It’s 1964. The US involvement in Vietnam is limited to
advisors to the South Vietnamese armed forces. Lt. Hank Dillon is one of those
‘advisors’ who leads a unit of similarly trained members of the US Navy. Odd
that they are stationed on land. Their moniker is also new, unusual, and mostly
secret to everyone they deal with. They are the first wave of a new and
controversial unit of the Navy. They are SEALs. They live in an almost
cloistered environment while on base. Get very hush-hush orders, and then they
are gone for a few days. Upon return, they clean up, rest, and train to be
ready for the next task. Their barracks resembles an arsenal, which no other unit is allowed.
Most of their assignments are supposed to be ‘snatch-grab’
where they find someone of interest to the spooks and bring them back to the ARVN or US
Army to interrogate. But these SEALs are armed to the teeth when they go out and
frequently come back empty handed. Until they come back with 2 of their own
over their shoulders. Their operations are so secretive, the only way they
could have been ambushed is if there was a leak. Dillon has his own personal
bodyguard, a Montangard named Y Fli, who has his back, always. Loyalty is a
defining trait. Not so for the ARVN or other Vietnamese tribal cultures.
Drugs are also a huge problem and when one of those who
support the SEALs dies in his bed, Dillon and a Army cop (a civilian)
come to blows because the cop thinks this shadow unit is a bunch of cowboys
operating outside the uniformed code of military justice as well as outside of
decent humanity. Then there are the black market dealers in weapons, out
strictly for profit, taking cases of weapons right off the trucks using
forklifts to transport to other trucks waiting to send them who knows where.
This new unit is under very close watch. The SEALs are very
new and Dillon’s unit is very much a test case to see if the program can be
successful. The numerous missions are conducted in South Vietnam, but also in
the North above the DMZ. No one's Rules of Engagement allow them cross the DMZ, except for these guys. The locals refer to these ghost-like soldiers as the
‘green faces’ from all the camouflage paint they wear. No one sees them, but a
bad guy is gone, and depending on how bad, he might not make it to
interrogation.
This is a novelization of some true events (details of which, according
to the book description, are still classified) that occurred early in the
Vietnam war. The authors say that about half of what is presented is true and
the half that the reader might think is fiction probably isn’t.
A while back I read Matterhorn, a epic-style story of a
year in Vietnam. This doesn’t match that one, but it’s pretty darn close. The
portrayals of Dillon, Y Fli, and others in this experimental unit make you hold
you breath as each assignment becomes more and more risky and deadly. The camaraderie
amongst the unit is palpable.
The only issue with the book is that it was a straight to Kindle product via Amazon. As such, it lacks much of the grammatical polish
that is normally found in a book from a mainstream print publisher. There were so many grammatical,
wording, and sentence structure errors that at times, the errors distracted from
the story (being a medical editor, I tend to notice such errors, so maybe the
grammatical observations might just be me). It’d be a shame if the word of
mouth about the editing scared readers away. This really is a terrific story
because it’s partially true and because it’s about the SEALs.
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