SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam Book

_SOG_ is the amazing accounts of some of our best soldiers from the Vietnam war era, dying in places where they were not officially operating. SOG is the Special Operations Group that tangled with the NVA while learning what was happening in places outside the Vietnam border. Cross border actions into Laos & Cambodia are here, tracking the movement of men and materials via the Ho Chi Minh trail.

This is a hard book to read at times. I had to put it down for a few days and come back to it with a clear head. The author, as someone who operated within SOG & lead his own missions, knows many of the men involved. A number of them did not come back. He lists out the missions and the names of the Americans involved, providing detail when possible on how they died. Some of the accounts are not for the squeamish. There is a reason why SOG had the highest number of Medal of Honor recipients.

I had uncles over there, one a Marine that saw a lot of action in the center of the country. The author points out how the small band of SOG operators were able to tie down a large number of NVA units & destroy caches. Not enough to turn the tide of the war, but enough to keep many in the front line units alive. SOG went in after aircrews who were operating outside of official boundaries, as the US didn't have any SAR groups that could go there. SOG went back for their dead, sometimes right back into the teeth of a reinforced NVA. The other side had no qualms using SOG prisoners and dead to lure teams in, as they knew SOG never wanted to leave anyone behind.

The 160th SOAR is an outgrowth of one of the last SOG missions. The SOG unit was keeping an NSA site online at the top of a mountain. They were to stay there until it became untenable. SOG had to borrow helicopters to move its units around. One unnamed REMF thought he'd play with lives by threatening the careers of any aircrew who heard the call to pull them out. Americans on a hill that was about to be captured & an American high ranking officer said no. That simply burns raw that we could do that to ourselves.

In reading other accounts of the smaller units in Vietnam, they did the best they could with the resources given. But they really shouldn't have been there. With no real plan from the top, all units like SOG could do was get the intelligence & report it up the chain. Nothing was really done with what they learned. What the leadership didn't realize or wanted to admit was just how prepared and patient the other side was with their goal, that of unifying the two halves of the country.

Read the book to learn about a less known, but no less important part, of the American war effort in Vietnam. Know that these men were over there doing the job given them. They fought and died where the US government said they were not. The author has done a tremendous service to bring their stories to light.