Nick: “SOG’s Secret Agent Man”

By John S. Meyer
Originally published in the July 2020 Sentinel

It was Saturday afternoon on April 30, 2011 when more than a dozen Green Beret veterans and several hundred people gathered at Whitley’s Funeral Home in Kannapolis, N.C., to bid final farewell to Green Beret SFC Donald Monroe Shue. On November 3, 1969, Shue was one of three Green Berets on RT Maryland who were overrun by communist forces in Laos. All three Americans assigned to the top secret Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group, or simply SOG, were listed as MIA for 41 years. At the end of April, his remains arrived in North Carolina.

On this day, comrades-in-arms, family and friends gathered to pay final respects to Shue and his family, after a huge public welcome home event in neighboring Concord, N.C., complete with a motorcycle procession led by fellow Green Berets from the Special Operations Association Riders that stretched for more than nine miles with citizens standing along every street and overpass from downtown to the funeral home. It was an amazing event for the Kannapolis-born Shue and his family.

SOG’s Secret Agent

At one point in the gathering, then-recently retired Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell — who served two tours of duty in SOG, where he earned the Distinguished Service Cross, approached fellow SOG recon man Doug “The Frenchman” LeTourneau and me, and pointed to a nattily attired gentleman who was on a bent knee talking to Shue’s sister Betty S. Jones in reverential tones. Bargewell asked LeTourneau, “Who the hell is that?” pointing to the gentleman.

Without missing a beat, LeTourneau quickly replied: “Don’t tell anyone. That’s SOG’s top secret agent.” Bargewell, who during nearly 40 years of service in the Army spent most of those years in highly classified units from the Rangers to the elite Delta Project, knew about every secret project in the government and responded, “WTF!? How come I never heard about him?”

LeTourneau couldn’t resist teasing his long-time friend and highly respected general: “You know how it is in top secret operations, if we told you, we’d have to shoot you.” Then the kidding stopped and LeTourneau quickly laid out how Nick Di Benedetto, then-62, and recently retired as an auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he oversaw more than 800 employees in five offices spread throughout central and south Italy had arrived in Kannapolis.

The Journey Begins

Di Benedetto’s journey to the funeral home began during the summer of 1966 in Kannapolis, where he had breakfast at a narrow restaurant that had a long bar and serving area. He had arrived in the United States a few weeks earlier to stay with an American family. On that morning in 1966, Di Benedetto was standing looking at a bulletin board in the restaurant when a young man approached him and introduced himself as Donnie Shue. “I always remembered his last name because, even though my English was broken at that time, I teased him about misspelling his last name…. We talked for several minutes. He was extremely kind to a complete, total stranger,” Di Benedetto said.

They met again in that narrow restaurant the following day and at some point the topic of Vietnam came up. “I remember asking him about what he thought about the war in Vietnam, that was so far away from Kannapolis, North Carolina. I don’t recall exactly what he said, but I do remember that he had a strange smile on his face. We spoke briefly and bid fond adieu, returning to our lives.” That encounter with Shue stuck with Di Benedetto over the years.

Decades Later

Thirty plus years later, Di Benedetto went to the Virtual Wall website and decided to type in Shue’s name. “I must admit, when I typed his name in I had hoped it wouldn’t come up. When it came up, I was heartbroken. Saddened beyond words. During that sad day, I made a vow to myself that I would never forget the men, like Donnie who served America in that war, in that deadly secret war.” He purchased a POW/MIA bracelet with Shue’s name on it. He wore it faithfully everyday as his responsibilities at PcW grew requiring international travel as well as meetings at the five PcW offices he oversaw in Rome, Florence, Naples, Palermo and Bari.

Being an avid reader of history with a strong sense of admiration for the United States — his grandfather worked in the U.S. for 10 years before WWII erupted, he read military history books and began to learn about SOG. By early 2008, he had purchased my non-fiction book On The Ground – The Secret War in Vietnam, which mentioned the November 3, 1969 mission in Laos when Shue’s team, RT Maryland was overrun by communist soldiers. Shue and his teammates Bill Brown and Gunther Wald were never heard from again.

Nick Gathers Intel

On October 14, 2008, I received my first e-mail of introduction from Nick where he expressed his appreciation of SOG’s unique place in history and he had many questions about RT Maryland. Over the following weeks we exchanged many e-mails. And, finally I received a phone call from Nick. We spoke for quite a while before I realized that he was calling from Rome, Italy — not Rome, GA.

Over the next few months, we developed a friendship as he asked deep, knowledgeable questions about SOG. By the spring of 2009, we had exchanged e-mails on everything from RT Maryland to our family history to new SOG books hitting the market place such as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Lynne M. Black Jr. As all of this unfolded I gave LeTourneau updates on Di Benedetto and how he wanted to meet Black, LeTourneau, Bargewell and other SOG recon legends and was contemplating attending our annual reunion in Las Vegas of the Special Operations Association, formed by SOG recon men after the war.

Nick’s Mission

On November 16, 2009, things became much more interesting when Di Benedetto casually mentioned in an e-mail: “…I just finished corresponding with a travel agency in Laos.”

Four days later, I received an email with an itinerary that took him from Rome to Dubai, to Bangkok and finally to Vientiane, Laos, with plans to helicopter into Salavan Province with the hope of being able to land on the exact location in Laos where the SOG Forward Air Controller last observed RT Maryland, as the team was setting up its RON (Rest Over Night) on November 2, 1969.

Over the next 20 days Di Benedetto worked with Laotian authorities to visit that site in the jungle and a nearby village Ban Chakenvy Tai (he later learned that its name had been changed to Koung Ban Kong). Later he was authorized to build a water line from the Nam Xe Kong River into the village in an attempt to spend enough time there to make friends with some old people who might have had some knowledge of what happened that fatal night and perhaps provide information useful to tracking the remains of those men. In between he had to return to Rome to work in his fledging international consulting business.

Nick’s SITREP

Then, on December 14, 2009 I received this e-mail: “SITREP: I called you twice on your mobile and once on your (land line) from the very spot where RT Maryland was attacked….” He picked up three stones and some soil from that spot in Laos to bring them back to Rome.

I called LeTourneau, filled him in on Di Benedetto’s latest report from Laos and he responded, “Nick is SOG’s secret agent man. I can’t believe he made it to the RON.”

LeTourneau also had a burning interest on any details about RT Maryland’s fate because its One-Zero (Team Leader) Gunther Wald had served with him as the One-Zero on RT Virginia for a handful of missions into Laos and the DMZ in late 1968 and early 1969, before LeTourneau transferred to RT Idaho. LeTourneau also knew Brown from their days at FOB 1 and at CCN. He met Shue in early October 1969. After he ran his last mission with One-Zero Lynne M. Black Jr., on RT Idaho, he turned over all of his equipment to Shue, “because he was a new guy in camp,” said LeTourneau. “I showed him the ropes at CCN because I remembered how kind (SFC) John McGovern was to me when I first landed at FOB 1. That’s what SF does, we take care of our own….I liked Shue. He was a sharp, young soldier.”

I told LeTourneau how Di Benedetto had landed close by in a village of ten or so huts, Ban Chakeuy Tai, at the side of a river where he was greeted by about 40 screaming kids. I told LeTourneau, “Nick had brought a backpack full of colored pencils, pens, exercise books, T shirts and 2 cartons of cigarettes for the adults. The pilot told Nick that it was a good thing he was an Italian because if he were an American the authorities would not have allowed him to give even those innocent gifts to the locals!”

Mission Accomplished

I read to LeTourneau Di Benedetto’s e-mail to me: “So this has been the 14th December 2009 of Nick Di Benedetto and I’m grateful for this accomplishment.” He added: “Next time you talk to your people please tell them that a friend of yours (no need to mention my name), after 40 years left the photos of three of you (one is your picture John) and the (Shue) POW-MIA bracelet in a corner of that jungle, as a sign of your never ending presence.”

“Wow, our secret agent man did good. I can’t believe he tricked those commie bastards so he could get to the RON in an effort to help locate the men of RT Maryland. He managed to do something that none of us have been able to do. That’s amazing,” LeTourneau added.

Three days later Di Benedetto wrote saying the pilot who flew him to the RT Maryland RON told him that Americans working on locating POW/MIA’s remains were optimistic about locating U.S. airmen’s remains. There was no mention about any Army remains.

Thus, LeTourneau and I felt Di Benedetto had earned the nickname of SOG’s Secret Agent. Di Benedetto was too modest, telling me that he simply wanted to try and honor someone who had been kind to him.

15 Months Later

Flash ahead to March 2011, Di Benedetto’s driving — probably at a fast rate of speed — on a road in Rome when he received a text message from me explaining that authorities had recovered Shue’s remains. Stunned, the speeding Di Benedetto had to pull over and stop. For one of the rare moments in his life, he was speechless. He later wrote to Shue’s sister Betty S. Jones, …“I was shaken and wordless.”

By that time, he had purchased a new POW/MIA bracelet with Shue’s name on it and wore it daily. As soon as he heard the good news about Shue’s recovery, he booked a flight to Charlotte, N.C., and quietly met with the SOG recon men who attended that historic weekend event in Kannapolis and Concord, including Bargewell, LeTourneau, Lou DeSeta, John Owens, Ron Owens, George “The Troll” Sternberg, Terry “Destiny” Lanegan, Robert Noe, Larry Kimmel and SF soldiers Jack Tobin and John Randolph.

At the funeral home in Kannapolis, we observed Di Benedetto explaining his story quickly to Shue’s sisters Betty S. Jones and Peggy S. Hinson, and presented them with the Shue MIA/POW bracelet he had worn since returning from Laos 16 months earlier and a book he compiled on his story relating to Shue. Lastly, he presented Betty with a stone he picked up from RT Maryland’s RON site, which he had a jeweler turn into a necklace.

Throughout the entire proceeding, Di Benedetto quietly blended in, paid his final respects and reluctantly spoke to a local reporter about his trip to Kannapolis that day, then returned to Rome, Italy, a humble man who earned the respect of every SF man in attendance at Shue’s service.

Shue’s nephew Micky B. Jones told the Sentinel that he’ll never forget Di Benedetto and the Green Berets who traveled from near and far away to attend Shue’s service in Kannapolis on May 1, 2011. Jones added, “The Shue family would like to thank everyone involved for their participation helping bring Donnie home. That event was beyond anything anyone could hope or even imagine coming true to pay respect to Uncle Donnie for his sacrifice for his love of family and country. Absolutely incredible!”

“Thank you all, God bless.”

SOG recon man John Owens, who attended Special Forces Training Group classes with Shue and spent time with him at CCN before the fateful mission, said this about Di Benedetto: “It’s a great honor to know Nick Di Benedetto and to know about all that he has done for our mutual friend Don Shue. What started as a chance meeting with Don in a coffee shop, to renting a helicopter forty years later in Laos to look for Don’s MIA site is unimaginable. God bless you, Nick.”

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During the funeral service there was a short break, and the aide checked his phone for messages, then leaned over to Mulholland and whispered in his ear.

Doug LeTourneau was standing next to the aide: “I heard that major tell General Mulholland, ‘They got him.’ “

LeTourneau didn’t say anything until we returned to our hotel and on the TV was the good news that Osama bin Laden was killed by Special Operations Forces.

“I heard him say it but didn’t realize how significant those words were,” LeTourneau said that night. “It also gives you special insight into the character of Lt. Gen. Mulholland, here on a day so significant in the war on terror, he took time to pay homage to our Donnie Shue.”

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