Goodbye to All That

In 1962, John F. Kennedy told them: "Wear the beret proudly. It will be a mark of distinction and a badge of courage in the fight for freedom." The Green Berets were, in this war at least, a final flowering of glory--Pimpernels, the last Lone Rangers, ready for anything, ascetic, hard as knives, Apaches with diplomas from Fort Bragg. For a time they were American heroes. In 1965, Robin Moore's novel The Green Berets became a bestseller, and a year later, Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets went to the top of the song charts. John Wayne even made a mock-heroic hagiographical film, which among the young became Middle America's answer to The Graduate.

The Special Forces were never quite as bad or wholly as good as their mixed notices. They fought the war they were sent to fight, and it eventually slipped out from under their combat boots. They were trained to work in small teams, to meet the guerrilla enemy one-to-one in any remote paddy or jungle where he could be found. As the war has turned, the nimbus of heroism dissolved. At the beginning of the year, the Green Berets turned over their last camps to the South Vietnamese troops. Last week, the Army announced that as an official unit the Green Berets have ceased to function in Viet Nam.

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