SHRIVER, JERRY MICHAEL
Name: Jerry Michael "Mad Dog" Shriver
Rank/Branch: E7/US Army Special Forces
Unit: CCS - MACV-SOG, 5th Special Forces
Date of Birth: 24 September 1941 (De Funiak Springs FL)
Home City of Record: Sacramento CA
Date of Loss: 24 April 1969
Country of Loss: Cambodia (some older records say Laos)
Loss Coordinates: 165048N 1063158E (XT441913)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 4
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1431
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families,
published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 1998.
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: SFC Jerry M. "Mad Dog" Shriver was a legendary Green Beret. He was
an exploitation platoon leader with Command and Control South, MACV-SOG
(Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group).
MACV-SOG was a joint service high command unconventional warfare task force
engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast Asia. The 5th
Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG (although it was not a
Special Forces group) through Special Operations Augmentation (SOA), which
provided their "cover" while under secret orders to MACV-SOG. The teams
performed deep penetration missions of strategic reconnaissance and
interdiction which were called, depending on the time frame, "Shining Brass"
or "Prairie Fire" missions.
On the morning of April 24, 1969, Shriver's hatchet platoon was air
assaulted into Cambodia by four helicopters. Upon departing the helicopter,
the team had begun moving toward its initial target point when it came under
heavy volumes of enemy fire from several machine gun bunkers and entrenched
enemy positions estimated to be at least a company-sized element.
Shriver was last seen by the company commander, Capt. Paul D. Cahill, as
Shriver was moving against the machine gun bunkers and entering a tree line
on the southwest edge of the LZ with a trusted Montagnard striker. Capt.
Cahill and Sgt. Ernest C. Jamison, the platoon medical aidman, took cover in
a bomb crater. Cahill continued radio contact with Shriver for four hours
until his transmission was broken and Shriver was not heard from again. It
was known that Shriver had been wounded 3 or 4 times. An enemy soldier was
later seen picking up a weapon which appeared to be the same type carried by
Shriver.
Jamison left the crater to retrieve one of the wounded Montagnards who had
fallen in the charge. The medic reached the soldier, but was almost torn
apart by concentrated machine gun fire. At that moment Cahill was wounded in
the right eye, which resulted in his total blindness for the next 30
minutes. The platoon radioman, Y-Sum Nie, desperately radioed for immediate
extraction.
Maj. Benjamin T. Kapp, Jr. was in the command helicopter and could see the
platoon pinned down across the broken ground and rims of bomb craters. North
Vietnamese machine guns were firing into the bodies in front of their
positions and covering the open ground with grazing fire. The assistant
platoon leader, 1Lt. Gregory M. Harrigan, reported within minutes that half
the platoon was killed or wounded. Harrigan himself was killed 45 minutes
later.
Helicopter gunships and A1E aircraft bombed and rocketed the NVA defenses.
The heavy ground fire peppered the aircraft in return, wounding one door
gunner during low-level strafing. Several attempts to lift out survivors had
to be aborted. Ten airstrikes and 1,500 rockets had been placed in the area
in attempts to make a safe extraction possible. 1Lt. Walter L. Marcantel,
the third in command, called for napalm only ten yards from his frontline,
and both he and his nine remaining commandos were burned by splashing
napalm.
After seven hours of contact, three helicopters dashed in and pulled out 15
wounded troops. As the aircraft lifted off, several crewmen saw movement in
a bomb crater. A fourth helicopter set down, and Lt. Daniel Hall twice raced
over to the bomb crater. On the first trip he recovered the badly wounded
radio operator, and on the second trip he dragged Harrigan's body back to
the helicopter. The aircraft was being buffeted by shellfire and took off
immediately afterwards. No further MACV-SOG insertions were made into the
NVA stronghold. Jamison was declared dead and Shriver Missing in Action.
On June 12, 1970, a search and recovery element from a graves registration
unit recovered human remains that were later identified as Sgt. Jamison, but
no trace was found of Shriver.
For every insertion like Shriver's that were detected and stopped, dozens of
other commando teams safely slipped past NVA lines to strike a wide range of
targets and collect vital information. The number of MACV-SOG missions
conducted with Special Forces reconnaissance teams into Laos and Cambodia
was 452 in 1969. It was the most sustained American campaign of raiding,
sabotage and intelligence-gathering waged on foreign soil in U.S. military
history. MACV-SOG's teams earned a global reputation as one of the most
combat effective deep-penetration forces ever raised.
The missions Shriver and others were assigned were exceedingly dangerous and
of strategic importance. The men who were put into such situations knew the
chances of their recovery if captured was slim to none. They quite naturally
assumed that their freedom would come by the end of the war. For 591
Americans, freedom did come at the end of the war. For another 2500,
however, freedom has never come.
Since the war ended, nearly 10,000 reports relating to missing Americans in
Southeast Asia have been received by the U.S., convincing many authorities
that hundreds remain alive in captivity. Jerry Shriver's friends claim they
heard on "Hanoi Hannah" that "Mad Dog" Shriver had been captured. They
wonder if he is among the hundreds said to be alive today. If so, what must
he think of us?
---------------------------------------------------------------
[smith2.94 07/31/94]
Mark Smith 07/06/94
NOTE: this report IS NOT repruduced in its entirety.
MISSING SF
1. Burt Small......Garwood was asked if Burt Small was his brother.....
2. Willie Stark.....how Stark was found at the crash site, when he was
missing on the ground....DIA list him missing on a helicopter....
3. Russell Bott....indigenous reports on Bott are numerous and come from
the same area as Stark.
4. Jerry Schriver ....Shriver remained on the radio for four hours after
legend has it he was supposed to have died.....
5. Donald Carr .....Much was made of a picture provided to LTC RET Jack
Bailey of the USAF. This photo was only a very small part of an
overwhelming case for Carr's survival to this day....follow up
conversations with Carr's Lao daughter.... show Carr very much alive. He
has a wife and one child. He is also missing fingers from an accident
with a rice mill...
6. Walter Moon....persistent intelligence on Walter Moon surfaces from
time to time......although Bo Gritz was accused of fabricating
intelligence on Moon, in all fairness, his intelligence was consistent
with all other information. Though other prisoners related Moon's death,
none actually witnessed it........reported alive as late as 1990....
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