Following a night raid with a Regional Forces unit on a VC encampment near Bong Son, the unit was engaged by a superior VC force. Many of the Regional Forces soldiers refused to fight and most of the A team were injured by VC fire, including Waugh who was shot multiple times and left between the VC and U.S./South Vietnamese forces. Waugh was later rescued by Davis under fire. He spent much of 1965 and 1966 recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., eventually returning to duty with 5th Special Forces Group in 1966. He received a Silver Star and a Purple Heart (his 6th) for the battle at Bong Son. At this time Waugh joined the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). While working for SOG, Waugh helped train Vietnamese and Cambodian forces in unconventional warfare tactics primarily directed against the North Vietnamese Army operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Prior to retirement from U.S. Army Special Forces service, Waugh was senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) of MACV-SOG's Command & Control North (CCN) based at Marble Mountain on the South China Sea shore a few miles south of Da Nang, Vietnam. Waugh held this Command Sergeant Major role during the covert unit's transition and name change to Task Force One Advisory Element (TF1AE). SGM Waugh conducted the first combat High Altitude, Low Opening (HALO) jump, a parachuting maneuver designed for rapid, undetected insertion into hostile territory. In October 1970, his team made a practice Combat Infiltration into the NVA owned War Zone D, in South Vietnam, for reassembly training, etc. Waugh also led the last combat Special reconnaissance parachute insertion by American Army Special Forces HALO parachutists into denied territory which was occupied by communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops on June 22, 1971. Waugh retired from active military duty at the rank of Sergeant Major (E-9) on February 1, 1972. CIA career After Waugh retired from the military, he worked for the United States Postal Service until he accepted an offer in 1977 from ex-CIA officer Edwin P. Wilson to work in Libya on a contract to train that country's special forces. This was not an Agency-endorsed assignment and Waugh might have found himself in trouble with U.S. authorities if it weren't for the fact that he was also approached by the CIA to work for the Agency while in Libya. The CIA tasked him