Code Name, Copperhead: My True-Life Exploits as a Special Forces Soldier

A Special Forces veteran reveals top-secret missions and contingency plans so extreme that no one believed they would ever be put into action, in an adventure-filled memoir that includes the author's days as an original Green Beret.

Garner's memoir is an engrossing chronicle of his adventures during 21 years as a sergeant major in the Army's Special Forces. His account is all the more noteworthy for the fact that much of the material was classified until recently. With freelance writer Fine, he describes how he ran mercenaries into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam for the hush-hush Studies and Observation Group, rescued a Marine infantry company stranded on the Laos-Vietnam border and engaged in several breathtaking duels with the North Vietnamese. Garner was the first GI to free-fall with a nuclear device strapped to his back. His comments on fine-tuning his parachuting technique ("Batman never had it better") and on testing special equipment on the battlefield are unfailingly interesting. He also recounts how he sought to help restore the Army's image in the face of antiwar activists' disparagements by organizing a re-creation of the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition. It was a stirring success; Garner and team were welcomed warmly along the 2800-mile trail. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A gung-ho account of 27 years in Special Forces. Garner opens with the story of how his son, crossing the Canadian border in 1982, was detained for hours by agents who wanted to know where his father was. Finally, he was let go, ``but the alarm bells were ringing. A lot of cages had been rattled by the name Joe Garner.'' The elder Garner, by his own account, is something of a legend. He begins his own tale with his Special Forces (SF) training days at Fort Bragg in 1958, a period characterized by secrecy, weird training specializations, and plenty of tight-lipped macho toughness. Garner seems to have relished it all. Ten years later, in Vietnam and Laos, he was at first disappointed to see no front-line action for a year and even more peeved to be assigned the duty of taking care of Vietcong POWs. This section of the book, though, is one of its most interesting. The SF men are first trained to withstand enemy torture themselves: In one exercise, a man is paraded naked in front of one of his comrades skillfully made up to look like a woman (the recruit finally breaks down, pleading the Geneva Conventions); at times recruits were forced into steel boxes with a few inches of putrid water for hours and days on end. Later, Garner expresses some doubts over the way Vietcong POWs were interrogated--things weren't done, he knows, strictly according to the Conventions. Throughout this book there are fascinating glimpses of what it was like to be part of a unit perpetrating what the Defense Department could always call ``disavowable actions.'' For aspiring soldiers or readers with little interest in larger political themes. It doesn't analyze anything, but for all that, it's a pretty gripping account of dirty war. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

One of the first members of the Army Special Forces, Garner participated in a Special Forces team project that conducted "attacks" on important civilian targets in the United States. The aim was to test security in an undertaking similar to that of Richard Marcinko's Seal Team Six in Rogue Warrior (Pocket Bks., 1993). Garner tells about many important and groundbreaking missions for the army, including test parachuting with a nuclear weapon. The book's most interesting part recounts the re-creation of Lewis and Clark's expedition across the United States by two Special Forces teams. This re-creation was done at the height of anti-Vietnam War fervor, but the teams found that people along the route were very supportive of the military. Strongly recommended for public libraries and all libraries with military science collections.
Terry Wirick, Erie Cty. Lib. System, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In an absorbing military memoir, Sgt. Garner, assisted by Fine, tells the story of an army career in which he spent 22 of 27 total years wearing the green beret. He saw combat in Panama, Laos, and Vietnam; made more than 1,300 parachute jumps (including a couple accompanying a nuclear demolition charge); and became complete master not only of infantry warfare but of teaching it to sometimes reluctant and often distrustful Asians. He had already survived a brutally abusive childhood to make an enduring marriage, and he went on to endure plenty of interservice politics before retiring full of years and honors. Like its author-subject, this book deserves the accolade "Well done" as well as a place beside James Watson's Point Man in the attentions of anyone interested in the methods and mind-set of special warfare. Roland Green