Per Colonel Francis John Kelly’s book on the US Army’s Special Forces aka Green Berets.
The same events and pressures that shaped directly or indirectly the major part of American foreign policy during the last twenty years led to the formation and activation of the U.S. Army Special Forces.
In February of 1950 the United States recognized a quasi· independent Viclilam within the French Union and first began to consider granting aid to the French forces fighting against Commu· nist insurgency in Indochina. In May of the same year lhe United
States agreed lO grant military and economic aid. American involve ment in post-World W(lT IJ Southeast Asia had begun. Four years later, in May 1954, the French Army was defeated by the Viet Minh-the Communist-supported Vietnam Independence League at Dien Bien Illlll, and under the Geneva armistice agreement Viet nam was divided into Nonh and South Vietnam. tn the course of those four years the policy-makers of the United States had an opportunity to observe the struggle of France with the insurgentS and to become familiar with the political and military situation in Vietnam. It \'a$ also during those years that the U.S. Army Special Forces came into existence.
Orighl of Ihe Speci(d Forces
The 1st Special Service Force of World War I I is considered the antecedent of the present U.S. Army Special Forces. In the spring of 1942 the British Chief of Combined Operations, Vice Admiral
Lord Louis Mountbatten. introduced to U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall a project conceived by an English civilian, Geoffrey N. Pike. for the development of special equip ment to be used in snow-covered mOllntain terrain. This plan. named PLOUGH, was designed for altack on such critical points as the hydroelectric plants in Norway upon which the Germans de pended for mining valuable ores. American manufacturers working 011 equipment for the project developed a tracked vehicle known as the Weasel and eventually standardized as the M29.
General Marshall concluded that an elite force recruited in