SOUTHERN AIR TRADE / FIELD NOTES
08 NOV 2026 · FILED BY SOUTHERN AIR TRADE

Coffee and the Special Forces

USGI Canteen Cup Stand Stove

COFFEE AND THE SPECIAL FORCES

How the military's favorite drink followed America's soldiers into the shadows

CASE FILE // UNITED STATES

Every unit in American military history has run on something. For most of them, it was coffee.

Before we get to the Green Berets, we have to go back a bit, because the Special Forces didn't invent the military coffee habit. They inherited it.

"NOBODY CAN SOLDIER WITHOUT COFFEE"

In the Civil War, a Union soldier's ration included 36 pounds of coffee a year. A Smithsonian curator who went through soldiers' diaries found the word "coffee" more often than "war," "bullet," "cannon," "slavery," "mother," or "Lincoln" (NPR).

The Union blockade cut the South off from coffee. Confederates roasted rye, peanuts, acorns, chicory, and just about anything else they could find to fake it (American Battlefield Trust). Between battles, the two sides traded across the lines, Southern tobacco for Northern coffee. At Fredericksburg, Confederates floated little toy sailboats across the Rappahannock to make the swap.

Union General Benjamin Butler was a believer. He had his men carry coffee in their canteens and timed his attacks for when they'd be most wired. His advice: "If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold." Sharps even built a carbine with a coffee grinder in the stock (NPR). (We're not saying it's the greatest firearm innovation of the 19th century. We're not saying it isn't, either.)

A CUP OF GEORGE

The next big leap came out of a jar.

The first successful stable soluble coffee powder was invented in Chicago in 1901, and a Brooklyn man named George Washington (not that one) brought it to market just before World War I. Instant coffee went overseas with American troops, and the Department of Defense bought up to 37,000 pounds of the powder a day. Soldiers called their morning cup a "cup of George" (U.S. Army).

That's the line that runs straight to the instant coffee packet in an MRE accessory pack today. Fair warning, it hasn't gotten much better.

THE GREEN BERETS GO TO COFFEE COUNTRY

Here's where the story gets interesting.

The French introduced coffee to Vietnam in the 19th century, and in the 1920s they set up coffee growing in the Central Highlands, especially Đắk Lắk province. The plateau around Buôn Ma Thuột became the heart of the industry (Wikipedia).

Under its old name, Darlac province, with its capital at Ban Me Thuot, that's also exactly where U.S. Army Special Forces ran their first big program in Vietnam.

In 1961, the CIA and Special Forces began working with the Rhade, one of the Montagnard highland tribes. The pilot site was Buon Enao, a village of about 400 people roughly four miles outside Ban Me Thuot (HistoryNet). The first American in was a Special Forces medic. Then, in December 1961, Detachment A-35 arrived to train the village's strike force. By October 1962, about 200 Rhade villages, roughly 60,000 people, were protected by 10,600 village defenders and 1,500 strikers.

That became the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program, or CIDG. Green Beret A-Teams moved into villages, built Area Development Centers, and did most of the training. In 1963, control moved from the CIA to MACV, and before long the whole 5th Special Forces Group was in country (Wikipedia).

In other words, the defining mission of the Green Berets in Vietnam was born in the middle of what is now the heart of Vietnamese coffee. Vietnam is now the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil (Wikipedia). The war did hit hard, though. The fighting disrupted production around Buôn Ma Thuột and emptied much of the area.

FROM THE TEAM ROOM TO THE ROASTERY

What veterans do after the military has become part of this story too.

In December 2014, former Green Beret Evan Hafer founded Black Rifle Coffee Company, starting with a "Freedom Roast" sold through a friend's apparel site (Wikipedia). Love it or hate it, it went from a side project to a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in a few years, and it launched Coffee or Die Magazine along the way.

Marines Harrison Suarez and Michael Haft deployed to Afghanistan with 1/9 and later opened Compass Coffee in Washington, D.C. Suarez said coffee was how "pretty much every new relationship in the Marines is formed." They also learned that trying to bond with Afghan partners over coffee in a tea culture was, in Haft's words, "just a train wreck" (NPR).

That might be the most special operations lesson in this whole article. Building rapport with local partners is the job. You just have to know which hot drink to bring.

WHY IT'S IN THE MANIFEST

Coffee is the one piece of military kit every generation shares. The Union picket, the doughboy with his cup of George, and the A-Team medic in the Highlands were all waiting on the same thing.

Brew yours the field way or the kitchen way:

SOUTHERN AIR TRADE // THE MANIFEST