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Special Operations Team 13, code-named Deer and thus better known today as the Deer Team, was an American OSS special operations team operating in Vietnam from July to September 1945. There the team, led by US Army Major Allison Thomas, provided training and support to Ho Chi Minh and his group of Communist insurgent guerrillas, the Viet Minh.

Background
In 1940, French Indochina fell to the Empire of Japan. Following its defeat, the Japanese opted to allow the French colonial administration to continue managing the affairs of the colony. The French Governor-General, Jean Decoux, was loyal to Pétain and Vichy France, and thus amenable to collaboration with the Axis powers. This state of affairs continued until 1944, when Charles de Gaulle was returned to power by the Allies. De Gaulle rejected Decoux's policy of cooperation with the Japanese and removed him from power, placing it instead in the hands of Eugène Mordant. Decoux retained his official position of Governor-General in order to give the Japanese the impression that nothing had changed, and the French began a policy of deception. Mordant began building an organized resistance and spy network in Vietnam, which supplied the Allies with intelligence against the Japanese and helped rescue downed Allied pilots.

The Japanese finally realized that the French were no longer cooperating when they refused to hand over six downed American pilots in January 1945. They thus decided to overthrow the French colonial administration in Indochina and replace it with their own, which they did with Operation Moonlight on March 9, 1945. The Allies refused aid to French Indochina on the basis of their pre-1944 collaboration with the Japanese, and they were quickly and decisively overrun. With Mordant imprisoned and the French resistance and spy network in disarray, no intelligence or aid to pilots was forthcoming following the coup. This prompted the OSS to act.

OSS Involvement
With the French intelligence networks no longer functioning, Major Archimedes Patti was dispatched by Lt. Col. Paul Helliwell to develop a new strategy in Vietnam. Patti quickly determined that the only resistance group organized enough to provide reliable intelligence to the Allies were the Viet Minh. To that end he met with Ho Chi Minh in Kunming, who agreed to provide the Allies with intelligence and aid in rescuing downed pilots from the Japanese, in exchange for OSS training and support.

On July 16, 1945, Major Allison Thomas, 1st Sgt. William Zielski, and Pfc Henry Prunier parachuted into Tan Trao, a camp not far from Hanoi. There they were welcomed by a 200-strong force of Viet Minh guerrillas and Ho Chi Minh himself, who apparently made a very positive impression on Major Thomas. In his first official communique to Patti, Thomas wrote that Ho "personally likes many French" and that the Viet Minh were "not Communist."

On July 30th, the remainder of Deer Team parachuted in. These were Lt. René Defourneaux, Staff Sgt. Lawrence R. Vogt, Sgt. Aaron Squires, and Pfc. Paul Hoagland, a medic. The timing of their arrival was fortuitous: Ho was apparently very sick, suffering from what Pfc Hoagland believed to be a combination of Dengue fever or malaria, dysentery, and possibly hepatitis. According to Defourneaux, Ho's condition was such that at the time no one believed that he would live very long and General Giáp seemed to be essentially in charge. Major Thomas instructed Hoagland to care for Ho and with access to proper medical care he made a quick recovery.