The first and last deaths of Special Forces in Vietnam

Wars & Conflicts · Published 16 October 2026 · Updated 25 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) holds a somber chronological bookend for the Vietnam War. Its members were the first and last Special Forces soldiers killed in that conflict, spanning nearly two decades of combat. Today, they remain the primary architects of unconventional warfare across the Indo-Pacific.

The 1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG) was officially activated on June 24, 1957, at Fort Buckner, Okinawa. It was designed to execute nine specific doctrinal missions, including unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, and counter-terrorism. During the Vietnam War, the group operated with high flexibility, sending teams on six-month temporary duties and running the Camp Hardy Combat Training Center in Okinawa to train Navy SEALs and US Marines.

The unit's history is marked by notable milestones in casualty records. Captain Harry Cramer became the first Special Forces soldier killed in Vietnam on October 21, 1957. The final Special Forces death of the war occurred nearly 17 years later, when Captain Richard M. Rees was killed on December 15, 1973. The group was later inactivated in June 1974 due to a shift in military focus toward Europe and NATO, remaining dormant for a decade until its reactivation in 1984.

Modern operations for the 1st SFG (A) are centered on the Indo-Pacific Command. While they are routinely deployed globally—supporting missions in Haiti, Bosnia, and Central Asia—their core responsibility involves security force assistance and counterproliferation. In the Philippines, for instance, the group spent years training six light infantry battalions and providing intelligence fusion to target militant cells. They also conducted humanitarian demining in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, earning Humanitarian Service Medals for those efforts.

The group's lineage traces back to a combined Canadian-American organization constituted in 1942. Today, the unit is distributed with the First Battalion in Okinawa and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and Group Support Battalions at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. They continue to serve as a primary tool for U.S. strategic efforts in Asia, balancing high-intensity combat with regional stabilization and partnership building.

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