A small special operations squad was in a life-or-death situation thousands of kilometers away in Southeast Asia.
The tiny crew had entered Laos on a secret mission as a member of a clandestine special operations group called the Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG). ST Idaho was given the assignment to enter Laos on Christmas Day 1968 with a crucial mission. The main goal of ST Idaho’s mission was to find and destroy a fuel pipeline inside of Laos. Although American commandos weren’t supposed to be fighting outside of South Vietnam, they were forced to due to the realities of the conflict and North Vietnam’s exploitation of the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos as staging areas for attacks on the south.
Source: https://taskandpurpose.com/history/macv-sog-christmas-laos-vietnam-war/
