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

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. 

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.