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A SPECIAL WARRIOR'S LAST PATROL:

It was perfect timing. Dick Meadows phoned not a dozen days after I'd
finished two year's work on a history of SOG. At last we could start his
twice-postponed biography.

And what a tale to tell: Project White Star, SOG, the Son Tay Raid,
Delta Force, the drug wars - - Meadows had lived one adventure after
another, dodging bullets on three continents for 45 years. In our
caricature world of hoo-yah Rambos, Dick was genuine and unassuming, the boy
next door with a CAR-15, America's Otto Skorzeny or David Sterling. No matter
his rank-master sergeant, captain, major-all of us in Special Forces knew him
as Dick Meadows, a man who didn't need a rank to be who he was; Meadows was
Meadows.

It would be a fabulous book.

"But I have a problem," Meadows announced, his soft voice hinting
nothing special. "I'm dying, John." A brick couldn't have hit so hard.
Ten days earlier he'd been in Central America when fatigue so
overwhelmed him that he came home. His doctor diagnosed leukemia, in its
final, most virulent stage. That simply couldn't be. Though 64, Meadows
looked two decades younger, fit, trim and vigorous. "How long do you
have?" I asked." "A week." True to his word, six days later Dick Meadows
died.

A Self-Made Soldier

There was no one like Dick Meadows. He lived the life on which books are
written-in the plural. Born in a dirt-floor West Virginia moonshiner's
cabin, in 1947 Meadows lied his age to become a 15-year-old paratrooper,
then so distinguished himself in Korea that he was that war's youngest
master sergeant, at age 20. The quick-learning but largely self-taught
Green Beret acquired such a descriptive vocabulary and sophisticated
style that it surprised people to learn he had only a ninth-grade
education. The British SAS, with whom Meadows served two years on
exchange in the late fifties, thought so much of him that they entrusted
him with serious responsibilities. In fact, an SAS sergeant major
entrusted him with his daughter, Pamela, for a bride. In the early
sixties he deployed covertly with other Green Berets to Laos where, led
by Colonel Arthur 'Bull' Simons, they trained Khmer Tribesmen to fight
the Pathet Lao and NVA. These Project White Star men were withdrawn when
Laos was declared 'neutral' at a Geneva Conference.

SOG Team Leader Extraordinaire

It was in SOG-the top secret Studies and Observations Group, the Vietnam
War's covert special operations unit-that Meadows really shined. He
spent two years in SOG, all of it running missions deep behind enemy
lines in Laos and North Vietnam while leading Chinese Nung mercenaries
on Recon Team Iowa. Before each operation, Meadows built a terrain map
in the dirt, then had his whole team memorize the prominent features.
"Meadows did everything meticulously, everything was rehearsed,"
then-Major Scotty Crerar recalls. "You could have taken a film of [his]
mission preparation and used it as a training film." Like a martial arts
master certain of his abilities, Meadows possessed an unegotistical
confidence-fearless but not oblivious to danger. He was a practitioner
of the tactically sublime, able to assess a situation in a glance,
weigh his alternatives and act in a flash.

Much of Meadows' reputation evolved from capturing prisoners, at which
according to then- Colonel Jack Singlaub, Meadows proved SOG's most
prolific prisoner snatcher, bringing back 13 NVA from Laos. He once
arrayed Recon Team Iowa beside a trail when instead of the desired one
man, five NVA strolled up and stopped right there for lunch. Meadows
stepped out and announced, "Good morning, gentlemen. You are now POWs."
Despite his warning, "No, no, no," three went for their AKs, so, 'yes, yes,
yes,' Meadows shot them faster than you read this. The other two
proved surprisingly compliant. "Meadows is cunning," thought one of
SOG's most accomplished combat leaders, then-Captain Ed Lesesne, who
adds with a touch of awe, "he's a killing machine, and I mean to tell
you-Meadows is a calculating, cool guy." SOG Chief Donald 'Headhunter'
Blackburn, a highly decorated WWII guerrilla leader, so admired Meadows
that he thought of him as a son.

Battlefield Commission

Meadows had a knack for making history, as in 1966 when he proved North
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong a liar. Pham had been insisting not a
single North Vietnamese soldier had been sent to South Vietnam, telling U.S.
anti-war activist Tom Hayden such allegations were, "a myth fabricated by the
U.S. imperialists to justify their war of aggression."
Pham's deceit seemed by its magnitude unbreachable. Was this a war of
conquest from the North, or a popular revolt by South Vietnam's
peasantry? General William Westmoreland couldn't offer Congressional
doubters a 'smoking gun.'

Then Meadows helped out. Laying beside Laotian Highway 110, his RT Iowa was
watching North Vietnamese soldiers and porters pass by. Meadows pulled from
his pocket a Pen-EE camera, crawled forward and snapped a whole roll of
photos. Then he and his assistant team leader, Chuck Kearns, crawled back
beyond enemy earshot and Meadows decided on an even more dangerous gambit; in
Kearns' rucksack was an 8mm motion picture camera, which he'd brought along
on a lark. Meadows took it, crept perilously close to the trail and began
rolling, shooting a few frames of each NVA that came into his viewfinder,
footage of such perfect exposure that it came out like mugshots. For an hour
Meadows laid there and recorded nearly a whole battalion-hundreds of heavily
armed North Vietnamese-marching alongside porters toting loads of military
supplies.

Chief SOG had Meadows personally brief his findings to Gen. Westmoreland,
who couldn't help but praise Meadows and SOG. Meadows' film was rushed to
Washington and presented in a closed-door briefing of select Congressmen who
nodded convinced that Hanoi was lying. A few months later Meadows penetrated
an NVA Laotian cache which contained Russian-made artillery pieces. The
Howitzers were too big to carry back, even for Meadows, so he photographed
them and brought out their sights.

Again Chief SOG had Meadows brief Westmoreland, who almost hugged
the intense Green Beret master sergeant when he presented a souvenir:
A Soviet-made artillery sight. Westmoreland noted, it was exactly such
evidence "which finally prompted the State Department to relax its
restrictions on firing into the DMZ." Deeply impressed by the sincere,
quiet-spoken GreenBeret, Westmoreland gave Meadows a direct commission to
captain-the Vietnam War's first battlefield commission-and cited him by name
in his memoires.

In October, 1966, Chief SOG Jack Singlaub chose Meadows to
lead SOG's first American-led operation into the heartland of North
Vietnam, to rescue a downed U.S. Navy fighter pilot. Lieutenant Deane
Woods had parachuted onto a heavily jungled ridgeline halfway between
Vinh and Hanoi, 30 miles inland, where for several days he'd been
evading NVA searchers. Launching by Navy helicopter off the carrier
Intrepid, Meadows took in a 13-man team that made it within 500 yards of
Lt. Woods when the NVA captured him. "A cautious soldier would have
taken his men to the nearest extraction point and departed enemy
territory," Chief SOG Singlaub says. "But Meadows was not overly
cautious." Coming upon a major trail, Meadows set up an ambush to
capture a prisoner. Momentarily, an NVA officer and three soldiers
walked up, alert, still searching for Woods, apparently unaware he'd
been captured. To the NVA soldiers' astonishment Meadows stepped from
the dense foliage, leveled his AK-47, and called a friendly, "Good
morning." As one,all four NVA went for their guns, but Meadows shot
first, killing them all in blur. While his men searched the bodies,
Meadows radioed for an exfil and soon they were on their way out. After
the war, Meadows met Lt. Woods, who'd spent six years as a POW, and
presented him with the Tokarev pistol he'd taken off the dead NVA
officer.

POW Rescue at Son Tay

Meadows' best known mission had to be the Son Tay Raid, the November
1970 attempted rescue of American POWs from a prison 23 miles west of
Hanoi. Meadows didn't merely lead the assault element, but served as
the primary trainer of the entire raiding force, teaching them
everything he'd learned about close quarters combat and small unit
tactics. When the raiders landed at Son Tay, it was Meadows' voice on
the megaphone that called, "We're Americans. Keep your heads down. This is a
rescue.... We'll be in your cells in a minute." But Son Tay was
empty, its POWs moved while the camp was being refurbished. Though an
intelligence failure, the raid boosted POW morale and compelled Hanoi,
at last, to cease mistreating American prisoners. Son Tay inspired the
Israeli rescue mission six years later at Entebbe, right down to the
megaphone instructions to captives.


Our Man in Tehran

Dick Meadows retired with 30 years service in 1977, but he couldn't stay
away long, especially when Colonel 'Chargin' Charlie' Beckwith asked him
to be the civilian trainer of his newly formed counter-terrorist unit,
Delta Force. The adaptable Meadows applied all he knew of long range
raiding, recon and close combat, and modified it to fit the terrorism
environment, resulting in the world's most respected counter-terrorist
organization. He retired again in 1980, then a few months later came
back to assist Delta's hostage rescue in Iran. The Carter Administration
had gutted the CIA of operatives capable of reconning the U.S. Embassy
in Tehran, leaving Delta Force planners without the tactical details
they needed.

A CIA bureaucrat initially rejected Meadows as a covert advance man,
calling him, "An amateur with poor cover, poor backup and poor
training." Meadows told the CIA he'd go into Tehran with or without
their assistance. Given those options, CIA Director Stansfield Turner
approved Meadows and had him issued a false Irish passport. apparently,
Iranian immigration couldn't tell the difference between an Irish brogue
and West Virginia twang, because they waved Meadows-posing as 'Richard
Keith,' a European auto executive -- right through customs. Meadows
surveilled the U.S. Embassy, reconned Delta Force's planned route into the
city and watched for any hint of hostile counter-surveillance at the
warehouse in which the CIA and a Green Beret advance team had hidden Delta's
trucks and gear. Meadows would guide the Delta raiders then join them in the
assault-but they never got to him.

Deep in the Iranian desert, Delta's mission was aborted, two aircraft
collided and its helicopters had to be abandoned. But in their rush to
escape, the chopper pilots haphazardly left behind documents that
disclosed Meadows' warehouse location. Due to satellite communications
problems, Meadows did not learn what had happened for 24 hours and
barely escaped into Turkey.

Meadows also played a yet undisclosed role in the 1979 rescue of two of
H. Ross Perot employees from an Iranian prison, a mission led by his
old boss, Colonel Arthur 'Bull' Simons, which was the basis of Ken
Follett's 1983 bestseller, "On Wings of Eagles."

"Virtually no one outside the black ops and Special Forces community
knew of Dick Meadows until he made the cover of Newsweek in the early
1980s."

Meadows Last Patrol

Despite an affinity for bass fishing, Meadows still could not retire. In
the mid-1980s he volunteered to operate an aircraft refueling front in
the Caribbean to ensnare Columbian drug cartel smugglers. Then he
operated for a decade in Peru, helping plantation owners and businesses
defend themselves from Sendero Luminosa terrorists who'd have nothing
more than put a bullet through him-they never got close. Twice he told
me he'd become frustrated by inadequacies in the War on Drugs, and
doubted U.S. sincerity. Though he was not on the U.S.government payroll,
many times over the past decade he helped 'the community' in ways which
must remain unsaid. Several times he negotiated the release of kidnap
victims in South America.

Presidential Citizens Medal Citation

"With courage, initiative and devotion to duty, Major Richard Meadows,
USA (ret), has made extraordinary contributions to the security of this
nation. After enlisting in the Army at the age of 15, he became the
youngest Master Sergeant of the Korean War. His exceptional Special
Forces and civilian career included operations behind enemy lines in
Vietnam for which he received a rare battlefield commission, leadership
in a daring rescue attempt of POWs at Son Tay Prison near Hanoi,
infiltration into Tehran for the Desert One hostage rescue mission, and
a key role in establishing the elite Delta Force. Repeatedly answering
our country's call and taking on the most dangerous and sensitive
missions, few have been as willing to put themselves in harm's way for
their fellow countrymen."

(s) William J. Clinton [26 July 95]

Within weeks of his death, Meadows was still active in Central America.
During his career he'd been awarded every U.S. valor award except the
Medal of Honor. "If he hadn't done so many things that are classified,
he'd been the most decorated soldier in the Army," Colonel Elliot 'Bud'
Sydnor, the ground force commander at Son Tay, told Newsweek magazine for a
1982 cover story. When H. Ross Perot learned of Meadows' imminent death, he
reportedly phoned President Clinton to see that he was awarded the
Presidential Citizens Medal. It was presented posthumously to his family by
the U.S.Special Operations Command commander, General
Wayne Downing, who relayed the President's condolences and called
Meadows, "one of America's finest unsung heroes."

Statement by President Clinton

"I mourn the passing today of Major Richard J. Meadows, USA (ret.),
whose dedicated and exceptional service is cherished by everyone who
knew of his extraordinary courage and selfless service." I recently
asked General Wayne Downing, the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Special
Operations Command, to present the Presidential Citizens Medal to Major
Meadows. I am gratified to know that Major Meadows' wife, Pamela, and son,
Mark, a U.S. Army captain, and his daughter Michelle, will receive
this award tonight at a gathering of those involved in the Son Tay raid
at Hurlbert Field. Although this now will be a posthumous award, I am
pleased that Major Meadows knew of this honor before he died.
To Major Meadows's family and friends and to the Special Operations
community, I extend my heartfelt condolences. We will all remember him
as a soldier's soldier and one of America's finest unsung heroes.

Facing the certainty of death in his last week, he told me, "It's like
I'm preparing for one last patrol." In those final days, Gen. Downing
assured Meadows there would be a SOCOM award for young special
operators to commemorate his name.

Having come so close at Son Tay and in Tehran, Dick once told me his
only unfulfilled wish in life was, "To lead one that succeeded." That's
the job now for younger men he and his record will inspire, perhaps a
recipient of the award that bears his name.

[Hondo]

Via con Dios, Major. De opresso libre.
_________________
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse."
-- John Stuart Mill