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

Plaster, John L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451214471 ISBN 13: 9780451214478

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2005

Synopsis

Major John L. Plaster recalls his remarkable covert activities in SOG from 1969 to 1971 in Vietnam. 

Code-named the Studies and Operations Group, SOG was a secret operations force in Vietnam, the forerunner of today’s Delta Force and Navy SEALs. Exceptionally skilled Green Berets, they were the most highly decorated unit in the war. Although their chief mission was disrupting the Ho Chi Minh Trail—the main North Vietnamese supply route into South Vietnam—SOG commandos rescued downed helicopter pilots and fellow soldiers, and infiltrated deep into Laos and Cambodia to identify bombing targets, conduct ambushes, mine roads, and capture North Vietnamese soldiers for intelligence purposes.
 
Always outnumbered—often by as much as 100 to 1—SOG commandos matched wits in the most dangerous environments with an unrelenting foe that hunted them with trackers and dogs. Ten entire teams disappeared and another fourteen were annihilated.

In Secret Commandos, John L. Plaster vividly describes these unique warriors who gave everything fighting for their country—and for each other. 

About this title

About the Author

Major John L. Plaster is a national authority on sniping, firearms, and special operations, as well as the author of Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines With the Elite Warriors of SOG and SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam. He served three tours in the top-secret unconventional warfare group, Studies and Observations Group, in Vietnam. As a long-range reconnaissance leader, he led tiny intelligence-gathering teams behind enemy lines in Laos and Cambodia before leaving SOG in late 1971. He was decorated for heroism four times and retired from the U.S. Army as a major.

From Booklist

SOG was the Studies and Observations Group, a U.S. Army organization that operated behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War. It gathered intelligence and was responsible for rescuing downed pilots, identifying bombing targets, kidnapping enemy officers, wiretapping phone lines, ambushing convoys, and mining the Ho Chi Minh trail. Plaster shares details of his training in Fort Bragg as a Green Beret before being sent to Vietnam, where he served three one-year tours in SOG. He chronicles the group's operations and portrays the soldiers he worked with there. Some readers may find too much here about fighting a war that many people today believe should have never happened, but the book nonetheless is an intriguing first-person account of this elite group's intrepid operations. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0451214471
• ISBN 13: 9780451214478
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400