What were the missions they were doing? Did they have to be secretive about their identify and have to be sheep dipped during operations? On paper at the time we know they were supposed to be advisors only, and JFK said they were only authorized to fire unless fired upon, but that's not all they did. For example there is a scene in Ken burns Vietnam documentary episode 2 where green beret Robert Rheault is talking (the man who was the center of the green beret affair for executing a double agent) played over a scene where we presumably see a special ops agent in a gas mask assaulting a village around 1963. Does anybody have more information about that mission?
I have a book about special forces in Vietnam but besides for the phoniex program,training Montagnard's and ARVN in anti insurgency, as well as some operations to disrupt the trail from laos and Cambodia there isn't much info. especially in the early parts of the war before the buildup.
What would be some typical missions and other goals a green beret would accomplishing during say, 1961 or 62?
Throughout the war there were numerous special forces groups that prosecuted the war. You had groups that were geared more towards intelligence gathering such as the CIA, French SDECE, and the various military intelligence agencies. They fought a much quieter war in many respects. These were often small cells of intelligence officers and their local officials. This is the sort of traditional cloak and dagger sort of espionage we are used to seeing in popular media. Though these agencies operated more like guerrilla units in Vietnam than they did elsewhere. The Green Beret units had a much louder role, for the most part, and you do hit on some of the roles they fulfilled. Training foreign units to fight on our behalf was and still is a major component of the Green Berets mission. This is a form of force multiplication, by inserting special forces who can train and direct local units to further the goals of the US military.
The mission and overall goals of the US Army Special Forces takes root in their patrons own goals, the CIA. In 1952 at the behest of the CIA the Green Berets were created to serve functionally as a militant wing of the CIA. Reformed under the Kennedy administration their goal was to counter the Soviet ideology of national ware for liberation as laid out by Nikita Khrushchev. The Kennedy administration saw a rising tide of communist insurgencies that would threaten US foreign policy aims. The Green Berets were the answer put forth by the CIA to fight these insurgencies. In some ways you could say it was fighting fire with fire. To give you an idea of what this meant, the ideal Green Beret was described as:^(1)
an ambassador, propagandist, medical and economic aide, applied anthropologist and surrogate ward heeler for the client government.
In one rapid sweep the Green Berets grew from a dwindling 2,000 men to 8,000 in 1962 when they were deployed to Vietnam in a counter-insurgency role. But their role wasn't simply to go out and kill other insurgents. They had a less glamorous job of building a nation, of propping up South Vietnam through a variety of projects. They primarily worked among the CIDG or Civilian Irregular Defense Groups, Vietnamese villagers trained in irregular warfare by the Green Berets. These are the "montagnards" you typically hear of. The Montagnards were a specific tribe that fought in the CIDG due to their ethnic conflicts with the Vietnamese in the highlands.^(2) CIDG units could be formed out of any group of locals so designated by USSF operations. This particular arm of the USASF would number 42,000 by the time regular US forces were deploying to Vietnam. Their primary role was to extend the counter-insurgency operations of South Vietnam into more rural areas. They defended villages against communist incursions and conducted disruption patrols in rural areas.
Many of the actual missions undertaken by the Green Berets are not in line with the popular image of the unit. We remember them as these heroic units of men who fought in heroic raids against Vietnamese units. While it is true that the Green Berets did make use of the CIDG to harass and raid communist forces, their actual endeavors were much more in line with the "hearts and minds" strategy. They helped to build roads, schools, and classrooms.^(3) They operated clinics and assisted in medical endeavors we would would much quicker recognize as the work of Medicins Sans Frontiers. In 61' and 62' much of what the Green Berets were doing were these sorts of nation building jobs. Raiding against the Ho Chi Minh trail began early in 1964 with Green Beret units organizing Laotian locals to watch trails. In conjunction with South Vietnamese special forces units, these Green Beret units called in airstrikes on the trail and then make assessments as to their effectiveness.^(4) While raiding continued through the war, it remained only a component of a larger counterinsurgency operation. The mission of the Green Berets early on in the war was that of a strict counter-insurgency operation. While it did change under the LBJ administration, the US Army Special Forces largely maintained their role as nation builders and force multipliers.
Sources:
Spark, Alasdair. "The Soldier at the Heart of the War: The Myth of the Green Beret in the Popular Culture of the Vietnam Era." Journal of American Studies 18, no. 1 (1984): 29-48. www.jstor.org/stable/27554399.
Jackson, Larry R. "The Vietnamese Revolution and the Montagnards." Asian Survey 9, no. 5 (1969): 313-30. doi:10.2307/2642459.
Spark, Alasdair.
ROSENAU, WILLIAM. "U.S. AIR GROUND OPERATIONS AGAINST THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL, 1966–1972." In Special Operations Forces and Elusive Enemy Ground Targets: Lessons from Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War, 5-28. Santa Monica, CA; Arlington, VA; Pittsburgh, PA: RAND Corporation, 2001. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mr1408af.8.