The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story Review

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(More customer reviews)It is impossible not to be moved by this great story. Any serviceman will know that not obeying orders and even worse - to turn your weapons on your own and make a cristal clear threat - usually means severe trouble; either being shot at the spot or to be court-martialled and cicked out of the military. This is the unique story of a man and his crew who did just that. - To save some total strangers; some civilians they did't know and had no responsibility for. They could easily have turned their heads away, and gotten away from it. But they acted, and took charge. Humanity needs heroes and ideals that we can look up to and to lead us in difficult moments. The two surviving crew members have been my true heroes through more than ten of my military years. Their My Lai story of courage and ideals and high morale has been tought to Norwegian, Swedish and Danish soldiers and officers as military ethics, code of conduct and law of war for many years already. The British TV film on My Lai, shown also in all the Scandinavian countries should be seen by servicemen and particularly in all military academies all over the world. This book is an impressive and important milestone. My compliments and highest recommendation. Terje Lund. Major, Royal Norwegian Air Force, Attorney at law, Special adviser on international humanitarian law, Norwegian Red Cross. "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference." (Elie Wiesel)

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Eyes of the Eagle Review

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(More customer reviews)There have been anonymous reviews posted about Linderer's books that question his truthfulness. I'm posting this review under my own name because I was an eyewitness to some of the incidents described in Linderer's books, particularly the events of 20 Nov 68. My name is John Reid.
I served briefly in Gary Linderer's unit then transferred to B Co 101st Aviation Battalion, the unit that proveded helicopter support for Linderer's unit. I was flying as door gunner for pilot W.T. Grant (author "Wings of the Eagle) on 20 Nov 68.
Warrent Officer Grant and Captain Bill Meacham (author "Lest We Forget") piloted the two helicopters that arrived over Linderer's team shortly after they ambushed an enemy unit on 20 Nov 68. Both pilots braved enemy fire trying to extract the team with MacGuire rigs. The trees were too thick to lower ropes to the team. We could see armed enemy all around the team trying to get at them. We were hovering low enough to see that most of the team were badly wounded. Only the combined efforts of the artillery, gunships and Air Force fighter bombers, directed by LRRP commander Captain Eklund, kept the enemy at bay and saved the wounded survivors of the team. I personally witnessed this from a helicopter just above the action (off the gun target line) and heard most of the radio communications that day.
Pilots Grant and Meachum spent most of the day ferrying in a reaction force to rescue the teams survivors and then extracting them all later in the day. The battle began at ten in the morning and we brought out the last friendlies well after dark. We took enemy fire every time we flew close to the ground that day. Flying in and out of the landing zone I saw many dead enemy soldiers on the slope below the LRRP team. On the missions we flew after dark that day, the muzzle flashes and tracers of multiple enemy weapons trying to shoot us down were visible to the support air crews overhead.
I've read the descriptions of the 20 Nov 68 battle in the books written by Linderer, Grant and Meacham. As someone who was actually there, I find no discrepancies in their descriptions.
The anonymous smears lead back to one person who I have talked to but will not name here. That person, who served in Vietnam, was not near Linderer's team on 20 Nov 68, but by his own admission was in a different unit hundreds of miles away. He bases his attacks on Linderer's veracity on a brief log kept by clerks at a base camp miles away from the action. All the participants in the action that day, that I have talked to, agree on the basic facts of the battle. The brief notations of the clerks in the rear are slightly different. Who are you going to believe. The soldiers and air crew who were actually there or some anonymous person who wasn't anywhere near the battle.
This same person calls Linderer a liar because not all his medals are listed on the Form DD214 held at the army records repository in St Louis. By that same logic I'm a liar too because I received an Air Medal years after my discharge and thus it doesn't show up on my DD214. It's not all that unusual.
Gary Linderer is a true hero who has devoted his life since Vietnam to helping other veterans (including the person now slandering him anonymously). These attacks on his character and truthfulness are shameful and undeserved.
Read Linderer's books with the assurance that they reflect the truth as related by the soldiers and air crews who were actually there. John Reid, Portland, OR

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When Gary Linderer reached Vietnam in 1968, he volunteered for training and duty with the F Company 58th In, the Long Range Patrol Company that was "the Eyes of the Eagle." F Company pulled reconnaisssance missions and ambushes, and Linderer recounts night insertions into enemy territory, patrols against NVA antiaircraft emplacements, and some of the bravest demonstrations of courage under fire that has ever been described....

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Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG Review

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(More customer reviews)Major John Plaster ranks as one of the top historians of the Vietnam War and stands alone among writers about special operations in Indochina. In Secret Commandos, Plaster continues the story he first brought to readers in SOG: The Secret Wars of Americas Commandos in Vietnam. Unlike all of the phoney wannabes that inhabit the fringe world of post-Vietnam America John Plaster is one who has been there, done that and has the T-shirt! You will sweat with him running recon along the Ho Chi Minh trail, shiver in the chill Central Highland nights while the enemy searches for him in the darkness, bleed with his comrades as they fight and die in places that are as remote for most Americans as the far side of the moon. But in Secret Commandos you will be on top of the action in a manner that can be written only by one with the experience who combines that background with an extraordinary writing talent.
Secret Commandos is a must-read for anyone who is interested in America's secret operations in Vietnam, in what the US Special Forces soldier is really made of, and in learning the hard-core truth. The soldiers who volunteered for SOG were a special breed no doubt. For most of a generation they have been overlooked, ignored, hidden behind mounds of top secret classification stamps, or lied about by detractors, impersonators and pretenders. No more. John Plaster rips back the curtain to show war at its most difficult - and in so doing displays the remarkable abilities, dedication and professionalism of our very special American fighting men.
Buy this book and treasure it. Recommend it to your friends. Get the word out: learn the truth of Vietnam and meet the men this fine country produces who will sacrifice and die to defend our freedom. This is a story that has waited a long time to be told and has the perfect man to tell it.

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The leading historian of SOG, the elite commando unit in Vietnam, tells the astonishing story of the SOG warriors who penetrated enemy lines in operations directed at the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The warriors of SOG -- code-named the Studies and Observations Group -- were a secret operations force in Vietnam, the forerunner of today's Delta Force and SEALs. Highly skilled Green Berets, they were the bravest of the brave, the most highly decorated unit in the war. Chief among their activities was observing the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main North Vietnamese supply route into South Vietnam, and disrupting its operations. SOG warriors secretly penetrated deep into Laos and Cambodia to identify bombing targets, destroy troops, ambush trucks, mine roads, and, in their most difficult assignment, capture North Vietnamese soldiers for intelligence purposes. Operating in the most dangerous conditions imaginable -- always outnumbered, often by as much as 100 to 1 -- SOG commandos matched wits with an un-relenting foe that hunted them with trackers and dogs. They suffered an extraordinarily high casualty rate. Ten entire teams disappeared and another fourteen were overrun and annihilated. Many of the missions run by SOG fighters were rescues and attempted rescuesof fellow soldiers and downed helicopter pilots who supported SOG missions. In Secret Commandos, a riveting account of his years in SOG from 1969 to 1971, John Plaster describes his own remarkable covert missions as well as those of dozens of his comrades. He takes readers from his grueling training for SOG to his heart-stopping first assignments to his experiences as a SOG veteran and team leader. Even as SOG's field of operations became more limited late in the war, these accomplished warriors continued to give their all, fighting for each other.

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Force Recon Diary, 1969 Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a story about Bruce Norton, who joined the Navy and then became a
> Navy medic.(Corpsman)
> > He was assigned to 3rd Force Recon Company in 1969-1970 in Vietnam. He
> served with Alex Lee, who wrote his own book about commanding 3rd Force
> Recon Company.
> >
> > Norton, like the Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock, was raised in the woods,
> and learned to shoot and find his way around the woods as a kid. This came
> in handy in Vietnam.
> > He learned to shoot rats in the city garbage dump in his home town in
> Mass. They hunted at night, with flashlights taped to their rifle barrels
> to spot the rats.
> >
> > While in Vietnam, he went through a typhoon and was in the jungle, with
> his 6 man team. They tied themselves together, and to some banana trees to
> avoid being blown away by the 120 mile per hour winds.
> >
> > He was on patrols that encountered a bear on one, and a tiger on another.
> >
> > He lost several friends in the Ashau Valley. Alex Lee describes the
> Ashau Valley as spooky and filled with evil spirits in his book, Force
> Recon. Horton, on the other hand compares it to the Garden of Eden.
> > While in the Valley, he describes how he got very sick on water the North
> Vietnamese poisoned by killing a pig and throwing the carcass in a pond.
> Norton drank the water, not realizing there was a dead carcass in there,
> even though the North Vietnamese left signs on the nearby trees announcing
> this.(The Marines could not read Vietnamese)
> > The 3rd Recon Company was disbanded when he was there, after Gen
> Nickerson, who created the Company, got transferred back out of Vietnam.
> >
> > Norton notes the outstanding leadership in the Company. Alex Lee, Major,
> Commanding, had the Legion of Merit, Silver Star, Bronze Star, 3 Navy
> Commendation medals, Navy Achievement medal, 2 purple hearts. Today, Lee is
> still considered a genius at small unit tactics. Clovis Coffman, another
> officer won the Navy Cross.
> > Two of his best friends, died bravely in the Ashau Valley winning medals.
> Charles Sexton, won the Navy Cross in the Ashau Valley and Paul Keaveney
> won the Silver Star.
> >
> > Norton stayed in the military, leaving the Navy and made a career
> > of the Marines, and was a Major when writing this book in 1990.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

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The riveting, true-to-life account of survival, heroism and death in the elite Marine 3d Force Recon unit, one of one two Marine units to receive the Valorous Unit Citation during the Vietnam War. Doc Norton, leader of 3d Force Recon, recounts his team's experiences behind enemy lines during the tense patrols, sudden ambushes and acts of supreme sacrifice that occurred as they gathered valuable information about NVA operations right from the source.

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Green Ghosts Review

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(More customer reviews)LtCol Bill Floyd, USMC (ret), the first XO and then CO of this volunteer company formed in Camp Geiger, Camp Lejeune, NC in 1965, chronicles the Vietnam combat experiences of his highly trained Marines and navy corpsmen, commissioned for special duty in support of the 3D Marine Division along the DMZ. Writing from the heart, desiring to leave a written legacy of the men he deeply respected, Bill Floyd describes first person accounts of his men in combat against NVA regulars, men in covertly inserted 4-8 man recon teams, patrolling for several days often beyond the reach of supporting fire. Readers will taste the tension, the fear, the pride, and the professionalism of the men so respected by the writer. The personal accounts are stunning in scope. Recon Marines saved hundreds of their fellow grunts who would have faced overwhelming odds if the recon Marines had not executed their role so superbly often surrounded by NVA forces. Recon casualties were many but none of the wounded, the dead, or the survivors, would regret their great sacrifices, because of their pride and dedication to each other in their performance in accomplishing some of the most dangerous duty in Vietnam.
Bill (Doc) Bentley, 3d Force Recon, 1966-67.

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If I had it to do overHad to face it once againI wouldn't change a momentI would do it with these men.
In this company of heroesI'd face another warPrint another page in historyFor our Country and our Corps.

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We were Soldiers Once...And Young: Ia Drang--The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam Review

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(More customer reviews)I commanded A Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cav under LTC Hal Moore at X-Ray. I lived the battle and led two aasaults. Hal Moore's book is an accurate account of the events of those two days and reflects his love for his soldiers as well as his determination to close with the enemy. As another reviewer described the book shortly after it was published it is "the best description of small unit combat since the Red badge of Courage". Having just read 71 reviews I note that some of the reviewers criticize Moore on issues of tactical considerations. Without going into a lot of detail the Hueys did well to carry 6 soldiers at the altitude of the central highlands of Vietnam. We did not have good intelligence as to where the enemy was so the operation was planned as a reconaissance in force. Not much different than hundreds of other air assaults by both Army and Marine units during the war. The book was not written to glorify war but to demonmstrate the courage and character of the American soldier.

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Six Silent Men...Book Three (101st Lrp/Rangers) (Book 3) Review

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(More customer reviews)This work is all that is to be expected from a sequel to the first "Six Silent Men". I was not let down, as I so often am, with some of the small unit contact books. This work was all that I expected. The action was close to non stop. The depictions of contact were thrilling and heart stopping. I was with and rooting for the teams all the way. This book, as was its precursor,is top notch. After having read circa 110 books about this subject, you may take my word for this book's being an interesting read.

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"The Eyes and Ears of the Screaming Eagles . . ."By 1969, the NVA had grown more experienced at countering the tactics of the long range patrols, and SIX SILENT MEN: Book Three describes some of the fiercest fighting Lurps saw during the war. Based on his own experience and extensive interviews with other combat vets of the 101st's Lurp companies, Gary Linderer writes this final, heroic chapter in the seven bloody years that Lurps served God and country in Vietnam. These tough young warriors--grossly outnumbered and deep in enemy territory--fought with the guts, tenacity, and courage that have made them legends in the 101st.

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