Dale Hanson takes us from a northern Minnesota boyhood to the incredible stresses of US special operations during the Vietnam War, the deadly world of MAC-V-SOG, the top-secret Special Forces project that conducted America’s secret war against the Communist forces on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Shrouded in mystery and equipped with exotic weaponry, SOG operators suffered casualty rates in excess of 100 percent for three successive years.

In October 1969, Captain William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Fire Base Kate, held by only 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnard militiamen. He found their defenses woefully unprepared. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments - some 6,000 men - crossed the Cambodian border and attacked.

1st Lieutenant Robin Bartlett suddenly found himself at the "repo-depo" in Bien Hoa reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. The unit had more helicopter support than any other unit in Vietnam. Immediate support from artillery, helicopter gunships, and ARA was only minutes away to support a firefight. Wounded troops could be medevaced even in dense jungle using "jungle penetrators." It also meant that Bartlett's platoon could deploy through helicopter combat assaults into hot LZs (landing zones) at a moment's notice if an enemy force had been spotted. And they did.

This book tells the story of the Teams operating out of FOB2 Kontum, near the tri-border area, in 1968-69. From recon missions over the fence to the heroic, and sometimes fatal efforts undertaken to try and rescue missing SOG members, the events are told through the words of the men themselves, supported by previously unreleased official documents.

A young US Marine officer recounts his experiences of the Vietnam War over a 19-month period. He graphically describes what it was like to perform three distinct combat missions: long-range ground reconnaissance in the Annamite Mountains of I Corps, infantry operations in the rice paddies and mountains of Quang Nam Province, and special police operations for the CIA in Tay Ninh province. Using official Marine Corps unit histories, CIA documents, and his weekly letters home, the author relies almost exclusively on primary sources in providing an accurate and honest account.

Across the nation in the spring of 1966, farm boys from the Midwest, surfers from California and city-slickers from Cleveland opened their mail to find greetings from Uncle Sam. Some of these men, optimistic and looking to serve their country, joined Charlie Company and trained for service. They deployed together, experiencing the camaraderie, fear, smell, pain, violence and senseless deaths. And through it all they wrote letters back and forth with the loved ones they’d left behind. Back at home, the families of Charlie Company faced fear, loneliness and uncertainty.

In this intimate memoir, Perry A. Ulander chronicles with powerful clarity the bewildering predicament he confronted and the fellowship and guidance that transformed him during the year he served as an American GI in the jungles of Vietnam. Conveying with unadorned precision the harrowing experiences that shattered his core beliefs, Ulander also captures the camaraderie and humor of his platoon, the hostility between "lifers" and draftees, the physical hardships of reconnaissance missions, and the unrelenting apprehension underlying everyday life.

LRPs were all volunteers. They were in the spine-tingling, brain-twisting, nerve-wracking business of Long Range Patrolling. They varied in age from eighteen to thirty. These men operated in precision movements, like walking through a jungle quietly and being able to tell whether a man or an animal is moving through the brush without seeing the cause of movement. They could sit in an ambush for hours without moving a muscle except to ease the safety off the automatic weapon in their hand at the first sign of trouble. These men were good because they had to be to survive.

Rattler One-Seven puts you in the helicopter seat, to see the war in Vietnam through the eyes of an inexperienced pilot as he transforms himself into a seasoned combat veteran. Soon after the war, Gross wrote down his adventures, while his memory was still fresh with the events. Rattler One-Seven (his call sign) is written as he experienced it, using these notes along with letters written home to accurately preserve the mindset he had while in Vietnam.

In 1967, at age 19, John Stillman - refusing to wait for the draft - voluntarily enlisted in the Army to aid his fellow countrymen in one of the most opposed involvements in our nation’s history: the Vietnam War. Written with John’s daughter, Lori Stillman, Jumping from Helicopters is a vivid and moving memoir that unearths 50 years of repressed memories with stunning accuracy and raw details.

Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat - the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Davis' artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At 21 years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated.

This memoir tells the story of a Marine rifle platoon commander’s time in the mountainous jungle of the northernmost province of the then Republic of Vietnam. While tasked with fighting the enemy, G.M. Davis made some great friends but saw too much death. The author tracks his tour of duty in the jungle, leading Marines not against the Viet Cong but against the North Vietnamese Army, a well-trained and well-supplied professional army dedicated to unifying the two Vietnams.

Kacy Tellessen is a grunt. After completing high school in rural Washington, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and began the hero's journey he imagined might parallel those epic tales he'd consumed throughout adolescence. But what Tellessen lived through—from boot camp to the battlefield and home again—had little in common with Homer's tales or Hollywood's depictions. In his memoir, Tellessen offers a truer account of life as an infantryman: the complicated, conflicting, adrenaline-pumping, and traumatic experience of war.

An autobiographical account of one US Marine Reservists tours as a Mortuary Affairs Marine. His story begins in 2002 as an everyday postal letter carrier in Springfield, Ohio when he gets the call to muster. In the next three years, his life is thrust onto the world stage as an active participant in combat. His unique experiences as an MA (Mortuary Affairs) Marine puts him and his teammates directly into the path of war. Told in first person view, hear what it was like to witness a regime crumble, walk the streets of terrorist-held cities, go on Search and Recovery missions, and more.