Viet Rock Apes: Vet Confirmation
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 9th, 2011
Based on my past postings, part of which can be read below, this following confirmation has been left by a Cryptomundian identifying himself as “VietVet”:
In country, 65-66, 70-71, 71-72.
Rock Ape sightings. Central highlands and up.
Humped jungle in line plt. (squad size 6-10) and of course Recon and LLRPS.Your sightings were more likely from out in the bush (infantry) and not base camp, better known as (REMF’S).
Sightings limited for reason of proximity and location, not to mention reports.
Example the RTO gets on the horn and our Lt. reports to the commander, “Enemy contact 3 kia’s. NVA or VC?”
“No we killed 3 rock apes.”
“Don’t the damn fools know the difference between the enemy and a bunch of monkeys.”Looks nice on a sitrat (situation report), doesn’t it?
A lot happens and [is] never reported and/or not considered significant, especially in a war zone.Yes, they are real; how do I know?
I saw them and I say they are real; big deal, don’t mean nothin’.
VietVet
In the book, Very Crazy GI – Strange but True Stories of the Vietnam War, Vietnam War veteran Kregg P. J. Jorgenson tells of how he had an actual sighting of a short, red-haired, hairy, upright anthropoid, which he says soldiers in Vietnam called a “Rock Ape.” One even was said to be captured in Dak Lak Province in 1971, and in 1974 a North Vietnamese general, Hoang Minh Thao, requested an expedition to find evidence of the creatures, but it was unsuccessful.
Other soldiers, we are told, down through the years, have told of their own Vietnam War era encounters with these cryptids.
Incidents are to be found on the Internet, such as this one here:
All except one was light brown to reddish brown in color, and about 3 1/2 four feet tall. One dark, almost black, male remained fighting to protect the others retreat and he was flying through the branches and rushing the men with his teeth bared. He was one very brave animal, I’ll tell you that. Michael Kelley
And here:
When Poncho got control of himself, he told me that he had been walking back to the bunker when he noticed a bush that hadn’t been there before. He bent over to see it better and it SNORTED at him and he fired. What he had encountered was the ubiquitous Rock Ape of Vietnam. I would come to learn that they were nearly everywhere, and quite fearless. That is what we had heard near the wire that night.Robert “JungleVet” Baird
Names like “Monkey Mountain” apparently referred not to local monkeys but to the Rock Apes.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
It does not seem too much of a stretch to put a species of the gibbon/siamang group in Vietnam.
Bernard Heuvelmans thought the Minnesota Iceman was smuggled out of Vietnam in a body bag. Does 2+2 = anything significant?
Matt: It’s not an impossible stretch to put this to gibbon/siamangs.
But it would require some stretching. And the aggressive behavior attributed to these animals doesn’t seem characteristic of those animals.
I think that “the jungle” meant to a lot of Americans: anything you see out there is to be expected. I would also think that scientific documentation was way down on the list of to-dos in a war zone. Wonder how many servicemen saw a saola and went: another jungle critter?
My grandfather retired Air Force Master Sargent Richard D Locke will give you confirmatiom as soon as he returns from polson montana at the end of the month as he saw them many times. I told him of the interest in the rock apes and has agreed to share his info about them with Loren.
My father, a member of the Marine’s Force Recon unit at the time, can confirm this as well. More specifically, they encountered a colony of them when first establishing and securing the infamous “Rock Pile.” He said that they lived about half way up, and were very aggressive in nature.