not be sent to the growing war in Vietnam as an infantry private.
What Marjorie and Jack did not know was that Private Portet had come to the attention of Colonel Sanford T. Felter even before he had completed basic training.
Felter was convinced the United States was about to become involved in the ex-Congo Belge. There were very few people in the Army who spoke Swahili. At Felter’s orders, records were scoured for anyone who spoke the language, and Portet’s name had come up.
The situation in the Congo had grown much worse much more quickly than anyone, including Colonel Sanford Felter, thought it would.
Thousands of square miles of the ex-Congo Belge, including Stanleyville, had fallen to the “Simba Army of Liberation,” commanded by Joseph Olenga. There was no question that Olenga was a savage, and there was considerable reason to believe that he was insane, as well. Neither was there any question that he was being supported to some degree by the Soviet Union.
Sixteen hundred “Europeans” were being held hostage by Olenga, who regularly proved his willingness to execute them all if he didn’t get his way by murdering two or more a day in the Center Square of Stanleyville.
The “Europeans” included the staff of the U.S. Consulate in Stanleyville, and sixty-odd other Americans, including Jack Portet’s stepmother and sister who had been caught there returning to Léopoldville from Europe with Ursula Craig and her infant son. Ursula’s husband was a Green Beret lieutenant undergoing flight training at Fort Rucker.
The President of the United States had signed “a finding,” which meant that he had determined that a covert operation was necessary. Something had to be done about the Simbas, and not only because of the Americans the Simbas held captive.
Covert operations of this type are normally given to the CIA. The President gave Operation Dragon Rouge to the military, and specifically named Colonel Sanford T. Felter as “action officer.” It was generally believed this was the President’s method of expressing his dissatisfaction with the CIA and its formal conclusion that there would be no trouble in the Congo in the foreseeable future.
Felter had immediately taken several steps to accomplish his mission. The first had been to instruct the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare to prepare to mount an operation that would be landed by parachute to seize the airfield at Stanleyville. Brigadier General “Red” Hanrahan was advised that he would be sent a young man who knew the Congo, and Stanleyville in particular, intimately, to help plan the operation.
The “essential to mission” classification of Private Portet at the Instrument Board fell to his being essential to the presidentially directed mission of Colonel Sanford T. Felter.
Bob Bellmon’s reaction to the sudden transfer of Private Portet to Fort Bragg was relief. “Out of sight, out of mind” occurred to him, and he had never believed that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
The next thing Bellmon had heard about Private Portet was from a very upset Marjorie, who returned from a brief weekend visit to Fort Bragg to announce that Jack was now a PFC, having qualified as a parachutist in a “special course” and was looking forward to becoming a sergeant, which would take place immediately on his graduation from a Special Forces “special course” at Camp Mackall.
“What the hell’s going on, Daddy?” Marjorie, torn between fury and tearful concern, had demanded. “They can’t do that, can they? Doesn’t it take four weeks for jump school and a year to get through Special Forces training?”
The reply that came to his lips and nearly escaped was “Nothing those crazy bastards do surprises me anymore, honey.”
What he said was “I’ll see what I can find out, honey.”
There was a grain of reason in the madness, he found out, by making an en-route-to-Washington fuel stop in North Carolina, and cornering his old friend Brigadier General Hanrahan in his quarters.
“You’re not supposed to know anything about Dragon Rouge, Bob, and you know it, and I have never even heard the name. But hypothetically speaking, do you really think that if there were such an operation, I would send a kid—he’s a really nice young man, by the way, and Marjorie’s really gone on him, isn’t she?— on it?”
“It would appear that way. You were saying, Red?”
“If there were such an operation, and we both know there isn’t, but if there were, and your expert about the landing zone was a private soldier, would you pay as much attention to him as you would if he