Vince Massi said:
In HAC chapel, Jim told about the time he was leading a patrol inside of North Vietnam, and how they were lost. Sitting in the pew, I believed then, as now, that he was lying.
Yep, that absolutely doesn't pass the smell test. His chronological chain of events never match real history. I recently came across a Newspaper site that has an article from The Daily News (Huntingdon, Pennsylvania) dated November 4, 1972 that features Jim Vineyard because he was leading a bus ministry seminar in their town.
http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/17294500/
The article states that he was saved in a motel room on September 17, 1964 as "a businessman well on his way toward making his goal of earning a million dollars". It then goes on to say that Vineyard "spent three and a half years behind the Iron Curtain with the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets)".
I find the "behind the Iron Curtain" comment laughable but will give it a pass because the paper was from Huntingdon. So how long do you suppose he was "in business"? Let's be generous and say two years or since 1962. Since the article says he served three and a half years in the Special Forces, that would make his service in the Army from 1958 to 1962.
Since he never gives details about what SF Group or base he was supposedly in, we have to be deductive. Based on this above timeline, here are some things we know for sure:
1.) JAV would have NEVER fired a M-16 in theater combat. The first M-16 (commercial AR-15s) didn't reach the SF Groups in Vietnam until Spring 1964 and most Groups held on to their M-14s and M-1s until 1966.
2.) The only active SF Groups in 1958-61 were the 10th and 77th (later the 7th). Neither of which deployed to Vietnam. While a handful of advisers were deployed to Vietnam from late 1957, I can assure you none of them were low experience enlisted personnel with less than three years of service. They were all experienced NCOs (but, who knows, maybe they took a mail clerk along).
3.) The 5th SF Group was activated in 1961 expressly to meet the challenges presented in South East Asia and started to deploy to Vietnam in late 1962. It became fully deployed by 1964-65, well after JAV supposed departure.
There, that is just a casual summary that should cause any serious thinker to question JAV's stories. If he would release his records, the world would know. Until then, reasonable deductions lead thinkers to believe that he is a liar.