March 5, 2018
First published in 2005, this offbeat memoir deals with Brokhausen’s action-heavy second tour of duty in the Vietnam War as a Green Beret, working with indigenous Montagnard fighters on secret, dangerous reconnaissance missions into enemy-controlled territory in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in 1970. In overheated, salty language, Brokhausen offers lots of details about many of the recon missions, complete with reconstructed dialogue. He also rails against perceived enemies, both foreign and domestic; in the latter category are rear-echelon American soldiers, MPs, and just about any other troops who were not battle-hardened Special Forces men. (He even goes after Donut Dollies—American volunteer Red Cross workers—calling them “stuck-up little snots.”) It’s hard to tell how much of Brokhausen’s profanity-laden screeds is bluster and how much sincere, and his depictions of drunken brawls and other violent behavior have a patina of embellishment. On the other hand, he tells readers that the book—“a tribute to my peers”—is his attempt to provide a “window to the past” by looking at the men of the Special Forces in Vietnam, an “unwashed, profane, ribald, joyously alive fraternity.” More sensationalized than truly gripping, these war stories, in the main, don’t ring true.
March 15, 2018
Special Forces veteran Brokhausen starts this memoir with the remembrance of a dream. He's on a fishing trip with his brother, who turns toward him, sobbing, and reaches for him. But it's not his brother; it's a Viet Cong soldier Brokhausen killed, cleaving his skull in half with a trenching tool. "I took his future," the author muses, and the dream ends. The prose is clunky at times, and the mentality of the soldiers can be sophomoric, but niceties of style are beside the point here because Brokhausen writes painfully and truthfully of the realities of war. The combat scenes are wrenching; the constant drinking, thieving, and fighting is disturbing. One passage describes how Special Forces troops would borrow from new recruits, figuring that when payback time came at the end of the month, there was a 50 percent chance the soldier who loaned the money would be dead and the borrower would get off free. Throughout this personal narrative, Brokhausen shows the harrowing state of mind that exists when walking outside means putting one's life at risk. VERDICT Gritty and real. For all readers interested in war memoirs.--David Keymer, Cleveland
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 15, 2018
Although teams of specially trained commando troops who go behind enemy lines began conducting secret missions as far back as WWII, Special Forces, as they're now commonly called, didn't start attracting major media attention until the First and Second Gulf Wars. In this riveting account of his own role in these elite military units, Brokhausen shows how often they were used and how brutally effective they were during the Vietnam War, when he belonged to a small squadron dubbed Recon Team Habu. In the early 1970s, his crew led raids and intelligence-gathering operations in enemy-controlled areas of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Mostly composed of indigenous tribal Vietnamese soldiers, the teams regularly suffered horrific casualties yet brought back critical information about guerrilla troop movements that immeasurably aided the U.S. war effort. In colorful, military-jargon-laced prose leavened by gallows humor, Brokhausen pulls few punches describing what it was like to navigate remote jungle terrain under the constant threat of enemy fire. A smartly written, insider's view of one rarely seen Vietnam War battleground.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)