff it gets spooky and if you get seen you can t sue for unfair bullets entering your being if you step on a mine you can t file a claim and ask for your Root Back. Like that time Quot we were on this Trail and i said whoooa1 and i stopped everybody and the interpreter said it s of. No Viet Cong 1 said but How about mines7�?T and just As i said that some instinct hit me and i stepped up on a Rock my to took a step and i stepped Back right in front of him and he hit a mine that blew his foot off and sent shrapnel All up the Back of my legs and in my butt and the Back of my head Quot asked if he put himself in for a purple heart he laughs As if you re putting him on Quot i was a medic a to took care of if himself no medal required he pulled the Bullet out of his leg that time As if it were a Bee stinger. Quot big Deal a lot of them were that Way. No big hard steely eyed killer rambo stuff they just sewed it up. Did t Tell anybody and drove medals were sometimes suspect anyway he says especially at a certain stage when it seemed troops in the rear bumping their Knees on hard desks and things were getting More medals than line troops when it appeared a lot of creative medal writing was going on. The badges of Honor lost some of their Luster Lor the men who were really out doing it. And doing it in his first Viet tour in 68. His a teams worked out of strange Little Camps near the cambodian Border. They worked with indeed were surrounded by. Several Hundred hopefully anti communist Quot indigenous Quot or bldg civilian irregular defense group forces mercenaries who made up their Mobile strike Force. Quot irregular Quot was the operative word they included Nung chinese disenfranchised cambodians and Mountain men called montagnard. Jensen himself once recruited a company of mercenaries half sex Viet Cong trailing the a indigo Quot about was a ragtag army of wives kids aunts old grandmas and others because it was up to the surviving male in a family to take care of the rest. Jensen and others in the a team wore their teachers a of everything from personal Hygiene to How to fire and Man Euver to explaining Why eating the delicious foot Long rats was t the american Way. From How to set a Booby trap and master the Art of the silent attack and the sure kill to How to avoid several flavors of malaria a there was the time that out of 390 in the Camp. 388 came Down with Falc Parum malaria. Everybody lying around with ivs in them shivering and shaking and asking for help. Five died. I think they already had another form of malaria on top of that. As an a team member Jensen was also in charge c. A company of the indigo making sure they got paid and generally taken care of. Quot Many of them knew no other Way to live except what they were doing. They just kept fighting till they were As a medic he could do everything from Battlefield surgery to delivering a baby to delivering antidote for Snake bites and scorpion stings Quot a lot of it was out on the Job training. There were things that happened to you in Vietnam that no training could so Many medics were killed at one Point their commander had to order them to Cool it Quot we made House Calls Quot smiles Jensen Quot foxhole Calls it got pretty hairy scary Quot not to mention air Calls in 71 i was the Chase medic always m the air if a team got in real trouble we d go m and get them really hot los we d Hose Down with gunships first then i d shimmy Down a Ropi ladder snap the wounded Man into a harness and there we went swinging out Over the Trees other times you d go in on strings Rappel rope just attach yourself under the chopper and off you d go. Flying through the air t be seen Guys in smash right into a latrine trying to do that Quot in Nam there were More than latrines trying to smash you there was the time his chopper crashed upside Down in a Stream and they swallowed a lot of Muddy water getting themselves out and diving for the strapped in Pilot. And that time the propeller Blade knifed through the Side of his aircraft and hacked through the ribs of the Man next to him. And that time. And that time. And All the other times they re supposed to be Able to do everything and endure everything of course. So says the image As solid As As they Are however Jensen a seen More than a few Green berets exposed to heavy combat stress finally crack their Good sense dribbling out of them iik3 yesterday s Beer talking in strange tongues dreaming nightmares with their eyes open it was a very individual thing a one Ellow spent nine years in Vietnam and did t Burn out. Another spent five years and burned All the Way out turned into a Complete Unadel curated alcoholic and burnout. Could t go to sleep without taking a drink could t Wake up without taking a drink. Died within five years after he the old Green Beret pauses now. As if listening to himself talk the boy who joined up to shoot people has changed a bit Over the years maybe 180 degrees. Quot i guess the approach to special forces should be a i want to go out and learn All i can and then use i to help people in places where they sure As hell need it it took me awhile to understand it. But that s really that happened in Vietnam no training could cover. A sgt. Maj. Ernest Jensen the stars and stripes a Page 15
