PROFILE
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ROBERT (BOB) K.
WAGNER Chief Storekeeper |
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This website is dedicated to Bob Wagner,
a plank-owner of SEAL Team 1. The Wagner family would like to thank the
following individuals for providing valuable insights on Bob during his
deployments to Bob was extremely dedicated to SEAL Team
1 and was a loving husband and father. He is truly missed by his family and
others that knew him. To view the original pictures
from the following thumbnails, double-click on the picture. A description of
the picture can be viewed if the mouse is positioned over the thumbnail of
the picture. |
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Bob Wagner was born in |
Bob, second from left |
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Bob enlisted in the Navy
on |
1951 - Alabama heavyweight Golden Gloves Champion |
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On Upon his return, he volunteered for
Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) training at the Naval Amphibious Base in |
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Bob, top row, third from right |
July 1962 |
Class 28 Training |
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Bob on right. (Picture dated |
Oscar Hunsaker, Wagner,
and Charlie Niergarten (r to l) |
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Bob 1963 |
Bob 1963 |
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After joining SEAL |
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08/20 - 09/06, 1962 |
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01/12 - 02/02, 1963 |
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Army Airborne School |
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03/20 - 04/12, 1963 |
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05/20 - 07/16, 1964 |
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The following
information on his involvement with the development of the Provincial
Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) program is based on a tape recording Bob made |
Da Nang Time Frame? |
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It was recognized the delta region
has its own peculiar problem areas. The main transportation arteries
are a river, canal and stream; the main mode transport is the junk and
sampan. It is heavily farmed and cultivated for rice. It has level
terrain crisscrossed by rivers, streams and canals, therefore predominately a
maritime environment. The primary mean will be to work in strictly VC
controlled areas within the home province. This unit will be highly
mobile and able to use various means of transportation in the objective -
land, air or water. 1. Once
in the objective area, the purpose would be to gather intelligence as to the
critical and economic infrastructure of the VC controlled area. 2. To
gain intelligence as to tactical strengths, deployments and movements. 3. Distributing
leaflets and other propaganda material in areas where it would be realized
that it could only be hand carried in. 4. Collecting
intelligence as to living conditions, crop conditions and the effectiveness
of bombing, shelling, etc. 5. Be
efficient in abduction, ambushes, patrolling, harassing and any other task
that may be properly assigned within the scope of the training. By being mobile and not tied down to
one base, plus the ability to remain in field for long periods of time, the Training: The course will be approximately eight weeks duration. Field training will be in small arms scouting and patrolling, map and compass work, intelligence gathering, agent handling, demolitions, ambush, road and river watching, camera and scaling, abduction, harassment, coordinating targets for terrain and air strikes, and distribution of propaganda. It is felt that by utilizing prior experience in each field and instructing the Vietnamese, an eight-week course would be sufficient to turn out a capable and efficient trainee. These personnel would be capable of working along in conjunction with other units highly satisfactorily. The Service
Available. A camp has already been constructed and is now in
operable condition. Supplies and materials required for such a course
as this has been gathered and are available. It is estimated that the
first class can commence within one week, and this one week was the date of
this report and the following classes could commence at two or four week
intervals as desired. |
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The reply came back, and as you well
know, directed us to return to the States as soon as possible, and if the company
or the Embassy wanted people, they should come in the front door and not the
back. We informed Mr. Murphy of this fact, and Mr. Murphy contacted We had to write up a new concept
paper based on the fact that Mr. Hart was not in favor of using the word
‘maritime’ because of his experiences with the Cuba deal, so we wrote up
another one, and this is what it said: Subject: Armed
Reconnaissance Training Program Information
Concerning: 1.
BACKGROUND. It is proposed to select a province from the delta
regions for the initial training class. From a group of fifty to one
hundred men, twenty-one will be selected after personal interviews are
conducted by SEAL and Vietnamese instructors. The selected personnel
will be brought to Vung Tau
for eight weeks of hard and physically demanding training. However this
training will be slanted towards the personal side. The new trainee
would be pointed towards successful completion of the course. This aim
will be realized partly due to the personal selection method indicated
above. It is not to be construed against anyone, no matter what his
attitude or ability may be pending he can successfully complete this course.
Proper motivation and instruction are the responsibility of the instructor
staff. Long periods of time will be spent in the field with the aim of
developing confidence and the ability to subsist off the land with a minimum
of support, but yet effectively and efficiently carry out their assigned
missions. 2.
OBJECTIVE. After the course is completed, it is proposed that the unit
return to its province with two SEAL advisors. Their mission will be to
work in strictly VC controlled areas within their home province. The
unit will be highly mobile and use various means of transportation in the
objective area—land, air or water. Their purpose, once in the objective
area, will be (1)
To harass and disrupt the political and economic structure in the VC
controlled area. (2)
Be especially efficient at abduction, ambushes and intelligence gathering
concerning VC strengths and locations, their ability to maintain internal
control of the people within the area. Further information of the crops
and living conditions, the effectiveness of bombs and shelling, etc. could
also be supplied. (3)
Distributing leaflets and other propaganda material in areas where it would
be known that they could only be hand carried. (4)
Any other tasks that could fall under the scope of this training.
It is
respectfully noted that one of the greatest advantages that the VC have is
that they, in most cases, are not tied down to static defenses whereas the
government of Vietnam troops and the Americans, for the great majority,
are. In these areas of the delta, the VC have had unrestricted control
for a period of four to five years, and they, themselves, therefore are
committed to static defenses of some kind. By being mobile and not
being tied down to one home base, plus the ability to remain in the field for
long periods of time, it is felt that we can out guerilla the guerilla and
create great havoc with his supply lines and his own sense of personal
security. This concept paper was given to John
Hart around the 29th or 30th of August, 1966. He
took it to When we returned to the States, I
talked to you and discussed this project, and you agreed that it was very
worthwhile and worth developing if possible. As I was due to return back
to I went down to Vung
Tau, and the first thing I found out was that the
Australians had been moved into our camp. The reason they moved into
our camp was that they had intended on taking over the program. We had
to wait four or five days until Joe Murphy got back from wherever he was at
the time (we couldn’t contact him). We sat down for two or three days
of talk; it was continually up and down, up and down. At this time, we
were just trying to get the camp back. We felt that if we had the camp
back, then we could continue on and push it in the right direction as far as
legality went. After a considerable discussion,
Commander Weber came down, and he talked to Joe Murphy. They had a
meeting of the minds. Again, a lot of it hinged on the fact that the
Australians were in there, and Murphy did not know how he was going to get
rid of them. He indicated that he would try to get rid of them, that he
wanted to get rid of them and have us back, but he had been committed to the
Australians. He’d have to work this out in such a way as to not
antagonize the Australians and yet, get us back in there. Finally a concept paper came down
from Around the end of October, Joe Murphy
wrote a letter to In July 1966, we
recommended overhauling what was then known as the Counter Terror
Program. Bill Smith (who was the head civilian for the Counter Terror
Program in Vung Tau at
the time of the training concept) with two In September
1966, we were told that the CT program was cancelled effective at the end of
the current class, 10 November, and a new program, Provincial Reconnaissance
Unit, would be substituted for CT. A copy of the PRU project outline
was given to us to be used as a guide in writing a new training
program. Preliminary work has now been completed on new schedules and a
draft was forwarded to Chief Cod on 28, October. We intend to draw on
several different sources of information before submitting the final draft of
the proposed training schedule. |
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I went back down
to Vung Tau. In the
meantime before this had happened, I had relieved the Special Forces Sergeant
of work at the camp because of a few things that had happened. He spent
five days without coming to the camp on his own; he felt he couldn’t work out
at the camp on this leadership schedule, so he went and arbitrarily detached
himself from the camp. He went into town, stayed there to work on his
leadership schedule, which he never got done. I made up one in a little
less than eight hours and sent it up to Saigon and got it approved.
Using this as a justifiable reason, I told him that he was relieved and
unless I got direct orders from Redel, he was
finished. After talking to Redel, I got back
down and he was back out to the camp. Friala
had brought him out there. I told Mr. Friala
that if he wanted Special Forces, then he should tell Redel
this, and we’d get out, no hard feelings. It’s going to be one way or
the other at this stage. We could not work together; there were too
many conflicts in ways of doing things, and maybe the Army wants to do the
high jumper, and we want to do the jumping jack. It’s all exercises,
and there’s no sense spending hours arguing and debating about which one is
right. If they had any dissatisfaction with the way we had done things
down there to date, then they should get rid of us. If they were
satisfied with us then they had no reason for moving anybody else
in. The next day, Redel called down on the radio and told Mr. Friala he wanted to see himself, Kassa
and me in Saigon the next day to iron this thing out. We went to Saigon the next day. Mr. Redel told Mr. Friala that
there would be three SEALs in that camp and nobody
else, and went along with just about everything that I’d requested the
previous three nights before. Here’s how it stands right now: I
am returning to the States on my own volition. I feel that under the
circumstances, there is no need for me to stay around any longer. Kassa is here, Swepston, Mathison. They are three fine Petty Officers doing
outstanding jobs. They are well oriented to the program and the
objectives. The letter was written to MACV. I’ve seen it. [It’s]
addressed to Westmoreland and requesting an effective date of 1, July.
Whether or not we can meet this effective date, I don’t know. However,
we do have a total of five people in the program now, counting Goodman and
Garret. Also there’s a sixth SEAL which is assigned to Ba Xuyen Province, a Chief by the name of Lenny Waugh, that the
East coast has placed down there arbitrarily and on their own with a deal
through the regional headquarters. Therefore SEAL, or the Navy, overall
has six people committed to the program or in the program right now. The positive side of all this is I
would like to say that we’ve gained a lot of experience. I know I have,
and I know everybody else that came in contact with this program has.
Captain Kaine has been here. He’s seen the
camp. Lt. Commander Olsen and many other Navy people has been here.
Everybody who has seen it, been briefed on it, is 100% for it. The big
hitching point was the inability or lack of initiative on the Embassy to
establish our legality here. After working with these people for eight
months straight, I was very, very disappointed. I feel personally, that
there’s a lot of hot air coming out of them, but when it comes right down to
brass tacks, it’s pretty hard for them to produce. I do feel this
program is worth it. I feel the experiences that we have gained here on
how to construct camps such as this—this program right now can be used in any
country, and we made this program… …We set up the topic breakdowns,
wrote the lesson plans, the… …The Vietnamese that have turned out
from this training is far superior to any other training that I’ve seen here,
including Da Nang by a
long shot. Going back over everything, there were a lot of things that
possibly I made mistakes on, but you can’t cry over spilled milk. I
should have pressed maybe a little bit harder at the beginning for this
letter, but I really believed them when they told me so many times before
that they’d written it or it was in the mill. I have no doubt about the
SEALs’ capability or our capability of handling a
program such as this. It’s a matter of getting oriented towards
it. I feel that we’re more flexible, more adaptable than the Special
Forces or Marine Recon, and I think that we’ve proved it in this
program. I think the other people when they return, Mathison,
Swepston, Kassa, Garret
and Goodman, will tell you the same thing, how much they’ve learned. It
isn’t a matter of not being able to do it; it’s a matter of having the
opportunity to do it. Special Forces realized the value of this
program. Their CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Group)
program and a couple of other project areas aren’t really working out so good; in fact, they’re hurting. This would be one
way for them to maybe justify their existence in Right now, we
have the following courses that can be taught at Vung
Tau. First of all, there’s a six-week basic
refresher course. This is the course we’re going right through
now. Then we have a four-week leadership course. We have a
two-week jump training, a two-week diving training (and this is
open-circuit), and a two-week special operations/jungle warfare type
training. We also have a special eleven-week course set up PRU sea,
air, land operations training. This includes five weeks of the basic
refresher course with more emphasis on intelligence gathering, agent handling
and so forth, two weeks of jumping, two weeks of diving and two weeks of
jungle warfare training. The people who come through this eleven-week
training would be mostly reaction teams throughout the country, special
mobile teams—a team that could move into for a specific job in any province,
do the job and get right back out. They wouldn’t be compromised as far
as being located within a province for any specific time such as these other
teams in the province have a tendency to be done if they hang around a province
capital for too long. By the time you hear this, I’ve
already given you the course breakdown. Some of these titles of
subjects that are used are civilian titles, and I had to use these because of
the civilian authority and approval. ·
The general courses we teach are motivation of personnel, leadership with
management areas, physical training, hand-to-hand combat, first aide and
seminars on operational techniques in different provinces. ·
In operations areas, we teach map and compass work, communications, planning
of operations, briefing (this includes the use of the sand table which we
emphasize very, very heavily), debriefing (oral and written), execution of
operations, operational reporting and small unit operations techniques (small
unit tactics) and field training. ·
Under field training, we teach ambush and counter ambush, raid,
road/river/stream surveillance, ground search and tracking, operational
movement, camouflage concealment, unit movement with sound discipline, hand
signals and formations, and water transport. All teams are taught water
transport because there’s no place in ·
Intelligence courses we teach are sources of information, VC infrastructure
(the complete infrastructure starting with the Russian revolution on down
into its effect in the hamlet level today in Vietnam), intelligence
recognition, security, compartmentation,
surveillance, sketching, elicitation, evaluation of intelligence, clandestine
communication, recruiting of agents and recruiting of sympathizers within VC
controlled areas, interrogation, photography. ·
Under special operations, we teach abduction and capture, rescue, escape and
evasion, survival, penetration/infiltration/exfiltration
techniques, disguises, deception, artillery and air target spotting and other
means of elimination. ·
In weapons we teach the BAR, the Bren, the M-60, the carbine, the grease gun, the
Swedish K, the caliber .45 pistol, the M-1 sniper rifle with the sniper scope
and the M-79 grenade launcher. We do not teach any Mortar we give them
a familiarization, but that’s all. ·
In Demolitions, we teach anti-personnel demolitions, claymore mines, booby
trapping. Because we use the claymore mine, we also teach them priming,
capping, non-electric and electric firing, delays and so forth. Every academic lecture, otherwise
every hour spend in the classroom, every segment spent in the classroom, we
give them a ten question examination similar to what is given in UDT
training. We further give them a weekly test covering all activities
done in a week. We give them a midcourse examination of fifty questions
and a final course examination of seventy-five questions. All of these
are multiple choice. For field training exercises, they have night
problems every night. When I say night problems there’s night training
that could be done in the camp somewhat such as sand table building and so
forth, but when they go out on actual night problem which is three to four
times a week, they plan it, brief, execute, debrief and report on it with an
American advisor as an observer and the Vietnamese instructors observing and
critiquing. It’s just worked out really well. It’s very similar
on some of the concepts of the Ranger training except we’ve modified it
towards the use of the Vietnamese or indigenous personnel. In closing, I would like to say that
this program has been quite an experience…starting from scratch, the building
of the camp, the outfitting, the payment of indigenous personnel, everything
that’s connected with a program such as this. I’ve really been
amazed. I feel that if we can impart this knowledge and disseminate it,
it would be a real value to the Navy, and we could set up programs basically
the same as this anywhere, anywhere in the world in any country with no
problem. There was no problem getting indigenous personnel to work on
something like this. It’s just a matter of making contact and getting
them the necessary financial support from somewhere. I think we’re, in
all truthfulness, more capable than any other specialized unit. We’re
more adaptable, more flexible than anyone else. Thank you very much. " |
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Chief Guy E. Stone,
escorted Bob's body back to In addition to other medals, Bob was
posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit
with the Combat "V", a medal normally given to staff or Flag
ranking officers. Click on the link to view the complete description. He was
also awarded the Bronze Star (with combat "V") and posthumously
promoted to Chief Petty Officer. This site is not only dedicated to Bob
but also to his wife, Helen. During his time in |
Carl Swepston with SQT class at Bob Wagner’s grave
SQT class K-Bar knife |
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Bob's family.
From left: Karen, Jim, Mike, Bob Jr., and Bob's wife, Helen. Bob's
second son, Mark, died January 14, 1976 If there are any comments about the information on this website please send an e-mail message to Mike Wagner: mwagnerla@yahoo.com |