SFC Edward J. “Pat” Brogan
De Oppresso Liber

Pat, 72, has returned to the “all Healing Hands” of the Lord. Pat retired from the U.S. Army Special Forces having served in Germany twice, Thailand and multiple tours in Vietnam.

Pat was born September 18th 1938 in Tampa, a seventh generation “Cracker”. His eternal PCS was March 6th, 2011 at Mease Countryside Hospital. Pat fought a courageous battle with COPD for the last 8 years his final with the assistance of Hospice in his home.

Pat served with the 77th Special Forces Company, the 46th Special Forces Company and the 5th, 7th and 10th Groups. In Vietnam he was in III Corp and II Corp Mike Force, as well as MACV-SOG. He served as an instructor in the Advanced Training Committee teaching HALO, SCUBA, and Skyhook. He was a member of the U.S. Army Parachute Team that pre-dated what is now known as the Golden Knights. He was a member of the Trojan Parachute team in Bad Toelz, Germany in the 1950’s. He spent a tour at Ft. Carson, CO. on the Mountain Rescue Team and as a flight paramedic in the M.A.S.T Unit. While with M.A.S.T, he and his crew flew over 100 search and rescue sorties evacuating survivors of the Big Thompson Canyon flood that claimed 250 lives. They flew round the clock missions for 72 hours straight.

Before retiring, his final assignment was in Bad Toelz, Germany, running the Special Forces Europe Parachute Center. He was the Area Safety Officer and was responsible for organizing several international military freefall competitions. He and his wife Joyce turned the Parachute Center into a “family” friendly center teaching dependants of the soldiers how to enjoy the sport of parachuting. In the two and a half years he ran the center there were no major injuries or fatalities because of his insistance on safety first.

During his military career he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal with 7 stars, Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with palm, Bronze Star with “V” device, Air Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal with “v” device, He was also awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, Master Parachutist Wings, Royal Thai Army Jump Wings, Scuba Diver Badge, Freefall Jump Wings, Skyhook.

After the Army, Pat worked as personal security for H. Ross Perot “The Boss” and his family. He also worked for Special Protection Inc. Later, with his wife and brother-in-law, Bud Goeltzenleuchter, ran two ports for the franchise known as Club Nautico in Dunedin and New Port Richie. Following his love for the sea as a licensed Sea Captain he founded and co owned Delta Sea Rescue which operated out of Marker One Marina in Dunedin until approx 1998.

Pat is a Past Commander of VFW Post 10757, Tarpon Springs, FL and also a 32nd Degree Mason with the Scottish Rite.

He was a volunteer firefighter during his life at fire departments in North Carolina, Michigan, and Florida.
His sons followed his wishes of serving our country for at least two years. All served more than what their father ever expected of them. All of them in the U.S. Army. All of them with ten plus years of service with the youngest son still serving with twenty plus years.

He is survived by His wife Joyce and sons David Pall-Brogan, Timothy Pall, and Denis Brogan, two Daughters from a previous marriage, Patti and Winnie, six grand children and his sister Mary Douglas.

Memorial services to be held at VFW Post 2550, 360 Douglas Ave., Dunedin, FL. Service to commence at approximately 6:15 pm with a motorcade forming at Klosterman Rd. and US 19. at 5:00 pm.

In lieu of flowers we are accepting contributions. Contributions will be used to benefit 3 Veteran relief funds.
 

A Quiet Professional
Written by Chris Ballmer for an article in the Chapter XL SFA newsletter.
Volume 15 issue 2 February 2002

Pat Brogan is the quintessential Special Forces Soldier. From an early age he had a sense of history and his place in it. A 7th generation Florida Cracker (Arcadia is named for his great great great aunt) and the son of a career military man, Pat thinks his childhood experiences prepared him much better for going into the world and making his way than non-military kids. Born in September of 1938 at what is now MacDill Air force Base, Pat remembers the days of a “plane a day in Tampa Bay”. He remembers because his father was the commander of the crash boat squadron that had to race into the bay to search for survivors when planes went down. His family was on the first boat into Southeast Asia after WWII. The military contingent and their dependants sailed into Okinawa in 1946. Pat still remembers seeing many of the 30,000 Japanese prisoners that were still on the island when his family arrived.

Another relative who had impact on Pat’s life was his Uncle Harold Brogan. The stories and the esprit of the paratroopers that Pat got from his uncle made him determined to be airborne. At 17, in 1955, Pat enlisted in the U.S. Army.

As luck would have it, he enlisted directly into Special Forces from induction; all he had to do was get through Basic, Advanced Training and Jump School. The DI’s were seasoned combat veterans with service with the 101st Airborne in World War II and the 187th Airborne in Korea and they were determined to make sure the “kids” coming in would be ready for combat. Pat is sure this training helped him throughout his career. Jump school at this time lasted 6 weeks, 1 orientation week, 4 weeks to complete jump school, and a week for the permanent staff to put everyone on a detail. Pat went immediately from jump school to the 77th Special Forces Group located in the old RTC area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was assigned as a demo man to FA-96 of FB-13 of FC-3. In 1956 he went to Mountain School in Fort Carson, Colorado. Then it was on to Key West for scuba school. He also went through E&E school, working both aggressor and escapee teams. During Christmas leave in 1956, Pat was assigned to the 82nd Airborne and place TDY with 18th Airborne Corps for Operation King Cole, one of the last multi-division exercises the Army held in the continental United States. He was destined to remain attached to the 18th Airborne until the end of his first enlistment in September 1958.

Pat then again enlisted for Special Forces and SGM Halford created a clerk/typist slot for him to get him on “the hill.” After 4 months in that slot he moved to Germany with the “C” team, 1st Provisional Training Company of the 10th SF Group (Abn) in Bad Toelz, FRG, as a demo man. He went through the Army Demo while in Germany. Pat was in Germany from 1959 until 1961, returned to Fort Bragg for four months as a Demo Instructor, and returned to A Company of the 10th Group, in Lengreiss, FRG when a buddy of his gave up his 2 year rotation. Back to Fort Bragg in 1964, Pat was assigned to E company of the 7th Group. After a few months Pat was ranking Engineer and Operations NCO, and was the Team Sergeant although only an E-6. He worked with Captain Jackson, an ex enlisted paratrooper. During his tour Pat received training and practice in Weapons, Commo, Military Free Fall, Skiing and Advanced Mountain Training. In the fall of 1964 he re-enlisted for a Halo Instructor slot, and trained in Halo, Scuba, and Skyhook. Pat is one of the few who has made a “live” lift with the skyhook technique. During a demonstration for the Secretary of the Army, contrary to what had been planned and practiced, Pat was sent to the flight line to get in the harness and get ready to roll. Awaiting the pickup, Pat warned a Life photographer not to stand in front of him because the pickup might be at a cross angle. The photographer responded with the old “sure, sure” and kept on taking pictures. Pat remembers both his Jump Boots hitting the guy in the face just before he got fully airborne. Being the old “Halo” guy, Pat started having fun flying on the rope. He found out that performing a ”full delta” would fly him up, above and behind the open cargo door with the winch reeling him in. Little did he know that the crewmen waving at him frantically weren’t having fun and encouraging him. They were trying to let him know that the rope had broken away from the fuselage and that only two wraps around the winch wheel were holding him attached to the plane. After landing, Pat was “because he earned it”, awarded the hook end of the skyhook rope instead of the traditional 3-4 feet of the rope end.

In 1965 Pat headed to the Republic of Vietnam. After being inhospitably run out of A-332 Minh Tanh after about a month in the country, Pat was assigned to the Tay Ninh B-Team. While there, he volunteered for the III-Corp Mike Force with whom he operated until October 1966. During this time Pat was a part of what he thinks may have been the only C-130 Combat Assault in Vietnam when his Mike Force made a landing on a hot runway at Loc Ninh to relieve the A-camp defenders.

Stateside for only 5 months, he returned to the Republic of Vietnam in March of 1967 with orders attaching him to MAC-SOG. Pat sneaked out of Bien Hoa and headed for the Mike Force where SGM Welsley found a spot for him. One night SGM Bill DeSoto who was the senior NCO for MAC-SOG came into the bar and gave Pat 10 minutes to get his stuff packed and get on the chopper for Da Nang.

Pat worked as an engineer for the first few months, simultaneously building two FBO’s. Then he and Don Levitt assigned to Operation Eldest Son. They headed to Saigon for briefing, just in time to get caught downtown at the start of the Tet Offensive with nothing but a jeep and a 45 caliber pistol apiece. They safely negotiated the alleys and streets and got to the MAC SOG compound. Two days later they were in Okinawa to work on Eldest Son.

Declassified not so long age (see the book by John Plaister) Eldest Son was the operation designed to contaminate VC and NVA ammunition, rifle, machine gun and mortar shells with explosive rounds that would both destroy the weapon and the operator. Pat and Don developed methods of accomplishing this, and manufacturing the contaminated shells. They should have gotten a patent for the “rickshaw” device they invented to set off the mortar shells in the tube. When the mortar is fired, a belleville spring starts an inertial device that drops onto a small charge which then ignites the HE in the mortar round half way up the tube. To contaminate bullets, they pulled the bullet off the jacket, poured out the powder and replaced it with the exact same weight of Composition A high explosives. The rounds were then replaced into the middle of captured ammunition, taken back to Vietnam and “salted” into the countryside. Working on direct orders from the President, Pat and Don spent most of the rest of 1968 manufacturing the shells, re-inserting the contaminated rounds, flying back to Vietnam, and going into the bush to “salt the trails’ with his handiwork. Toward the end of 1968 Pat went ITT to 46th Company, Thailand where he was the Operations and Intel (S-3) Sergeant for the Headquarters Company at Loi Buri. In late 1968 Pat returned home to Fort Bragg as the Operations and Intelligence (AIR) Sergeant for the JFK center for Special Warfare, Institute for Military Assistance. Part of his time was spent as the Special Forces liaison and SF Student Commander at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia.

At the end of his enlistment in 1970, Pat opted to ETS rather than accept the E-8 slot available to him. Instead of being allowed six months to get his affairs in order he would have had to return to Vietnam in 3 months.

After four years as a civilian, Pat re-enlisted as a PFC with the 4th Infantry (leg) as an equipment repairman. Finding out about his experience and his training, he was attached to the Fort Carson Mountain Rescue team and instructed at the Mountain school. He was later assigned to be a radio operator than flight medic for the 571st Helicopter Ambulance Company. He served as a flight paramedic with the Military Assistance Safety Transportation (MAST) flight team. He is as proud of his accomplishments there, as with anything else he has done. He is especially proud that he was part of the 101 helicopter search and rescue sorties flown into the Big Thompson Canyon area of Colorado during a 72 hour period. Major thunderstorm floods wiped out four small towns and several homesteads all along the 20 mile long canyon that narrows to 50 yards at places and helicopters were flying from first light until complete darkness. He remembers saving a few people from the fate that claimed 250 lives.

Assigned to the 14th Maintenance in Weisbaden, Germany, Pat was an electronic instrument repairman and he spent most of his time replaces modulators in PRC-25’s. When his commander was gone one weekend, he got a call from SGM Lyons in Bad Toelz telling him that if he could get to a friend at Personnel there was a position available for him. Pat got the XO to give him permission, walked the paperwork to the clerk himself, and he was in Bad Toelz a couple of days before his old commander knew he was gone.

Pat took over the Parachute Club center at Bad Toelz and in 30 days was able to pass the first IG inspection the club had passed in five years. He is also proud that he jumped in the first Herbst Fest in Bad Toelz in 1959 and ended his career running the Herbst Fest Parachute Meet twenty years later.

After 20 plus years of service, Pat retired in 1979. Six months later he was in Dallas, Texas for a job interview with H. Ross Perot. He eventually was assigned as a bodyguard to the Perot family, but he finally decided the 80 to 90 hours a week was worth having a house and horses on one of Perot’s compounds.

Pat is very proud of his three sons, all of whom have served time in the military and reserves. The two oldest sons came into his life when he married Joyce, the widow of his best friend Louis S. Pall. David Allen, the eldest, had his named changed to David Allen Pall-Brogan as a 50th birthday present for Pat. David was an MP with the 82nd Airborne. The youngest, Denis Patrick Brogan was also an MP. Timothy Daniel Pall. The middle son served as a combat medic. They all followed dad’s caveat, “when you turn 18, you owe your country 2 years service.”

Reflecting on his life, Pat emphatically states “I would not trade my life for anyone’s. I got to do everything I ever dreamed of doing and I can’t think of anything I really wanted to do I haven’t done.” From raising his boys to knowing Martha Raye as “Aunt Maggie” to being with Special Forces in 1961 when Kennedy awarded the unit the Green Beret, to meeting President Kennedy again as he inspected the SF equipment demonstrations at the Fulda Gap in 1963, Pat participated in many of the major and unique Special Forces events that have occurred during its 50 year history.

When asked that given his experience, training and history, what would he most like to pass on to future generations of Special Forces quiet professionals, Pat thought for a few minutes before answering. He replied. “Today is seems like all the Special Forces training is aimed primarily at physical fitness. Everyone wants to say I have the biggest build. This is more of an attitude for the Rangers, not Special Forces. We had to be able to do physical stuff Rangers do, but Special Forces always emphasized using our brain as our best weapon. SF’s job is imparting the necessary knowledge to the people you train. This should never be forgotten.”