NICK LANDRY WAS BORN on the bayous of Lafayette. His Cajun family could trace their history back to the French Canadians who fled south from what today is Nova Scotia when Britain won the French and Indian War.

Or the War of Conquest, as the French Canadians called it.

He grew up hunting alligators, hogs and whatever else was edible in the swamps, becoming a formidable outdoorsman by the time he was a teenager.

He joined the army after his 17^th birthday and six months later was in Vietnam. He wanted to see action. He soon did.

By the time he was 18 he was a veteran combat soldier and signed up for his next tour. He applied to join the Special Forces, and when it was discovered he spoke French, the lingua franca of much of Indo-China, he was snapped up by the rather quaintly named Studies and Observation Group.

Except no one called it that as few even knew it existed. Its full name was Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG), and it was the elite of the elite; a highly-classified unit operating way behind enemy lines.

A SOG ‘recon’ team usually consisted of three Americans and about eight Montagnards. The Montagnards, who are ethnically diverse from the Vietnamese, were not only fighting for the Americans, but also – and primarily – for their own homeland in the Central Highlands. These tough mountain people had been persecuted by the numerically superior Vietnamese throughout history. The Vietnamese name for the Montagnards is ‘moi’, meaning savage. That loathing was returned with intensity, and these hardy little highlanders fought with uncommon valor for both the Americans and the French colonialists before them.

Nick was transferred to the SOG base in Kon Tum, near Laos and Cambodia. He soon discovered why; the majority of missions were in those countries and were the most dangerous anywhere in the world. A Huey would drop a recon team deep in hostile territory, usually on the chief supply route known as the Ho Chi Minh trail, and they would spend about a week hiding and observing enemy movements in the jungle. Firefights, which happened often, were short, sharp and vicious. If discovered, a SOG team would lay down a curtain of lead, then retreat while their radio operator called for urgent evacuation. This meant finding a suitable LZ, or landing zone, for the Huey. The bravery of those pilots who routinely braved bullet blizzards to land in spaces little wider than a chopper blade is difficult for most to grasp.

In any given firefight, the SOG teams were usually outnumbered by at least 20 to one. That was considered a fair fight.  The injury rate was 100 percent – no SOG warrior escaped without being shot or blown up at least once. The mortality rate was about 50 percent; one out of two SOG men died in action. But for every SOG fighter killed, 158 enemy soldiers died. It is unlikely that such a consistently lopsided kill ratio will ever be equalled. For them, almost every mission was an Alamo or Thermopylae. The courage of those men, who believed they were doing it for their country, is impossible to fathom.

On one mission, both Nick’s leader and the second-in-command were shot miles behind enemy lines. Nick and his Montagnards, or Yards as the Americans called them, carried them to a makeshift LZ where a Huey swooped down to snatch them in a maelstrom of lead. Despite the fact that they were running for their lives, Nick and his men would not leave their comrades – one of whom was dead – behind.

After that, Nick was promoted to Zero-Zero, his unit’s leader. He had been running recon for a mere nine months. He was 19. He was a gunslinger. Soon to be a legend among legends before he was legally allowed to drink.

His point man was a Yard called Loc, a slightly-built guy, barely five feet tall. Loc could track the enemy all day without working up a sweat and was totally fearless. His hatred for the Vietnamese was absolute. The problem was that he hated the South Vietnamese, who were their allies, as much as the North Vietnamese, who were their enemies. To Loc, it made no difference if you came from the north or the south. The only people he trusted were fellow Yards and Americans. But not all Americans, just the Green Berets. Men like Nick Landry.

Nick learnt to rely on whatever Loc said. It saved his life more often than he could tell. On one mission he was wounded and somehow held a company of 100 North Vietnamese at bay while the rest of his team were airlifted out. The firefight was so intense that the pilot had to leave without Nick.

Nick was listed missing in action. A week later Loc went to the commanding officer at Kon Tum and said he knew Nick was alive and where to find him.

The officer, who loved Nick like a son, gave permission to launch a rescue mission, but it had to be on a voluntary basis. It didn’t matter. There were not enough seats on the Huey for all who stepped forward.

They found Nick barely conscious, almost exactly where Loc said he would be. He had managed to evade the enemy while they were distracted trying to shoot down the departing Huey.

Loc had trained Nick well. Instead of rushing to higher ground to call in another helicopter as the North Vietnamese expected, he crawled deep into a ravine where no chopper could land. He momentarily passed out from his wounds, and somehow his pursuers missed him. How he survived a week no one, least of all Nick, knew.

Loc said it had come to him in a dream. He dreamed that he himself had been wounded and escaped by doing what would come naturally to him. He knew with absolute certainty that Nick had done the same.

Nick never forgot Loc’s faith in him.

Then in one of the most shameful episodes in history, America abandoned its loyal Yards when it left Vietnam. The Yards trusted the Americans, as they had the French before them. In doing so they lost everything; their country, their way of life and their communities. When the Americans left, the North Vietnamese conducted an unreported genocide against all who had fought against them. But they reserved a special murderous spite for the Yards. Out of a population of seven-million Degar-Montagnards in Vietnam, just 600,000 are alive today. Pleas to bring them to America, a country they had loyally served, fell on deaf political ears.

The Yards had chosen the wrong side. Tough.

To say the Green Berets were disgusted to their bones by the betrayal from politicians is like observing night follows day.  The last thing Nick and his fellow Green Berets did was to get as many weapons as they could and stash them in the jungle for Loc and his tribesmen to defend themselves.

Loc continued fighting until one day, two years later, he got a message that Nick was waiting for him in Laos.

Loc, his wife and two children, as well as four other Yard fighters from Nick’s unit walked across the border. Nick was where he said he would be. He also had in his hand visas for the United States. To this day, Loc does not know if those documents were legal. But he soon had a Green Card.

Within five years he and his family, except for one son, were swearing allegiance to their new country. All, including Nick, had moist eyes.

Loc became part of the 8,000-strong Yard community in Fayetteville. Many Yards could have perhaps got jobs in other towns and cities of America, but this was Fort Bragg, home of the Green Berets. Their brothers.

One night after a beer or two, Loc told Nick about Truc, the son he had lost. Through the community grapevine he had discovered Truc was in Saigon, barely surviving in a re-education camp. Loc asked Nick if they could get him out.

Nick plugged into the Green Beret network. His former comrades were well acquainted with the Boat People fleeing Vietnam at the time. Whenever boats docked, they asked if any Montagnards were among the desperate refugees.

If a Green Beret could vouch for them, the lobbying began, first with the military, then with Homeland Security. The Green Berets wanted to do what was right for their fellow-warriors.

Truc, a stick-thin boy with hatred in his eyes, stared suspiciously at the two men who had approached him at the re-education camp, where he had been for the past five years.

They gave him a letter from Loc, the father he barely remembered. He couldn’t read it, so the one man did so for him. In the words were the pet-names of family only Truc would know. He knew the letter was true.

The 11-year-old was told to go with the two men who would put him on a boat. He would sail to Thailand. Once there, he would be met by a white man called Nick.

That’s what happened. Loc has no idea how much money changed hands to achieve it. Truc, like his father, joined the army when he turned 17 and served with distinction as a Ranger in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

He revered his father and his father’s best friend, this wild white man called Nick Landry. After leaving the army, he joined Nick’s security company as a highly-paid trainer and consultant.

So when Nick asked for a favour, it would not enter Truc’s head to decline.

He prepared to go back to the land of his birth.