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TEN MILES southeast of Saigon, between the capital city and the South China Sea, sits some of the nastiest real estate in South Vietnam. It's the legendary Forest of Assassins-the Bung Sat Special Zone (RSSZ), 400 square miles of swamp, overgrown by Nipa Palm and mangrove, cobwebbed by meandering streams and muddy rivers with 12-foot tides, which at the ebb barely conceal sunken stumps and shifting sandbars.
In the Rung Sat, the Marines are assigned a difficult and challenging role: combatant instructors in the most lethally realistic school in the world. They have fought and they have been decorated for their valor; but their principal mission is to train the Vietnamese military forces and advise the military commander of the area.
They are Marine Advisory Team 43, a tightly knit group of three officers, seven enlisted men and their two pet dogs. As part of the Naval Advisory Group, Vietnam, the team operates independently of the other Marine advisory units who work exclusively with Vietnamese Marines.
The team works and lives in a small, one-story, three-room "hootch" in the Vietnamese Regional Forces compound outside the Navy base at Nha Be. The base, ten miles south of Saigon, is located at the northwestern border of the Rung Sat. It is also the home of three river patrol boat (PBR) sections, a Navy armed helicopter detachment, a Seal unit, an Army communications outfit and a Seabee detachment.
Nha be is also the headquarters of the commander of the Rung Sat Special Zone, Vietnamese Navy LtCmdr Nguyen An. Because of its geography the RSSZ is the only land area in South Vietnam under the operational command of the Vietnamese Navy.
Within this setup Marine Advisory Team 43 has a twofold purpose -to provide specialized advice to LtCmdr An in the fields of infantry, intelligence and political warfare, and to provide assistance in these fields to the senior U.S. advisor in the Rung Sat, Cmdr Charles N. Straney.
Because of the close working relationship between the Marines and the senior advisor and his staff, the assistant advisor, LtCmdr Alvin N. Catalano, also lives at, and works out of, the Marine hootch.
The team works primarily with the 13 Regional Force companies which comprise a part of Vietnam's home...