Jungle Drop

Although teams of specially trained commando units, who were deployed behind enemy lines to undertake clandestine missions, existed as far back as the Second World War, special forces, as we generally call them today, did not capture the attention of the mainstream media until the first and second Gulf Wars.

In his thrilling book about his role in these elite military units, Brokhausen describes how effective they were during the Vietnam War, when he was a member of a small group called Reconnaissance Team Habu. This unit was part of MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group) or SOG, as it was innocuously known. In the early 1970s, it carried out raids and intelligence-gathering operations in enemy-controlled areas of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The teams were mostly composed of indigenous Vietnamese soldiers. They regularly suffered enormous losses, but they brought back crucial intelligence on the movements of guerrilla units, which was immensely helpful to the American war effort. Brokhausen uses colourful language peppered with military jargon and light-hearted gallows humour to describe what it is like to move through remote jungle terrain under the constant threat of enemy fire.

Brokhausen's team achieved one of the highest numbers of decorations for valour awarded to any unit in the history of the US Army. However, this came at a high price; the number of wounded and killed in action was incredibly high. Today, we would consider these missions suicidal. This was also true in 1970, yet these men went into action day after day with their local allies – Montagnards, Vietnamese, and Chinese Nungs – and faced these challenges with courage.