Apocalypse Now: The Real-Life Colonel Kurtz

Most people who have watched the 1979 American epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, think of Marlon Brando’s character, Colonel Kurtz, as fictional. But we’ll be surprised to hear that he is an actual person. While the Vietnamese majority have a common language and culture, and have developed and maintained the dominant social institutions of Vietnam, the Montagnards do not share that heritage.
The Montagnards retain their tribal customs and ancestral land ownership. And between 1963 and 1965, an Australian army captain would be proclaimed a god by the Montagnards and was forced to flee the country to escape a CIA assassination squad, Fringham gone native.
So who was the infamous Tiger Man of Vietnam? Why did the CIA want him dead? And whatever happened to Captain Barry Peterson? Let’s try and find out. Hello, I’m Mike Droberg, Marine Corps veteran and filmmaker, and we will try to answer these questions on today’s episode of Forgotten History.Arthur Barry Peterson was born on the 8th of February 1935 in the small sugarcane town of Serena, Queensland, 990 kilometers outside of Brisbane. His father, Arthur, owned a radio repair business and served as a staff sergeant in New Guinea and Borneo, who, when he returned from the war, decided to move his family to Innisfail. There, Barry went to school with Italian, Greek, Chinese, and Aboriginal kids, giving him an interest and respect for other cultures.
In 1953, he enlisted in the Australian Army as a part of his national service, but chose to stay on once his term expired. In 1954, he was promoted to second lieutenant as a signaller, and in 1957 was transferred to the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment. 1959 to 1960, he fought in the Malayan Emergency, serving alongside the indigenous tribes to combat the communist terrorists, learning both their language and culture.
This expertise saw him recruited by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, who sent him to Vietnam on the 27th of August in 1963, where he was placed under the command of the CIA. September of 1963, Peterson was sent to Ban My Thuat, a town 265 kilometers away from Saigon, and the capital of the Darloc province.
Located in the Central Highlands and bordering Cambodia, in the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, a secret route through the jungles of supposedly neutral Laos and Cambodia that was supplying the Viet Cong. It was a strategically important site. Peterson’s mission was to train the indigenous Montagnards into an efficient counter-guerrilla unit. Upon arrival, Peterson, using his CIA funds, persuaded the local police chief to gift him 100 of his men from the Riad tribe, much to the annoyance of his corrupt deputy.
Later that night, Peterson was awoken when someone tried to open his locked door. Reaching for his pistol, he realized he had locked it in his drawer and left the keys in the doorknob. Unable to retrieve his keys, he instead armed himself with the only weapon he had at hand, one of his army boots.
Eventually, his intruders gave up and left, but not without Barry getting a glimpse of them, a pair of Vietnamese men. He was convinced they were sent by the deputy. Peterson had a hard time convincing the Montagnard to join the war against the Viet Cong due to the South Vietnamese racism and fear towards them.
Fortunately, he spoke their language, which wasn’t too dissimilar to the Malayan tribespeople he served with. Setting up his base in the half-empty town of Buan An Ao outside Ban My Thot, Peterson began training them rigorously. He was much loved by the raid, who paid him with a pet deer, gibbon ape, sun bear, a tiger cub called Sonny, and a leopard club called Fatima, who later died from eating poisoned chicken sent either by the Viet Cong or the deputy.

But his main achievement was his role in dealing with a local tiger that was preying on their livestock. For two days, Peterson left the goat tied up in the clearing to deceive the feline while he constructed a local tiger that was preying on their livestock.
For two days, Peterson left the goat tied up in the clearing to deceive the feline while he constructed a local hide. On the third day, he sat in the hide, waiting with his friend and interpreter, Waiut. When he saw that the bushes ahead appeared to move, several Montagnards appeared at the bottom of it, jabbering for his attention.
Worried about scaring off the tiger, Peterson sent Wyja to hush them, only for the translator to inform him that the VC were coming. Without hesitation, he fled, although he still won the support of the Ryad. Peterson’s force proved successful, operating in eight-man squads like the Viet Cong compared to the American 100-man patrols. This subsequently forced the VC to operate in larger units, much like their American enemies.
Peterson was ordered to increase his force to 350 and was given another Australian advisor,Warrant Officer Bevan Stokes, to help command. In only a few days, Stokes proved himself when his squad launched a raid on an enemy base and killed the VC commander of the Darlock province.

In response, the Viet Cong placed bounties of 500,000 piasters, equivalent to 600 U.S. dollars, on both Stokes and Peterson and called their Montagnards the Tigermen, due to their unit’s CIA-provided striped camo uniforms. Peterson liked the name and subsequently had badges of snarling tiger heads minted and sewn into the men’s hats.
At 9pm on the 19th of September in 1964, things had came to a head when the 3,000 Montagnard soldiers mutinied in the Darlac over a wide range of grievances from poor pay by corrupt officials to a lack of democratic representation. At least on two bases the Montagnards disarmed their American advisors and executed their Vietnamese counterparts.
Unbeknownst to Peterson, his vaulted Tigermen were also supposed to join the mutiny and seize Ban My Thot, but the expected signal failed to appear so they remained at Buon An Au. By the afternoon, the South Vietnamese Airborne Regiment, led by General Nguyen Huu Co, flew in and quickly seized control of Ban My Thot.
He then ordered a meeting with Peterson, his Australian superior, his CIA contact, and his American advisor. The decision was made for the four Westerners to travel to Buan Anau to arrange a meeting with the mutineer’s leader, knowing Peterson’s rapport with the raid would win them over. The Kuat set off in their jeep that night, passing several checkpoints who saluted as they passed Eventually they reached Buan Anau and after a few hours of careful negotiating were able to convince them to voice their complaints to General Koh in person
The General promised to help answer their demands and the mutiny was effectively ended Sadly enough, Koh did not keep his word causing a large amount of Montagnards to defect to either the VC or the Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, also known as Fulcro in French, a French-sponsored neutralist movement operating out of Cambodia.
Peterson was later awarded the Military Cross for his role. In March of 1965, Peterson returned to Australia on leave where he met with many members of the Australian government, including Prime Minister Robert Menzies, who asked him whether Australian soldiers could fight in Vietnam. On April 19th, when he returned to Vietnam, he was informed by one of his fellow advisors that Australia was sending troops to Vietnam.
Peterson long suspected his role was to blame. By now, Peterson’s vaunted Tigerman had grown to a force of 1,200 as hundreds of other local tribes flocked to join to gain the protection from the VC. This led to the force building of a new camp that the Magdagnard publicly named after Peterson as Dam Sen, the unconquerable demigod warrior from Montagard mythology who challenged the sun to a fight and lost. It was at this time that the CIA began to fear Peterson’s influence, fearing him going native
with some agency employees contemptuously referring to him as Lawrence of the Central Highlands. agency employees contemptuously referring to him as Lawrence of the Central Highlands. Peterson loved the name. One time while on patrol, his Tigermen stumbled upon a force of VC and North Vietnamese army situated in a hundred pits along a road awaiting a coming South Vietnamese convoy.
Without hesitation, they attacked and rolled up the enemy, clearing them out with automatic fire and grenades. The Tiger men suffered no casualties. Another incident saw an eight-man patrol locate an NVA battalion in a fortified camp. Despite Peterson’s call to withdraw, they attacked, capturing a 62mm machine gun, although seven of the eight were wounded in the process.
For this action, Peterson received the South Vietnamese Silver Star of Gallantry, with all eight Montagnards receiving similar awards. Peterson’s relationship with the CIA began to sour in mid-1965 when he refused their call to set up a special assassination squad who would dress up as VC to hunt down communist collaborators in the villages.
This program would be called the Phoenix Program in 1967. Peterson feared that it would only result in non-combatants being slaughtered, as the Montagnard hated all Vietnamese and often struggled to differentiate allies from the communists. The CIA were not impressed and became even less so when they set one of their agents to work with Peterson. This didn’t last when he found him going behind his back to the local provincial chief, which was a close friend of Peterson’s, to set up an assassination squad.

But when the agent loudly proclaimed within earshot of the chief that he could be bought, that’s when Peterson snapped, calling up the CIA headquarters in Saigon and ordering the agent’s dismissal.
In August, 1,000 Fulcrum members closed the Cambodian border,offering to defect to the Tigermen due to their movement’s lack of money, food, arms, and other basic necessities. A meeting was called between them, Peterson, the Americans, and General Vinh Loc, the head of the South Vietnamese military in Darloc, and a hardline national who despised both foreigners and Montague alike. Things were going well until the Fulcrum representatives demanded Montague autonomy as one of their concessions.
General Loc flew into a rage, bringing negotiations to an end and left the following day. The day after his departure, Peterson was summoned by his CIA superiors and promptly told that he was fired. General Locke had blamed him for the Montagnard Mutiny and claimed he was destabilizing the province.
The CIA agreed to this as a convenient way to remove this troublesome Australian to finally set up their Phoenix program in Darlac. In September he was granted the right to two weeks in Darlac to join the Montagnard Farewell celebrations which later extended into three weeks and by the end of it he was wearing 220 bracelets and 10 amber bead necklaces.
On the 14th of October, he left Darlaq. He attempted to bring Sonny, his pet tiger, to Australia, but it was refused, and she spent the rest of her life in the Saigon Zoo instead. Not long after this, the Tiger Men came under South Vietnamese control and subsequently dissolved as members defected to Fulcrow.
Later after, he wrote in his 1988 memoirs, he was informed by Peter Young, an Australian serving with the CIA in Vietnam, that when he spoke to some of the CIA agents, they openly stated that if Peterson refused their call to leave, that don’t be surprised if Peterson falls under a bus. Between the 20th of November and the 20th of December, 1965, Peterson was recruited by MI6 to train the indigenous tribes of Borneo in response to the Indonesian troops skirmishing across the border.
After this, he returned to Australia, training troops for Vietnam until the 29th of April, 1970, when he returned to Vietnam as a major commander of a company. During one engagement, he was wounded in the tongue by bullet fragments and was awarded the second South Vietnamese Silver Star of Gallantry.
He was also recommended another military cross, but it was downgraded to a mention in dispatches due to a bureaucratic error. He finished his first tour in June of 1971, to a mention in dispatches due to a bureaucratic error. He finished his first tour in June of 1971, and not long after that, he was sent back to Malaysia to train the local military in counterinsurgency.
In early 1975, he was rung up by a mysterious man, offering to pay him $20,000 for military info and threaten to kill him if he refused. The following day, Peterson informed the police to set up a sting operation. The men never showed and never called again. In 1976, he started a successful campaign to allow South Vietnamese former servicemen to participate in Anzac Day parades, and in 1979, he left the Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, tired of office politics.
He bought a farm outside of Carnes. His quiet life didn’t last long, though. In 1983, he was approached by former Army officer Gary Scott, offering him $5,000 per month to train mercenaries to overthrow the Indonesian government in West Guinea, known in Indonesia as the Aryan Jaya. As this was illegal in Australia, Peterson went to the police and in 1987, after a long sting operation, arrested Scott and sentenced him to 12 months imprisonment.
Later that year, he had a Seychelles man also offering money to overthrow the communist government in his country. Likewise, Peterson went to the police, but the case fell flat when Peterson refused to testify. In 1992, he sold his farm and moved to Bangkok, where he founded a successful company for foreign businesses, his 17 Thai employees being his family, and he continued to advocate for the Montagnards human rights violations.
He died on the 20th of February 2019 at the age of 84 of cancer, which he claimed was caused by Agent Oren. Thank you for watching Forgotten History. Please like, share, and subscribe. If you have any comments or show ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks again. you