“Eldest Son” was the name of the project used to sabotage North Vietnamese arms and ammo. Doctored ammo left behind on bodies or ammo caches by SOG recon team members and Hatchet Force operations in Laos and Cambodia. The explosive ammo was everything from AK rounds to mortar rounds. The picture is from an AK after it fired an Eldest Son round.

The SOG vets recently commented on their experiences with Eldest Son ammo in the private group.

“I placed mine in the corner of an NVA bunker partially covered with dirt.”

“There were some Hatchet Force Companies that had some involvement in Eldest Son. Most Recon Teams weren’t suited for this type of operation. Everyone thinks of Eldest Son as a large insertion of contaminated munitions but it wasn’t. For the most part it was as simple as replacing a magazine in a dead NVA AK 47, then leaving the body and weapon like it was never searched. We weren’t there…it never happened.”

“The op I was on had found several new dirt bunkers and new dug in AA positions. But no equipment yet. On the radio I was asked if it was a good place for Eldest Son. I said no, since there was no hardware of any kind. Dropping a case of any ammo would be very suspect. So, of course, the people back at camp decided we should. They sent out one case of rigged mortar rounds. (The CH34 that brought it, got hydraulic damage and when leaving, had to ditch the chopper on a sand bar in the river on the way. So, another mission had to retrieve it.) One of the dirt bunkers seemed the only place for the case. I put the case of ammo inside against a side wall. (I used to mess with explosives, and had made a concussion grenade from a half strip of C-4 that had a peal and stick strip of adhesive on one side.) I put it on top of the opening of the bunker to partially collapse it and cover the ammo case in dirt. Hoping that if found it would look like we missed the case and we had tried to destroy the bunker. The whole thing just seemed like the folks back at base were too eager to employ Eldest Son.”

I did put a box of mortar ammo out there once. I had told them it was not ideal. But they wanted it, so I put it in a dirt bunker and blew the roof down with a half stick of C-4. Tried to make it appear overlooked. I think they were getting over ambitious by then. It was summer of ’68 out of FOB2. It did cost us one CH34. The pilot ignored my attempts to wave him off. And he landed on a 5 foot stump of a small tree and broke the hydraulics. When he tried to RTB, he had to land on a sand bar in a river. Requiring another mission to retrieve it. “

“At Kontum we usually called it pole bean. We did one mission where a recon team found a large weapons cache so we went in and planted a bunch of AK ammo and some mortar rounds”

“There was a couple of names for the doctored ammo we dropped. We called it Italian Green… one night our compound was receiving incoming rocket and mortar rounds, then there was an explosion off in the distance. The next morning a patrol found a damaged 61mm mortar and a couple of rounds near by…”

The name changed a few timed during the war, from Eldest son, to Italian Green then POle Bean. That’s why you see them refer to it as different things depending on the year they served.