Sog: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam - Softcover

Plaster, John L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 045123118X ISBN 13: 9780451231185

Publisher: Dutton Caliber, 2010

Synopsis

“The most comprehensive examination of widespread covert American actions during the Vietnam War.”—Kirkus Reviews

Code-named the Studies and Observations Group, SOG was the most secret elite U.S. military unit to serve in the Vietnam War—so secret its very existence was denied by the government. Composed entirely of volunteers from such ace fighting units as the Army Green Berets, Air Force Air Commandos, and Navy SEALs, SOG took on the most dangerous covert assignments, in the deadliest and most forbidding theaters of operation.

Major John L. Plaster, three-tour SOG veteran, shares the gripping exploits of these true American warriors. Here is a minute-by-minute, heartbeat-by-heartbeat account of SOG’s stunning operations behind enemy lines—penetrating heavily defended North Vietnamese military facilities, holding off mass enemy attacks, launching daring missions to rescue downed U.S. pilots. From sabotage to espionage to hand-to-hand combat, these are some of the most extraordinary true stories of honor and heroism in the history of the U.S. military.

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 Kirkus Reviews

A heavily anecdotal recounting of the covert, behind-enemy- lines operations undertaken by American special forces during the height of the war in Vietnam. Retired US Army Maj. Plaster served for three years as a Studies and Observation Group (SOG) commando in Southeast Asia. His book is a combat-heavy, laudatory accounting of the SOG's little- known role in the Vietnam War. From 1964 to 1971, SOG teams, made up of specially trained American volunteers (mainly Green Berets) and South Vietnamese hill tribesmen (known as Montagnards), took part in hundreds of combat, reconnaissance, and rescue missions in North and South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Plaster tells this story with a minimal amount of historical background, relying heavily on detailed recreation of individual SOG missions. Those action-filled accounts are based on the author's personal war-zone experiences and on interviews he conducted with dozens of former SOG operatives. Plaster writes about successful and failed missions, but accentuates the positive in assessing SOG's impact on the war. SOG ``logged a combat record unequaled in U.S. history,'' Plaster claims. He cites the number of medals the SOG units earned; the vast amount of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) arms and materiel the teams captured or destroyed; the valuable information they provided on NVA troop locations and movements; the courageous rescues of downed American pilots; and the large number of NVA soldiers killed by the teams and by American bombers using information provided by SOG. The teams' ratio of 150:1 enemy kills, Plaster says, ``was the highest documented kill ratio of any American unit in the war, exceeding the average by a factor of ten, and quite likely is the highest such ratio in U.S. history.'' Although short on documentation, this is the most comprehensive examination of widespread covert American actions during the Vietnam War. (Military Book Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton Caliber
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 045123118X
• ISBN 13: 9780451231185
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368