THE GREEN BERETS

This is a bloody, blazing account of American Special Forces in Vietnam and Laos and is filled with revelations of a kind that never make The New York Times. To protect identities these stories have been lightly fictionalized. But their authenticity is evident sentence by sentence. There are nine stories and each drives home the point that almost no one, including the Army, knows what Special Forces is doing in Vietnam. There are only about 2,000 Special Forces members in Vietnam. As so-called advisers, they are essentially guerrilla paratroopers who train Vietnamese civilian irregulars and soldiers and accompany them into battle. Some of the moral deviousness that takes place in this book is scarcely believable. One American officer blows up his own troops as part of his strategy. He also makes unauthorized raids into neutral Cambodia and gets away with it. We watch Viet Cong prisoners being tortured for information. We discover that French Communists are acting as advisers to the Viet Cong. And we soon know why Vietnamese troops are sneeringly referred to by the Americans as LLDBs (Lousy Little Dirty Bugouts)...The battle scenes are tremendously immediate, and the moral implications are often shocking.