SOG: A Photo History Of The Secret Wars Review

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(More customer reviews)If you thought John's first book was a trip (SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam), this one is mandatory. It is bound to become required reading in every senior war college in every country in the world. It is covert operation best of breed techniques and tactics evolved by both sides over an eight year period. It also puts an evolutionary perspective on the development of those tactics and techniques. How to put em in, pull em out, what to wear, what to take, what to do while you're there, how to do it, and what to whistle while you're doing it. Moves and counter moves. "Hey John, what do we do about the dogs?" Because both books cover the same unit and period, there is a superficial duplication. The first book was primarily a collection of amazing, small, war stories in a historical framework with enough background and profile material to hold anyone's interest. While it had a little of the soldier's bias "from the bottom of the trench", the current book is a lot more objective with more history and substantial tactical and technical detail. Did I mention 700 photographs? Two of the photographs are mine and he actually spelled my name right - Thank you John. About half of the book could (and will) be used as textbook and manual for future recon operations. It also includes a lot of info on the intel/spy/psyops operations and miscellaneous odds & ends we occasionally got mixed up in. The photographs are unreal. Nothing like this has ever been done. It is an instant classic in military circles.
This unit was unique in that it could only have evolved in the way that it did in the time frame and with the people as they existed. Almost all of the SOG commanders were either WWII OSS or jungle guerilla types. The last missions were run in '72 and in another 2 or 3 years, all of the experienced people from SOG left in the military will have retired. The Army in their infinite (and normal) wisdom evidently destroyed the photographs and most of the documentation. The senior brass that is left will not have the foggiest idea of what this is all about. You can recreate the TO&E and fill the slots, but you cannot order people to do what the men in this unit volunteered to do three or four times a day (or night). John does an excellent job describing that esprit de corps and comradery that makes men stand in line, without a thought to personal safety, to leap in harm's way to rescue another. There was a lot of James Bond and John Wayne in this outfit. What does live on exists in the spirit and knowledge imparted to and residing in the various Special Operations Command units. There is still some well deserved bitterness because we often had to fight our own senior military command, State Department, and politicians as well as the North Vietnamese, and any of the above could get you killed. There might be some more bitterness due to the fact that after the US pulled out of South Vietnam, a lot of the natives, both Montagnard and Vietnamese, that we worked and fought with, and loved, probably wound up against a wall or spent at least a decade or more in re-education camps.
It should also be noted that the SOG vets that brought these photos back with them to the States were also in some serious jeopardy because of the TOP SECRET classification on all of SOG's activities. Photographs showing identifiable terrain features in Laos, Cambodia, or North Vietnam would identify the photographer as being in those forbidden or illegal locations. Photos showing actual operations in progress, people preparing for operations, and people returning from operations could create some rather enormous international problems (and maybe a wee bit of political embarrassment) when obviously American led troops were still in NVA uniforms and carrying AK-47's. Real "Spy" spoken here folks. The release or publication of these types of photos could have resulted in prosecution and up to 20 years in a Federal Fun Resort. That was then - this book is now and belongs to all of us with John still in the one-zero seat.
When Hollywood gets around to SOG, they will have to tread lightly. The problem they will have to face will be believability, because the reality was much larger than any fiction and no writer would dare to go this far out on the credibility limb. But then, there are those 700 photos.

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This is the companion photo history to SOG: The Secret Wars of American's Commandos in Vietnam. In 1972 the U.S. military took steps to ensure that such a book could never be printed by destroying all the known photos that existed of the top-secret Studies and Observations Group. But unknown to those in charge, SOG veterans brought back with them hundreds of photographs of SOG in action and kept them secret for more than three decades. More than 700 irreplaceable photos bring to life the stories of SOG legends Larry Thorne, Bob Howard, Dick Meadows, George Sisler, "Q" and others, and documents what really happened deep inside enemy territory: Operation Tailwind, the Son Tay raid, SOG's defense of Khe Sanh, Hatchet Force operations, Bright Light rescues, HALO insertions, string extractions, SOG's darkest programs and much more.

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