Inside MAC-V SOG: The Green Beret Who Ran the Most Classified Missions of the Vietnam War | Ep. 289

About this video

Ritland interviews Travis Mills, a Vietnam-era Green Beret who served in the classified MAC VOG unit. Mills recounts his upbringing in rural Texas, working wheat harvests and in manufacturing, his father’s World War II Navy service as a diver salvaging ships in the South Pacific, and the circumstances that led him to enlist in the Army in the 1960s with the goal of joining Special Forces rather than being drafted.

Key takeaways

• Mills attributes his decision to enlist to an imminent draft notice in the mid-1960s, choosing to volunteer for Special Forces rather than wait to be drafted as a standard infantryman.
• Mills’ guest recounts his father being rescued from the USS Kidd during WWII by Mills’ own father, who was diving on sunken ships—a remarkable coincidence discovered decades later.
• Mills describes learning early awareness of Vietnam through stories from a coworker’s uncle who was a MACV advisor in 1963, providing context about communism and the strategic importance of rice-producing nations.

Episode details: published April 28, 2026 · 99.7K views · 5:01:46 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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