Word: bereted
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Like the disciplined, daredevil corps of '60s prose and ballad, the Special Forces, or Green Beret, teams slipped quietly into the countryside miles from their base. Soon the Berets, many of them veterans of countless similar operations in Montagnard villages in the mountains of South Viet Nam, were moving among the natives, ministering to the sick, refurbishing schools, teaching preventive hygiene and first aid. In many ways it was a textbook exercise, except that the locale was not Viet Nam but two poverty-stricken counties in rural North Carolina...
This kind of civic action at home has not been an Army practice in the past, even though the Green Berets made their reputation by doing just that -along with more dramatic feats of counterinsurgency-in Viet Nam and other underdeveloped nations round the world. But the Berets' luster has been dimmed by scandal, the war backlash and the withdrawal of the last remaining Special Forces units from Viet Nam last February. From a wartime peak strength of 9,000 men, the Green Beret force has been whittled down to 6,000. Consequently, two pressing concerns within the corps...
Lieut. General John J. Tolson III, now deputy commander of the U.S. Continental Army, last year came up with a notion that may well provide the answer. Why not apply the skills of such specialized units as the Green Berets where they are most needed-at home? If Green Beret civic action teams in Viet Nam could combat sores, human parasites, rats, venereal diseases and other miseries, Tolson reasoned, how much better to do the same thing in the Army's backyard as part of regular training for their primary role as a topnotch fighting force...
...Among the first nation menders into Hoke County were a doctor, Captain George Reavell, and five medics, including Green Beret Master Sergeant Jesse Black, a career soldier with 19 years in the service, including four in Viet Nam. The ground rules were strict: the medics could not act as doctors, even though Special Forces medics are so highly trained that they can perform amputations. All medical equipment was supplied by state, local and private agencies...
Recently, Green Beret Captain Robert Marasco appeared on the show to justify his killing of a Vietnamese double agent. On another program, Fashion-Model Czarina Eileen Ford got into a ranting match with two other women over whether mannequins are sexually promiscuous (some are, some aren't). Author Luigi Barzini told of the time that Mussolini, accompanied by a phalanx of officials and journalists, was motoring through the countryside. Suddenly the caravan halted and Il Duce got out and walked to a wall, apparently to gaze at the scene. Everybody else respectfully went over to share the leader's bucolic...