Book review

SOFREP Interview with Army Ranger, Vetrepreneur and Author Dan Blakeley

“Your past never forgets you.” – Dan Blakeley

The first thing that struck me about Dan is that he’s incredibly easy to talk to. Some special operations guys have a reputation for being a little standoffish or having a larger-than-life ego, not Dan. Yet, he endured some of the most demanding military training there is to become a member of the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, part of the US Special Operations Forces (SOF). Dan deployed six times in six years to multiple war zones in support of the Global War on Terror. He’s fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Naturally ambitious, Blakeley joined the Army at the age of 17, right out of high school after graduating a year early. He went straight through basic training, followed by airborne school and the grueling Ranger pipeline, ending up at the 2nd Battalion, where he served from 2006 to 2012, eventually earning the rank of Staff Seargent.

Then, as happens to so many of us, life threw him a curveball; his was during the Army’s Advanced Leader’s course while he was on a group run. Dan started feeling a sharp pain in his chest. Instead of going away, it only got worse. In short order, he found himself in the back of the fall-out van and, later, on his way to the ER. Turns out it wasn’t just indigestion from some bad burritos the night before; the doctors found that Blakeley had a hole in his heart.

There is no scenario where that is going to be good news for anyone, especially a warfighter.

After exiting the Army, he earned a double Master’s at Appalachian State University and went on to found United Valor, an organization that helps veterans by telling their stories in a way that fosters healing and understanding, ultimately aiding their transition back into civilian life. His book is an extension of their efforts.

The Twenty-Year War is available on Amazon and at twentyyearwar.com. Proceeds from sales on twentyyearwar.com go to veteran service organizations that are supported by the authors.

Dan is shown here with his weapon and an American flag. — Dan on one of his multiple deployments, is shown here, weapon at the ready, holding an American flag. Image provided by Dan Blakeley

Hearing how Dan and his fellow authors took the stories of 71 post-9/11 combat veterans and presented them in their own words reminded me of one of the best books I have ever read, The Good War by Studs Terkel. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for General Non-Fiction and was required reading as part of my course of study as an Army cadet. Briefly, the author interviewed over 100 people worldwide and told their stories of the days immediately before, during, and after World War II. It’s an oral history of the greatest generation. Post 9/11 veterans, in their own way, can be considered to be our nation’s second “greatest generation.”

However, many of their stories have remained untold until now. The Twenty-Year War breaks their silence and allows the reader to become part of their world. In doing so, we understand the individual’s motivation, sacrifice, and ongoing challenges. This becomes both cathartic for the storyteller and enlightening to the reader. I believe it’s destined to be a new American classic.

I hope you enjoy reading the SOFREP interview of Dan Blakeley as much as I did talking with him.

Dan Blakeley stands in front of One World Trade Center in New York City — Dan poses in front of One World Trade Center, a fitting symbol of rebuilding and moving forward after 9/11. Image Credit: Dan Blakeley’s Instagram account

SOFREP: So, how are you doing this morning, Dan?

DB: I’m doing well; how about yourself?

SOFREP: Great, thanks. Could you tell us a little bit about your military background?

DB: Sure, I joined straight out of high school; I actually graduated a year early and joined when I was seventeen. Went straight through basic training…everything…airborne school, Ranger indoctrination program…ended up at 2nd Ranger Battalion, which is where I served for six years. From 2006 to 2012. It was kind of during the peak, during the height of both wars; that’s when the two surges happened and everything. So, it was a pretty high optempo at the time.

I served there up until I was a squad leader, a Staff Sergent, operated on the line, and then got out because I had some medical issues. My heart kinda started failing on me (laughs). I guess too much stress or something. I ended up deciding to go to college, and while I was in college, I also stayed in the North Carolina National Guard for two more years, teaching OCS [Officer Candidate School] through the National Guard, so I was an OCS instructor for two years.

SOFREP: I was reading your book, and I really enjoyed it because it was broken down into bite-sized stories. Seventy-one of them, right?

DB: Uh-huh, yeah.

SOFREP: I was surprised by the story of how you had to fall out of a run with chest pains and then be taken to the hospital, where you found out you had a hole in your heart. Did you suspect anything that serious was wrong with you?

DB: I did not. Honestly, up until that happened, I thought I was relatively invincible. I think a lot of people, especially that serve in special operations, think that they are…until something happens to them. I had every intention to stay in. I was coming up on a reenlistment as well, and I was recently married. Basically, what the doctors told me was that it could be fine; you could be OK for the rest of your life. Or, you could continue to stress your heart, and the hole could get bigger and you would need to have open heart surgery to repair it. I said, “That’s a pretty big ‘maybe.’”

So, I decided to stay in through the rest of my enlistment, I had one more deployment. Once this happened, basically, I told them, “Well, look, I’ve got to really assess whether this is smart for me and my family or not, to stay in.” Me and my wife talked about it, I went on my last deployment, came back, still was having off and on chest pain and ultimately decided it would be best for me not to stress out my body so much. And, it was hard to leave the guys that I served with and the guys that I trained. They were going to be on the same optempo and constantly deploying. So to not be able to be there and fight alongside of them was rough. It was definitely a difficult thing.

SOFREP: And how are you doing now?

DB: I think slowing down, backing off, has definitely made it better. I get chest pains every once in a while, I get checked out annually to make sure nothing is getting worse, but I haven’t had to have a procedure or anything.

SOFREP: So, did you get the idea for your book, The Twenty Year War, because it was coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9/11?

DB: Well, initially, in 2020, I had a lot of time at home, like everybody else, and I took a lot of time to reflect on life in general. I talk about it in the book, but I did not do a good job of staying connected. As soon as I got out of the military, I pushed off everything, didn’t identify as a veteran, most people didn’t know, and I didn’t even try to let people know. But in 2020 I started reflecting and thinking that there has to be countless other people out there who don’t want to tell their story, don’t want to feel connected, for whatever reason, and so I was thinking of ways to try to connect with those types of veterans.

At the same time this is happening, one of my childhood best friends, Beau Simmons, he’s the photographer for the book, was moving across the country to North Carolina to be closer to me. And he had been working on a photo series for Heros and Horses, a veteran non-profit, and he said he wanted to figure out a way to keep doing the same kind of thing. He wanted to give back to the veteran community. He hasn’t served himself, but he has a strong affinity for veterans and people who have served.

We were both talking at my kitchen table and got to thinking about how we could put our heads together and do something for veterans. We figured we’d tell the stories of veterans, do portraits of veterans, as they are today, not in uniform, out of service. He loved the idea. I realized it was the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 and the GWOT [Global War on Terror] and I said we should just lean on that theme and call it The Twenty-Year War. We’d tell stories of only people who had served in the past 20 years, in combat. Lots of time books are written so long after the fact; why don’t we do ours now when we’re right at the tail end of it?

Co-author, fine art photographer, and good friend to Dan Blakeley, Beau Simmons. Image courtesy of Dan Blakeley

DB: After we had the idea to do the book, I got a hold of Tom [co-author Tom Amenta]. We had been in the National Guard together for a year and had become good friends. He had co-founded a company called “Ranger Up” but had recently left and said he was tired of doing veteran projects because it had taken up so much of his time. When I told him this idea [for the book], he as like, “100%, tell me what you need. I’m all for it.”

The first thing I asked him for was his black book; I said, “Give me all your contacts, everybody that you know.”

SOFREP: That answered my next question. I was wondering how you found all of these fascinating people to interview for your book.

DB: We started calling people who would help support this book. About a month into it, I talked to Tom again and asked him if he could help me write these stories…because I needed some help from someone who had some experience. And that’s how he became heavily involved in the writing of the book. To go back to your question about how we got all these specific people….all word of mouth. I contacted my first initial network of people, and they asked how they could help the project, then connected us with two or three more people, and it kind of just organically grew that way.

SOFREP: I wanted to comment on how much Beau’s images contribute to the book. To see portraits of the people behind the stories goes a long way in making them more relatable.

DB: He had been doing fashion photography for a long time, and he decided he wanted to get back into more traditional photography. He shot every single photo in the book on a 1980s camera, all on medium format film.

Photo of a member of the second marine division who shared his story for the book. — Portrait of a member of the 2nd Marine Division who shared his story for the book. Image by Beau Simmons

SOFREP: My favorite quote of yours from the book is where you note, “Your past never forgets you.” Everyone deals with their past in their own way, and that comes out in the stories.

DB: Yep, we had a guy in the book, Roy…he could not open the book for months. He gave it to all his family and friends and let them read it, and they had no trouble with it, but he couldn’t bring himself to read it since it’s a piece of his story of how he lost one of his guys overseas. We left the details out, per his request. But, over a decade after he retired, out of pure luck, or chance, or whatever you call it, got connected to the guy’s father once he got back, and his photos in the book are of them at his friend’s grave. Roy’s past found him. It took him months to open it…he finally opened it (maybe five or six months after the book was released), then he called me and said, “I can’t thank you enough for doing this. For kind of forcing me to be able to read these stories because it’s important.”

And that right there was enough for me to write a book like this. I have countless other examples, but that one really struck me.

SOFREP: Your book is helping a lot of people heal, not just the veterans portrayed in the book but other veterans who read it as well.

DB: And that’s what I hope it does, and I hope it continues to do. We struck when the iron was hot, right at the end of the twenty-year war, and of course, that’s the title of the book. People are still buying it. Once people have learned of the book, they understand the impact it can carry.

SOFREP: Dan, we thank you for your service, for writing this wonderful book, and for taking the time to talk with us today.

First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA to Avenge 9/11- Review

Looking for the Perfect Christmas Gift or Reading Material? Look No Further

Award-winning author Toby Harnden has crafted an incredible story of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. His book, “First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA to Avenge 9/11,” was initially slated to be released on the 20th anniversary of the U.S. involvement. Still, during his detailed 17-month research into putting this book together, the Afghan government collapsed, and the Taliban returned to power once again.

Harnden was granted some incredible access to the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) employees, some of whom are still in government service. All of their stories and remembrances make for compelling reading. But as Harnden said, sometimes the best stories are the true ones. And this one is fantastic.

The Plan

The story begins on 9/11 when the members of al-Qaeda hijacked the planes and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the one aircraft that was crashed into rural Pennsylvania. America is shocked and on its heels, reeling after ignoring some intelligence reports that the terrorists intended to bring death to America. Signals and intelligence were missed or not shared.

President Bush convened his National Security Council on September 13, and the Pentagon revealed that they had no war plan for Afghanistan. CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks told the president it would take months to build up enough conventional troops for an invasion. CIA Director George Tenet turned the meeting over Cofer Black, an experienced Agency hand who had spent many years in Africa. The CIA’s plan was to infiltrate small numbers of Agency linguists and paramilitary officers along with some Green Beret A-Teams (ODAs) into Afghanistan to link up with the Afghan resistance, warlords from the Northern Alliance. Black sensed that President Bush wanted his pound of flesh.

“When we’re through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs,” he said.

The President pondered for several seconds before asking, “Cofer, can we really do this?” Black stared back at the President for several seconds for theatric effect and said there wasn’t a doubt in his mind at all. Bush responded with, “That’s what I’m talking about. Go get ’em.”

And in the early days of the war, the successful ones, the CIA, would run the war effort. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seethed over this. He later dragged his feet over any assistance until the military took over the war, pushed thousands of troops into the country in a mission completely opposite of what had worked, and ultimately turned the effort into a “goat rope.”

For an avid reader of all things OSS/SOE from World War II, the mission was a throwback and a fantastic legacy of those who paved the way for the organizations that became the CIA and Special Forces.

The Team

Team Alpha, David Tyson, and Mike Spann (top row far right). Photo courtesy of Toby Harnden

The book centers around “Team Alpha,” an eclectic group of Agency employees who entered Afghanistan on October 17, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Much of the book centers around CIA agents David Tyson and Mike Spann. They joined Northern Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who in a SOFREP podcast said the warlord was “straight out of central casting.”

Dostum was known as a thug. A brutal, bloodthirsty type whose own men were terrified of him. But, he was also quite shrewd. He could adapt to situations at the drop of a hat, like anyone who had survived the bloody politics of Afghanistan for so long could.

Tyson was an Uzbek linguist, which was invaluable as he had the ability to communicate easily with the Northern Alliance. The key to taking the country was taking the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. A precursor to the fall of Kandahar, Kabul, and the collapse of the Taliban government that occurred on Nov. 17, 2001.

The CIA/Green Beret team had built a great rapport with Dostum in a very condensed period of time. Much faster than is preached at “Robin Sage,” the SF UW exercise that every SF NCO and Officer must pass. The commander of the A-Team, Captain Mark Nutsch of the 5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG), and Tyson built a great relationship of trust with Dostum.

Dostum (white horse) with Northern Alliance fighters and U.S. troops. Photo courtesy of Toby Harnden

The Fortress

Rumsfeld was still trying to convince President Bush that all of the CIA’s efforts were stalled. But once Mazar-I-Sharif fell, he insisted that the war couldn’t be won with just Captains and Sergeants and started sending Colonels and Generals, who Harnden says were not needed nor appreciated. Dostum was told in short order that instead of Nutsch, he’d now deal with Nutsch’s battalion commander LTC Bowers. He, in turn, would be replaced with a two-star, Rear Admiral Bert Calland, the SOCCENT commander.

The Green Berets were pulled out from Team Alpha, and the military was pushing in green troops with no clue as to what was still going on. Before the country was even taken from the Taliban, the Pentagon was focused on stability operations.

Mike Spann and David Tyson find “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh in the throng of al-Qaeda prisoners at Qala-i-Jangi. Photo courtesy of Toby Harnden

During this time, Tyson and Mike Spann headed to the Qala-i-Jangi fortress outside Mazar-i-Sharif to interrogate hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters, who had supposedly surrendered, including U.S. citizen John Walker Lindh. But the al-Qaeda fighters had smuggled weapons, grenades, and suicide vests into the fortress.

They then started a violent uprising while Spann was interviewing a prisoner with dozens around him. As they rushed him, Spann killed numerous al-Qaeda fighters before being hit from behind. The prisoners then overwhelmed Spann before killing him with a pistol. Tyson attempted to get to his friend, but the sheer numbers of prisoners rushing him prevented that, despite the fact that he killed perhaps dozens.

Tyson made it a temporary safe spot in the compound with German journalists. Other American CIA, Green Berets, conventional troops, and a small contingent of British SBS (Special Boat Service, Britain’s equivalent to Navy SEALs) began an effort to rescue Tyson and Spann (who was considered missing) from the fort. The amount of detail and the personal accounts of the men who fought at Qala-i-Jangi is some riveting reading.

The Break Down

Harnden’s book is a fantastic read as he interviewed nearly all of the major players in the early, heady days of the Afghanistan invasion before the Pentagon and State Department turned it into a nation-building sh** show and tried to build a country based on our own model that would never work in Afghanistan.

Dostum, the pivotal warlord who was instrumental in the success, was pushed to the side and quickly ostracized by the government, especially the State Department. Harnden traveled to Afghanistan a year ago to interview the former warlord who was blocked from visiting the U.S.

“I was the one who fought against and defeated the Taliban in 2001,” Dostum said. “My soldiers were killed and wounded, but I was left behind and received nothing. If the Americans had listened to me, they would now have the upper hand on the battlefield and at the negotiation table.”

“I have no issue with CIA,” he says. “They never let me down. But US diplomats have not allowed me to act against the Taliban.”

The Page-Turner

If you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift for the reader in the household or want to spend hours on end curled up in a chair with a great book, then pick up “First Casualty.” It is extremely well-written, meticulously researched, and an absolute page-turner.

It was a story that needed to be told, which is why the CIA was so helpful with Harnden in arranging for nearly all of the involved people to be interviewed. It is a story about personal sacrifice and incredible bravery and resourcefulness. But most of all, it is a story about “what could have been,” but like what occurred in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal, to quote Charlie Wilson, “we f***ed up the end game.”

The Giant Killer: A Fascinating Look at the Smallest Green Beret in History

The Green Berets, the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, are the military’s premier unconventional warriors. And Richard Flaherty was, perhaps, the most unconventional Green Beret warrior to ever serve.

Flaherty served with the 101st Airborne during Vietnam. He was awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. After Vietnam, he did contract work for the CIA all over the world.

But he had to fight to even get into the Army and the Army’s Officer Candidate School (OCS), going so far as to get his congressman involved. The reason was that Richard Flaherty was just 4’9” tall.

Years after Vietnam, David Yuzuk, a career Miami Beach police officer, struck a friendship with a confident but unassuming homeless man. After 15 years the man told Yuzuk, “It’s time I tell you who I really am.” The homeless man was Richard Flaherty.

Yuzuk finally learned the man’s story and began a quest to discover all there was to know about this diminutive man who cast a giant shadow in combat.

As he began digging into Flaherty’s background, Yuzuk decided to write a book, having previously put together an award-winning documentary on the man’s fascinating life. To do so, he enlisted the help of his father, Neil. The book dives into some of the details of Flaherty’s life that weren’t in the documentary. The trailer for the documentary can be seen here.

The book begins with Flaherty’s bizarre death. He was killed by Leslie Socolov in a hit-and-run incident. Socolov who worked for the Miami-Dade homicide division and who, despite leaving the scene of a deadly accident, was never charged with any crime, recently made headlines for an anti-Semitic rant caught on camera.

Richard Flaherty was always sensitive about his height. When he was young growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, he set about achieving the best possible physical condition he could and started learning martial arts.

When he joined the Army, he was bullied and harassed by both fellow soldiers and drill sergeants. That was until he showed his mettle in the hand-to-hand combat pit against his largest and biggest bully. He went through much the same in OCS, but persevered and graduated. Evidently, his nickname, “The Giant Killer,” which was given to him back in high school, was apt.

His commander in Vietnam hated the diminutive lieutenant. Some of Flaherty’s men corroborated this. As a result of the commander’s animosity, they always got the short end of the stick when it came to operations. His men knew Flaherty to be fearless and ruthless in combat and a capable commander.

After the war, like many Army officers, Flaherty was riffed out. This was a devastating blow to him. A failed relationship, an assortment of jobs, and later the death of a fiancé devastated him and eventually left him homeless.

That’s when he met Yuzuk. After he told him his story, the veteran police officer was skeptical. He frankly thought that Flaherty’s tale of working with the CIA was pure fantasy. But after Flaherty’s death, he spoke with his fellow vets and found his awards and decorations.

Richard Flaherty then went through Flaherty’s storage unit and found his passport. It was full of stamps to the world’s hotspots: Cambodia, Venezuela, Iraq, and Jordan among other places. Why would a homeless man visit those places, and how could he afford to?

His work with the CIA in support of the Nicaraguan Contras ended up with him being arrested and spending time in prison for drug-running. That incredible chapter involves HALO jumps from aircraft over “Alligator Alley” in Florida, guns, and lots of cocaine during the wild Miami days of the 1980s. Flaherty eventually worked undercover for the ATF in an effort to stop the flow of cocaine and weapons in the Fort Bragg, NC area.

His manner of death and his adamant statement to Yuzuk not to look into his undercover work, only raised more questions.

Yuzuk’s book is a fascinating look at one of the most extraordinary characters ever to wear a Green Beret. It is a story that sounds so off the wall that it could never be true. But it is.

The book is very well-written and guaranteed to keep your attention throughout. It is the incredible but true story of a man determined to beat the odds and make a difference. We highly recommend it. It can be ordered on Amazon.

Book Review – “Murphy’s Law” And the Truth Will Set You Free

I always balk at when someone I know writes something and I’m asked to give an opinion on it. As my circle of friends has grown smaller, I have erred on the side of caution, not wanting to hurt any of my friends’ feelings. Jack Murphy has never had that problem.

Jack has been on a mission, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And when you’re blunt, do your homework and research and then write what you believe is the right thing, the truth, you’ll invariably piss some people off. Jack has done that. In fact, in the Special Forces community of which he was a member, many men of the Regiment have a case of the red-ass against him.

Murphy was a member of the Ranger Regiment and deployed to Afghanistan with them. He then moved on to Special Forces, and was on an A-Team in the 5th Special Forces Group, “The Legion”. He deployed again to Iraq with SF. He then decided to leave the military and graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Political Science. Murphy is near a perfect fit that the OSS in World War II was looking for.

OSS was the forerunner to both CIA and the U.S. Army Special Forces. General William “Wild Bill,” Donovan said they were looking for “PhDs who can win a bar fight.” Murphy is an Ivy League graduate who was a Ranger and Green Beret.

Along the way, he co-founded the website “SOFREP” which later became “NEWSREP” and developed a ton of aspiring writers who came from military backgrounds and had the itch to write. SOFREP developed a reputation as a hard-hitting journal of military and current affairs that spoke plainly and covered it all. The great successes and the failures with equal attention. It was far from a PR firm or just a cheerleader squad for the military. That was Murphy’s doing. Which brings us to his book.

“Murphy’s Law” is basically a two-part book, the first half deals with Murphy’s military career and the second part, which is the next chapter in his life takes you on the trail with an investigative journalist. But this is one who covers the military with the trained and sometimes jaundiced eye of someone who has “been there, done that”.

This book is an absolute page turner and as with everything that Murphy writes, he covers the “who, what, where and most especially, why” of his experiences. Murphy hardly paints himself as a hero, in fact, he delves into a particularly sensitive subject of a friendly fire incident in the Ranger Bn. That could’ve easily been glossed over, but again, that wouldn’t have been the “whole truth” and Murphy hardly paints himself in glowing light there. That’s part of what makes this so intriguing.

Murphy’s experiences during the Global War on Terror (GWOT), gives his perspective on what has been the United States’ longest war in its history. And like he always does, Murphy tells it like it is. His take on al-Qaeda and their fighters is an instant classic.

“The Iraqi insurgency consisted of hardcore criminals, jihadists, and a ton of foreign fighters looking to get their kill on. These dudes were murderers, members of a death cult called al-Queda. The Nazis, the Soviets, and all the North Vietnamese Army were at least fighting for some twisted vision of a better future. By comparison, al-Queda was, and is gutter trash”.

Awesome stuff there.

After graduating from Colombia, Murphy wasn’t a sit in the office type of journalist. He traveled to the Philippines where his interview with the commanders of the Light Reaction Regiment of the PI’s SOF, while they were actively engaged with Abu Sayyaf terrorist units. He snuck into Syria to report first-hand on the brutal fighting that tore the country apart there.

Murphy wrote about the religion of the Yazidi and Peshmerga peoples of Syria, as in the Middle East religion is everything. Something that I never knew about was that the Yazidis predated both Christianity and Islam. All stuff I’ve never seen anywhere.

I can’t recommend this book more, it is a great take on one man’s life with extraordinary events and people thrown together. Murphy has already written some military novels but this book was different. He was trying to put down the events of his life, thus far and was worried about appearing “douchey”.

As with anything, I have to put an anecdote in there. Our local Veterans Council consists of vets from the VFW, American Legion and unaffiliated veterans. Every year we visit all of the schools in the area at Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day.

We were finishing up a school visit last week when one of our vets named George who was a Major in Army Intelligence who is now a retired attorney asked me, “Have you ever heard of a guy named Jack Murphy?”

“My wife and I were walking thru Barnes and Noble and I saw his book and picked it up. And after scanning thru it for a moment, had to buy it. I brought it home last night and can’t put it down. It is a fantastic read. The guy was a Ranger, a Green Beret…now he’s a globe-trotting journalist. Have you read it?”

After I explained the workings of NEWSREP and SpecialOperations.com and the relationship I have with Murphy, George said, “I think he’d be a great guy to sit down and have a beer with to just be able to pick his brain.”

Yes indeed.

Being so young, Murphy and his wife, who is also an investigative journalist should have plenty of adventures left in their lives for another book sometime in the future. I’d put that one on the reading list, but for now, head to the nearest bookstore and read “Murphy’s Law” asap. You’ll be glad you did.

Photo: Amazon, NEWSREP

Trapped at Pearl Harbor: Escape from the Battleship Oklahoma

Book Review: On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands was a quiet place as the sun came up. Many of the sailors along Battleship Row were feeling the effects of being on liberty ashore drinking which ended at midnight.

At dawn, there was a sleepy, Sunday feel to the morning, not much was moving other than the sailors who had the morning duty. The rest were sleeping off the festivities from Saturday night. The battleship USS Oklahoma BB-37 had been preparing for an inspection, which was to take place on the morning of Monday, December 8. As a result, many doors and hatches were wide open on that fateful day.

The Japanese had planned on giving a declaration of war intentions 30 minutes before the attack began but due to the slowness of their code machines and the typists, the message didn’t get to Washington until the attack was over. The Japanese attack force, led by the first wave swept over Pearl Harbor at 7:48 a.m. and achieved complete surprise. Not only were the battleships parked in a row along Ford Island, but the American fighters on Hickam Field were parked wingtip to wingtip.

As the first wave (183 planes) led by the slow, vulnerable torpedo bombers searched out battleships at anchor, dive-bombers hit Hickam and Wheeler Airfields. The second wave (170 planes) attacked American facilities on Ford Island and Bellows Field.

Oklahoma was berthed at Fox 5 on Battleship Row next to the USS Maryland. The officers of the watch called the crew to battle stations having witnessed the attacks beginning elsewhere in the harbor. Ensign Herb Rommel the 4th Division officer, called the crew to General Quarters. Rommel saw the cruiser Helena get slammed with a torpedo and jumped onto the General Announcing System. “This is no shit, God damn it! They’re real bombs, Now get Going!” As another officer fumbled with the keys to the ammunition lockers, the call went out that would live forever. “Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill!”

At 7:56 a.m. the Oklahoma was hit simultaneously with 2 torpedos, 20 below the waterline between the smokestack and mainmast. She was hit with a third torpedo at 8:00 a.m. which penetrated the hull. Her boilers punctured, she began to list heavily, then two more torpedos slammed into her and she began to capsize. In less than 11 minutes the USS Oklahoma would roll over and sink. But her masts touched bottom in the harbor and her hull was still above water. Of the crew 429 would be killed or missing and many others trapped alive under the water.

Stephen Bower Young was one of those trapped below the decks. He was just 19, from Methuen, Massachusetts and had joined the Navy in the summer of 1940, hoping to go to the Naval Academy.

When the attack began, he was ordered as per SOP to go to his battle station below deck. Young and 10 of his shipmates were at their station inside the No. 4 gun turret, which in the space of fewer than five minutes was now inverted, and beneath the water.

Young authored his book and describes their own terrifying experiences in horrendous detail. His battle wasn’t about the carnage that was taking place all around them in Pearl Harbor. But in a very small, confined space, where he was virtually unaware of anything else other than the Japanese had sunk his ship. The realism and horror at the feeling of his ship being capsized is clearly felt by the reader.

His easy to read but riveting story reads almost like a work of fiction. The reader can feel the cold water slowly but with incredible realism, inescapably rise, the fuel oil taste which would turn stomachs and the nasty fetid air that would soon envelop the men. The young sailors would try to force wisecracks but others would succumb to despair and then finally the men in total darkness would go quietly as a church in an effort to save air.

The men decided to try another room called the Lucky Bag to see if they could stay dry and breathe long enough to be rescued. The room had only one entrance and exit but it was at least dry. The room on the opposite side of the wall held sailors still alive in the #4 radio compartment.

The Japanese attack was over in ninety minutes and immediately Navy personnel and civilian dock workers began the task of trying to rescue men trapped below decks. However, it wasn’t until around 1:00 a.m on December 8, that the rescue crews would be able to get enough air compressors, pumps, chipping tools and torches alongside the hull to begin their work in earnest.

As the men dozed, they were woken to the sound of air hammers in the distance, trying to cut thru the hull to reach trapped sailors. The men began tapping out SOS code to alert the rescuers. Soon the hammering was much closer. Then they’d pause to listen if the trapped sailors were close by.

The men in #4 radio compartment, yelled thru the steel bulkhead that the rescuers were cutting thru to them. Young yelled them to alert them that they were just on the other side of the wall. “Okay!, don’t worry, if they can get to us, we’ll tell ‘em”.

Twenty-five hours after the Oklahoma had capsized, Yard worker Joe Bulgo cut through to sailors in the No. 4 radio compartment. “There are some guys trapped in there,” one sailor said, pointing to the wall behind him. “We’ll get ’em out,” said DeCastro.

Young yelled to the rescue team on the other side. DeCastro’s calm voice came back, promising he would get them out. But as they began cutting through the bulkhead, it was releasing air from the Lucky Bag compartment, and water began rising. There was momentary panic but as DeCastro’s men began their work, the men inside tried in vain to seal the hatch to the Lucky Bag.

It was the longest 60 minutes of Young’s life. The water level had reached their knees but finally, they had three cuts in the bulkhead. And the sweetest words Young had ever heard were Bulgo saying, “Look out for your hands, boys,” he yelled. With a sledgehammer, he pounded in the section of the wall. The sailors scrambled through and were guided up and out by DeCastro’s men. They made it out by 9:00 a.m. and Young recalled the sun was bright and the air smelled fresh. The eleven men in the #4 gun turret had survived.

The sailors on-board the USS Maryland watched it unfold and began cheering as they clambered out of their doomed ship. In all, 32 men would be rescued from the crippled Oklahoma, which would never sail again.

Despite the fact that you obviously know that the author survived the sinking and capsizing of his ship, the account of the author and his shipmates was impossible to put down and very tense. This isn’t a big picture kind of overall look at the disaster at Pearl Harbor but a very narrow view of the author’s quest to survive in a sunken ship. This book was an excellent read and gives the reader the feeling of what it was like to be there in the #4 gun turret as the ship sinks and rolls over and the incredible stress of waiting to be rescued.

Photos: US Navy/author

War Story by Jim Morris Is the Definitive Special Forces Book on Vietnam

This book is dedicated to anybody
whoever died for something he
believed in, whether he was right
or not.

The difference between a fairy tale and a war story,
is that a fairy tale starts out with “Once upon a time,” and
a war story starts out with, “This is no shit.”

Before you turn a page in “War Story” and just read that small two-paragraph introduction you are hooked. Morris begins his book with a recurring dream when in a firefight in Vietnam, his left nut was shot off, which actually happened. But in his dream, which he had for years after coming home, he’d be killed in some ugly grotesque way, but one night he finally made it in his dream. He killed the enemy soldier and was finally at peace. As he says in the book, he was finally at peace and could go home now.

Morris’ book is a page-turning, can’t put it down look at one man’s experience in Vietnam while a Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group. It is arguably, (here there is no argument) the finest book on Special Forces in Vietnam.

Morris loved Vietnam, the people especially the Montagnard mountain tribesmen who he remained close to even after all of those years. The way he describes the scene upon arriving back in Vietnam is particularly captivating.

“I loved Vietnam more than any other place, for the beauty and strangeness of it. I always had a weird feeling in Vietnam, as though I was in the presence of exotic, occult happenings, as though I had arrived in a place where spirits prowled and sorcerers plucked at strings that controlled natural laws. I felt valid there, as though this were my place and my time and was where I counted. I was happy.

Morris grew up in Oklahoma and wanted to get into Special Forces, little did he know in 1963 when he got into SF that the war in Vietnam would be his calling. Morris served in Vietnam before the big American involvement began and was shocked when he returned to see so many Americans and military bases dominating the countryside.

He served in Special Forces when it was the kiss of death for the careers of the Captains and Majors who stayed for very long. But he found his calling and feared being promoted or else he’d lose his chance to command a Special Forces A-Team any longer.

He loved the ambushes and searching for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in the close-quarters battles in the jungle. On Morris’ website, he had an excerpt from his book where he described an ambush with his close friend, Montagnard, Philippe Drouin aka “Cowboy” on one such operation.

“We were all firing. Tracers from the thirty caliber weapons were ricocheting so high I thought the Cong were sending up flares. I fired up one magazine and then another. I kept firing. We all did. I wanted nothing to live out there. I felt nothing, neither elation nor horror, just the cold astringent calm.

I fired up five magazines before I stopped. Then everybody stopped and I called out, “Cowboy, let’s check out the stiffs.”

We got up and moved onto the trail. The bodies were lying to the left, to the right, on the trail, cut down running. I fired a round in the ground beside each man to see if he would move. None did. Cowboy moved beside me, covering.

When we came to the last one I moved in on him and he raised up, his arms extended, eyes wide. I said, “Good, we got a pris…”

Cowboy stitched him up the middle with his AR-15. He didn’t even twitch.

I said, “We could have got some good information from that guy.”

“Sorry,” said Cowboy. “I get, you know, excited.”

Morris minces no words on how the war was mismanaged and opportunities to win it was lost on the people in charge of prosecuting it. “There is only one way to fight a guerrilla war and that is to out-guerrilla the guerilla. You have to steal his political issues and his social issues and his tactics; and if you do that he has nothing left to sell and the war is won. It was so easy. Why couldn’t the bastards see it?”

One of the highlights of the book was the chapter where he spoke with an SF legend in Ludwig Faistenhammer. He was an expert on guerrilla warfare and was featured in Robin Moore’s book, “The Green Berets”.

There weren’t many like Ludwig. He was the character Fritz Scharne in Robin Moore’s The Green Berets. It was the story of how he managed to ambush a VC battalion commanded by a Frenchman… It was such an improbable story that I asked him if it was true. He said it was. “I lay awake nights dreaming up ways to get that son of a bitch,” he said. Part of how he set him up was by feeding him false information while playing tennis with him at the Cercle Sportif in Saigon.’

Morris was a guest on SOFREP Radio’s podcast this week with Host Ian Scotto and Jack Murphy and you can listen to it in its entirety here:

This brought me way back. As a young man as I was preparing to go to Special Forces training, I heard about Morris’ book and must have read it about 4-5 times enthralled. He was a big influence on me in those early years.

He wrote for Soldier of Fortune magazine and whenever he had anything in it it was a must read article.His Vietnam war stories and subsequent work covering some of the hotspots around the globe were manna from heaven for an aspiring Special Forces soldier.

For those young men of today who are planning on taking the road to go to Special Forces training, ensure that you put “War Story” on your must reading list. Although the copies are harder to come by today, on Amazon.com you can download a Kindle version of the book to your favorite device or laptop. It is worth the time and effort.

On the podcast, Murphy told Morris that if you substituted the words Communist or Viet Cong with the word “Terrorist”, the book would read much like what Special Operations troops face today in the hot spots around the Globe.

But “War Story” doesn’t delve into politics or policies, it is one man’s story of his involvement in the war. For him, it was a deeply personal one and he wanted to be involved in it all the way thru. Morris is a master storyteller and this will be guaranteed to keep you enthralled.

Photo: Amazon.com

“The Secret War Against Hanoi”, A Must-Read Book On SOG

When researching the works of the secretive Studies and Observation Group (SOG) during the war in Vietnam, Richard H. Schultz Jr. digs through their papers in an exhaustive and sprawling piece of work.

While critical of much their work, especially in the matter of inserting foreign agents into North Vietnam, Schultz’s admiration for the warriors of SOG bleeds thru his work, and who can blame him? Some of America’s best warriors were the backbone of SOG, garnered from the US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and Navy SEALs.

After the war in Vietnam ended, much of SOG’s operations were buried in the vaults of the Pentagon. Schultz spent countless hours digging thru thousands of pages of reports that had been recently declassified as well as conducted interviews with some of the key players. The result is a fascinating and extremely detailed read on the largest and most covert operations since World War II.

Studies and Observations Group (SOG) was the Pentagon’s code-name for their own Special Operations Group. It conducted operations from 1964 -1972. SOG came into being when President Kennedy in 1963 was very dissatisfied with the intelligence and guerrilla operations that CIA was running on North Vietnam, turned it over to the military.

The Pentagon and the staff officers didn’t understand Special Operations and had little interest in doing so. Their distrust of Special Operations and operators was very high. The Pentagon, the NSC (National Security Council) and State Department all had their hand in micro-managing SOG’s operations, however.

The official acronym (the military loves acronyms) for SOG, was MACVSOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group). SOG was tasked with inserting intelligence agents into North Vietnam, waging psychological warfare, and mounting covert naval and reconnaissance operations as well as strike operations.

The first task failed miserably. Every single agent of the 500 inserted into North Vietnam was caught. They were either killed or turned into double agents. But the resourceful Americans turned some into the classic triple cross agents, though never to be trusted.

Even this failure though into a semi-successful operation. In a series of brilliant moves, SOG convinced the North that a massive underground was operating under their very noses and loyal North Vietnamese were implicated as traitors. The chapter on “psychological warfare”, where Shultz goes into detail with the “Drive Them Crazy with Psywar”. SOG set up a fake resistance movement, the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League (SSPL) and then sent bogus radio traffic, propaganda, and parachuted blocks of ice into the jungle to melt and leave empty chutes and have the North Vietnamese chasing ghosts

Part of the reason the Psywar campaign wasn’t more successful was that CIA didn’t value Psywar. To “fast track” in the Agency, one had to be in the Directorate of Intelligence or in Paramilitary Operations. Psywar was looked down on and so many of the agency’s best and brightest stayed away..

Schultz’s telling of how anything could be accomplished at all while dealing with the tottering bureaucracy is a testament to the bravery and resourcefulness of SOG’s operations personnel. They had many successes in trying to report and thwart the North Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But even these successes were limited and often costly, due to the level that the South Vietnamese government had been compromised.

That chapter, “Crossing the Fence” is a chapter that many of the readers will want to check out as that is where he details the cross-border operations of SOG into Laos.

Shultz does an excellent job of detailing SOG’s operations and he spares no detail on the subject matter because the government finally decided to declassify documents that had been part of SOG. The biggest issue with the ultimate failure of SOG has to do with the military leadership in Vietnam. They had little use for the men working there, provided little to no support for their operations and had no consideration to ever included SOG’s efforts into the overall strategy. SOG and Special Operations Forces, in general, were not highly esteemed by the military and officers who led SOG troops were not fast-tracked.

Richard H. Shultz, Jr.’s The Secret War Against Hanoi: Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Use of Spies, Saboteurs, and Covert Warriors in North Vietnam (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, 1999) is a fantastic read for the lovers of both military history and those who can’t get enough of what makes Special Operations and operators tick.

It is a very detailed oriented book that spells out the many failures and successes of the SOG warriors during our long, troubled misadventures in Vietnam. The lessons learned from our failures in Vietnam were stepping stones to the way our Special Operations Forces are being used today. It is a book well worth your time.

Photo: Author, SOG

Operation Halyard, One of the Great Rescue Stories of WWII

Operation Halyard was the greatest rescue mission of American airmen in our history. And it was conducted by a three-man OSS (Office of Strategic Services) team dropped into Serbia that was occupied by the Germans. The OSS operatives linked up with Serbian “Chetniks” led by General Draža Mihailović in August of 1944.

This three-man Halyard team was commanded by Lieutenant George Musulin, along with Master Sergeant Michael Rajacich, and Specialist Arthur Jibilian, the radio operator. The team was assigned to the United States Fifteenth Air Force and designated as the 1st Air Crew Rescue Unit.

By the time the operation was finished, the OSS had rescued 432 American airmen and 80 other Allied personnel who were airlifted out of Yugoslavia and back into Allied control. The story was captured in the outstanding book “The Forgotten 500” by Douglas A. Freeman.

Setting the Stage: The story of the rescue of 512 Allied airmen should have been front-page news, especially since it was accomplished by just three OSS men. The OSS were the forerunners of the CIA and the US Army Special Forces. But it was kept under wraps and the story never really was told until long after it was over.

The mission was a daunting one. During WWII, Allied forces stationed in Italy were using airbases there to bomb Germany, as well as Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Some of the most important targets were sources of petroleum and petroleum refineries in Ploesti, Romania.

The American bomber crews were suffering increasing losses in the Southern theater, and more and more crewmen were bailing out over Yugoslavia. Some were grabbed by German forces or those loyal to the Germans and were made into POWs. But reports were leaking out to OSS men in Italy that hundreds of airmen were falling into the hands of the Serbian people.

The Serbs were risking their lives hiding Allied airmen from the Germans. They shared their meager, insufficient food with the airmen, usually stale bread and goat’s milk. The Serbian women treated the wounded and operated makeshift hospitals as they shuttled the airmen from village to village to hide them from the Germans.

The OSS men had to infiltrate Serbia, make contact with the Chetniks, then the coalition of Americans and Chetniks had to build clandestine airstrips, large enough to hold C-47s all while hiding them from the Germans and land the cargo aircraft and take off without being detected. It was an extremely risky operation, literally, hundreds of things could go wrong.

The Americans had contacted Marshal Tito of the Communist partisans to secure his cooperation. The British considered Yugoslavia as under their sphere of influence, threw their total support behind Tito and were trying to sever all ties with Mihailović, lest they offend Tito and the Communists. They actively tried to rebuff any American attempt to contact Mihailović’s Chetniks.There were rumors, not proved until 1997 that a group of Communist sympathizers inside the British government were poisoning reports of Mihailović’s collaboration with the Germans which submarined any chance of the Chetniks getting any kind of support initially as Churchill and the British were adamantly against any support for them.

Musulin, who had spent nearly a year with the Chetniks was livid at the way the Allies, specifically the British were in essence handing over the country of Yugoslavia to the communists. He asked to be court-martialed so that the true story of the Chetniks and their loyalty to the allied cause would come to light.

However, in truth, the OSS in the Italian theater was full of communist sympathizers, many of whom naively believed because that Russian was an ally that is just fine.

The OSS team was selected and they were ready for infiltration. The overall operation was headed up by OSS agent George Vujnovich. The British were not pleased, especially since the Americans would not be relying on the Brits to ferry them to Yugoslavia nor using British radio operators. It was to be a completely American operation on the ground. Several attempts to infiltrate the team had gone awry with British pilots that had wrong coordinates which intentionally tried to put them over partisan (Tito) territory. Musulin had enough. He demanded an American plane and crew fly the team to Yugoslavia.

The night of August 2nd, the men parachuted into Mihailović’s headquarters at Pranjani. Musulin landed on a chicken coop which sent chickens flying in every direction. Rajacich landed in a tree where Musulin helped him climb down from. Jibilian had the softest landing, coming down in a cornfield. When the Chetniks saw Musulin, they were overjoyed.

One of the American airmen, Richard Felman (415th Bombardment Squadron, 98th Bombardment Group), witnessed the reunion between Musulin and the Chetniks. “The one who was in the lead was the of a mob of Chetniks—they were kissing him and cheering him with tears in their eyes. He was in an American uniform and was one of the biggest chaps I’d ever seen. He walked over to us and put out his hands. ‘I’m George Musulin’, he said.

Musulin was told to expect 150 airmen at the airfield. Secretly, he hoped the number to be exaggerated so as to make it easier to get them all out. But he was surrounded by no less than 250 airmen.

The next morning, the men began work on the airstrip. The two hundred and fifty men were joined by 300 villagers and Chetnik soldiers who provided 60 oxcarts for hauling stones and debris away from the airstrip. The flat terrain was 700 yards long which was the minimum length an airstrip for a C-47 needed to be.

For six days the men toiled on the airstrip using mostly their bare hands with an occasional hoe or pitchfork to clear the ground. The men cleared some trees at the end of the strip to give the C-47s another precious 75 feet of runway. On August 8, Musulin surveyed the airfield and told his radio operator, “Jibby, tell them we’re ready. We’ll start evacuation tomorrow night.”

The next day the men got a scare when a German Stuka dive-bomber accompanied two German JU-52 cargo planes directly over the airstrip. The men, hiding in the woodline, thought that the Germans were there to bomb the freshly cleared airfield. But just as the planes were passing over at 1000 feet, a large herd of cows, sauntered onto the strip giving it the look of a freshly plowed field. The Germans never noticed a thing.

At 10:00 p.m. Musulin heard the drone of the C-47s approaching but they noticed there were four, not six C-47s circling, two had turned back for engine trouble. The first 48 men would be leaving, as they’d load a dozen per plane. As the planes landed and taxied to the sides of the highway, OSS agent Nick Lalich, bounded out to help the team. The Serbs who sheltered the Americans, fed and protected them were happy for their rescue but sad. There were many hugs, tears among both parties that could barely speak a word of each other’s language.

Allied airmen fly home with their feet in canvas bags after giving their shoes to local Serbs.

The Serbs gave the Americans the traditional Serbian national rugs, wrapping them around the American’s shoulders. The airmen began stripping off their boots, and some with their flight jackets, giving them to the Serbs, most of whom lacked proper footwear.

About 8:00 a.m. the next morning, the men around the airstrip heard the roar of aircraft. Not only were there six more C-47s but they were accompanied by 30 fighter planes, P-38s and P-51s who would protect the airmen on the trip back to Italy. The scene was repeated from the night before with the airmen stripping off their shoes for the Serbs.

A half-hour later, six more C-47s appeared with 25 fighters. The men had made it out and back to Italy. In all 241 US airmen, six British, four French, nine Italians and 12 Russians, a total of 272 airmen had made it out during the days of 9-10 August. But the mission was far from over. What was deemed to be a few week mission turned into a six-month marathon. Allied airmen continued to be escorted down to Pranjane at the airstrip. When it was over, 512 Allied airmen were safely escorted from Yugoslavia. Not a single airman was lost.

OSS Nick Lalich and General Draža Mihailović

Because of this operation, United States President Harry S. Truman posthumously awarded Mihailović (he’d been arrested by Tito and executed after his takeover) the Legion of Merit for his contribution to the Allied victory during World War II. Initially, this high award and the story of the rescue was classified secret by the U.S. State Department so as not to offend the-then Communist Tito government of Yugoslavia.

The rescue, one of the most daring in U.S. military history and conducted by a handful of OSS men was kept a secret as not to offend the communists.

Photos: US Archives

Book Review: “War Stories of the Green Berets” by Hans Halberstadt

Frequently, we get emails or tweets here at SpecialOperations.com in the realm of questions about the training and the qualification course. Many of course deal with Selection and I have to tell people that the Instructors don’t actually kill anyone during the events and one doesn’t have to be 10-feet tall to pass. But one I got last week was different and an intriguing one so I’ve decided to post it and address it in our post today.

J.P- wrote, “as a young man getting ready to attempt Selection soon, I was wondering if you can reccomend (sic) any books that deal with Special Forces, specifically SF history and maybe some that aren’t as well known as others.”

Consider it done. The history of SF doesn’t really begin just with Aaron Bank and the SF of 1952. The OSS in World War II, with the Jedburghs and the Operational Groups (OGs) were the first true forerunners to what SF and CIA became down the road. There are plenty of great books about the beginnings of OSS and Special Forces and we’re compiling a list of some of the definitive great books to read in that regard.

But for today, if you want to understand where you are and where you’re going as a candidate in Special Forces, then look to the past. Special Forces got its reputation during many years of combat during the Vietnam conflict. And the more you can learn about the men and operations of that era then you can gain an understanding of what you are about to attempt.

“War Stories of the Green Berets”, The Vietnam Experience, by Hans Halberstadt is a great book for not only the military history enthusiast but for the potential candidates who someday hope to wear the Green Beret.

Halberstadt has done dozens of interviews with former Special Forces soldiers who fought in Vietnam and the stories are always intriguing, oftentimes funny and many times sobering.

Many of the legends of Special Forces tell their stories. Among them, Martha “Maggie” Raye, a Hollywood entertainer and trained nurse who would visit the austere SF A-camps and during rough times would pitch in and work as a nurse. Colonel Maggie as she was affectionately known by the SF troops, always preferred the Sergeants company to that of the officers and could drink many of those sergeants under the table.

Dan Pitzer (RIP), was the senior medic on an A-Team that got ambushed in 1963, during the ambush while moving up to help one of the Vietnamese, Pitzer broke his leg. Lt. Nick Rowe tried to help Pitzer but was clubbed from behind and both men were taken, prisoner. Pitzer spent the first year of captivity alone in solitary confinement. He set his own leg by suspending himself from the tiger cage bars and straightening his leg by hanging from it. He and Rowe spent a considerable amount of time as prisoners together.

Years later Pitzer would work for SERE Committee at the JFK Special Warfare Center that Colonel Rowe started after their return. In those days, you already had to be Special Forces qualified to go to SERE. Pitzer got up in front of the class, gave a long presentation on his experiences as a POW, his treatment by the Viet Cong and how he was subsequently “released” from captivity. He had a room of hardcore SF guys captivated. You could hear a pin drop. His story in the book about Christmas Eve as a POW is a must read.

Jon Caviani, who was awarded a Medal of Honor for valor in Vietnam and who spent time as a POW told some funny stories some sad and an eye-opener about killing an NVA sentry with a knife. His remembrances on the Medal of Honor and the hassles of remaining in the Army while being a Medal of Honor awardee as well being one while n Delta was interesting and different than one would expect. The secretive Delta Force wasn’t worried about Caviani’s experience level but his public profile, but they needn’t have worried, he didn’t give speeches, make appearances nor attend any functions.

Jim Morris, the former Special Forces officer who authored a few books, “War Story” one of which that should be required reading for Special Forces candidates. Morris later worked as a journalist for Soldier of Fortune magazine. One of his stories was made into a film, “Operation Dumbo Drop.” In this book, Morris penned a sarcastic piece that only someone who served in the military could understand with the jargon and acronyms that was wryly brilliant.

Vernon Gillespie was a Captain and Commander of a Special Forces A-Team in 1964 at Buon Brieng when the Montagnards, sick of oppression by the lowland Vietnamese revolted. Gillespie’s camp was the only one of six in the area that didn’t revolt. The Army sacked all of the Special Forces officers as if they were responsible. Gillespie became the first face of Special Forces in the mainstream when National Geographic ran a story on him. It coincidentally was my own first glimpse into what would become my own life, when reading it while visiting my grandmother’s house.

Halberstadt’s book is definitely worth the read, I understand a newer version is now available and has been expanded with modern stories woven in. That is fantastic because the book was already a great read. I absolutely recommend this one as a fantastic read, as the stories are quick, easy to read and gives a glimpse of what being a Green Beret was truly like in Vietnam.

In the near future, we’ll have some other books to choose from and have a “required reading list” for Special Forces troops.

Photos: Amazon

Book Review: “The Double Agents” (Men at War #6) W.E.B. Griffin

I will be the first to say that I am always ready to read anything pertaining to the OSS in World War II and love the genre. I’ve read many of W.E.B. Griffin’s books and they follow along a same general outline. The plot and character development take up the vast majority of the novel and the action sequences are nearly an afterthought and seem to be shorted out too quickly. It sometimes seems he’s looking to set up another novel by always leaving you guessing at how the action plays out.

“The Double Agents” is no different, using his same characters from earlier work, Griffin spins the tale of the Dick Canidy, the OSS and upcoming invasion of Sicily. The one thing I like about Griffin’s novels is the meticulous detail to get every little facet of life during the World War II years as close to perfect that he can. He weaves his characters around real ones, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Wild Bill Donovan and sometimes you have to remind yourself that it IS a novel when you read the dialogue between FDR and Donovan.

Throw in the machinations of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the jailed Mafia don who helps the Allies by getting the Sicilian Mafia on board (which really did happen), to pave the way for the invasion, and you have the stuff of intrigue. Griffin obviously had some fun by weaving in the characters of Ian Fleming (author of the James Bond books), and actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov as well in this tale. The two actors, Fleming and OSS operative Lt. Hoche weave a tale about a dead British Major’s body that washes ashore in Spain. It is it believable? Ah, no…but it makes for a fun ride.

Our OSS hero Major Richard “Dick” Canidy is en route to Sicily. The ruggedly handsome, playboy type is also a hard-core, Special Operative that is equally at home blowing a German ship out of the water as he is romancing the ladies…. Isn’t that the description of every Special Operations trooper? At least in our own minds….but I digress.

The story has a few subplots that can be distracting at times but starts with a Dr. Rossi that has proof that the Nazis (dastardly buggers that they are), have infected Allied POWs with Yellow Fever. And our hero Canidy, has blown up the aforementioned boat with Tuban, a dangerous nerve agent that Hitler is going to use against the Allies. So Canidy has to ascertain whether the nerve agent sunk with the boat or burned in the explosion.

He also has to work with Luciano’s man Frank Nola, who is the prototypical Mafia Don who sets Canidy up with the local Mafia in Palermo. And from the previous books, Canidy’s love interest Ann Chambers resurfaces for those who like a little bit of romance thrown in with their war stories.

Griffin’s book nicely mixes the true events, the Sicily invasion, Luciano’s help with securing the Mafia’s cooperation, the dead British Major floating ashore in Spain with faked documents and weaves them around his fictional characters.

This particular novel by Griffin I thought could have been much shorter. He used quite a bit of filler that perhaps didn’t need to be in there. One of the more common complaints about Griffin’s novels pertains to filler and the amount of swearing that goes on in them. Welcome to the real world folks. Having worked in Special Operations, the amount of cussing going on in Griffin’s novels is pale by comparison to what you’d find in a Special Forces team room. An American Ambassador in South America once told me having Special Forces A-Team guys in the Embassy was educational. How so, I asked him? He said, he never knew there were that many ways to conjugate the verb “To F**k” before he met us.

I really liked the part with actors Niven and Ustinov, and Ian Fleming it was a fun, enjoyable part of the book and the interactions among the characters were priceless. Having watched Niven (Guns of Navarone) and Ustinov (Spartacus) in countless films, it is easy to see this scene playing out. Especially being a fan of James Bond. They behave as I’d see them behaving…or perhaps as I’d like to see them.

Like all of his novels, Griffin’s believability scale is about pegged out. Our hero Canidy always seems to get things worked out exactly in his favor. Like the jet-setting Green Berets in Griffin’s later series, one has to roll their eyes at times. But truth be told, I would have loved to serve in Griffin’s Special Forces.

But that’s not why we read novels, at least speaking for myself. We/I read them to be entertained. And when reading a military novel about World War II and the OSS, Griffin has woven plenty of true facts around a story that makes for a very enjoyable ride.

I’ve read about 10 of his books and still have seven (friends and colleagues borrow and “forget” to return them), so there is a good reason why I keep coming back for more. I wouldn’t say this is the best of his work, but even as one of his lesser efforts, it was well worth the time.

For you aspiring Special Operations candidates as well as its veterans, you will enjoy the OSS and Green Beret Series of his books. They make for light, enjoyable reading. I bought this particular book for a long flight to the Middle East. I ended up not reading a lick of it on the plane, but lost two nights of sleep after arriving as I couldn’t put it down once I began to turn the pages. Just like his other books.

In the jacket of the book, Griffin dedicated to Colonel Aaron Bank and Captain William Colby, both members of the OSS during World War II. Bank ended up becoming the “Father of Special Forces”, being the first commander of the 10th Special Forces Group. Colby was an OSS operative who joined the fledgling CIA after the war and worked his way up to become the Director of Central Intelligence. He never forgot his OSS service and could be seen for years, cutting his grass with his Army Patrol Cap on.

Photos Courtesy: Wikipedia, author