Mike Guardia - Shadow Commander: The Epic Story of Donald D. Blackburn—Guerrilla Leader and Special Forces Hero

INTRODUCTION

The fires on Bataan burned with a primitive fury on the evening of April 9, 1942, illuminating the white flags of surrender against the nighttime sky. Woefully outnumbered, outgunned, and ill-equipped, the battered remnants of the American-Philippine army surrendered to the wrath of the Rising Sun. Yet amongst the chaos and devastation of the American defeat, Army Captain Donald D. Blackburn refused to lay down his arms.

Together with Russell Volckmann, the pair escaped from Bataan and fled to the mountainous jungles of North Luzon, where they raised a private army of over 22,000 men against the Japanese. Under Volckmanns leadership, Blackburn organized a guerrilla regiment from among the native tribes in the Cagayan Valley. Blackburns Headhunters, as they came to be known, devastated the Japanese 14th Army with in the eastern provinces of North Luzon and destroyed the Japanese naval base at Aparrithe largest enemy anchorage in the Philippine Islands.

After the war, Blackburn remained on active duty and played a key role in initiating Special Forces operations in Southeast Asia. In 1959, as commander of the 77th Special Forces Group, he spearheaded Operation White Star the first major deployment of American Special Forces to a country with an active insurgency. Six years later, at the outset of Americas combat mission in Vietnam, Blackburn took over the highly classified Studies and Observations Group (SOG).

In the wake of the CIAs disastrous Leaping Lena reconnaissance program, Blackburn revitalized the special operations campaign in South Vietnam. Sending cross-border reconnaissance teams into Laos, he discovered the clandestine networks and supply nodes of the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail. Taking this information directly to General Westmoreland, Blackburn received authorization to conduct full-scale operations against the NVA and Viet Cong operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Following his return to the United States, Blackburn was appointed Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities, where he was the architect of the famous Son Tay Prison Raid. Officially termed Operation Ivory Coast (and later, Kingpin ) the Son Tay Raid was the largest POW rescue missionand indeed, the largest Special Forces operationof the Vietnam War.

The idea for this project began in January 2008 when I was conducting research for my first book, American Guerrilla: The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann. In the opening stages of the war, Blackburn and Volckmann developed a close friendship while they were assigned to Headquarters Staff, 11th Division (Philippine Army). Previously, I knew nothing about Donald Blackburn outside of Volckmanns literature. However, at the US Armys Military History Institute (MHI) in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, I discovered the 400-page transcript of an interview conducted with Blackburn by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Smith (USAF) in 1983. As part of the Senior Officers Oral History Program, this interview covered nearly every aspect of Blackburns lifehis childhood, the Philippines, Vietnam, Son Tay, and his activities since retirement. After reading the transcript, I was surprised that, despite his impressive career, no one had ever written a biography of Donald Blackburn.

At this stage in my research, I assumed that Blackburn, like many of Volckmanns comrades, had passed away. However, the interview transcript included a bio-data section indicating that Blackburn had two children, Donald Jr. and Susan. I initiated a public records search to locate Blackburns children and, in the course of doing so, was surprised to discover that Blackburn himself was still alive and living in Sarasota, Florida. Contacting Blackburns family, I secured a visitation in March 2008.

Unfortunately, Blackburn had been suffering from Alzheimers which diluted much of his memory. However, his daughter, Susan, granted me access to all of his records. Comprising nearly two whole filing cabinets, The Donald D. Blackburn Collection included a wealth of photographs, letters, war trophies, guerrilla reports, and official duplicates of government documents. I also learned that Blackburn, like Volckmann, had kept a diary while in the Philippines. The diary spanned the period from October 23, 1941 to April 29, 1944. Although Blackburns diary contained fewer entries than Volckmanns, Blackburn often wrote his entries at greater length.

Blackburns diary became the basis of the 1955 book, Blackburns Headhunters . The idea for that work began in 1950, when Blackburn was teaching at West Point in the Department of Military Psychology and Leadership. As it were, Blackburns wartime experience caught the attention of the Commandant of Cadets, then-Major General Paul D. Harkins. Convincing Blackburn to get his story published, General Harkins tasked his younger brother, Philip Harkins, to pen Blackburns Headhunters .

Four years after its publication, Hollywood turned Blackburns Headhunters into a feature film. Allied Artists, a prominent B-movie studio, began production in 1958 and invited Blackburn to serve as a technical advisor on the film. Actor Keith Andes (a Broadway baritone and former leading man to Marilyn Monroe) portrayed Blackburn in the film. Under the new title SurrenderHell! , the movie was released on July 26, 1959. The film was a modest success at the box office, but Blackburn hated it. He thought that the filmmakers had taken too much artistic license by creating subplots that never existed. On one occasion, he called it the worst movie Ive ever seen. Modern critics have often referred to it as typical 1950s B-movie fare.

In Spring 2008, SurrenderHell! had not yet been released on any home video format. Determined to see whether the film held any research value, I began searching for the rights-holder. Allied Artists had since gone out of business and its film library had been acquired by Republic Pictures. However, my search for SurrenderHell! ultimately led me to a gentlemen named Kit Parker, proprietor of Kit Parker Films International. Parkers film studio specializes in restoring old noir films and re-releases them through VCI Entertainment. Contacting Parker about the rights to SurrenderHell! , he informed me that his production team had restored the film and were planning to re-release it on DVD that summer. After watching SurrenderHell! I can understand Blackburns frustration with the subplots and historical inaccuracies. And although it provided no help to my research, I still found it to be an enjoyable film.

Blackburn also conducted interviews with the Special Warfare Center in 1988 and 1993, respectively. Both interviews cover the same topics as the 1983 MHI Oral History Project. The transcript for the 1988 interview currently rests at the US Special Operations Command History Office at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The audiotapes for the 1993 interview are also at Fort Bragg, filed in the JFK Special Warfare Center and School Archives.

Works produced by Blackburns own hand include War Within a War: The Philippines, 19421945 and Operations of the 11th Infantry, USAFIP-NL, in the Capture of Mayoyao, Mountain Province, PI, 26 July8 August 1945. The former is an article Blackburn submitted for the Summer 1988 edition of Conflict , while the later was Blackburns capstone research paper for the Infantry Officers Advanced Course, which he attended in 194748. War Within a War gives an overview of his and Volckmanns guerrilla campaign in North Luzon. The paper describes in detail Blackburns own experience as a regimental commander fighting the Japanese in the Mayayao Campaign.